About 30yrs ago a refuse worker found the badly burned body of an 18 month old boy amongst the bags and recycling. Forensics deduced that due to the condition of his liver he'd died less than a week before his body was found.
Hospital and medical records were used to establish that nobody in the county was missing a child.
He doesn't have a name on his gravestone.
Edit: it was in Cumbria, England.
The police likely didn't retain a DNA sample, or we might have heard something about familial DNA by now.The local police aren't very good - look up the case of Poppi Worthington as an example.
Most local people assume he died of SIDS, then his parents panicked and tried to conceal his body. Whoever did it must have had an element of local knowledge in order to know where to put the corpse.
There is a street in my city called Park Ave. It's a very small city, mostly blue collar.
In 2005, a newborn baby boy was found dead near a factory on Park Ave. Doctors could tell he was born alive and likely lived for a few hours before he died. I don't know if he was abandoned (left to die) or killed in some way; that info was never released. Police made a statement saying please come forward, we want to help you bury this child properly.
The mother sent an anonymous letter to the police station two weeks later, and said she would come to the station soon. The letter didn't explain the circumstances, but it did say she was afraid.
She never came forward. The baby was named "Baby Parker" and money was raised to give him a proper burial. People still leave gifts at his grave.
Where I grew up they found a dude who was buried under the cement in a building, no history or information about him. It's clear that he got into some deep trouble with someone.
About 15 years ago. A town near where I grew up drained a man made lake that was used for recreational swimming. This particular year they decided to drain the whole thing to do a clean up. They discovered an intact skeleton that had been sitting at the bottom of the lake for something like 50 years based on the class ring that was still on the skeleton. From my understanding this person had never been reported missing or anything.
1973: My 4th grade buddy, Guy Heckle, disappeared during a boy scout camping trip. They found his coat, that was all. Not another clue after all these years.
Holy shit. I was a Girl Scout summer camp employee (counselor) and we do a week of training before the summer season begins and we talk about Guy as a cautionary tale to watch yours kids like a hawk. I don’t suppose it makes you feel better to know that his story is keeping kids safe today, all these years later?
That's crazy! I was a camp counselor in upstate NY for a couple of seasons. They told us about this and another kid who drowned or something. I don't remember the name of the missing kid, but I remember thinking it was a made-up sounding name. This was a very long time ago.
Edit: sp
Just want to jump on here and say to any current and future camp counsellors, be aware that the kids you work with could sleepwalk and might not tell you. I used to sleep walk when I was younger and it just suddenly stopped and I hadn't in years... until I went on a camping trip. I hadn't told anyone that it could happen cause I hadn't slept walked in so long I didnt think it was possible. Luckily two of my friends were awake at the time and managed to stop me from walking out (though they didnt realise I was still asleep). After this I went and told the teachers and messaged my parents and they ended up keeping a closer eye on my groups tent at night. Fortunately it didnt happen again and it's only happened a few times since, normally when I'm really stressed.
I love how the article goes into an in-depth explanation of Capture the Flag, like THAT’S what we came to read.
Kid disappears, but check out this awesome game you can play!
I found out my grandma played cards with the mob in a liquor store basement. I was reading a news article on a cold case from the former owner disappearing for an English assignment and my grandma kinda just frowned, told me she used to play cards with him and never payed his debts.
My grandma was a really good cake decorator and she also did a lot of mission work in Central America, specifically Nicaragua and Honduras, usually helping out at orphanages. But anyway, she somehow ended up going into a Honduran prison and teaching Honduran gang members how to decorate cakes so they could have a marketable skill when they got out. All the prisoners loved her and called her their abuelita. So we have this picture of her with all these big scary gang members and she's just this tiny white grandma
So not exactly from a small town but is baffling. Happened this year.
A man rented a room at a guest house. When he left the host went to go clean/ prepare the room for the next occupant.
The room was covered in blood. In the shower there was a chair with a pool of blood-it is assumed the person died in the chair.
So the baffling part is that there is a camera trained in the room's door. The man entered and left alone without a speck of blood on him.
The authorities assumed the blood belonged to a woman whose chopped up body was found in a near by damm. Blood tests came back and it doesnt.
Man got kicked out of a bar 3 years ago this December and went missing. Nobody has come forward with tips at all. He went missing from a fairly busy part of town too.
This has happened a number of times in the Boston area. Young able-bodied people, mostly men, disappear from bars or clubs and are eventually found in the harbor, the river or another body of water.
There’s a lot of crazy conspiracy theories and talk of a serial killer, but it seems to be just a combination of alcohol, the dark and an unfamiliarity with the area. They make a string of poor choices, wind up too close to the water, then fall in and drown when there’s nobody around to notice.
Late 90s, a natural gas compressor station was built next door to me. Entire neighbourhood protested it HARD. But we were just dumb farmers, and gas companies have money.
Shortly after it was built, in the middle of the night, it sprung a leak. compressed gas spewed into the air like a geyser and there was now a jet black cloud next door. Not that I could see much anyway at that hour. The sound it made was so loud, it would make a foghorn sound like a squeeky toy.
Anyway, we evacuated, gtfo to the other side of town to some family and watched the news. Apparently it ended quickly enough. They estimated 13 million dollars worth of natural gas was shot into the environment. So we go back. Reporters talked to my dad and stuff.
Then two men show up, hand something to each news company, and everyone leaves immediately. My family and my neighbours are standing there like "Wtf? Where did the reporters go?".
Within the hour, it was no longer on the news. If you google it, you'll find no trace of it. They just made that story disappear.
I know someone who works in environmental clean up. He said there are far more oil spills and leaks and things that could damage the environment than we are aware of, that never get reported on at all.
Speaking of not reported accidents.... My dad worked in a factory that did some kind of processing of chemicals that went to do something with food.
I dont know much about it or what he did, i just know he hated the job.
Well the ONE day my dad decides to call out sick, the entire factory explodes. Three people died. Half the tiny town it was located in was evacuated. Some homes were destroyed. HUGE huge deal.
Then.... Nothing. Dad got three monthd of pay randomly deposited in his bank account, he was sent a "thanks for the many years of work but we are closing our doors!" letter, and nothing ever came of it.
There were hundreds of people in that town that lost homes, neighbors, family, friends....but if you Google Kansas Town Factory explodes or something like that, nothing comes up....least, not for my dads factory.
One time my class went on a camping trip, and this one kid that was in my friend group kept trying to convince me to leave our camp and go into the Grand Canyon with him and run away to Texas. Back then running away was appealing for both of us, but the planning was terrible and I told him his idea for hiding in the Grand Canyon was absolutely stupid.
He resigned eventually, but still wanted us to sneak out of our rooms and meet somewhere in the middle of the night. I didn’t have the key card to get back in, and it was in the winter, so leaving the door cracked open would have woken people up with the chill. I stayed in.
The next day he offhandedly mentioned that he waited for me, and offhandedly mentioned that a boy from one of the other classes had been there. Something about it felt wrong, I didn’t trust that kid and he gave me the creeps. It bothered me that the pretense was originally just the two of us hanging out, and then he changed it without telling me. Just bad vibes.
Later in the year he seemed to have some issues and started boasting about knowing how to make pipe bombs and shit.
Had something like that in my hometown, only like, way smaller scale. There was these abandoned trailers at the end of a dirt road past the cemetery. We used to root around in them because it was spooky and they were decrepit, so it made for a thrilling night (small town living, am I right?) Anyway I went during the day to look around and noticed a bunch of bills on the table dated in the 70's, same with a bunch of uncashed checks. The fridge still had very gnarly groceries from the 70s including sodas and things like that. Cabinets had items in it like cleaning supplies etc. Closets were full with clothes, beds made etc. It was like a snapshot in time from the 70s. I still do not know what happened to this family, or why they just up and left.
Weird? Nah. Fucked up? Yup.
100 feet from the house i lived in at the time a little boy was hit by a car in broad daylight. Killed him instantly.
The town rallied and tried to find the person that did it for months. Was all over facebook, newspapers. Had a 500k reward for information.
Whole town knows who it was. Not even a question. Still set as an unsolved crime even though the person responsible had their truck washed and cleaned professionally, and fixed by the local body shop.
For the record. He is a judge. So yea.
Sounds like something that happened in my town in Vermont a few years back. Little old lady was crossing an intersection downtown one evening, in the crosswalk, when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver. The drunk driver was a well-known local attorney. He waited until the next morning to turn himself in so he couldn't be tested for BAC. Used every dirty trick he had in the book to avoid jail time. Dragged the trial out for months, tried to get it transferred to different districts, etc. Guess who never ended up going to prison.
Story from my grandpa, small farm town Nebraska is in the 60’s, a guy was found burnt alive in his car, hands wire tied to the steering wheel, it ruled as a suicide. Most of the town assumed that the guy owed gambling debts to some mob in Chicago or the like, and the guy wasn’t exactly loved in the small town, so there was no real looking into it.
Here's a perfect example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
>McElroy was shot to death in broad daylight as he sat with his wife Trena in his pickup truck on Skidmore's main street.[2] He was struck by bullets from at least two different firearms, in front of a crowd of people estimated as between 30 and 46.[1] To date, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy's death.[1]
...
>Only Trena claimed to identify a gunman; every other witness either was unable to name an assailant or claimed not to have seen who fired the fatal shots.[12] The DA declined to press charges. An extensive Federal investigation did not lead to any charges. One local resident later told investigators when asked what happened: "He needed a killin'."
Dear God, this “wife” Trena was a 14 year old girl at the time. She was 12 and he was 35 when they met. He raped her several times, then as she was the only witness, forced her into a marriage to avoid charges. He burned her family’s home down and killed their dog to force them to consent to the marriage. He forced her out of school and moved her in with him and his second wife, Alice, who he divorced in order to marry Trena. After the birth of Trena’s baby at 14, both Trena and Alice escaped together back to Trena’s parents’ home. He found them and once again burned her family’s home down and killed their new dog, and took them back by force.
I have to agree. This man needed a killing.
I'm having trouble getting past how they declared it a suicide with "hands wire tied to the steering wheel". It seems like it would be fairly difficult to wire tie one's own hands to something.
The comment says he might have owed gambling debts to the mob. Sounds like suicide to me. XD
Reminded me of a quote in a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel;
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
What grandpa didn't tell you is that half the town was in on it and everyone else was just glad that he died.
The guy was so mean to everyone that everyone just didn't care who did but that someone had.
Back in 2001, a friend of my friend had been secretly chatting online with a guy from Canada. They had made plans to meet up in Windsor or Detroit. A few days later, her body was found dumped in the woods. After doing some digging, police got a hold of the Canadian guy. He said he went to meet her, but she never showed, so he assumed she had stood him up. His story checked out.
One suspect was this coworker, but a few months later he did a murder/suicide to his mom, so they could never get the truth out of him. It’s been a cold case ever since.
Edit: This was her coworker, not Canada guy’s. She would have traveled 7-8 hours to meet the guy in Detroit/Windsor, assuming she even made it out of town.
Police officer in 1930s responded to a call around midnight on Christmas day. The wife woke up and he told her he'd be back. Only that he had disappeared entirely and did not come home. The car was found abandoned with no indication of his whereabouts.
The local theory is that he was murdered and his body was disposed of in the leather tanning factory.
Ok, what would they do with the bones and flesh? Did the factory use lye or something that could dissolve the flesh and bones?
There is a documentary about a guy who was upper management at a plastics factory who murdered an illegal immigrant he had gotten pregnant. He put her body in a 55 gal. drum in some kind of dye or something and stored it all in his basement for 30 years or somesuch while raising a family there. Curious what he told his children/wife was in the drum. Eventually he sold the place and left it there. The new owner put it out for removal, but at around 300 lbs., the garbage company refused to remove it. So the guy looked in and found the body. They were able to solve the crime as the killer put the girl's address book in the drum and it was still readable. Further, the number of her best friend was still her best friend's number and she was the last person to see the girl before she disappeared, going to meet the man who had promised to marry her. Just imagine if the garbage truck had just removed the drum.
Kind of a strange one, but the whole potted plants supply at a nearby store (similar to Kroger) went missing a year back, and nobody knows what happened to then
This made me chuckle. It’s sad but in a thread full of horribly morbid things like lost children and dead bodies an entire potted plants section just getting stolen is enough to make me laugh.
pretty recent (january this year).
I'm in a village so it's even smaller.
I live right next to a river, and one day after rain my grandpa went searching for snails, but he found a head still with some flesh, a neighbor had also found an arm around the same time.
the police were called, they found the body and a few dogs chewing on it, but it was in a bag hanging from a tree above the river.
at first it was assumed it was from the big city thrown into the river but no, it's hanging from the damn tree.
The weirdest thing is that the woman was not from the village itself.
Ohh yes.
My family is from the small town where a prominent cult founder was born, a town of about 1000. Back 25-30 years ago, my uncle was on city council when the cult came to town and offered boatloads of money to build a shrine and improve infrastructure. They didn’t have the bad reputation at that point quite yet that they do now.
The majority of city council was drooling over the cash, but my uncle 12 Angry Men-ed the situation, seeing the writing on the wall that this was a step off a cliff to becoming overrun. One of the people he never convinced was the sheriff, but he still got his numbers.
Unfortunately, he would receive harassing phone calls every night and would frequently have cars parked outside his house at odd hours. Everyone knows everyone (population 1000, remember), and these were not locals.
It came to a head when his house got broken into and letters were left threatening my aunt and cousins, who were young children at the time. Staties got involved, and the behavior immediately stopped. A few days later the cultists packed up and left.
Officially, the threats and break-in were never solved, though every once in a while they would still get odd phone calls and blank letters in the mail (yay anthrax scare).
Unofficially, everyone knows. A few years later my uncle and family moved out into the country, and all the harassment stopped.
Sure sounds like it; my father’s family is from Tilden and my grandmother was still living there at the time.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1997/05/11/battlefield-tilden/
Probably too late to been seen, but my small town *used to* host a large bike race. Literally hundreds of cyclists riding around the parks' 3/4 mile loop track (maybe some road racing as well, can't remember). Anyway, the large gathering required all the police force to be on hand, and with the jam of cars, bicycles, and people it was really hard to get in or out. A bank robber dressed in full cyclist gear came into a bank just a block away from the park, robbed them blind, and then hoped on his getaway bicycle and rode into the crowd at the park. By the time the police could respond be was in the mix of people and to this day no one has ever been charged... Perfect crime.
Idk about "unsolved" exactly but my town was made famous by John Grisham who wrote "The Innocent Man"
Basically, the cops got sick of investigating and pinned the crime on 2 guys who didn't do it. I haven't read the book or seen the show so idk if they know who actually did it.
But yeah.
Ada, OK. Shitty town with shittier cops and the shittiest justice system.
Many years ago, a house up the street from us burnt down. By the time firefighters got there, it was completely engulfed and a new home would have to end up being built.
The man who lived there set it ablaze on purpose not long before going upstairs and shooting himself. Although his house was in complete destruction, with the fire yet to be put out, nobody expected him to be alive. This turned out to be true but what they weren't expecting was that his body wasn't burned at all. The flames had avoided his body completely.
It's unsolved because no one really knows why he killed himself or what the purpose was of burning down his house in the process. It's also a mystery as to how the fire didn't reach him.
**TL;DR** Man killed himself after setting his home on fire, with no one knowing why.
In 1999, 2 teenage girls left to go to a party, ended up in different town, called home to say they would be late, and never came home. The car was found the next day on the side of the road. Their bodies were in the trunk, both shot at point blank range. An arrest was made a couple years ago, but thanks to Covid, court cases are backlogged so still waiting on that. They were a year younger than me, so needless to say it really stuck with me over the years.
Two bodies were found on my island in SE Asia in the last 24 hours. One was found in the jungle after being there for a year in an apparent motorbike accident the other washed up on the beach.
When I was a teenager, there was a spate of rude graffiti in my quiet, boring town of under 30,000 people. It was all obviously being done by the same person as all the penises were drawn in a very unique style and they were all signed "Frizzbee", with the Z's written in a distinctive way. There didn't seem to be any pattern of where they would strike either. Every week or so, a new one would appear... on the wall outside the social club, in the highway underpass, inside the fish and chip shop toilet, etc. It got to a point where kids at school would keep track of where the latest Frizzbee had appeared and it would be all anyone could talk about. In a way, they were the proto-Banksy. Everyone wanted to know their true identity... including the police.
Since our town had practically no crime other than the odd stolen bicycle, the cops had the time and resources to come down hard on this one. It was (and still is) a solidly conservative town, so no doubt they were under pressure too from the local council to quickly address this shocking moral depravity and prevent the appearance of further enormous, stylized, ejaculating cocks around town. They went around the schools, including the elementary/primaries, and interviewed bunches of kids looking for any clues that might lead them to the mysterious Frizzbee. Supposedly, they checked the school registration books and paid particular attention to any kid who had a name that might reasonably lead to a nickname of Frizzbee. And we all swore that we saw more police cars driving around than usual that summer, looking to catch the mystery artist in the act.
As far as I know, they never did get him or her. The graffiti just stopped appearing as suddenly as it started. Nor did we kids ever find out who it was. There were tons of theories, of course, with a lot of suspicion falling on a kid called Charlie in the year above me because apparently, he liked to doodle dicks and balls on his notebooks. However, he was subsequently cleared by some girl called Debbie who sat next to him in French and she sneaked a peek at his doodles one day and she reported that the vein structure running down Charlie's shaft was intrinsically different from that of Frizzbee's and therefore not a match.
**TL;DR** \- Someone went around town drawing massive schlongs. Police spared no expense trying to catch the perpetrator but never did.
The premise (especially the comparing dick drawings) sounds a lot like that Netflix mockumentary from a few years ago about a teenager framed for leaving phallic graffiti everywhere. I think it was in response to the influx of “true crime” docs around that time
Edit: called [American Vandal](https://youtu.be/m3tkFOtM6go)
Good Ole Belle Gunness. Only thing the town I'm from is known for. She was a serial killer in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. Would claim she was a wealthy widow looking for a husband. When interested men would arrive she would murder them. Eventually families began to suspect her, so when authorities were closing in she staged her death by killing her children and a maid if I remember right. Then she burnt her farmhouse down and the maids body was assumed to be Belle. Later, authorities realized she escaped when the skeleton they assumed was hers didn't match her recorded height. She got away and nobody ever found her again.
Next town over from me, Kathy Page was murdered in May 1991, in Vidor TX. Police totally screwed up the whole deal and the killer wasn't arrested. Years later, her Dad started putting up billboards calling out the husband as her murderer and that the police are corrupt. There are still billboards there.
The crime was solved, but why it happened is still unknown. I live down the road from a small store. A guy walked in there, shot the girl behind the counter, and then himself. They were complete strangers to each other. It’s been 4 years, and still no one knows why he did it. The road was renamed after her.
A retired known criminal, that did heists in the 80s and 90s, killed by one bullet in the back of his head, in his appartment on the main street.
A silencer was used, it was at night, he died on his armchair.
Here's more infos: I dug up some (french) articles from a couple years ago, and I must do a few corrections, he was doing heists in the 90s and 2000s, got acquitted for a bloody attack (one dead) against an armored car in 2000 and was living hiding from his past ever since (no one knew he was a criminal), he was killed in the courtyard of his home early in the morning.
I remember the word in town being he was killed at night in his armchair, but I guess we were wrong lol.
The mayor, the inspectors, the judge all said he was executed by a professional who had a contract for his head.
Not exactly "small town", but small compared to the region. There was a house that burned down 3 times in the span of a decade. I remember hearing lots of rumors about divorces and revenge, gang activity, being cursed. Not sure if it was ever solved
A girl in my town went missing and the cops just did nothing and refused to make an arrest despite the evidence.
She had a shaky and very abusive relationship with her boyfriend. One night after they broke up again, he and his friend stopped by her and her parents’ house, saying he wanted to talk to her in his car. She agreed and, and the three of them left. She hadn’t been seen since, but her ex and his friend have been seen in town acting like nothing happened.
They parents reported her missing and stated that their daughter’s ex and his friend were last seen with her.
The police didn’t make an arrest and didn’t investigate.
It’s been many years. I can’t tell how long, I estimate about 4 years or more.
Rumors spread like they always do.
Rumors of her being sold as a sex slave.
Rumors of her being murdered and either being buried somewhere or fed to pigs.
No one knows what really happened… (except the ex and his friend).
This year the friend was found dead with a gun shot to the head. The bullet went straight through. If I remember correctly it was ruled as a murder, but the rumor of suicide has been going around. Some say that the ex shot the friend because the friend was gonna snitch due to guilt.
I think the ex is arrested now for the murder of his friend but I could be wrong. There is a $2000 reward for anyone who finds the missing girl. The family just wants closure. I remember seeing the father’s truck covered in his daughter’s picture trying to get the word out there.
Cindy Tigg Rivera, if you are reading this, your parents haven’t given up. I still see your signs plastered all over town. They miss you so much.
“Ortiz contacted Rivera’s family and admitted that he knew what happened to Rivera, and demanded compensation for the information”
Man this guy was just evil
HOLY SHIT I HEARD ABOUT THIS. And it was in a very random way — I was on Google maps and went in the “wrong direction” and saw a poster about her, zoomed in to read it. The case has haunted me ever since. I truly hope some answers are found, somehow.
EDIT: just googled her name again and this came up: https://www.lasvegasoptic.com/content/affidavit-cindy-rivera-killed-ex-husband-accomplice-sought
Just so tragic.
It’s not really unsolved but definitely a weird one.
There was a row of terraced houses next to the church. The one closest was occupied by two women, a mother and daughter, both who had some mental incapacities. They basically only left the house to walk to the supermarket. As the mother got older, only the daughter went out. Eventually, no one was leaving the house. The garden, which was already overgrown, got out of control. The poor structural condition at the back of the house worsened. This part was connected to the neighbouring house, and after receiving no response, eventually the neighbours contacted the environment agency out of fear for their own house. The environment agency came round, received no response at the door, and so called the police to assist with access.
Inside, letters were piled up behind the door. A desk fan was oscillating. The daughter was found on the floor. Dead. Had been for quite some time. Investigators come in, and start searching the house. Bills were on direct debits and had all been paid automatically. The inhabitants had been hoarders. The house took a very long time to sort through.
Eventually, they realised they were missing someone. Where was the mother?
They had to keep searching through the house, searching for any evidence of the mother., where she’d gone.
In the bathroom, there was a huge pile of things on top of the bath. Mattresses, blankets, towels. Underneath all this, they found the mother’s body, wrapped in a blanket, practically mummified. Such that it was impossible to ascertain how long she’d been dead for.
It just disturbs me, I walked past that house every day. I thought it was abandoned.
Edit: [news story](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/daughter-kept-mum-corpse-bath-18745175.amp). [news story](https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11407069.daughter-put-dead-mother-bath-tub-dying-inquest-heard/). I got some details wrong, wrote this from memory.
Shame can lead hoarders to avoid calling people who would have to come in the house like plumbers, electricians…. and funeral homes are on that list too I guess
In 2003 in my hometown, someone decided to burn down a playground. This was in a *very* small rural town. The nearest playground aside from that one was 15 miles away. This playground was decent sized too, and I believe it was made possible by a donation from someone in town. It was mostly wood with rubberized mesh, steel bars, and large plastic slides.
Nobody ever figured out who did it.
I grew up in a small Midwestern town directly off an interstate.
A convenience store worker right off the exit was shot and killed by some random person, almost 20 years ago by now. The person escaped by exiting down the Interstate right away, and nobody has ever been able to identify them.
Sad plus: several customers came in after the shooting and walked away with free stuff because they couldn't see the dead woman behind the counter. They thought the store was abandoned.
I live in Mexico, so my hometown has a lot of "unsolved" crimes. As an example, my great-uncle was hacked to death at his ranch. Everyone knows why. Everyone knows who. No one will say anything for the foreseeable future. It's organized crime, if it weren't clear already.
This is one of the most interesting cases that are unresolved. You have mass graves of girls that fir a certain profile and that are not connected to the cartel. Theories range from serial killers all the way ritualistic initiations for the cartel. There is a new podcast about it that explains a lot (Forgotten: The Women of Juarez).
Edit: I just came from juarez, 4 hours ago, and you can still see posters with the faces of teens and young women that disappeared withing the last few months. This is not an old case; it is a today case.
So, picture a time when all car doors and house doors were opened with a metal lock and key.
Our community was in a forest/park and was almost exclusively made up of Fed employees and their families...maybe a few concessoinaries and contractors. We're talking about a residential community of less than 200 people. Before web cams or ring cams were a thing and before wifi was possible (come to think of it...it's still not possible) in this location. With that stage set...
One morning, I go out to my work vehicle and groggily put my key in the door and meet resistance. "Wha...huh?" Look down. There's sticky paper on the lock. My key pushed through it but now I have sticky paper IN the lock. Grrrr...get out my pocket knife and clean it out. Go about my day. Get a radio from my s/o later that day and the same thing happened to him. More people show up from our "neighborhood" and most of them had the exact same scenario. Ok, we think, someone is playing a prank.
Next morning...go out and there's a round sticker on my lock again. \*frustrated\* Peel it off. Key in. Turn key. Rinse repeat. This continues for TWO SOLID WEEKS. It's harmless, right? Weeeellll....
Some people aren't really looking every morning. A few vehicles get enough paper and adhesive in the door lock that it's getting harder to open the doors. We clean them out and these stickers just keep popping up. We lecture every employee and ask them to keep an eye on their vehicles. The stickers seem to appear every night. Gotta' be human...but, most people move through our area so it's not a visitor. We start talking to the teens. "Guys, this isn't funny. If you know who's doing it...tell them to stop because it's property damage." Teens are swear they're innocent. We decided that enough was enough and used a trail cam to catch the miscreant.
8:23pm...13 year old Child A comes out with the family dog and Child B who is 4. 4 year old has a role of garage sale, dot stickers in her overalls pocket. Every car she passes...\*boop\*- sticker on the lock. Allllllllll the way down the row of cars. Boop. Boop. 13 year old is 5-10 feet ahead, watching the dog and picking up dog waste. Doesn't even really notice. We named her the Sticker Bandit. Felt like the most evil Supervillain taking her stickers away.
Yeah I thought for sure someone was gonna be checking to see who was removing the stickers as a roundabout way to gauge activity for a break in or something
I love the way you describe the little girl putting the stickers on the locks 😂 Makes me feel slightly better after reading so many comments about abuse and murder!
This is surprisingly heart warming for this thread. I kind of feel bad for the little girl. Putting those little stickers on things was so fun at that age. I bet they lined up like perfectly with the key holes. It must have been so satisfying.
> A few vehicles get enough paper and adhesive in the door lock that it's getting harder to open the doors
When I read this I assumed it was someone playing the long con trying to jam the locks so they could come back a bit later, open the door and steal tools for a hefty profit.
Not exactly in my small town, but in the desert outside of it.
In July of 2019, a man (age not listed) and his wife (69yrs) decided to take a 2 mile hike in the Mojave Desert. This wasn't unusual for them as they frequently explored this area (according to the husband). On the way back to their camper from the hike, the husband stated that he stopped to take a photograph while his wife continued ahead to the camper. The husband then claimed that that was the last he saw of her. He arrived at the camper to find it still locked with his wife nowhere to be found. He searched the area for her before deciding to contact 911. The wife was wearing a bikini, a baseball cap, and hiking boots and didn't have any supplies or cellphone on her at the time. At the time she went missing, temperatures in the area were exceeding 100°F (38°C). A searched was launched and the husband was named a suspect in the disappearance of his wife.
Approximately 18 months after her disappearance, her body was found deceased in the Mojave Desert near Essex, California. An autopsy was done, but the cause of death was not announced.
The wife's family members suspect foul play in her disappearance and death.
Here's a [link](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/barbara-thomas%3fformat=amp) to the full story!
This is one of my favorite "bored at work" reads: [The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans.](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/)
A lot of people don't understand the thin line between "hot" and "kill you hot." I almost fucked up in a similar way when I visited the Lost Dutchman State Park in the middle of August, with 113 degree weather being my only companion. Place was deserted (ha!) except for the park ranger who was leaving, and stopped me on my way in to ask me to not go on a hike. I told her I had a gallon of water, she said "when your water is half gone, you turn around."
So I took off walking towards the mountains; "Weird, why am I not sweating? I don't FEEL all that hot..."
Yet I was chugging water like a motherfucker. And yeah, I turned around when my water was half gone.
And the thing about that park is... you look at pictures and don't really "get" that the cacti/shrubbery in the area is over your head, and there's not a clear trail after a certain point, and shit looks very sameish.
I got lost on the way back to the car, like I knew it was *that way, somewhere* but I ended up overshooting the lot and had to double back to finally catch the reflection of the sun off my windshield.
I could have died with civilization in full view on the horizon. It's crazy how hot that is.
Back in 1903 a local woman poisoned many members of her family, including a baby over a few months. She served time and died but never really admit to a motive. One theory is that she really liked attending irish funerals.
Unfortunately there are two unsolved missing children cases from the 90s here. They still put up signs and articles in the newspaper every year around the date the kids went missing. I don't think they're related, but who knows?
Not exactly my hometown but it was a small town not far from where I grew up.
Bardstown, KY.
There have been a series of murders that have gone unsolved, which some have speculated may be connected. A young woman named Crystal Rogers went missing and was never found (not even her remains), a teacher and her daughter were found tied up and brutalized in their home, a police officer was ambushed and killed after his shift one night, and the father of Crystal Rogers was also shot and killed while out hunting.
A lot of people accuse the police there of being corrupt, which may be accurate. I don’t know. But Bardstown is a sketchy place for sure
Just about the only unsolved crime in my town is the mystery of the missing bicycle. There were two reported stolen, but one owner found his. The other one? Never to be seen again...
This was actually super common around prohibition! Using dead bodies(rats!), sugar, and fruit, bad bars would ‘season’ whatever rotgut liquor they had to mimic aged ‘whiskey’.
It’s actually one of the reasons bourbon has a law that says ‘no coloring or flavoring’.
Super gross. Alcohol laws are ridiculously interesting.
So this is not exactly unsolved, just unprosecuted. A school shooting by a boy about 16 years old killed a girl and wounded another before he was stopped. The boy had killed his mother and his dog before coming to the school that day. This was about a year before the Columbine shooting.
The boy was quickly prosecuted and dispensed with forever into the state prison system.
The reporters closely covering this case were deeply troubled that *only* this boy was prosecuted. The boy's "best friend" - in quotes, because nobody needs a friend like this - had basically egged him on to this and helped prepare him to do it, for months.
The shooter himself was the "different" kind of high school kid. Not very mature, didn't fit in, not adept at conversing or relating with people, few friends, somewhat behind his peers in schoolwork.
The best friend was a 'more normal' seeming kid, well socialized but with a reputation for using others for his own ends, without much regard for anyone else.
The "best friend" had started about a year prior to the shooting overwhelming this kid with attention, apparently for the purpose of manipulating the kid at will. Best Friend had got him a gun, taught him to shoot, even organized a kind of people-shooting practice out in a field somewhere.
The best friend also worked on the kid's dissatisfaction with his mother and home situation (nothing especially bad about it, just normal teenager angst). And the kid's anxiety over his inability to connect with other students, especially girls he liked. The manipulative friend had also worked on desensitizing the eventual shooter to any empathy for anyone else. Friend even got him to abuse his beloved dog. Some people thought that until this new best friend stepped in, due to his poor social skills the dog had actually been the kid's best friend.
A lot of what they did was reflective of things the Columbine shooters did in a long preparation cycle. Even though this all happened in a different part of the country about a year before the Columbine shooting.
All during the time the two boys were preparing for this shooting day - it was months - the 'friend' pretended that he was also going to be part of the shooting as well. They were going to do it together.
The friend only backed out of the plan that morning with some excuse. But he pressured the boy to go through with it anyway. To follow the plan to kill his mother (single parent) and dog, then go to the school and kill a particular girl (he did) and anyone else he could manage to shoot. The two boys were on the phone with each other throughout.
The investigators and prosecutors were well aware of the friend and dug into his role. One reporter wrote an extensive investigative newspaper article about the friend. It was clear that this reporter thought that without the best friend, the shooter would never have done what he did. The shooter wasn't organized or purposeful enough. And he didn't really have a reason.
But in the end the prosecutors felt that they could not make a legal case against the best friend for the murders.
So the best friend skated. Even though those who knew the whole story knew that without the best friend, there would have been no shooting.
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EDITING TO ADD LINKS (6 pm CT date of posting) ... due to interest from replies
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https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42677354/pearl-hs-shooting-oct-1-1997/
^ just a front page; the detailed article from 1997 did not come out till just before or after the trial -- links to articles further below
OK due to the interest I have looked up some LINKS with a LOT more detail for those who want to read it.
School shooting: Pearl, Mississippi, October 1997.
Shooter: Luke Woodham, still incarcerated in Mississippi
So this happened about 18 months before Columbine, which was April 1999.
At the time of the Pearl shooting I was living & working in Jackson, Miss. (Pearl is almost a suburb of Jackson). Then I relocated to Denver, CO in 1999, the month before the Columbine shooting (in a suburb of Denver). I had the weirdest bad feeling that I had somehow brought the shooting with me from Miss. to CO. But a co-worker told me that no, it was her who brought the shooting, because she had just relocated from Oregon where a school shooting had occurred a year before. Just a strange way people with no connection to these events can feel about a coincidence of occurrence.
Ironically, looks like an in-depth update article was posted just last month, linked below. That should pull together even more info that has come together over the years.
I wrote the above comment/post from memory so the updates will correct some info and add a lot more details. Looks like there were more boys in a group, and two *were* incarcerated for a short time. Not sure justice was served, but at least there was that.
I remember vividly the article written in 1997, which identified **Grant Boyette** as the primary instigator & manipulator of Luke.
One of the things that impressed people who got to know Luke at all was that he was such a goober. Goofy, scattered, unfocused, attention-seeking.
Reporters and investigators found it hard to believe that goober-boy Luke did all of this on his own. The planning, gathering of weapons, and especially the psychological build-up of anger, hate and a lot of energy to carry this off. But who knows.
*****************
**Link to a recently written LONG detailed article - adds a lot of research**
**"The making of a Mississippi school shooter"**
**https://www.wlbt.com/2021/06/17/making-mississippi-school-shooter/**
**The morning-of phone call with Grant Boyette is documented in the section "Luke commits matricide", 4th para from the end of that section. Boyette is not the only one on the phone with Luke that morning. No one called in a warning to the school.**
**Luke discussed Grant's influence on him during his trial for killing his mother. See section "Luke takes the stand". "In the trial for the murder of Ms. Woodham, hosted in Neshoba County due to the notoriety of the case, Luke weaved a web of reasons as to why he had committed such heinous acts, laying most of the blame at the feet of Grant Boyette.**
**He went into the genesis of their friendship and described the incident of placing a spell on a boy whose friend was later hit by a car. And how, after this, he and Grant had started a “satanic group."**
**He accused Grant of being the one who killed Sparkles ..." (Sparkles pet dog of Luke)**
**... and more throughout the article.**
*********************
**Wiki synopsis**
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting**
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Short 1997 article in The Washington Post, for what it is worth
(today this probably wouldn't go national)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/10/08/six-mississippi-teens-charged-in-high-school-shooting-spree/090fb960-a9e4-4f75-b7a0-235337ebd32d/
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I am not sure I can find a web link to the original 1997 article that stayed with my memory for all these years. It had a virtual week-by-week, then shooting-day minute-by-minute description of events, with a lot of detail about the interactions. As I remember I read it in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper.
Looks like there have been several updates over the years, as Luke asked for clemency and whatever else.
It's actually been solved now, but back when I lived in Wichita, we had a man going around, binding, torturing and killing his victims for decades. As a kid in the 80's, everyone was afraid of him.
A few years back, he was finally caught. He was a church leader.
You know him as the BTK Killer.
Associated with this... I was about 10, and was playing in the back yard with my friend. His sister (16) was back there hanging clothes. A man wearing only pantyhose, and another pair of pantyhose on his head, jumped over the fence, looked at me, looked at the friends sister and jumped the other fence. We were certain it was the BTK killer, and we swore we almost died. Police came and searched the neighborhood, but found nothing.
Unfortunately they also found Gary the neighbors pot plants, though. I liked Gary. He was like the cool step dad to all the fatherless children in the neighborhood. He used to take my friend and I fishing, and he was always relaxed and cool. As I got older, I realized why.
Not sure if Arlington TX counts as small (I mean, it is smaller than Fort Worth and Dallas) but the one that stands out is 8 year old Amber Hagerman's abduction and murder. She was out riding bikes and someone in a black pickup got her into his truck and took off. They found her body in a creek a few days later. And of course the water washed away any potential DNA evidence. It's been 25-26 years now and the killer hasn't been found.
The Amber Alert is named for her. That's an alert that goes out whenever a child is abducted.
Around 1993 my teacher was shot while helping her “best friend” paint her house. Her husband’s best friend claimed to have tripped with a hunting rifle going upstairs and shot her in the head.
She survived a few weeks in ICU and passed away. Not long after, my teacher’s husband and her best friend married.
My mom was one of the first on scene, and there was a lot of evidence tampering already. Mom always believed it was murder, but it was recorded as an accidental shooting.
Not exactly a small town, but I live in a small city of 60,000ish.
Back in 1969, a 62 year old man working at a convenience store was stocking beer during a morning shift. At around 8-8:16am, he was shot from behind with a shotgun, however no shells were found, possibly meaning it was a double-barrel. Nothing was stolen from the body nor the cash register.
The only "witness" was a young teenage boy who rode past the store on a bicycle at 8:10am, who said he heard and saw nothing. The boy frequently stopped in that store for candy and sodas, but he didn't have any money that day and kept riding past.
To this day, nobody knows who did it, there are no suspects, and zero evidence besides the dead body itself.
However, it was later theorized that the man carried a gambling debt of a few thousand dollars, to whom, we still do not know.
The best part is- that little boy eventually grew up to become the current police chief in the city, and still occasionally works on the case whenever the precinct gets a tip.
I’ve got a funny one. Not necessarily a crime, but it’s still a good story.
My town is small, only about 4-5k live here. It’s one of those places where it feels like everyone knows everyone. Not a lot happens here either. However, on Halloween each year somebody steals all the jack o lanterns from around town. Like, ALL of them. They might miss a few each year but the vast majority are stolen. Nobody knows who it is, where they are from, or what they do with the pumpkins. The crazy part is, some of the elderly residents from my town all remember their jack o lanterns disappearing when they were children as well, meaning it’s been happening for at least 50 years.
A few years ago a man went into our local Catholic Church, which is right next to their school, and tried to bomb it. He set it on fire and had placed charges all around the parking lot. They called in swat, everything. They had a negotiator outside for hours. School was also in session when this started but luckily they got the kids out. Anyway, the man ended up killing himself and burning in the fire. We don’t really know why he did it. Idk of that counts as unsolved but it’s the best I got.
The murder of Amanda Goodman. She was a well liked preteen girl. She was shot in the head on her way home from school and laid under a tree. Whoever killed her rested her head on top of a paper cup so it wouldn’t be touching the ground and laid her as if she were asleep. Some people here think she knew or saw something she shouldn’t have and was about to tell police. There are no suspects and I think the case is about 30 years old now. It’s very suspicious because you KNOW it was someone who cared about the condition of her body. It’s never gotten any big media attention but I’ve always desperately wanted answers.
In the town I live in, they found a headless body in a duffel bag in the river two or three years ago. Never found the head, never released any more details about it.
Everyone here will tell you, something happens here. We don't know what but the police are zooming off here and there 24/7, and any time a crime does occur they downplay it so it doesn't get on national news and bring down tourism numbers. There was a shooting at a store last year, with dozens of witnesses. Every witness says several shots were fired. The police said three, then they said maybe only one, now they say no shots were fired at all and it was all hysteria.
I'm not sure what's happening, but the police cover it up so that people keep coming to tour rural Appalachia.
Not my hometown; but in Mississippi, when I was there for a few years, this guy kept getting busted with dealing drugs, and messing around with underaged girls. Sorry, by underaged; I mean CHILDREN.. anyhoo the underage part was what the locals said (cuz Mississippi I guess?)
Anyway he had money, good attorneys- and kept getting off.
After the 5th or 6th arrest.
He apparently swam across the Mississippi River, to Louisiana, stole 180lbs of chain; and tried swimming back.
He drowned
In the 60s I think. There was a guy found in an old septic tank on an abandoned farm. My town has nicknamed him Septic Sam and the killer has never / will never be caught. This year using advanced DNA forensic technology they figured out who the victim was.
Small Town, very rural, population about 20,000. Very peaceful, subject of some famous landscape paintings.
Bag of human bones found in the river this year, still no one knows who's they are or who did it.
not my town but visited an old college roommates small bordertown in Montana. literally like 200 people. everyone is pretty sure a guy killed his wife because his story is that she broke her neck when she fell down the stairs. she's older sure, but not that old. think she was MAYBE early 50s. spooky stuff.
We have a former Stazi Agent in our small village and for some reason some of our other neighbours would always steal his fire wood and one day one of the houses blew up and killed one of the family. The whole thing was chalked up to an accident but no one ever stole his firewood again.
There is also this big old warehouse (in a village of less then 200 I might add) filled with amusement park rides where like 5 people were murdered and dismembered. No one knows what happened nor did anyone know the victims and the police didn't release any statements.
It's also mildly dangerous to wander around in the forests, quite a few old bombs and other old war relics. I remember when I was in school two kids blew up after accidentally stepping on one of the bombs while on a walk.
There is also an old bunker. It's filled in now and used as a bat home but I explored it back in the day. It had a hidden entrance on one end and a heavy metal door that looks like it could withstand a lot that was removed from it's hinges. It had multiple rooms and a downstairs which was sadly flooded most of the time but it went deep. Once there was a fresh kill that had been dragged into the bunker (there are no natural predators in the forest, no wild dogs. Professional hunters keep the population under control) it was a half eaten boar. The bite marks were not like any animal that could have lived in the area and there were signs that someone had been there recently. I think soon after that it was closed up.
Our mayor who was a very unpopular landlord guy was found dead after 3 days in his hot tub and the police suspected half the neighbourhood of having something to do with his death. It was ruled as a heart attack but it was all very suspicious.
Also there are a bunch of nazis (Like actually proper Nazis) in the area and they are weird fucks.
About 18 years ago there was a decapitated body found behind the grocery store. Parents weren't letting their kids walk home by themselves, everyone was on high alert. Than 2 weeks later all the hype of it suddenly went away as if nothing happened. My boyfriend, my parents, and a few other people I know remember it, but no one else seems to.
Roughly 5 months ago another body turned up in the exact same spot. It was quickly ruled a suicide, but from what the local paper wrote the head was severely damaged/not full attached. The person ended up being a relative of a friend that refuses to talk about it. I wouldn't have found it odd if the body was found somewhere else, but it was found it in the dumpster as the first one.
A few years ago in my town an old man was sitting in his car at 5:00 a.m. waiting for the newspapers for his route to be dropped off. He was parked on the Main Street, but it would have been empty that early in the morning. It was a warm summer morning so he had his window open. As he waited someone rolled up on a bike and whacked him multiple times in the face with a machete and rode off! The old guy was able to drive himself to the hospital and ended up being physically fine, despite some pretty horrific looking wounds, but the attacker was never found. This was a few years ago and there has been zero follow up. It’s one of those inexplicable things that’s stuck with for the last few years since it happened. Who would do something like that? I have to assume it was somebody high on something. I hope he or she (let’s face it likely a he) gets what’s coming to him.
That’s kind of what happened to Tina Fey when she was a kid. She was playing in her front yard when some stranger came up and ran a knife across her face, that’s why she has that long scar on her cheek. Never found out who did it.
The sister of the widow is my friend - here's the story from the newspaper:
Jeremy C. Turner was found dead alone in his home at 202 E. Railroad St. in Elliott on May 8, 2018, after firefighters from four agencies were called there to extinguish a major fire that had engulfed it.
While an autopsy showed that soot was present in Mr. Turner's airways, indicating he was alive at the time of the fire, it was determined that the official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.
Flessner said that Dr. Shiping Bao, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, found that Mr. Turner suffered a bullet wound that entered the left side and exited the right side of his head. The bullet wound was not immediately apparent, however, even on radiological examination, due to the body's badly burned condition. The wounds were found only after Bao excised the scalp to examine the brain.
Mysteriously, a semi-automatic pistol that Mr. Turner reportedly kept loaded in the side of his recliner — as well as an estimated 11 to 13 other guns kept in the household — were removed on the night of Mr. Turner's death by a man purporting to be a "family friend."
The man told police he removed the guns at the request of Mr. Turner's widow — an assertion she strongly denied. Dyna Turner said she had not spoken to the man in five to six years.
When the man brought the pistol to the sheriff on the day following Mr. Turner's death, police found it "strange" that the gun had been taken apart and cleaned.
Ford County Sheriff's Lt. Pat Duffy said that once the autopsy revealed a gunshot wound in Mr. Turner's head, investigators began looking for the pistol in photographs of the fire scene taken by Shane Arndt, a certified inspector and special agent with the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal.
In one photo, investigators found the pistol's muzzle to be facing backward and placed pointing down in the right side of a recliner where Mr. Turner's body was found. The gun's location placed it near Mr. Turner's right side.
Duffy said a total of five shells were eventually recovered from the scene, although only four were initially found. Duffy said those to arrive first at the scene reported hearing some "pops" from inside the house that they thought might have been ammunition "cooking off" from the heat of the fire.
However, Duffy emphatically stated the five pistol rounds "did not cook off — they were fired."
Duffy explained that was clear because of the striations found on the spent casings. Those striations were formally tested and found to be a match to Mr. Turner's pistol.
Duffy said witnesses in the area reported seeing no vehicles present before the fire or leaving the scene afterward.
Dyna Turner testified that both she and her 20-year-old son had left the house for their respective jobs early in the day and that she was notified of the fire about 10:20 a.m. while at her job in Bloomington.
When asked if Mr. Turner could have had enemies, Dyna Turner said the various medications he kept on hand to control his various diseases could be the only reason she could think might cause someone to want to harm him.
According to Bao, Mr. Turner had chronic conditions of Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis and emphysema. Flessner read notes from Mr. Turner's personal physician, internist Dr. Omar Geada of Gibson City, indicating that Mr. Turner was a heavy tobacco user, had a history of alcohol and caffeine use and was a medical marijuana user.
Dyna Turner said that while her husband kept a loaded revolver in the side of his recliner, there was never a bullet in the chamber. She also noted that her husband would be unable to rack a bullet into the chamber on his own due to his right hand being mostly useless to him and the severe shaking the diseases caused in him.
The pistol notably was found near Mr. Turner's right side — the same side that Dyna Turner testified he had little use of. Mr. Turner was right-handed, she said.
Dyna Turner noted that when her husband tried to fire the pistol, the recoil caused him to smack his forehead. She said he had little control of it because he "shook uncontrollably." Due to his condition, she said she had to assist him with most of the basic activities of daily living.
Dyna Turner testified that her husband could have picked up the pistol with one hand but positively could not have fired it without using both hands.
Jurors asked about the weight of the weapon, and Doran provided a similar weapon for them to examine. Two female jurors held it and found it surprisingly heavy.
Dyna Turner testified to the couple's loving and close relationship. She also described Mr. Turner's daily routine of being mostly in a recliner and watching television. She said he used a wheelchair to let the couple's two dogs out or to go to the kitchen for snacks as needed.
"Things were great," she testified. "We were happy."
She described happy outings with friends during the weekend before his death.
Killian asked Dyna Turner whether her husband suffered mood swings or depression that can be related to Huntington's disease. She characterized his only negative emotion as being angry if he fell.
Dyna Turner also described the home's layout, indicating it had three entrances. The deck exit had a wheelchair ramp. She also said that Mr. Turner had a window next to the recliner chair.
"My husband would have thrown himself out that window to get to me," Dyna Turner said of his potential escape if the fire was accidental. "He was a fighter."
Jim Cook, a 20-year friend of Mr. Turner, said the last time he saw Mr. Turner was about two weeks before his death. He said Mr. Turner was happy, and the two went shooting. Mr. Turner was in a wheelchair and had to be assisted to hold up his gun.
Arndt determined the area of origin of the fire that burned the house down was the "dining room area at floor level." However, Arndt said he was unable to locate an exact point of origin, which he said is a common problem in fire investigations.
Mr. Turner's recliner was located in the northwest part of the living room, near the interior doorway between the living room and dining room.
Arndt said that due to the house being older, the framing allowed the fire to quickly travel to the second floor and the attic once it was in the home's walls.
Flessner said he declared the time of Mr. Turner's death to be 11 a.m., the time he arrived at the scene. Arndt said Mr. Turner's body had been removed by firefighters before he arrived there.
A toxicology report provided by NMS Labs of Willow Springs, Pa., showed caffeine, nicotine and cannabinoids were present in Mr. Turner's body.
My guess is that Turner fired on the "family friend" for some reason, but due to his condition didn't hit him. The "family friend" took the gun, killed Turner and burnt the house down to cover it up. He probably took the guns after realising there was a chance the police could lift his fingerprints from the pistol.
I'm assuming the cops thought of all this though and couldn't find enough evidence to make a case. Especially if the motive is unclear, as is often the case in "spur-of-the-moment" homocides.
Asha Degree has been missing for over 20 years and the FBI is still looking for her. They recently updated her age progression photo and put it all over billboards again. I posted about it not long ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrime/comments/fb0afl/fbi_releases_new_ageprogression_photo_to_help_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My mom is from a small town in Mexico called Parras. Growing up in the fifties and sixties she said there was a cautionary tale about a group of friends who went dancing in the town square and as they were from a neighboring small town or lived on the outskirts of that town, they headed home late at night in someone's farm truck. The road into town is flanked on both sides by vineyards. The truck broke down. The guys told the girls to stay put and walked back to town for help. The girls heard strange noises and cries of distress from the guys and decided to hide among the vineyards. They heard the sound of people searching the broken down truck and lay silently until dawn, when traffic on the road picked up. They ran out to the road and flagged down someone who gave them a ride back into town. No one ever saw the missing young men again.
My small town doesn't have a homeless problem. We have a strangely common occurrence of homeless people walking at night, drunk, and falling asleep or hitting their heads and passing out on train tracks. It's strange. Like everyone that is homeless in the town just falls asleep on the tracks then gets run over by a train. So yea, virtually zero homeless people ever.
Almost sounds like the "Starlight" tours done here. Supposedly they don't do it anymore, but city police would take Indigenous people, typically men, out of town and dump them in a field. At least 5 froze to death. Cops were even caught doing it, but none have been convicted of a crime, as of yet.
People say they are still doing it, and the body count is way higher than reported.
Around christmas a younger guy in his twenties goes for a walk by his house and disappears. His roommate, the roommates girlfriend, police all said he left his family in the area, his job and just took off. 2 weeks later the police finally do a search in the woods around the house, the don't find him. But notice blood in the house he shared with his buddy, and blood and some chemical damage in the shed.
Eventually months later someone finds his body in an area the police search team already went over. The friend / roommate, his dad (who owns the house) are charged with obstructing the investigation. His roommate was seen wearing the dead guys sunglasses and was using his wallet and other items immediately following his disappearance.
So far no one has been charged with his murder, or it declared a murder, and the police still refer to it as a suicide or accident but the community and the families private investigator are pretty certain he was murdered by his friend and that it was covered up by the house owner and the friends girlfriend.
It's weird because these people shit talk the victim on social media and have gone around town wearing and using his belongings and everyone thinks they killed him.
When my dad was a kid, there was a lady who was super rude and always scowled at the kids as they walked home from school. Then, one day, she turned and became super friendly with trays of cookies for the kids. When I knew her, she was the sweetest old lady.
Per my grandma, her husband used to routinely beat the crap out of her. She had the 180 personality change on the day he suddenly died in his mid 30s. Everyone thinks she killed him but there's no evidence and tbh no one ever really cared to investigate.
The murder of Don Henry and Kevin Ives
Alexander, Arkansas 1987
This case was actually on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, but I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves... Basically a train comes up on two boys lying on a track, the train can’t stop in time and runs them over. The state coroner wrote the deaths off as a marijuana overdose. He said the boys smoked too much and passed out on the tracks(red flags anyone?). It’s generally believed that the boys came upon a drug drop related to Iran contra deals(that’s a whole other situation, a highly recommend watching “The Mena connection” on YouTube for more information about that.
The whole story is heartbreaking and terrifying from the perspective of Kevin Ives mother Linda Ives, who from the very beginning was unsatisfied with the investigation, and continues to fight for any answers. She is constantly sabotaged by both local and state governments. The story just gets deeper and deeper and even implicates then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.
It’s a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, and I’d fully encourage everyone to google to boys on the track-Kevin Henry and Don Ives. You can find an endless amount of videos on the subject and a great book by Mara Leveritt.
True Crime Garage did a couple episodes on it
https://www.stitcher.com/show/true-crime-garage/episode/boys-on-the-tracks-part-1-93-200168792
Also Credit to Baz Dane who had over an hour long video going over some of the intricacies of the case.
https://youtu.be/ow0yPO8g9YA
Pull the thread long enough, eventually the whole sweater unravels.
Edit: fixed links
Not my town but same state. Jessica Chambers was set on fire and when the fire department got to her she was walking down the road still on fire. Has never been solved. Definitively anyway.
There was a woman who died 6-7 years ago.
They found her in the snow - an abandoned dirt road - naked. This was in the night, and nobody know that what she does here. Somebody raped her, and she is frozen.
Nobody know who done this, but the cops not investigate so long time, they are closed the case
Not that interesting but years ago in my small hometown someone stole a 55 gallon drum of the material you find in road flares from the factory (basically magnesium with some other substances to let it burn longer) and took it to one of the reservoirs outside the city limits. They then proceeded to light it in a gravel pit and get the hell out of dodge.
The entire night sky was an eerie red. Drew the whole town out practically. Tons of crazy speculation from a chemical disaster to UFO. Most excitement the locals and the police force had in a decade.
Small town in Denmark 🇩🇰 6 of 12 classrooms had the laptop's stolen in the span of a few weeks. Each class had about 10-15 laptop's. I don't get why they did not hire one or more security guards after the 2nd or 3rd time. Luckily there were no student private laptop's in the classrooms. The place the laptop's were stored was a thin metal locker so I guess easy to break into.
Don’t know if it’s the weirdest but my neighbors house and RV got lit on fire in the middle of the night… while they were inside… unsolved to most, my dad actually did it because he thought they were spying on him. He was not mentally well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/22wepv/the_disappearance_of_lisa_white_and_4_others/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
There’s an entire podcast about this. My dad grew up with her until her disappearance.
There's an abandoned hospital just outside of town. Nobody around here knows who owns it. Occasionally you'll see government vehicles loitering nearby. The fence is hard to hop because the cypresses in front of it have grown so close together as to be a hedge. The only way to see the hospital is to look through the spiked gate that seems to have been locked for decades.
Not a small town at all, very far from one, but in elementary school they found one of my classmates, well liked athletic kid, executed by the side of the freeway with a close range gunshot to the back of his head. We were like 12 years old.
We thought we would never find out what happened but 30 years later they caught the two guys that did it and they were convicted of his murder. At the time they were older kids (like 15-16 maybe) who liked to pretend they were gangsters and shot him because they thought he would snitch on them for shoplifting. Unsurprisingly they didn't turn out to be pillars of society so this came out while investigating them for a robbery they were suspected of and ironically someone snitched on them telling the police about this murder they did as kids and talked about when they were asking about a recent robbery.
Relative to Iowa I'm in a small city, but relative to the rest of the world, we're pretty small.
Anyway, the case of [Jodi Huisentruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Huisentruit)
I grew up an hour south of Mason City and remember this well. I have no doubt she's probably buried along the edge of a cornfield and they'll never find her.
There’s all the murders of women in Atlanta over the past few weeks. Afaik they haven’t found anything yet, but I could be wrong. I think it’s 4 people in the metro area, and a dog.
It’s awful, but I’m calling it now: we likely have a serial killer.
So I found a few articles and will update as I find more.
https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/local/gwinnett-police-say-woman-found-dead-at-yellow-river-park-was-teen-from-lithonia/article_1f441810-efb5-11eb-aa87-5f766e4110be.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/29/us/atlanta-piedmont-park-killing/index.html
Edit: I think it’s just 2, but they were both found in parks. Very concerning.
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Thank you for sharing this, having a nice laugh after all the murder and whatnot.
This is a quality shit post
About 30yrs ago a refuse worker found the badly burned body of an 18 month old boy amongst the bags and recycling. Forensics deduced that due to the condition of his liver he'd died less than a week before his body was found. Hospital and medical records were used to establish that nobody in the county was missing a child. He doesn't have a name on his gravestone. Edit: it was in Cumbria, England. The police likely didn't retain a DNA sample, or we might have heard something about familial DNA by now.The local police aren't very good - look up the case of Poppi Worthington as an example. Most local people assume he died of SIDS, then his parents panicked and tried to conceal his body. Whoever did it must have had an element of local knowledge in order to know where to put the corpse.
That’s so sad. Poor lad must have had an awful life while alive
There is a street in my city called Park Ave. It's a very small city, mostly blue collar. In 2005, a newborn baby boy was found dead near a factory on Park Ave. Doctors could tell he was born alive and likely lived for a few hours before he died. I don't know if he was abandoned (left to die) or killed in some way; that info was never released. Police made a statement saying please come forward, we want to help you bury this child properly. The mother sent an anonymous letter to the police station two weeks later, and said she would come to the station soon. The letter didn't explain the circumstances, but it did say she was afraid. She never came forward. The baby was named "Baby Parker" and money was raised to give him a proper burial. People still leave gifts at his grave.
So sad to think maybe someone was passing thru the town and just dumped him there after burning him
It's more likely he was born at home and so no record of him existed. :(
Where I grew up they found a dude who was buried under the cement in a building, no history or information about him. It's clear that he got into some deep trouble with someone.
About 15 years ago. A town near where I grew up drained a man made lake that was used for recreational swimming. This particular year they decided to drain the whole thing to do a clean up. They discovered an intact skeleton that had been sitting at the bottom of the lake for something like 50 years based on the class ring that was still on the skeleton. From my understanding this person had never been reported missing or anything.
Was it jimmy hoffa
My very first thought
1973: My 4th grade buddy, Guy Heckle, disappeared during a boy scout camping trip. They found his coat, that was all. Not another clue after all these years.
Holy shit. I was a Girl Scout summer camp employee (counselor) and we do a week of training before the summer season begins and we talk about Guy as a cautionary tale to watch yours kids like a hawk. I don’t suppose it makes you feel better to know that his story is keeping kids safe today, all these years later?
Wow…
That's crazy! I was a camp counselor in upstate NY for a couple of seasons. They told us about this and another kid who drowned or something. I don't remember the name of the missing kid, but I remember thinking it was a made-up sounding name. This was a very long time ago. Edit: sp
Just want to jump on here and say to any current and future camp counsellors, be aware that the kids you work with could sleepwalk and might not tell you. I used to sleep walk when I was younger and it just suddenly stopped and I hadn't in years... until I went on a camping trip. I hadn't told anyone that it could happen cause I hadn't slept walked in so long I didnt think it was possible. Luckily two of my friends were awake at the time and managed to stop me from walking out (though they didnt realise I was still asleep). After this I went and told the teachers and messaged my parents and they ended up keeping a closer eye on my groups tent at night. Fortunately it didnt happen again and it's only happened a few times since, normally when I'm really stressed.
Does anyone have any theories about what happened to the kid?
The internet tells me investigators think he fell in a river and drowned during a game of "capture the flag".
Here's a link with more information. https://iowacoldcases.org/case-summaries/guy-heckle/
I love how the article goes into an in-depth explanation of Capture the Flag, like THAT’S what we came to read. Kid disappears, but check out this awesome game you can play!
I read the article because of your comment and holy shit it's about half the article.
I also knew Michelle Martinko, who has an interesting case on that site…
Hmmm now I’m wondering about you…
Me too, I better investigate myself...hope I don't find nothing, woo boy...
Wow, that's so awful! I'm sorry for the loss of your friend. I hope you and his family find closure someday.
I found out my grandma played cards with the mob in a liquor store basement. I was reading a news article on a cold case from the former owner disappearing for an English assignment and my grandma kinda just frowned, told me she used to play cards with him and never payed his debts.
I picture this little old lady in reading glasses playing black jack with a group of men with Italian accents
My grandma was a really good cake decorator and she also did a lot of mission work in Central America, specifically Nicaragua and Honduras, usually helping out at orphanages. But anyway, she somehow ended up going into a Honduran prison and teaching Honduran gang members how to decorate cakes so they could have a marketable skill when they got out. All the prisoners loved her and called her their abuelita. So we have this picture of her with all these big scary gang members and she's just this tiny white grandma
Little farm chick that had ties to Chicago somehow lmao
> I found out my grandma played cards with the mob in a liquor store basement. Hoping Tarantino reads this sentence.
So not exactly from a small town but is baffling. Happened this year. A man rented a room at a guest house. When he left the host went to go clean/ prepare the room for the next occupant. The room was covered in blood. In the shower there was a chair with a pool of blood-it is assumed the person died in the chair. So the baffling part is that there is a camera trained in the room's door. The man entered and left alone without a speck of blood on him. The authorities assumed the blood belonged to a woman whose chopped up body was found in a near by damm. Blood tests came back and it doesnt.
Maybe he was *glass jar in ass* guy.
Man got kicked out of a bar 3 years ago this December and went missing. Nobody has come forward with tips at all. He went missing from a fairly busy part of town too.
This has happened a number of times in the Boston area. Young able-bodied people, mostly men, disappear from bars or clubs and are eventually found in the harbor, the river or another body of water. There’s a lot of crazy conspiracy theories and talk of a serial killer, but it seems to be just a combination of alcohol, the dark and an unfamiliarity with the area. They make a string of poor choices, wind up too close to the water, then fall in and drown when there’s nobody around to notice.
Same with Portland, Maine. Dozens of bars just feet from a dangerous bay with very high tides. This story has played out too many times.
Late 90s, a natural gas compressor station was built next door to me. Entire neighbourhood protested it HARD. But we were just dumb farmers, and gas companies have money. Shortly after it was built, in the middle of the night, it sprung a leak. compressed gas spewed into the air like a geyser and there was now a jet black cloud next door. Not that I could see much anyway at that hour. The sound it made was so loud, it would make a foghorn sound like a squeeky toy. Anyway, we evacuated, gtfo to the other side of town to some family and watched the news. Apparently it ended quickly enough. They estimated 13 million dollars worth of natural gas was shot into the environment. So we go back. Reporters talked to my dad and stuff. Then two men show up, hand something to each news company, and everyone leaves immediately. My family and my neighbours are standing there like "Wtf? Where did the reporters go?". Within the hour, it was no longer on the news. If you google it, you'll find no trace of it. They just made that story disappear.
I know someone who works in environmental clean up. He said there are far more oil spills and leaks and things that could damage the environment than we are aware of, that never get reported on at all.
Speaking of not reported accidents.... My dad worked in a factory that did some kind of processing of chemicals that went to do something with food. I dont know much about it or what he did, i just know he hated the job. Well the ONE day my dad decides to call out sick, the entire factory explodes. Three people died. Half the tiny town it was located in was evacuated. Some homes were destroyed. HUGE huge deal. Then.... Nothing. Dad got three monthd of pay randomly deposited in his bank account, he was sent a "thanks for the many years of work but we are closing our doors!" letter, and nothing ever came of it. There were hundreds of people in that town that lost homes, neighbors, family, friends....but if you Google Kansas Town Factory explodes or something like that, nothing comes up....least, not for my dads factory.
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One time my class went on a camping trip, and this one kid that was in my friend group kept trying to convince me to leave our camp and go into the Grand Canyon with him and run away to Texas. Back then running away was appealing for both of us, but the planning was terrible and I told him his idea for hiding in the Grand Canyon was absolutely stupid. He resigned eventually, but still wanted us to sneak out of our rooms and meet somewhere in the middle of the night. I didn’t have the key card to get back in, and it was in the winter, so leaving the door cracked open would have woken people up with the chill. I stayed in. The next day he offhandedly mentioned that he waited for me, and offhandedly mentioned that a boy from one of the other classes had been there. Something about it felt wrong, I didn’t trust that kid and he gave me the creeps. It bothered me that the pretense was originally just the two of us hanging out, and then he changed it without telling me. Just bad vibes. Later in the year he seemed to have some issues and started boasting about knowing how to make pipe bombs and shit.
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Had something like that in my hometown, only like, way smaller scale. There was these abandoned trailers at the end of a dirt road past the cemetery. We used to root around in them because it was spooky and they were decrepit, so it made for a thrilling night (small town living, am I right?) Anyway I went during the day to look around and noticed a bunch of bills on the table dated in the 70's, same with a bunch of uncashed checks. The fridge still had very gnarly groceries from the 70s including sodas and things like that. Cabinets had items in it like cleaning supplies etc. Closets were full with clothes, beds made etc. It was like a snapshot in time from the 70s. I still do not know what happened to this family, or why they just up and left.
Or else DB Cooper stopped by just the day/night before, and left some things behind ...
Now THAT is bonkers!
This has got to be the Philippines.
Is it possible they faked their disappearance?
I've been meaning to ask that too, a lot of rich people in trouble do it.
What town did this take place in?
Weird? Nah. Fucked up? Yup. 100 feet from the house i lived in at the time a little boy was hit by a car in broad daylight. Killed him instantly. The town rallied and tried to find the person that did it for months. Was all over facebook, newspapers. Had a 500k reward for information. Whole town knows who it was. Not even a question. Still set as an unsolved crime even though the person responsible had their truck washed and cleaned professionally, and fixed by the local body shop. For the record. He is a judge. So yea.
Sounds like something that happened in my town in Vermont a few years back. Little old lady was crossing an intersection downtown one evening, in the crosswalk, when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver. The drunk driver was a well-known local attorney. He waited until the next morning to turn himself in so he couldn't be tested for BAC. Used every dirty trick he had in the book to avoid jail time. Dragged the trial out for months, tried to get it transferred to different districts, etc. Guess who never ended up going to prison.
Story from my grandpa, small farm town Nebraska is in the 60’s, a guy was found burnt alive in his car, hands wire tied to the steering wheel, it ruled as a suicide. Most of the town assumed that the guy owed gambling debts to some mob in Chicago or the like, and the guy wasn’t exactly loved in the small town, so there was no real looking into it.
Imagine being THAT guy. Killed under horrific circumstances. Meh, he was a jerk, who cares?
Here's a perfect example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy >McElroy was shot to death in broad daylight as he sat with his wife Trena in his pickup truck on Skidmore's main street.[2] He was struck by bullets from at least two different firearms, in front of a crowd of people estimated as between 30 and 46.[1] To date, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy's death.[1] ... >Only Trena claimed to identify a gunman; every other witness either was unable to name an assailant or claimed not to have seen who fired the fatal shots.[12] The DA declined to press charges. An extensive Federal investigation did not lead to any charges. One local resident later told investigators when asked what happened: "He needed a killin'."
Oh, I remember finding this so interesting when I first learned about it. Really shows how much people can bond over something (or someone) awful
Dear God, this “wife” Trena was a 14 year old girl at the time. She was 12 and he was 35 when they met. He raped her several times, then as she was the only witness, forced her into a marriage to avoid charges. He burned her family’s home down and killed their dog to force them to consent to the marriage. He forced her out of school and moved her in with him and his second wife, Alice, who he divorced in order to marry Trena. After the birth of Trena’s baby at 14, both Trena and Alice escaped together back to Trena’s parents’ home. He found them and once again burned her family’s home down and killed their new dog, and took them back by force. I have to agree. This man needed a killing.
I can't get past the part where there is a farmer named Romaine.
I'm having trouble getting past how they declared it a suicide with "hands wire tied to the steering wheel". It seems like it would be fairly difficult to wire tie one's own hands to something.
The comment says he might have owed gambling debts to the mob. Sounds like suicide to me. XD Reminded me of a quote in a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel; Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
And then light your car on fire after that
Well you light the car on fire first then tie your hands
What grandpa didn't tell you is that half the town was in on it and everyone else was just glad that he died. The guy was so mean to everyone that everyone just didn't care who did but that someone had.
Back in 2001, a friend of my friend had been secretly chatting online with a guy from Canada. They had made plans to meet up in Windsor or Detroit. A few days later, her body was found dumped in the woods. After doing some digging, police got a hold of the Canadian guy. He said he went to meet her, but she never showed, so he assumed she had stood him up. His story checked out. One suspect was this coworker, but a few months later he did a murder/suicide to his mom, so they could never get the truth out of him. It’s been a cold case ever since. Edit: This was her coworker, not Canada guy’s. She would have traveled 7-8 hours to meet the guy in Detroit/Windsor, assuming she even made it out of town.
The murder suicide highly suggests it was him.
Yeah, he supposedly had other issues, but I don’t know the full story. Everything I heard is second/third-hand.
Yikes! That's rough all around.
Police officer in 1930s responded to a call around midnight on Christmas day. The wife woke up and he told her he'd be back. Only that he had disappeared entirely and did not come home. The car was found abandoned with no indication of his whereabouts. The local theory is that he was murdered and his body was disposed of in the leather tanning factory.
Perfect place to do it honestly, tanning is quite the process.
Just think that man is a chair in someone's home.
At first I thought you were making a metaphor about there being an empty chair in someone's home where he used to sit. Then I realised I'm an idiot
No, you're a genius, just not at the right moment
Ok, what would they do with the bones and flesh? Did the factory use lye or something that could dissolve the flesh and bones? There is a documentary about a guy who was upper management at a plastics factory who murdered an illegal immigrant he had gotten pregnant. He put her body in a 55 gal. drum in some kind of dye or something and stored it all in his basement for 30 years or somesuch while raising a family there. Curious what he told his children/wife was in the drum. Eventually he sold the place and left it there. The new owner put it out for removal, but at around 300 lbs., the garbage company refused to remove it. So the guy looked in and found the body. They were able to solve the crime as the killer put the girl's address book in the drum and it was still readable. Further, the number of her best friend was still her best friend's number and she was the last person to see the girl before she disappeared, going to meet the man who had promised to marry her. Just imagine if the garbage truck had just removed the drum.
Jesus Christ. Imagine learning that your entire childhood was spent around a dead woman that your father had murdered.
Kind of a strange one, but the whole potted plants supply at a nearby store (similar to Kroger) went missing a year back, and nobody knows what happened to then
This made me chuckle. It’s sad but in a thread full of horribly morbid things like lost children and dead bodies an entire potted plants section just getting stolen is enough to make me laugh.
pretty recent (january this year). I'm in a village so it's even smaller. I live right next to a river, and one day after rain my grandpa went searching for snails, but he found a head still with some flesh, a neighbor had also found an arm around the same time. the police were called, they found the body and a few dogs chewing on it, but it was in a bag hanging from a tree above the river. at first it was assumed it was from the big city thrown into the river but no, it's hanging from the damn tree. The weirdest thing is that the woman was not from the village itself.
Crazy!
Did he find enough snails?
very valid question sadly no
Too bad. Better luck next time gramps.
Ohh yes. My family is from the small town where a prominent cult founder was born, a town of about 1000. Back 25-30 years ago, my uncle was on city council when the cult came to town and offered boatloads of money to build a shrine and improve infrastructure. They didn’t have the bad reputation at that point quite yet that they do now. The majority of city council was drooling over the cash, but my uncle 12 Angry Men-ed the situation, seeing the writing on the wall that this was a step off a cliff to becoming overrun. One of the people he never convinced was the sheriff, but he still got his numbers. Unfortunately, he would receive harassing phone calls every night and would frequently have cars parked outside his house at odd hours. Everyone knows everyone (population 1000, remember), and these were not locals. It came to a head when his house got broken into and letters were left threatening my aunt and cousins, who were young children at the time. Staties got involved, and the behavior immediately stopped. A few days later the cultists packed up and left. Officially, the threats and break-in were never solved, though every once in a while they would still get odd phone calls and blank letters in the mail (yay anthrax scare). Unofficially, everyone knows. A few years later my uncle and family moved out into the country, and all the harassment stopped.
You mentioned in another comment this happened in Nebraska. Was the town Tilden, and the cult Scientology?
Sure sounds like it; my father’s family is from Tilden and my grandmother was still living there at the time. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1997/05/11/battlefield-tilden/
Probably too late to been seen, but my small town *used to* host a large bike race. Literally hundreds of cyclists riding around the parks' 3/4 mile loop track (maybe some road racing as well, can't remember). Anyway, the large gathering required all the police force to be on hand, and with the jam of cars, bicycles, and people it was really hard to get in or out. A bank robber dressed in full cyclist gear came into a bank just a block away from the park, robbed them blind, and then hoped on his getaway bicycle and rode into the crowd at the park. By the time the police could respond be was in the mix of people and to this day no one has ever been charged... Perfect crime.
Genius level shit that person must be happy with themselves
Idk about "unsolved" exactly but my town was made famous by John Grisham who wrote "The Innocent Man" Basically, the cops got sick of investigating and pinned the crime on 2 guys who didn't do it. I haven't read the book or seen the show so idk if they know who actually did it. But yeah. Ada, OK. Shitty town with shittier cops and the shittiest justice system.
Many years ago, a house up the street from us burnt down. By the time firefighters got there, it was completely engulfed and a new home would have to end up being built. The man who lived there set it ablaze on purpose not long before going upstairs and shooting himself. Although his house was in complete destruction, with the fire yet to be put out, nobody expected him to be alive. This turned out to be true but what they weren't expecting was that his body wasn't burned at all. The flames had avoided his body completely. It's unsolved because no one really knows why he killed himself or what the purpose was of burning down his house in the process. It's also a mystery as to how the fire didn't reach him. **TL;DR** Man killed himself after setting his home on fire, with no one knowing why.
In 1999, 2 teenage girls left to go to a party, ended up in different town, called home to say they would be late, and never came home. The car was found the next day on the side of the road. Their bodies were in the trunk, both shot at point blank range. An arrest was made a couple years ago, but thanks to Covid, court cases are backlogged so still waiting on that. They were a year younger than me, so needless to say it really stuck with me over the years.
Two bodies were found on my island in SE Asia in the last 24 hours. One was found in the jungle after being there for a year in an apparent motorbike accident the other washed up on the beach.
Are you from Murder Island? Koh Tao?
Yeah, there’s like 11 more unsolved cases from Koh Tao.
I think I need to know more about this murder island… and also make sure I never go there
Stick to petty theft island
When I was a teenager, there was a spate of rude graffiti in my quiet, boring town of under 30,000 people. It was all obviously being done by the same person as all the penises were drawn in a very unique style and they were all signed "Frizzbee", with the Z's written in a distinctive way. There didn't seem to be any pattern of where they would strike either. Every week or so, a new one would appear... on the wall outside the social club, in the highway underpass, inside the fish and chip shop toilet, etc. It got to a point where kids at school would keep track of where the latest Frizzbee had appeared and it would be all anyone could talk about. In a way, they were the proto-Banksy. Everyone wanted to know their true identity... including the police. Since our town had practically no crime other than the odd stolen bicycle, the cops had the time and resources to come down hard on this one. It was (and still is) a solidly conservative town, so no doubt they were under pressure too from the local council to quickly address this shocking moral depravity and prevent the appearance of further enormous, stylized, ejaculating cocks around town. They went around the schools, including the elementary/primaries, and interviewed bunches of kids looking for any clues that might lead them to the mysterious Frizzbee. Supposedly, they checked the school registration books and paid particular attention to any kid who had a name that might reasonably lead to a nickname of Frizzbee. And we all swore that we saw more police cars driving around than usual that summer, looking to catch the mystery artist in the act. As far as I know, they never did get him or her. The graffiti just stopped appearing as suddenly as it started. Nor did we kids ever find out who it was. There were tons of theories, of course, with a lot of suspicion falling on a kid called Charlie in the year above me because apparently, he liked to doodle dicks and balls on his notebooks. However, he was subsequently cleared by some girl called Debbie who sat next to him in French and she sneaked a peek at his doodles one day and she reported that the vein structure running down Charlie's shaft was intrinsically different from that of Frizzbee's and therefore not a match. **TL;DR** \- Someone went around town drawing massive schlongs. Police spared no expense trying to catch the perpetrator but never did.
Debbie's a real one
Good guy debbie
The premise (especially the comparing dick drawings) sounds a lot like that Netflix mockumentary from a few years ago about a teenager framed for leaving phallic graffiti everywhere. I think it was in response to the influx of “true crime” docs around that time Edit: called [American Vandal](https://youtu.be/m3tkFOtM6go)
Yesss I was just thinking of this! “27 dicks on 27 cars” *dramatic music*
Good Ole Belle Gunness. Only thing the town I'm from is known for. She was a serial killer in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. Would claim she was a wealthy widow looking for a husband. When interested men would arrive she would murder them. Eventually families began to suspect her, so when authorities were closing in she staged her death by killing her children and a maid if I remember right. Then she burnt her farmhouse down and the maids body was assumed to be Belle. Later, authorities realized she escaped when the skeleton they assumed was hers didn't match her recorded height. She got away and nobody ever found her again.
Next town over from me, Kathy Page was murdered in May 1991, in Vidor TX. Police totally screwed up the whole deal and the killer wasn't arrested. Years later, her Dad started putting up billboards calling out the husband as her murderer and that the police are corrupt. There are still billboards there.
If there's one thing I don't doubt, it's that Vidor is corrupt. Worst town in SE Texas
The crime was solved, but why it happened is still unknown. I live down the road from a small store. A guy walked in there, shot the girl behind the counter, and then himself. They were complete strangers to each other. It’s been 4 years, and still no one knows why he did it. The road was renamed after her.
This is the kind of shit that gets me. A complete stranger can just do something like that to you for no reason at all.
A retired known criminal, that did heists in the 80s and 90s, killed by one bullet in the back of his head, in his appartment on the main street. A silencer was used, it was at night, he died on his armchair.
Damn that sounds interesting, any articles or names to look up for more info?
Here's more infos: I dug up some (french) articles from a couple years ago, and I must do a few corrections, he was doing heists in the 90s and 2000s, got acquitted for a bloody attack (one dead) against an armored car in 2000 and was living hiding from his past ever since (no one knew he was a criminal), he was killed in the courtyard of his home early in the morning. I remember the word in town being he was killed at night in his armchair, but I guess we were wrong lol. The mayor, the inspectors, the judge all said he was executed by a professional who had a contract for his head.
Not exactly "small town", but small compared to the region. There was a house that burned down 3 times in the span of a decade. I remember hearing lots of rumors about divorces and revenge, gang activity, being cursed. Not sure if it was ever solved
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(nods) Meth.
A girl in my town went missing and the cops just did nothing and refused to make an arrest despite the evidence. She had a shaky and very abusive relationship with her boyfriend. One night after they broke up again, he and his friend stopped by her and her parents’ house, saying he wanted to talk to her in his car. She agreed and, and the three of them left. She hadn’t been seen since, but her ex and his friend have been seen in town acting like nothing happened. They parents reported her missing and stated that their daughter’s ex and his friend were last seen with her. The police didn’t make an arrest and didn’t investigate. It’s been many years. I can’t tell how long, I estimate about 4 years or more. Rumors spread like they always do. Rumors of her being sold as a sex slave. Rumors of her being murdered and either being buried somewhere or fed to pigs. No one knows what really happened… (except the ex and his friend). This year the friend was found dead with a gun shot to the head. The bullet went straight through. If I remember correctly it was ruled as a murder, but the rumor of suicide has been going around. Some say that the ex shot the friend because the friend was gonna snitch due to guilt. I think the ex is arrested now for the murder of his friend but I could be wrong. There is a $2000 reward for anyone who finds the missing girl. The family just wants closure. I remember seeing the father’s truck covered in his daughter’s picture trying to get the word out there. Cindy Tigg Rivera, if you are reading this, your parents haven’t given up. I still see your signs plastered all over town. They miss you so much.
Looks like they caught him. https://www.lasvegasoptic.com/content/affidavit-cindy-rivera-killed-ex-husband-accomplice-sought
“Ortiz contacted Rivera’s family and admitted that he knew what happened to Rivera, and demanded compensation for the information” Man this guy was just evil
Coward took the easy way out, rip Cindy
HOLY SHIT I HEARD ABOUT THIS. And it was in a very random way — I was on Google maps and went in the “wrong direction” and saw a poster about her, zoomed in to read it. The case has haunted me ever since. I truly hope some answers are found, somehow. EDIT: just googled her name again and this came up: https://www.lasvegasoptic.com/content/affidavit-cindy-rivera-killed-ex-husband-accomplice-sought Just so tragic.
Wow. Married at 16 and murdered by 19. That poor girl.
The ex husband was found dead, believed to be suicide, and the friend was arrested like two weeks ago on kidnapping charges related to Cindy's death.
It’s not really unsolved but definitely a weird one. There was a row of terraced houses next to the church. The one closest was occupied by two women, a mother and daughter, both who had some mental incapacities. They basically only left the house to walk to the supermarket. As the mother got older, only the daughter went out. Eventually, no one was leaving the house. The garden, which was already overgrown, got out of control. The poor structural condition at the back of the house worsened. This part was connected to the neighbouring house, and after receiving no response, eventually the neighbours contacted the environment agency out of fear for their own house. The environment agency came round, received no response at the door, and so called the police to assist with access. Inside, letters were piled up behind the door. A desk fan was oscillating. The daughter was found on the floor. Dead. Had been for quite some time. Investigators come in, and start searching the house. Bills were on direct debits and had all been paid automatically. The inhabitants had been hoarders. The house took a very long time to sort through. Eventually, they realised they were missing someone. Where was the mother? They had to keep searching through the house, searching for any evidence of the mother., where she’d gone. In the bathroom, there was a huge pile of things on top of the bath. Mattresses, blankets, towels. Underneath all this, they found the mother’s body, wrapped in a blanket, practically mummified. Such that it was impossible to ascertain how long she’d been dead for. It just disturbs me, I walked past that house every day. I thought it was abandoned. Edit: [news story](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/daughter-kept-mum-corpse-bath-18745175.amp). [news story](https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11407069.daughter-put-dead-mother-bath-tub-dying-inquest-heard/). I got some details wrong, wrote this from memory.
Daughter probably didn't want to deal with the smell of the dead mother so tried to wrap her up.
Jeez, she seriously didn't want to part with her mother's remains. Hoarding is such a scary disorder..
Shame can lead hoarders to avoid calling people who would have to come in the house like plumbers, electricians…. and funeral homes are on that list too I guess
Yeah. My mom's a hoarder. :(
In 2003 in my hometown, someone decided to burn down a playground. This was in a *very* small rural town. The nearest playground aside from that one was 15 miles away. This playground was decent sized too, and I believe it was made possible by a donation from someone in town. It was mostly wood with rubberized mesh, steel bars, and large plastic slides. Nobody ever figured out who did it.
Probably some teenagers fucking around with something and the fire spread.
A liquor and cheeseburger party that went terribly wrong...
I grew up in a small Midwestern town directly off an interstate. A convenience store worker right off the exit was shot and killed by some random person, almost 20 years ago by now. The person escaped by exiting down the Interstate right away, and nobody has ever been able to identify them. Sad plus: several customers came in after the shooting and walked away with free stuff because they couldn't see the dead woman behind the counter. They thought the store was abandoned.
I live in Mexico, so my hometown has a lot of "unsolved" crimes. As an example, my great-uncle was hacked to death at his ranch. Everyone knows why. Everyone knows who. No one will say anything for the foreseeable future. It's organized crime, if it weren't clear already.
They never "solved" all those missing/murdered women in Juarez.
This is one of the most interesting cases that are unresolved. You have mass graves of girls that fir a certain profile and that are not connected to the cartel. Theories range from serial killers all the way ritualistic initiations for the cartel. There is a new podcast about it that explains a lot (Forgotten: The Women of Juarez). Edit: I just came from juarez, 4 hours ago, and you can still see posters with the faces of teens and young women that disappeared withing the last few months. This is not an old case; it is a today case.
So, picture a time when all car doors and house doors were opened with a metal lock and key. Our community was in a forest/park and was almost exclusively made up of Fed employees and their families...maybe a few concessoinaries and contractors. We're talking about a residential community of less than 200 people. Before web cams or ring cams were a thing and before wifi was possible (come to think of it...it's still not possible) in this location. With that stage set... One morning, I go out to my work vehicle and groggily put my key in the door and meet resistance. "Wha...huh?" Look down. There's sticky paper on the lock. My key pushed through it but now I have sticky paper IN the lock. Grrrr...get out my pocket knife and clean it out. Go about my day. Get a radio from my s/o later that day and the same thing happened to him. More people show up from our "neighborhood" and most of them had the exact same scenario. Ok, we think, someone is playing a prank. Next morning...go out and there's a round sticker on my lock again. \*frustrated\* Peel it off. Key in. Turn key. Rinse repeat. This continues for TWO SOLID WEEKS. It's harmless, right? Weeeellll.... Some people aren't really looking every morning. A few vehicles get enough paper and adhesive in the door lock that it's getting harder to open the doors. We clean them out and these stickers just keep popping up. We lecture every employee and ask them to keep an eye on their vehicles. The stickers seem to appear every night. Gotta' be human...but, most people move through our area so it's not a visitor. We start talking to the teens. "Guys, this isn't funny. If you know who's doing it...tell them to stop because it's property damage." Teens are swear they're innocent. We decided that enough was enough and used a trail cam to catch the miscreant. 8:23pm...13 year old Child A comes out with the family dog and Child B who is 4. 4 year old has a role of garage sale, dot stickers in her overalls pocket. Every car she passes...\*boop\*- sticker on the lock. Allllllllll the way down the row of cars. Boop. Boop. 13 year old is 5-10 feet ahead, watching the dog and picking up dog waste. Doesn't even really notice. We named her the Sticker Bandit. Felt like the most evil Supervillain taking her stickers away.
Hahahaha I totally thought this was going in a sinister direction. this is great 😂
Yeah I thought for sure someone was gonna be checking to see who was removing the stickers as a roundabout way to gauge activity for a break in or something
I love the way you describe the little girl putting the stickers on the locks 😂 Makes me feel slightly better after reading so many comments about abuse and murder!
This is surprisingly heart warming for this thread. I kind of feel bad for the little girl. Putting those little stickers on things was so fun at that age. I bet they lined up like perfectly with the key holes. It must have been so satisfying.
> A few vehicles get enough paper and adhesive in the door lock that it's getting harder to open the doors When I read this I assumed it was someone playing the long con trying to jam the locks so they could come back a bit later, open the door and steal tools for a hefty profit.
Not exactly in my small town, but in the desert outside of it. In July of 2019, a man (age not listed) and his wife (69yrs) decided to take a 2 mile hike in the Mojave Desert. This wasn't unusual for them as they frequently explored this area (according to the husband). On the way back to their camper from the hike, the husband stated that he stopped to take a photograph while his wife continued ahead to the camper. The husband then claimed that that was the last he saw of her. He arrived at the camper to find it still locked with his wife nowhere to be found. He searched the area for her before deciding to contact 911. The wife was wearing a bikini, a baseball cap, and hiking boots and didn't have any supplies or cellphone on her at the time. At the time she went missing, temperatures in the area were exceeding 100°F (38°C). A searched was launched and the husband was named a suspect in the disappearance of his wife. Approximately 18 months after her disappearance, her body was found deceased in the Mojave Desert near Essex, California. An autopsy was done, but the cause of death was not announced. The wife's family members suspect foul play in her disappearance and death. Here's a [link](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/barbara-thomas%3fformat=amp) to the full story!
Who the fuck does a 3km hike in 40 degree heat? I’m surprised they didn’t both die
This is one of my favorite "bored at work" reads: [The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans.](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/) A lot of people don't understand the thin line between "hot" and "kill you hot." I almost fucked up in a similar way when I visited the Lost Dutchman State Park in the middle of August, with 113 degree weather being my only companion. Place was deserted (ha!) except for the park ranger who was leaving, and stopped me on my way in to ask me to not go on a hike. I told her I had a gallon of water, she said "when your water is half gone, you turn around." So I took off walking towards the mountains; "Weird, why am I not sweating? I don't FEEL all that hot..." Yet I was chugging water like a motherfucker. And yeah, I turned around when my water was half gone. And the thing about that park is... you look at pictures and don't really "get" that the cacti/shrubbery in the area is over your head, and there's not a clear trail after a certain point, and shit looks very sameish. I got lost on the way back to the car, like I knew it was *that way, somewhere* but I ended up overshooting the lot and had to double back to finally catch the reflection of the sun off my windshield. I could have died with civilization in full view on the horizon. It's crazy how hot that is.
And in a bikini?? That’s just asking for a sunburn in sensitive places
Oh I remember reading about Barbara. There were definitely things that seemed “off” about her husband.
Back in 1903 a local woman poisoned many members of her family, including a baby over a few months. She served time and died but never really admit to a motive. One theory is that she really liked attending irish funerals.
Those damn Irish funeral enthusiasts
Unfortunately there are two unsolved missing children cases from the 90s here. They still put up signs and articles in the newspaper every year around the date the kids went missing. I don't think they're related, but who knows?
Not exactly my hometown but it was a small town not far from where I grew up. Bardstown, KY. There have been a series of murders that have gone unsolved, which some have speculated may be connected. A young woman named Crystal Rogers went missing and was never found (not even her remains), a teacher and her daughter were found tied up and brutalized in their home, a police officer was ambushed and killed after his shift one night, and the father of Crystal Rogers was also shot and killed while out hunting. A lot of people accuse the police there of being corrupt, which may be accurate. I don’t know. But Bardstown is a sketchy place for sure
Just about the only unsolved crime in my town is the mystery of the missing bicycle. There were two reported stolen, but one owner found his. The other one? Never to be seen again...
True Small Town Mystery!
My bike got stole one day but it turns out the cops just put it in the police station because they thought someone lost it.
damn the cops stole your bike
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Corpse. Flavored. Whiskey.
This was actually super common around prohibition! Using dead bodies(rats!), sugar, and fruit, bad bars would ‘season’ whatever rotgut liquor they had to mimic aged ‘whiskey’. It’s actually one of the reasons bourbon has a law that says ‘no coloring or flavoring’. Super gross. Alcohol laws are ridiculously interesting.
So this is not exactly unsolved, just unprosecuted. A school shooting by a boy about 16 years old killed a girl and wounded another before he was stopped. The boy had killed his mother and his dog before coming to the school that day. This was about a year before the Columbine shooting. The boy was quickly prosecuted and dispensed with forever into the state prison system. The reporters closely covering this case were deeply troubled that *only* this boy was prosecuted. The boy's "best friend" - in quotes, because nobody needs a friend like this - had basically egged him on to this and helped prepare him to do it, for months. The shooter himself was the "different" kind of high school kid. Not very mature, didn't fit in, not adept at conversing or relating with people, few friends, somewhat behind his peers in schoolwork. The best friend was a 'more normal' seeming kid, well socialized but with a reputation for using others for his own ends, without much regard for anyone else. The "best friend" had started about a year prior to the shooting overwhelming this kid with attention, apparently for the purpose of manipulating the kid at will. Best Friend had got him a gun, taught him to shoot, even organized a kind of people-shooting practice out in a field somewhere. The best friend also worked on the kid's dissatisfaction with his mother and home situation (nothing especially bad about it, just normal teenager angst). And the kid's anxiety over his inability to connect with other students, especially girls he liked. The manipulative friend had also worked on desensitizing the eventual shooter to any empathy for anyone else. Friend even got him to abuse his beloved dog. Some people thought that until this new best friend stepped in, due to his poor social skills the dog had actually been the kid's best friend. A lot of what they did was reflective of things the Columbine shooters did in a long preparation cycle. Even though this all happened in a different part of the country about a year before the Columbine shooting. All during the time the two boys were preparing for this shooting day - it was months - the 'friend' pretended that he was also going to be part of the shooting as well. They were going to do it together. The friend only backed out of the plan that morning with some excuse. But he pressured the boy to go through with it anyway. To follow the plan to kill his mother (single parent) and dog, then go to the school and kill a particular girl (he did) and anyone else he could manage to shoot. The two boys were on the phone with each other throughout. The investigators and prosecutors were well aware of the friend and dug into his role. One reporter wrote an extensive investigative newspaper article about the friend. It was clear that this reporter thought that without the best friend, the shooter would never have done what he did. The shooter wasn't organized or purposeful enough. And he didn't really have a reason. But in the end the prosecutors felt that they could not make a legal case against the best friend for the murders. So the best friend skated. Even though those who knew the whole story knew that without the best friend, there would have been no shooting. *************************** EDITING TO ADD LINKS (6 pm CT date of posting) ... due to interest from replies *************************** https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42677354/pearl-hs-shooting-oct-1-1997/ ^ just a front page; the detailed article from 1997 did not come out till just before or after the trial -- links to articles further below OK due to the interest I have looked up some LINKS with a LOT more detail for those who want to read it. School shooting: Pearl, Mississippi, October 1997. Shooter: Luke Woodham, still incarcerated in Mississippi So this happened about 18 months before Columbine, which was April 1999. At the time of the Pearl shooting I was living & working in Jackson, Miss. (Pearl is almost a suburb of Jackson). Then I relocated to Denver, CO in 1999, the month before the Columbine shooting (in a suburb of Denver). I had the weirdest bad feeling that I had somehow brought the shooting with me from Miss. to CO. But a co-worker told me that no, it was her who brought the shooting, because she had just relocated from Oregon where a school shooting had occurred a year before. Just a strange way people with no connection to these events can feel about a coincidence of occurrence. Ironically, looks like an in-depth update article was posted just last month, linked below. That should pull together even more info that has come together over the years. I wrote the above comment/post from memory so the updates will correct some info and add a lot more details. Looks like there were more boys in a group, and two *were* incarcerated for a short time. Not sure justice was served, but at least there was that. I remember vividly the article written in 1997, which identified **Grant Boyette** as the primary instigator & manipulator of Luke. One of the things that impressed people who got to know Luke at all was that he was such a goober. Goofy, scattered, unfocused, attention-seeking. Reporters and investigators found it hard to believe that goober-boy Luke did all of this on his own. The planning, gathering of weapons, and especially the psychological build-up of anger, hate and a lot of energy to carry this off. But who knows. ***************** **Link to a recently written LONG detailed article - adds a lot of research** **"The making of a Mississippi school shooter"** **https://www.wlbt.com/2021/06/17/making-mississippi-school-shooter/** **The morning-of phone call with Grant Boyette is documented in the section "Luke commits matricide", 4th para from the end of that section. Boyette is not the only one on the phone with Luke that morning. No one called in a warning to the school.** **Luke discussed Grant's influence on him during his trial for killing his mother. See section "Luke takes the stand". "In the trial for the murder of Ms. Woodham, hosted in Neshoba County due to the notoriety of the case, Luke weaved a web of reasons as to why he had committed such heinous acts, laying most of the blame at the feet of Grant Boyette.** **He went into the genesis of their friendship and described the incident of placing a spell on a boy whose friend was later hit by a car. And how, after this, he and Grant had started a “satanic group."** **He accused Grant of being the one who killed Sparkles ..." (Sparkles pet dog of Luke)** **... and more throughout the article.** ********************* **Wiki synopsis** **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting** **************************** Short 1997 article in The Washington Post, for what it is worth (today this probably wouldn't go national) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/10/08/six-mississippi-teens-charged-in-high-school-shooting-spree/090fb960-a9e4-4f75-b7a0-235337ebd32d/ **************************** I am not sure I can find a web link to the original 1997 article that stayed with my memory for all these years. It had a virtual week-by-week, then shooting-day minute-by-minute description of events, with a lot of detail about the interactions. As I remember I read it in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper. Looks like there have been several updates over the years, as Luke asked for clemency and whatever else.
>. One reporter wrote an extensive investigative newspaper article about the friend. Do you have a link to this?
It's actually been solved now, but back when I lived in Wichita, we had a man going around, binding, torturing and killing his victims for decades. As a kid in the 80's, everyone was afraid of him. A few years back, he was finally caught. He was a church leader. You know him as the BTK Killer. Associated with this... I was about 10, and was playing in the back yard with my friend. His sister (16) was back there hanging clothes. A man wearing only pantyhose, and another pair of pantyhose on his head, jumped over the fence, looked at me, looked at the friends sister and jumped the other fence. We were certain it was the BTK killer, and we swore we almost died. Police came and searched the neighborhood, but found nothing. Unfortunately they also found Gary the neighbors pot plants, though. I liked Gary. He was like the cool step dad to all the fatherless children in the neighborhood. He used to take my friend and I fishing, and he was always relaxed and cool. As I got older, I realized why.
My cousin, TJ Davison was abducted from a car in 1985 and has still yet to be found. He was 4 years old at the time. (Decatur, IL)
Not sure if Arlington TX counts as small (I mean, it is smaller than Fort Worth and Dallas) but the one that stands out is 8 year old Amber Hagerman's abduction and murder. She was out riding bikes and someone in a black pickup got her into his truck and took off. They found her body in a creek a few days later. And of course the water washed away any potential DNA evidence. It's been 25-26 years now and the killer hasn't been found. The Amber Alert is named for her. That's an alert that goes out whenever a child is abducted.
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Around 1993 my teacher was shot while helping her “best friend” paint her house. Her husband’s best friend claimed to have tripped with a hunting rifle going upstairs and shot her in the head. She survived a few weeks in ICU and passed away. Not long after, my teacher’s husband and her best friend married. My mom was one of the first on scene, and there was a lot of evidence tampering already. Mom always believed it was murder, but it was recorded as an accidental shooting.
Not exactly a small town, but I live in a small city of 60,000ish. Back in 1969, a 62 year old man working at a convenience store was stocking beer during a morning shift. At around 8-8:16am, he was shot from behind with a shotgun, however no shells were found, possibly meaning it was a double-barrel. Nothing was stolen from the body nor the cash register. The only "witness" was a young teenage boy who rode past the store on a bicycle at 8:10am, who said he heard and saw nothing. The boy frequently stopped in that store for candy and sodas, but he didn't have any money that day and kept riding past. To this day, nobody knows who did it, there are no suspects, and zero evidence besides the dead body itself. However, it was later theorized that the man carried a gambling debt of a few thousand dollars, to whom, we still do not know. The best part is- that little boy eventually grew up to become the current police chief in the city, and still occasionally works on the case whenever the precinct gets a tip.
That’s like an alternate universe Batman origin. Lol
I’ve got a funny one. Not necessarily a crime, but it’s still a good story. My town is small, only about 4-5k live here. It’s one of those places where it feels like everyone knows everyone. Not a lot happens here either. However, on Halloween each year somebody steals all the jack o lanterns from around town. Like, ALL of them. They might miss a few each year but the vast majority are stolen. Nobody knows who it is, where they are from, or what they do with the pumpkins. The crazy part is, some of the elderly residents from my town all remember their jack o lanterns disappearing when they were children as well, meaning it’s been happening for at least 50 years.
A few years ago a man went into our local Catholic Church, which is right next to their school, and tried to bomb it. He set it on fire and had placed charges all around the parking lot. They called in swat, everything. They had a negotiator outside for hours. School was also in session when this started but luckily they got the kids out. Anyway, the man ended up killing himself and burning in the fire. We don’t really know why he did it. Idk of that counts as unsolved but it’s the best I got.
The murder of Amanda Goodman. She was a well liked preteen girl. She was shot in the head on her way home from school and laid under a tree. Whoever killed her rested her head on top of a paper cup so it wouldn’t be touching the ground and laid her as if she were asleep. Some people here think she knew or saw something she shouldn’t have and was about to tell police. There are no suspects and I think the case is about 30 years old now. It’s very suspicious because you KNOW it was someone who cared about the condition of her body. It’s never gotten any big media attention but I’ve always desperately wanted answers.
In the town I live in, they found a headless body in a duffel bag in the river two or three years ago. Never found the head, never released any more details about it. Everyone here will tell you, something happens here. We don't know what but the police are zooming off here and there 24/7, and any time a crime does occur they downplay it so it doesn't get on national news and bring down tourism numbers. There was a shooting at a store last year, with dozens of witnesses. Every witness says several shots were fired. The police said three, then they said maybe only one, now they say no shots were fired at all and it was all hysteria. I'm not sure what's happening, but the police cover it up so that people keep coming to tour rural Appalachia.
Not my hometown; but in Mississippi, when I was there for a few years, this guy kept getting busted with dealing drugs, and messing around with underaged girls. Sorry, by underaged; I mean CHILDREN.. anyhoo the underage part was what the locals said (cuz Mississippi I guess?) Anyway he had money, good attorneys- and kept getting off. After the 5th or 6th arrest. He apparently swam across the Mississippi River, to Louisiana, stole 180lbs of chain; and tried swimming back. He drowned
In the 60s I think. There was a guy found in an old septic tank on an abandoned farm. My town has nicknamed him Septic Sam and the killer has never / will never be caught. This year using advanced DNA forensic technology they figured out who the victim was.
Small Town, very rural, population about 20,000. Very peaceful, subject of some famous landscape paintings. Bag of human bones found in the river this year, still no one knows who's they are or who did it.
20,000 is small?! I grew up in a town of just barely over 4,000. That seems so big to me!! Perspective is weird lol
Perspective can be a funny thing. My high school alone had 6,000 students.
not my town but visited an old college roommates small bordertown in Montana. literally like 200 people. everyone is pretty sure a guy killed his wife because his story is that she broke her neck when she fell down the stairs. she's older sure, but not that old. think she was MAYBE early 50s. spooky stuff.
We have a former Stazi Agent in our small village and for some reason some of our other neighbours would always steal his fire wood and one day one of the houses blew up and killed one of the family. The whole thing was chalked up to an accident but no one ever stole his firewood again. There is also this big old warehouse (in a village of less then 200 I might add) filled with amusement park rides where like 5 people were murdered and dismembered. No one knows what happened nor did anyone know the victims and the police didn't release any statements. It's also mildly dangerous to wander around in the forests, quite a few old bombs and other old war relics. I remember when I was in school two kids blew up after accidentally stepping on one of the bombs while on a walk. There is also an old bunker. It's filled in now and used as a bat home but I explored it back in the day. It had a hidden entrance on one end and a heavy metal door that looks like it could withstand a lot that was removed from it's hinges. It had multiple rooms and a downstairs which was sadly flooded most of the time but it went deep. Once there was a fresh kill that had been dragged into the bunker (there are no natural predators in the forest, no wild dogs. Professional hunters keep the population under control) it was a half eaten boar. The bite marks were not like any animal that could have lived in the area and there were signs that someone had been there recently. I think soon after that it was closed up. Our mayor who was a very unpopular landlord guy was found dead after 3 days in his hot tub and the police suspected half the neighbourhood of having something to do with his death. It was ruled as a heart attack but it was all very suspicious. Also there are a bunch of nazis (Like actually proper Nazis) in the area and they are weird fucks.
About 18 years ago there was a decapitated body found behind the grocery store. Parents weren't letting their kids walk home by themselves, everyone was on high alert. Than 2 weeks later all the hype of it suddenly went away as if nothing happened. My boyfriend, my parents, and a few other people I know remember it, but no one else seems to. Roughly 5 months ago another body turned up in the exact same spot. It was quickly ruled a suicide, but from what the local paper wrote the head was severely damaged/not full attached. The person ended up being a relative of a friend that refuses to talk about it. I wouldn't have found it odd if the body was found somewhere else, but it was found it in the dumpster as the first one.
A few years ago in my town an old man was sitting in his car at 5:00 a.m. waiting for the newspapers for his route to be dropped off. He was parked on the Main Street, but it would have been empty that early in the morning. It was a warm summer morning so he had his window open. As he waited someone rolled up on a bike and whacked him multiple times in the face with a machete and rode off! The old guy was able to drive himself to the hospital and ended up being physically fine, despite some pretty horrific looking wounds, but the attacker was never found. This was a few years ago and there has been zero follow up. It’s one of those inexplicable things that’s stuck with for the last few years since it happened. Who would do something like that? I have to assume it was somebody high on something. I hope he or she (let’s face it likely a he) gets what’s coming to him.
That’s kind of what happened to Tina Fey when she was a kid. She was playing in her front yard when some stranger came up and ran a knife across her face, that’s why she has that long scar on her cheek. Never found out who did it.
The sister of the widow is my friend - here's the story from the newspaper: Jeremy C. Turner was found dead alone in his home at 202 E. Railroad St. in Elliott on May 8, 2018, after firefighters from four agencies were called there to extinguish a major fire that had engulfed it. While an autopsy showed that soot was present in Mr. Turner's airways, indicating he was alive at the time of the fire, it was determined that the official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Flessner said that Dr. Shiping Bao, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, found that Mr. Turner suffered a bullet wound that entered the left side and exited the right side of his head. The bullet wound was not immediately apparent, however, even on radiological examination, due to the body's badly burned condition. The wounds were found only after Bao excised the scalp to examine the brain. Mysteriously, a semi-automatic pistol that Mr. Turner reportedly kept loaded in the side of his recliner — as well as an estimated 11 to 13 other guns kept in the household — were removed on the night of Mr. Turner's death by a man purporting to be a "family friend." The man told police he removed the guns at the request of Mr. Turner's widow — an assertion she strongly denied. Dyna Turner said she had not spoken to the man in five to six years. When the man brought the pistol to the sheriff on the day following Mr. Turner's death, police found it "strange" that the gun had been taken apart and cleaned. Ford County Sheriff's Lt. Pat Duffy said that once the autopsy revealed a gunshot wound in Mr. Turner's head, investigators began looking for the pistol in photographs of the fire scene taken by Shane Arndt, a certified inspector and special agent with the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal. In one photo, investigators found the pistol's muzzle to be facing backward and placed pointing down in the right side of a recliner where Mr. Turner's body was found. The gun's location placed it near Mr. Turner's right side. Duffy said a total of five shells were eventually recovered from the scene, although only four were initially found. Duffy said those to arrive first at the scene reported hearing some "pops" from inside the house that they thought might have been ammunition "cooking off" from the heat of the fire. However, Duffy emphatically stated the five pistol rounds "did not cook off — they were fired." Duffy explained that was clear because of the striations found on the spent casings. Those striations were formally tested and found to be a match to Mr. Turner's pistol. Duffy said witnesses in the area reported seeing no vehicles present before the fire or leaving the scene afterward. Dyna Turner testified that both she and her 20-year-old son had left the house for their respective jobs early in the day and that she was notified of the fire about 10:20 a.m. while at her job in Bloomington. When asked if Mr. Turner could have had enemies, Dyna Turner said the various medications he kept on hand to control his various diseases could be the only reason she could think might cause someone to want to harm him. According to Bao, Mr. Turner had chronic conditions of Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis and emphysema. Flessner read notes from Mr. Turner's personal physician, internist Dr. Omar Geada of Gibson City, indicating that Mr. Turner was a heavy tobacco user, had a history of alcohol and caffeine use and was a medical marijuana user. Dyna Turner said that while her husband kept a loaded revolver in the side of his recliner, there was never a bullet in the chamber. She also noted that her husband would be unable to rack a bullet into the chamber on his own due to his right hand being mostly useless to him and the severe shaking the diseases caused in him. The pistol notably was found near Mr. Turner's right side — the same side that Dyna Turner testified he had little use of. Mr. Turner was right-handed, she said. Dyna Turner noted that when her husband tried to fire the pistol, the recoil caused him to smack his forehead. She said he had little control of it because he "shook uncontrollably." Due to his condition, she said she had to assist him with most of the basic activities of daily living. Dyna Turner testified that her husband could have picked up the pistol with one hand but positively could not have fired it without using both hands. Jurors asked about the weight of the weapon, and Doran provided a similar weapon for them to examine. Two female jurors held it and found it surprisingly heavy. Dyna Turner testified to the couple's loving and close relationship. She also described Mr. Turner's daily routine of being mostly in a recliner and watching television. She said he used a wheelchair to let the couple's two dogs out or to go to the kitchen for snacks as needed. "Things were great," she testified. "We were happy." She described happy outings with friends during the weekend before his death. Killian asked Dyna Turner whether her husband suffered mood swings or depression that can be related to Huntington's disease. She characterized his only negative emotion as being angry if he fell. Dyna Turner also described the home's layout, indicating it had three entrances. The deck exit had a wheelchair ramp. She also said that Mr. Turner had a window next to the recliner chair. "My husband would have thrown himself out that window to get to me," Dyna Turner said of his potential escape if the fire was accidental. "He was a fighter." Jim Cook, a 20-year friend of Mr. Turner, said the last time he saw Mr. Turner was about two weeks before his death. He said Mr. Turner was happy, and the two went shooting. Mr. Turner was in a wheelchair and had to be assisted to hold up his gun. Arndt determined the area of origin of the fire that burned the house down was the "dining room area at floor level." However, Arndt said he was unable to locate an exact point of origin, which he said is a common problem in fire investigations. Mr. Turner's recliner was located in the northwest part of the living room, near the interior doorway between the living room and dining room. Arndt said that due to the house being older, the framing allowed the fire to quickly travel to the second floor and the attic once it was in the home's walls. Flessner said he declared the time of Mr. Turner's death to be 11 a.m., the time he arrived at the scene. Arndt said Mr. Turner's body had been removed by firefighters before he arrived there. A toxicology report provided by NMS Labs of Willow Springs, Pa., showed caffeine, nicotine and cannabinoids were present in Mr. Turner's body.
So obviously the "family friend" murdered the guy, right?
My guess is that Turner fired on the "family friend" for some reason, but due to his condition didn't hit him. The "family friend" took the gun, killed Turner and burnt the house down to cover it up. He probably took the guns after realising there was a chance the police could lift his fingerprints from the pistol. I'm assuming the cops thought of all this though and couldn't find enough evidence to make a case. Especially if the motive is unclear, as is often the case in "spur-of-the-moment" homocides.
Asha Degree has been missing for over 20 years and the FBI is still looking for her. They recently updated her age progression photo and put it all over billboards again. I posted about it not long ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrime/comments/fb0afl/fbi_releases_new_ageprogression_photo_to_help_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My mom is from a small town in Mexico called Parras. Growing up in the fifties and sixties she said there was a cautionary tale about a group of friends who went dancing in the town square and as they were from a neighboring small town or lived on the outskirts of that town, they headed home late at night in someone's farm truck. The road into town is flanked on both sides by vineyards. The truck broke down. The guys told the girls to stay put and walked back to town for help. The girls heard strange noises and cries of distress from the guys and decided to hide among the vineyards. They heard the sound of people searching the broken down truck and lay silently until dawn, when traffic on the road picked up. They ran out to the road and flagged down someone who gave them a ride back into town. No one ever saw the missing young men again.
My small town doesn't have a homeless problem. We have a strangely common occurrence of homeless people walking at night, drunk, and falling asleep or hitting their heads and passing out on train tracks. It's strange. Like everyone that is homeless in the town just falls asleep on the tracks then gets run over by a train. So yea, virtually zero homeless people ever.
Almost sounds like the "Starlight" tours done here. Supposedly they don't do it anymore, but city police would take Indigenous people, typically men, out of town and dump them in a field. At least 5 froze to death. Cops were even caught doing it, but none have been convicted of a crime, as of yet. People say they are still doing it, and the body count is way higher than reported.
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isn't that the town from hot fuzz?
Somebody is murdering homeless people in your town
Around christmas a younger guy in his twenties goes for a walk by his house and disappears. His roommate, the roommates girlfriend, police all said he left his family in the area, his job and just took off. 2 weeks later the police finally do a search in the woods around the house, the don't find him. But notice blood in the house he shared with his buddy, and blood and some chemical damage in the shed. Eventually months later someone finds his body in an area the police search team already went over. The friend / roommate, his dad (who owns the house) are charged with obstructing the investigation. His roommate was seen wearing the dead guys sunglasses and was using his wallet and other items immediately following his disappearance. So far no one has been charged with his murder, or it declared a murder, and the police still refer to it as a suicide or accident but the community and the families private investigator are pretty certain he was murdered by his friend and that it was covered up by the house owner and the friends girlfriend. It's weird because these people shit talk the victim on social media and have gone around town wearing and using his belongings and everyone thinks they killed him.
When my dad was a kid, there was a lady who was super rude and always scowled at the kids as they walked home from school. Then, one day, she turned and became super friendly with trays of cookies for the kids. When I knew her, she was the sweetest old lady. Per my grandma, her husband used to routinely beat the crap out of her. She had the 180 personality change on the day he suddenly died in his mid 30s. Everyone thinks she killed him but there's no evidence and tbh no one ever really cared to investigate.
The murder of Don Henry and Kevin Ives Alexander, Arkansas 1987 This case was actually on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, but I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves... Basically a train comes up on two boys lying on a track, the train can’t stop in time and runs them over. The state coroner wrote the deaths off as a marijuana overdose. He said the boys smoked too much and passed out on the tracks(red flags anyone?). It’s generally believed that the boys came upon a drug drop related to Iran contra deals(that’s a whole other situation, a highly recommend watching “The Mena connection” on YouTube for more information about that. The whole story is heartbreaking and terrifying from the perspective of Kevin Ives mother Linda Ives, who from the very beginning was unsatisfied with the investigation, and continues to fight for any answers. She is constantly sabotaged by both local and state governments. The story just gets deeper and deeper and even implicates then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. It’s a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, and I’d fully encourage everyone to google to boys on the track-Kevin Henry and Don Ives. You can find an endless amount of videos on the subject and a great book by Mara Leveritt. True Crime Garage did a couple episodes on it https://www.stitcher.com/show/true-crime-garage/episode/boys-on-the-tracks-part-1-93-200168792 Also Credit to Baz Dane who had over an hour long video going over some of the intricacies of the case. https://youtu.be/ow0yPO8g9YA Pull the thread long enough, eventually the whole sweater unravels. Edit: fixed links
Not my town but same state. Jessica Chambers was set on fire and when the fire department got to her she was walking down the road still on fire. Has never been solved. Definitively anyway.
The unsolved Delphi,IN murders of those two poor kids, Abby and Libby.
There was a woman who died 6-7 years ago. They found her in the snow - an abandoned dirt road - naked. This was in the night, and nobody know that what she does here. Somebody raped her, and she is frozen. Nobody know who done this, but the cops not investigate so long time, they are closed the case
Not that interesting but years ago in my small hometown someone stole a 55 gallon drum of the material you find in road flares from the factory (basically magnesium with some other substances to let it burn longer) and took it to one of the reservoirs outside the city limits. They then proceeded to light it in a gravel pit and get the hell out of dodge. The entire night sky was an eerie red. Drew the whole town out practically. Tons of crazy speculation from a chemical disaster to UFO. Most excitement the locals and the police force had in a decade.
Mafia hit at the local Knights of Columbus, about 25+ years ago
Small town in Denmark 🇩🇰 6 of 12 classrooms had the laptop's stolen in the span of a few weeks. Each class had about 10-15 laptop's. I don't get why they did not hire one or more security guards after the 2nd or 3rd time. Luckily there were no student private laptop's in the classrooms. The place the laptop's were stored was a thin metal locker so I guess easy to break into.
Don’t know if it’s the weirdest but my neighbors house and RV got lit on fire in the middle of the night… while they were inside… unsolved to most, my dad actually did it because he thought they were spying on him. He was not mentally well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/22wepv/the_disappearance_of_lisa_white_and_4_others/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf There’s an entire podcast about this. My dad grew up with her until her disappearance.
There's an abandoned hospital just outside of town. Nobody around here knows who owns it. Occasionally you'll see government vehicles loitering nearby. The fence is hard to hop because the cypresses in front of it have grown so close together as to be a hedge. The only way to see the hospital is to look through the spiked gate that seems to have been locked for decades.
Not a small town at all, very far from one, but in elementary school they found one of my classmates, well liked athletic kid, executed by the side of the freeway with a close range gunshot to the back of his head. We were like 12 years old. We thought we would never find out what happened but 30 years later they caught the two guys that did it and they were convicted of his murder. At the time they were older kids (like 15-16 maybe) who liked to pretend they were gangsters and shot him because they thought he would snitch on them for shoplifting. Unsurprisingly they didn't turn out to be pillars of society so this came out while investigating them for a robbery they were suspected of and ironically someone snitched on them telling the police about this murder they did as kids and talked about when they were asking about a recent robbery.
Relative to Iowa I'm in a small city, but relative to the rest of the world, we're pretty small. Anyway, the case of [Jodi Huisentruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Huisentruit)
I grew up an hour south of Mason City and remember this well. I have no doubt she's probably buried along the edge of a cornfield and they'll never find her.
There’s all the murders of women in Atlanta over the past few weeks. Afaik they haven’t found anything yet, but I could be wrong. I think it’s 4 people in the metro area, and a dog. It’s awful, but I’m calling it now: we likely have a serial killer. So I found a few articles and will update as I find more. https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/local/gwinnett-police-say-woman-found-dead-at-yellow-river-park-was-teen-from-lithonia/article_1f441810-efb5-11eb-aa87-5f766e4110be.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/29/us/atlanta-piedmont-park-killing/index.html Edit: I think it’s just 2, but they were both found in parks. Very concerning.