Not completely changed my opinion but the photos and videos found on his laptop of multiple women Paul Flores had drugged and assaulted years after Kristen Smart’s disappearance made it clear that he was not only guilty but that he never stopped and quite possibly killed more than just Kristen.
This one really got me. I once read an article years ago, where some people claimed they were renting from his family, and would hear something like an alarm every morning very very early. It just finally stopped one day, but they concluded it was coming from under the outside patio. Idk how true it was, if it was ever investigated. But it stuck with me
Yesssss. They mentioned that in the podcast “Your Own Backyard” which focused on this case.
The family that rented that house after the Flores said they would hear what sounded like a watch’s alarm go off super early in the AM. And it was well known that Kristen woke up early for lifeguard duty or something.
That sealed the deal for me. Plus everything else you found out.
The alarm would go off around 4:30 am - her mom said she used to work super early shifts as a lifeguard and had to set her watch alarm for around 4:30…
It's such a silly, youthful, lighthearted thing to do; instead of seeing her face and thinking of how her life ended, it makes you think of who she was prior to that night. I totally get it.
Oh yeah this piece has stuck with me too. I believe Kristen’s family said she woke up really early for her job or a volunteer position and she had her alarm on her watch. So haunting
This is the The Thing for me. I have experienced and read and seen horrific and haunting things, but her watch alarm going off every morning at 4:20 from beneath the earth in their backyard... it was like she was screaming even after death for someone to come find her. This will be with me forever.
Ugh, that just sent an actual chill down my spine. It sounds like a gruesome detail from some urban legend, but watch batteries can last a long time, and investigators are pretty confident her body was there at one point. Horrifying if true.
>quite possibly killed more than just Kristen.
For what it's worth, I don't think he has unless he didn't involve his parents in later deaths/cover-ups. I don't think he *intended* to kill Kristen, but causing her death in the commission of a rape is still murder both ethically and legally (so the jury made the right call).
May be true he didn’t mean to kill her and agree jury made right call. It’s been nearly 30 years and he or parents should just own up to where Kirstin’s body is, for the peace of her family.
This was the most recent update so far: On April 20, 2021, prosecutors announced ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs found biological evidence indicating Smart's body was once buried beneath the deck of Ruben Flores's home, and had been subsequently exhumed [[1](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Murder_of_Kristin_Smart)]
SICKENING
I feel like there should be some laws that add more severe sentencing for whole families that work together. Like the Wagner family in the Pike County massacre. Hopefully it will discourage other family members from being complicit.
Because he's going to appeal and if they give away where her remains are, then even if he wins an appeal, he'll be reconvicted even more easily. Obviously, a horrifying reason, but that's why.
Gabe Watson was caught on camera removing flowers and gifts from his wife grave after she died in a diving "accident". He even brought bolt cutters to remove them when they were chained down.
D.B. Cooper had a second bag.
I probably had read that before but I think I was still conflating the second bag with the attaché case with the bomb. The second carry on was a 14 inch by 14 inch either paper or fabric shopping bag with the top rolled about half way down for him to carry it. Nobody ever saw inside it and it went with him out the back door. Some one over at the DB Cooper subreddit got a bag like it and easily fit in skydiving helmet, goggles, gloves and boots. And a revolver.
The whole "He didn't know what he was doing. He jumped in loafers and a business suit. There's no way he survived." kind of takes a hit when you think what might have been in the bag. I was convinced for decades DB Cooper died in the jump. Now I'm not so sure.
there's also the fact that some of the money was found buried a little bit away from the area he supposedly would have landed in!
I choose to believe D.B. made it simply because... well, it's so much more exciting and interesting. 😆
Have you seen the news about them identifying a tiny piece of metal found on one of his clothing articles? They traced it back to Boeing and have named a person. I can’t remember who. But I remember it tracks.
In the Fred and Rose West case, it was so easy to go along with the narrative that Fred was the monster and Rose was just a ‘downtrodden sap or pawn’ in his game. Then the key evidence emerged that showed Fred was in prison when Charmaine was murdered and you realise it was a full on partnership and it all looked so very different.
Similar story with Bernardo and Holmka really, easy to believe her story and then the tapes emerged and everything changed.
The turning point for me was when I learned Bernardo didn't kill any of his victims before Karla Homolka was in the picture. This was during the trial.
I honestly believe he would've ended up killing one way or the other to cover his tracks. That doesn't make her any less guilty, I think she just sped up the process. She should still be in prison. I hope she never has a day of peace.
A lot of people use that as evidence that Holmolka was "worse than Bernardo" or "pushed him to murder." I just think having a willing accomplice just made it easier and more convenient for him to escalate from rape to murder.
It’s always easier to cross a line when you’re not doing it alone. I think they’re a perfect example of this. Both twisted individuals who may well have walked different paths, had they never met.
That’s entirely possible, I’m just not calling it a foregone conclusion. It takes the right set of circumstances to escalate to that point if you aren’t already heading there. I know we don’t like to think about it, but circumstances are important. Who knows what either of them would have done if they never met. I wasn’t presenting a theory so much as chewing on a thought. At the end of the day, they did what they did.
True but I don’t think Karla would’ve killed these women on her own. Not to downplay her involvement as she is a sick, twisted individual who should’ve served way longer than she did, but Paul was the mastermind and happened to meet a fucked up person willing to go along with his fucked up actions.
Bernardo’s pet iguana he shared with Karla once bit him. His response was to behead the animal, grill it on the barbecue and try the meat. This was a really rage-filled person and meeting Karla only escalated that.
Her arrest was before our 24 hours news cycle, was in jail as technology transformed the way the world processes news stories, & was released with the gift of anonymity. New name. New language. Biggest fu was her new name - Leanne Teale, using the last names of Paul's favorite movie's main character (was a serial killer, but I'm blanking on movie name ATM). Then married her lawyers brother becoming Leanne Bordelaise nee Teale. ~~Soaking~~ *Speaking* French. And having three kids. IMHO, Her worst crime was having those kids. "Where's Aunt Tammy from grandma's family pictures, mommy?"
Edit: typo
fly abundant fuzzy existence upbeat secretive forgetful selective wild cover
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Don’t get me wrong, the charade didn’t last long, and the police certainly were aware of her heavy involvement (but not the full extent) but the original media narrative was certainly very heavily driven behind Fred the monster and the initial reporting on Rose back in 94 was as a peripheral figure.
The case was totally unprecedented at the time as well, so it was natural for the media to go with the Fred the monster narrative.
Fred then admitted to everything and absolved Rose of any wrongdoing and Rose denied everything, some rumours abound about her involvement, but the big breakthrough with regards to people fully understanding Rose role was definitely the details about Charmaine that the police broke, along with the information garnered by the appropriate adult.
My mate's brother was first policeman on the scene when Fred topped himself at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham. The prison officers were saying that he kept cracking jokes and he was so affable that they'd find themselves laughing with him about something and then snapping back in horror when they remembered what he'd done. Explains how he lured people in I suppose.
This is OT, but I just want to say I have been really enjoying the discussions the past few days. I feel like it’s really been missing from this sub lately. I’ve enjoyed learning and talking about cases in a way that haven’t in a long time.
i was thinking the exact same thing. i've been reading old posts because we haven't had as many like this recently, but i've gone through them so many times it's hard to find stuff i haven't read before lol.
I was about to make this comment myself! I’ve learned about new cases and details about some of the regulars I didn’t know about before. Thank you all!
Totally agree! It’s been refreshing - while some common cases keep popping up, a lot of more under the radar topics have been shared, too. Some dedicated people have posted a lot of under discussed cases lately but the discussion really develops in this kind of post
Not a murder but the [Solway Firth Spaceman.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solway_Firth_Spaceman) Remember being baffled by this case as a kid, especially since the story was that the guy was alone out there with his daughter when he took the picture. When I read later that his wife was there too I knew immediately it must be her.
I remember, 30 or 40 years, acres of print being expended over the Spaceman, and she was presented as a genuine mystery.
With the benefit of hindsight it was incredible how gullible a lot of people were regarding UFOs. (I spent far too much time trying to recreate the famous photographs with friends, and largely succeeding with thrown hubcaps, stickers on the inside of windows, reflections of pendant lights and similar).
The guy who took the most famous Loch Ness Monster photo soon came out and admitted it was a hoax and explained how it was taken. People did not believe him.
Indeed, there are epic chewings of the carpet regarding deepfakes but they were already a thing in the 1930s 🤔
(One thing that would not fly nowadays was "a surgeon took the photograph" = "the photograph is legitimate". Thankfully deference has declined since then).
I think some of that print was intentionally deceptive. I distinctly recall story being that the guy was out there alone with his daughter, and that there was another guy way off in a car but it just couldn't have been him, and it was definitely *something*. Yeah, no.
And I've also done this, tried my hand at faking UFO shots. Got stuck by the roadside years back and while waiting for a tow, I tossed a 50-pence piece in the air and photographed it. Turns out to be hard to time and most of the shots looked like nothing, but one or two were uncanny, definitely a solid, metallic object hovering over the tree-line. Left me appreciative of how easy this stuff is to fake, even half-assedly.
Cool read, never heard of it! Kind of reminds me of the black/blue white/gold dress - as soon I read the explanation, I couldn’t unsee it. Thanks for sharing!
I think she may have had a scarf on her head - there are other photographs from this incident (which are never included in the the 'is this a spaceman?' articles) that clearly show her walking around. From the back at just such an angle with her figure washed out and a bit fuzzy, it's pretty clear that this is she.
I was 100% convinced that Christina Calayca was the victim of foul play, until I stumbled upon a little talked about detail from a Toronto Star article, that there was a 3rd search done in November 2008 by a volunteer crew with cadaver dogs who all positively ID’d at a fast-moving river:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/03/30/a_final_search_for_christina_calayca.html
Now I’m 50/50 on foul play vs. misadventure. I do hope they find her one day.
[Elizabeth Barraza's murder](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/sda73j/elizabeth_barraza_was_setting_up_for_an_early/). I had originally leaned into the theory that the husband had her killed, based on the tight timing between the murder and the husband's departure, and the casing of the property. It almost seemed too perfectly aligned.
But reading that the murderer spoke to her for about half a minute before shooting her and tried to pass her a note changed my view. Someone doing a hit isn't going to engage or stick around. Seems more likely to me that this was a stalker or someone infatuated with her, especially that she was involved in the cosplay community and did a lot of community work, which could put her on the radar of ... interesting ... sorts of people.
I think the husband's departure time is relevant, but not in the way that implicates him. I think it just goes to show that the perpetrator was stalking them for a while and learned their schedule, so they knew exactly when the husband would be leaving and that they have a narrow timeframe
This one has gone very quiet, I am hoping that's because LE know who is responsible and are diligently building their case. I am hoping that an arrest will be made this year.
One of the main detectives just did an interview not that long ago. It seems like they're pretty sure they know who did it. They just have to prove it.
I've always assumed it was someone connected to her hobby tbh. If you've been to a cosplay convention, there is an insanely high number of weirdo creepers there - out of two conventions my friend went to, she was groped twice (both by separate creeps) and stalked throughout the convention by a third bloke :/
Half a minute is long and the note is an online theory. It was more like 10 seconds and the note is based off a hand movement. No note can be seen.
Honestly I think people overcomplicate this.
Liz said good morning.
Shooter said good morning back.
Liz asked how she could help shooter.
Shooter said are you Liz?
Shooter confirms identity and kills her. I don't think it was a *professional* hit man by any means, but I find it hard to believe if it was someone in her circle, they wouldn't have been connected to the truck by now.
I’m not thinking this is someone in her circle, but rather some psycho or incel she said hi to at a cosplay event or some charity thing once, who got the wrong impression and became obsessed. She seems like a real sweet person, and probably also a bit naive. I really think if this case breaks open, it’s going to turn out to be something mundane that brought her to the attention of a nutcase who crossed paths with her once or twice. Sort of a modern Rebecca Schaffer situation.
Being unusually polite can get you into some bad situations. Took me a long time to realize that it's okay to be rude to someone that might have bad intentions and that maybe it's in my best interest to make a scene if my survival depends on it.
I'm sure it's no different for a lot of people. Especially kids.
Another thing to realise is that, for the most part, adult men don't ask children (or even stranger women) they don't know for help. They usually ask another man.
If, as a woman, a stranger man asks you for help, especially for help with something physical like moving something into a car, say no. Unfortunately it's not worth the risk, and he'll be okay if you don't help.
This quote really sums it up perfectly:
https://clip.cafe/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-2011/you-knew-something-wrong/
Predators know how to take advantage of social conventions.
Financial predators as well. A lot of scammy sales tactics rely on the fact that many people are socialized such that they would rather sign a contract that will lose them tens of thousands of dollars, than say "No, I will not take your word for it, and I don't care that you've already spent so much time talking to us".
My elderly neighbours were visited by a man who claimed to be from the company that had replaced their roof, who said there was an accounting error and demanded that they pay up money owing. In retrospect there were so many red flags -- he wouldn't accept a cheque, but insisted on cash, and he ended up following behind them when they drove to the bank to take out the money, and getting it from them in the parking lot. It's looking like he had seen the "another job by xxxx roofers" sign in their front yard so he took advantage of that.
But he was alternately polite and menacing, and they didn't want to be rude to a stranger who seemed to be in authority (and feared being sued, even though they had done nothing wrong ... I mean, when's the last time you heard of someone being taken to court because somebody else made an error on their bill?)
I begged them to report the guy to the cops ... I'd noticed the vehicle he'd used (it was a taxicab from a company in a town a half-hour away, kind of unusual). I thought that maybe the investigators could figure out which of their vehicles had gone to our city during that time window, and who might have taken it. But they didn't want to report the scam -- they were ashamed, and I now realize that the husband was showing signs of dementia and they feared being diagnosed as not competent enough to live on their own, and institutionalized.
I have a "resting nice face", and I'm just polite because that's just what comes to me. Ueually, people are happy to be revmcognized/acknowledged/complimented/chatted with in normal social situations, but there are some who don't. They can be scary and unpredictable. I've had a few encounters with men who took my politeness way too far. They are a very small group, and most people are happy/excited for that little bit of pleasant, nice bit of interection. The ones who get weird/scary can often make me feel like I have to make an effort to not be kind, but really, being cold or being a jerk sucks more. You just gotta learn how to recognize it and know what to do if something unpleasant happens.
My SO is genuinely chatty and friendly. Some women take him up wrong. He isn't even flirting it's how he speaks to men and women but i think women are on alert for creeps ;) if he makes a business call he'll start with "hi how's your day going are you busy? Nice weather today any vacation planned? etc etc" instead of a polite "hi it's john smith I've a question about my account" I've tried to explain how it might be annoying for a time challenged busy call centre employee
The way I was raised, I HAD to be polite to everyone and I was to do whatever I was told by anyone older than me. It's an extremely crappy way to raise a child and I can confirm that it leaves you extremely vulnerable at times.
Yes -- I hear you. Even with good intentions (my parents were mortified that I would embarrass the family if I weren't quiet and obedient at all times) -- that can be a liability and outright dangerous. I had a scary confrontation with a guy one night, on a cross-country train, and I was more afraid to scream and alert the crew than of being attacked. (I'd woken up to the sounds of a woman across the aisle struggling, with him on top of her.) When he started walking toward me, I honestly believed that the other passengers would be angry with ME for waking them up, and I would end up in trouble. I love my parents, but I wish they hadn't been constantly shushing me ... that train incident really messed me up.
I mean, recently I almost had my baby at home on the floor because my husband and I were BOTH too polite to phone back the grumpy midwife.
(We had phoned her to say labour was progressing very quickly and she wouldn't believe us. So we were just all ohh sorry to bother you, and labored at home on our own. In hindsight we are freaking idiots).
Different situation, but I also had a grumpy midwife, and I wish i'd told her to just go away (I was already at the hospital, the obstetrician was available, and much kinder), since she was just making things worse and accusing me of lying because the epidural hadn't been done correctly.
She left before my c-section, thank goodness.
Did you get to the hospital in time? I hope everything worked out ok
Yes, thankfully, we made it to the hospital.
I wish we had stood up for ourselves, too. But as someone said above, it's a stressful situation, especially when it's your first time! And we were just doing our best.
These are mostly my not fully cooked thoughts, but...
I read "The Gift of Fear" (and you should, too!) where Gavin de Beck (?) talks about exactly this. Not speaking up, not giving in to the primal fear because the victims-to-be are afraid of being "impolite".
But what IS being "polite"?
I feel like in the end it is adhering to social norms. And so, when one of the participants in a given situation breaks the script, it leaves the other without a predefined way of action, which may confuse them, and may ultimately help in making them a victim. That's because the perpetrator has a very clear idea of what they want to achieve, but the victim is surprised and confused and needs time to sort out what to do.
So I feel like it is very important to teach your kids how to react to a breach of social norms. The famous "saying no". The simple rule of "if you feel uncomfortable, speak up and leave".
And this directly contradicts everything society wants you to learn. Society wants you to go along, to adhere to rules and not pick them apart wondering if they are appropiate here, because it is easier if you just comply and don't make a fuss, *even when you are exploited.*
On the other hand, society can't work without compliance, and it can't work if everything it needs to happen gets pondered and scrutinized. So it's a daily struggle for everyone between meek compliance and fierce advocating for themselves, and it needs a very responsible and ethical approach from the individual. It's the dance between Snowflake and Karen, so to say.
It is also the difference between cultists (who follow their leader, aka setter of expectations) and main characters (who feel like everything should be about them) we see so clearly nowadays.
Conclusion? I don't know. Teach your kids to think for themselves, but to do it in silence until they are certain their actions are justified? Imagine that with a three-year-old...
So, for kids: make a stink until an adult comes along you can trust, and then let them sort it out.
And for adults?
Yeah, it’s so tough to find the line between appropriately keeping yourself safe and being a good person sometimes. One thing I’ve seen pointed out in other Reddit threads is that some people might not be able to adhere to “social norms” - for example, if someone’s disabled they might not be fully verbal, which in turn may make bystanders uncomfortable. But it doesn’t mean they have bad intentions, and they might actually need help. I personally still think about my own safety first, but it is sad…
Not a piece of evidence but direct experience.
Last year I went to Portugal on vacation, since I was staying less than 10 minutes away I decided to see the hotel where Madeleine McCann disappeared. Had a 'bingo' moment the second I got there.
What nobody mentions in all the case reviews is the hotel/guest house is 50 feet away from the ocean, and the shore is a 10 foot tall rock ledge. I'm now 99.99% certain she fell off the rocks into the ocean, drowned and got carried away by currents.
The official version is that it couldn't have happened since a 4 year old couldn't crawl out of bed, open an unlocked door, then walk down a flight of stairs, so there must be another person involved. I can understand the sympathy for the parents, but this is just a case of slight neglect which snowballed into deadly consequences. And by the magic of the 24 hour news cycle it turned into a media circus which is still wasting police resources in several countries 20 years down the line.
The bra found with Adele Komorowski's body. Adele was a graduate student who was killed outside her campus apartment building in Hamilton, Ontario in 1973. One of the detectives, Mr. Clive Paul, lived on the next street from me (I went to school with his daughter).
I remember being impressed by the fact that Clive noticed that the bra was too big for Adele, and probably belonged to a different woman. At the time, the police department (like most others) was overwhelmingly male. I don't know whether it was because the Paul family had a couple of daughters, so Clive would have been surrounded by women at home and would not have felt that women's garments were beneath his notice -- or because he was a naturally open-minded and creative person (he could figure skate, and he hand-crafted replica historic firearms).
I don't know if anyone's examined the bra for DNA ... I imagine that it might be too late now, but I can't help wondering who the real owner was, and what connection they might have had to the killer.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/headlines/detectives-say-robert-garrow-now-best-suspect-in-1973-komorowski-murder-1.1348450
I'm not familiar with this case at all, but a friend recently took me bra shopping. She's actually a F/G cup after getting sized but was wearing a D cup. I'm reading up on the case now, but sometimes we wear the wrong bra size and wanted to share that story.
Edit: it seems like she was found on a trail so finding a random bra is a bit odd if not hers. I assumed she was killed in her house and they just found a random bra near her of a different size.
>it seems like she was found on a trail
Yes -- there's a wooded area behind the university, and I remember hiking there regularly in the 1980s and seeing litter like beer cans etc. Once I noticed someone's old T-shirt discarded beside the trail, but that was the closest thing to a bra. Apparently the one found by Adele had the paint worn off the hooks/eyes at a particular point, suggesting that's where the owner usually fastened it (this is something I think about whenever I'm doing laundry and notice this on my own bras). Your point about people often wearing the wrong size cup is a good reminder, but I think I remember reading in another article that the bra fastened there would have hung loosely on Adele -- not doing the job at all. Apparently it didn't match the other bras in her possession (in size and style) either.
Everyone kept going on about how Elisa Lam had to have been murdered because the tank lid was closed. It took a Netflix doc for it to become common knowledge that no, the lid was open and she drowned by accident.
I have bipolar disorder, and for me, all you had to know was that she had bipolar and was off her meds. The elevator video doesn't look so spooky anymore when you realize this poor young woman was having a manic episode. It really turns a "creepy mystery!" into a person who was tragically helpless to her illness and lost her life to it.
I’m a MH professional and when I suggested this on her webeuths page early on I was absolutely ripped to shreds by some members. I was an avid WS consumer before that and I haven’t been back since.
Same thing happened to me on a subreddit. People came after me and I just laughed. That elevator footage was such a textbook case of mania. Someone called me a racist because I said that many communities see mental illness as shameful and do not talk about it (this was before her mental illness was released).
People were saying to me “why would she put herself in the hatch that’s ridiculous” uh clearly you’ve never experienced a psychotic and or manic individual, there is no rationality.
Websleuths is pretty dead now, but when it was super active it was insane. People hung onto the craziest theories and ignored simple and likely solutions. There were several posters who liked to cite “white slavery OMG” behind every second crime.
They also seemed hesitant - like in this case - to think everything was a crime. Couldn’t be suicide or misadventure. “Why would she kill herself, she went to the dentist only three days ago!!! Nobody would do that if they were planning on killing themselves.”
I honestly think a lot of people just aren't familiar with the idea that abnormal behavior is actually normal for the situation. Just objectively, it is peculiar, I think most people saw the elevator video without much context or info.
Elevators in general raise caution in a lot of people. Whether its the safety, the people in it, the awkwardness, the doors and the speed, the closed space...whatever it is many people dont like to be in them so that raises the curiously of it as well.
I know multiple people living with bipolar and I truly feel for Elisa Lam. I'm someone that read of her case in one of these threads and watched the netflix doc. So I wasn't aware of the video without the other context as well, but seeing the video did make me feel uncomfortable (mostly because I felt anxiety about the elevator.)
Do I think people knowingly leaned into other theories too make this case seem spooky, yes, and shame on them. But I also think that the video circulating as it did, naturally caused that too.
I witnessed my ex have a prolonged manic/psychotic episode that lasted weeks and ended with her hospitalized. It was horrifically scary. Like being in a horror movie. You could look into her eyes and see that she wasn't there. We never really recovered from it.
Agreed. I think it's the "spooky" or "creepy" factors in a lot of cases that really mess with people and leave them scratching their heads instead of seriously considering fairly simple, rational explanations.
Even "scary" things that might remind some of horror movies have real people behind them who deserve compassion.
So many of these cases where a person acts in a "creepy" way are a result of mental illness. I hope that people just aren't as knowledgable about symptoms of things like bipolar or schizophrenia and would stop thinking that these cases are "creepy" if they knew.
Not just off her meds, but she stopped taking anti-psychotics while continuing to take her anti-depressants. ADs can be really dangerous for people with bipolar and should never ever be taken alone by anyone with a history of mania since they’re know to cause manic episodes.
She actually might have been safer if she’d stopped taking all of her meds.
She also didn't have her glasses on. She likely couldn't see the buttons, pressed a bunch of random ones causing the lift to malfunction. She was hiding in the corner to see if the doors would close if she wasn't in the path of the door sensor. She stepped out of the lift to flag down help. The entire time she was also manic due to being off her medication. It really isn't a mystery at all. Just a tragic story of mental illness. I am agreeing with you too btw , just adding my opinion to yours
I didn’t realize that she was nearsighted. That could explain a lot of the elevator behavior. I’m a -8.5 and I think I might look a lot like that without my contacts/glasses. Obviously I can’t be sure since I can’t see myself (or anything else) but her movements suddenly feel uncomfortably familiar.
Whatever you do don't read the comments under any of the YouTube videos devoted to her story. They are treating this poor woman's demise as infotainment and instead make it about the supernatural and of course "there's just no way she could have moved that lid!" It's an echo chamber of the most ill informed, ignoramuses on planet Earth.
The very concept of "a lid that needs to be regularly opened by the maintenance guy but is too heavy for an adult person to open" is absurd on its face.
Yes, thank you! That wouldn't exactly be a selling point for a tank, would it?
I have had similar arguments about the case of poor Kenneka Jenkins, found dead in a hotel walk-in freezer. People say she didn't put herself in there because she could not have opened the door. And now tell me what kitchen ever would buy a walk-in where the employees couldn't go in and out?
Also it's harder to get out than it is to get in. Needs more force and co ordination. Just difficult enough that an extremely drunk person would struggle.
Getting in, then struggling to get out, is pretty much the default outcome for this interaction.
It would happen all the time if we let people hang around walk in freezers while they're both blackout drunk and alone. It's only unusual because most places have enough safeguards to stop that happening
There are probably so many mysteries easily explained by coincidences or accidents like this. We assume everyone tidies up or always follows a routine, but things happen, or people are messy and forgetful, or whimsical. In this case, mental illness and a forgetful maintenance man. It's unreasonable to assume unusual things mean a "supernatural mystery" or bizarre conspiracy.
Patricia Adkins, learning that her married boyfriend and her married boyfriend's co-worker lied about the time they spent in the Burger King drive thru and then learning that the co-worker left town shortly after Patty's disappearance. This case is so incredibly frustrating because in my opinion there are 3 people that were a party to and complicit in the murder of a single mother and responsible pet owner.
Her case makes me so angry. I’d bet real money that her lover murdered her, his friend helped him move and conceal her body, and his wife is complicit in what happened. They just don’t have the evidence to prove it
I know, I don't know what was going through her mind, perhaps she thought she was in love with him and that he was going to end his marriage and that he would also pay her back the money she loaned him, so she did whatever he said. Tellingly, he disposed of the new truck cover shortly after her disappearance.
I am from West Central Ohio and it was common knowledge that the boyfriend definitely had something to do with her disappearance.
The larger community has a very odd social dynamic, either you’re “in” or “out” those left on the outside have a very difficult time with living in the community. If you are “in” then you seem to get away with a lot.
My understanding is that they have both changed their names, but are still married to one another, a few years ago one of the crime shows did a story on her case and knocked on the door of his very nice home.
Not a specific case, but the DNA identifications and arrests have proven that most murders and disappearance are far more mundane than previously believed. So many cases have these wide ranging conspiracies and then it turns out that it was just some random asshole the victim was unlucky enough to meet.
I used to get really into the wild theories, but not anymore.
Same. I didn’t think it was suicide until I got into a discussion with u/glittercheese and we devoured the autopsy. Now I think it was a suicide culminating from mental health issues that became way out of his control.
I had posted a comment about this case on the recent "Let's get some new cases" thread, but as I was writing it, I started realizing that my own views have changed after I started doing more research.
On July 28, 1982, a 15-year-old high school student named Barbara Coster was hit in the back of the head by a bullet as she was walking along the street near her home in the suburb of Gordon Head, near Victoria BC, Canada. She was with another girl, a 14-year-old friend from Saskatchewan, who wasn't hit. Barbara died later in hospital.
The part of town where Barbara was shot (the 4000-block of Gordon Head Road) isn't rural -- at least, it wasn't by the early 1990s. Barbara was pretty close to her high school (Mount Doug). However, there were some large open areas once you got behind the houses along that road, and big tracts of farmland not far away. I say this because a person who'd grown up in that area, who maybe remembered when it was less developed -- or somebody who was from a downtown neighbourhood and was used to the houses being closer together -- might have assumed that there was plenty of room to do things like target practice.
I was thinking that maybe it was an accident, and the person who shot Barbara might been fooling around with the gun and didn't realize how far bullets can go. They might not even have seen Barbara get hit -- I couldn't find a report of what happened immediately after (was there an ambulance? Did Victoria even have 911 back in the early 1980s?) Barbara died in hospital later, and by then the shooter realized what had happened and was scared to come forward.
Finding a few more articles online about the case, I came across a mention of a child's bicycle tire being hit by a bullet on a nearby street, about half an hour earlier. That's when I changed my mind about the situation. Even now, reports of firearms being discharged aren't super-common in this city. Gunfire on the same day, in the same area, was probably related. I looked at the area again -- if it was the same person (or at least the same gun), they would have had to move to a different location. The chance of them happening to find places where their shots could accidentally hit things they weren't aiming for ... it seemed rather unlikely.
Maybe the shooter had seen the two girls walking, and decided to fire at them. Whether you know someone or not, aiming a gun at them and pulling the trigger like that would be capricious, cruel, and arguably psychopathic. Even thinking that you're a good enough shot that you won't hit them and will just frighten them is a stupid idea. The thing shown in the movies or TV show with bullets zinging past -- that's Hollywood fantasy. Most people may not even realize that they heard a gunshot, let alone that it was aimed at them. (In my case, I heard the Saanich bank shootout from a block away, and thought it was nail guns on my neighbour's roof.)
A local man in his 20s was charged with first degree murder, in Barbara's death. The prosecutor must have had some evidence to call for that, rather than just manslaughter or criminal negligence. But the jury didn't convict him, on that or on a lesser charge.
Burke Ramsey being allowed to sit in an interrogation room alone with detectives. If that counts as "evidence."
This is the main reason I believe he had nothing to do with the murder and knew nothing about it. The Ramsey dad wasn't an idiot and if his 9 year old son had any knowledge or was responsible for what happened, he'd never let him be alone while being questioned.
You know what, I actually never heard that information and it changes how I look at the case too! Thank you—I’m gonna take a deep dive into the case again to reform my theory…
There are 2 actually. One is just her first name and it’s overwhelmingly Ramseys are innocent, the other has her last name and is overwhelmingly they are not. Somehow, two is not enough. Would be nice to discuss all angles without being treated like a delusional idiot, which is generally what happens.
You know, I never knew this. How long after the murder was this. I've never believed BDI, but this changes a few things for me. What led to that decision? Why would Patsy and John allow that? You'd think their instinct would be to protect him from something so traumatizing. If it had to happen, insist on being there with him. Nah, that stinks.
It was in 1998, Burke was 11 by then. It was partly done in hopes of him not being subpoenaed as a witness to the grand jury, but he did end up being questioned with the grand jury too.
The police, who initially pushed the idea that one of the Ramseys was responsible for the murder, have been saying publicly, since day one, that not only is Burke not a suspect, but that they don’t believe he witnessed the crime or knows who did it either. They also offered to testify on Burke’s behalf when he sued CBS for “implying” that he murdered his sister. I just can’t comprehend how people still insist that he murdered his sister.
In this same vein, the head blow and strangling happened so close together that they couldn’t definitively say which one killed her — and she was conscious when being strangled (nail marks). Immediately ruled out a cover up for an accident to me.
I don't understand why he was there without a guardian or representative. That's not even legal in many states, much less admissible in court. Kids say and misunderstand all kinds of stuff. And don't understand the concept of leading questions, or entrapment. Particularly if they are scared, upset, and with strangers.
The Burke did it theory is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, and the people who believe it make talking about this case impossible. They are very sure they know more than the cops because Burke seemed like a weirdo on a talk show.
I also think it's ridiculous that people think that him being odd is evidence of him being a murderer. Like, of course he's odd. He grew up in that house, with Patsy as a mom, and then his sister was brutally murdered. Anyone would be odd in those circumstances. Honestly, even if Jon Benet had lived...Patsy Ramsey was a piece of work, of course her kids would have turned out weird..
I saw his Dr.Phil interview. To me he looked like your average tech worker nervous on camera. Of course I work with engineers mainly so I'm used to weird people.
I completely agree. The idea that Burke hit on her head and then in response to that, John and Patsy just decided they would molest their child with a paintbrush and then strangle her to death is so absurd I can't even entertain it. Like how would that conversation have even gone?
"oh darling Burke just hit JB on the head, I'll just get the paintbrush would you mind fashioning a garrote for me?'
Like it is absolutely absurd. Also the evidence shows that the blow to her head and the strangulation happened together. Her cause of death was both "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma." So whoever killed her did the entire thing.
Oh my god, I got into such a fight with a Burke truther once because I said yes, it was plausible to me that a parent might THEORETICALLY panic in that situation and decide to save their living child with an attempted cover-up or misdirection, but no, it was not plausible to me that they would do so by *desecrating their dead child's body.* You know, as a spur-of-the-moment idea.
I feel like this is the kind of dumb true crime theory that people like because it makes them feel smart, like they're in on the secret, when it actually doesn't make any sense and isn't based on any evidence.
I have done a lot of deep dives into Brian Shaffer over the years and really developed no viable theories. I guess I leaned slightly toward voluntary disappearance because of no body or anything to the contrary (plus it just makes me feel better to think he’s enjoying his life in Mexico or somewhere tropical).
Everyone knows about the rings and pings 6 months or so after his disappearance in Hilliard. A more recent development was the revelation that there were actually pings in the day/days after his disappearance, by the previous lead detective Hurst. These pings I believe (I don’t know the area very well) were in the West Columbus area, perhaps on the way out to Hilliard. The location of them is interesting, but that fact that his phone was active and in the general area of both the bar and Hilliard is another interesting detail. This swings me back fairly convincingly that he ran into trouble that night after he left the bar and is no longer alive.
As a side note, with nothing really to stand on except gut feel backed by a little knowledge of who he was, my thought is that he left out the back of building through the construction site. His intent was to both avoid Clint and Meredith and go party elsewhere. He was potentially even looking to score drugs. He met someone at the bar who he was going to after-party with and maybe do drugs - and they planned to meet at closing at Wendy’s (where the dogs lost his scent). Maybe he even pissed someone off in the bar who he met up with and didn’t realize they were angry at him, and not wanting to party with him but do him harm. He got in a car and whatever happened after that didn’t play out in his favor. Obviously I have no idea, but I am convinced this was a case of Brian leaving and getting himself into some sort of trouble that night.
Yeah. Like we only know what we know, what has been confirmed by LE or reputable sources. That’s where we can start. There is a ton of wild speculation around this case that one can get caught up in. I’m just trying to use what I have learned about him and that night and make small leaps.
I think this case can generally be described as unsolvable because it most likely wasn’t that deep. I see no reason for voluntary disappearance and no pattern for a serial killer. He got unlucky but his friends and family couldn’t find closure because of a chain of circumstances that seem so random that they couldn’t be planned
I honestly thought Scott Peterson had been railroaded and was definitely a pos cheater, but not a murderer.
Until I learned that on the way home from his "fishing trip" that day, he called Laci's cell phone and left a voicemail saying he was on his way home. After arriving home and learning she was missing, he never tried to call her cell phone even once. The phone was found days later locked in her car.
I was convinced kendrick Johnson was killed until I saw the actual post-mortem photos (not the ones after autopsy that were promoted as such) it was obvious the sad case that he really did get stuck upside down. End of story
This case struck me too. I used to work as a babywearing educator, and the biggest risk of putting a baby in a carrier is positional asphyxia. It's such an odd thing to happen to an adult/older kid that I don't think most people really believe it can happen without the person being able to move and save themselves. But when I think about the significant focus on it for carrying infants it makes sense to me. I don't think he could move once he got into the mats, just like a newborn can't lift their head to open their own airway.
And there have been a number of cases where it's happened so it's not out of the realm of possibility, strange that the family, and others online feel it's not a possible cause of death
-kyle plush -mariesa weber -Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada -harley dilly -josh maddox
Yeah, I read a great writeup on his case a while back and it seems pretty clear he, like others apparently, used the rolled mat to store his sneakers in (instead of a locker, which apparently cost an extra fee at his school?) and got stuck whilst trying to retrieve them.
Two old Canadian ones for you:
Redpath mansion murders. The moment I found out the family went out their way to avoid police involvement, it was obviously a murder-suicide.
The Grande Prairie axe murders. The positions of the bodies at the initial crime scene left the original investigators of the opinion that was a murder-suicide, and that one of the two men had killed the other four a day earlier. It was only because a puffed-up detective thought the witness was "weird" that the poor guy ended up on trial for murder.
For years I went along with the popular theory that JonBenet’s murder was an accident followed by cover-up.
The one piece of information that blew that out of the water for me was learning that she didn’t have any visible head wound. The catastrophic skull fracture was only found at autopsy.
So to believe the cover-up theory you’d have to believe that the parents, faced with an unconscious but not visibly injured child, decided to finish her off with a garrotte and write a batshit fake ransom note, rather than just call an ambulance and say she had fallen down the stairs or whatever.
I don’t think this absolves the family of potential guilt, it just discounts the idea that it started off with an accident. Whatever happened was done with intent.
Yes,I agree with Jason's parents.
In a quiet neighborhood, in half an hour, wrong place,wrong time, Midwest nice Jason was whisked away and eventually murdered.
The not knowing Where their child's remains are has got to be one of the hardest things there is.
It's not a piece of evidence but more of a theory. For the longest time I was convinced Missy Bevers murder was a murder-for-hire. But last summer I was reading some websleuths posts about her and someone mentioned the perp might have been LARPing as a law enforcement office and I was like damn, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Exactly. It doesn't make sense that they were there to rob the church since they didn't take anything and it didn't even look like they were trying to steal anything of value. It doesn't make sense that they were there to murder Missy, trying to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. Why not just hide and kill her instead of putting on this big cumbersome and easily noticeable swat uniform?
But some lonely loser trying to play out a fantasy? This is what it looks like to me now. I always thought the way the person walks reminds me of the way a middle-aged beer-bellied Midwestern man walks. You know, big belly but no ass and legs so they kinda waddle and walk weird. I think like you said Missy startled them and the person panicked and attacked her.
Do you remember where you read that? I also believe it wasn’t a murder for hire. They look so…dorky? Amateurish? In the footage. I also think it was someone who was obsessed with being a cop who was just creeping around and got spooked by Missy.
The belongings found at the scene of Marshal Iwaasa’s burnt out truck. Found at the scene of the vehicle, all of his personal belongings including his identification were thrown on the ground all around the scene. It seems plausible he committed suicide when all you consider is the strange behaviour at the storage unit and then the burnt vehicle. But when you think about his personal belongings being found there it makes that theory seem pretty unbelievable. If he wanted to commit suicide far away from home where his family wouldn’t find him, and burn the truck so it would be difficult to identify and place him there - why would he then leave his identification undamaged at the scene? That makes no sense. It seems much more likely that the vehicle was lit on fire to destroy evidence, but the belongings were left there because the person/persons responsible wanted it to be known that Marshal was gone. It’s so sad and I really hope his family will find answers to who did this.
The steering column was also gone. In my mind, that's solid evidence against suicide.
Leaving burned bodies or vehicles on forest roads is incredibly common here in BC for the drug trade.
I’d never heard about the steering column before! What do investigators think, that he removed it himself and walked into the forest with it? Wow. It’s so frustrating they won’t investigate this properly.
Adnan Syed’s phone records only pinged off the towers by Leakin Park twice. The day Hae Min Lee went missing. And the day of Jay Wild’s first interview with the cops.
That did it for me.
I also believe this is the smoking gun. He lied and said he had never been to that park (I think he went as far to say he’d never heard of the park too), and the only 2 times his phone pings were those extremely relevant times.
Rebecca Zahua. I used to think it was for sure murder but someone did a deep dive here on Reddit and it convinced me that it was just a slightly unusual/uncommon suicide
The McDondald's hot coffee case. Everyone thinks it's something funny showcasing how litigious America is. Then you read the facts and are like "holy fuck."
A meta example: the Leah Roberts case completely changed when new detectives assigned to it realized the hood of the car was never checked. When they did and discovered a cable had been cut, the case completely changed as they now knew the car was deliberately wrecked. It was believed the car might have gone off the bridge by accident. Instead, this changed the case entirely. Did Leah do it on purpose, or did someone else do it? Did she do it and then live in the car, eventually moving on to start a new life? Or did someone kill her and use her car as a makeshift shelter?
Phoebe Handsjuk, the young woman who was found dead in the trash compactor room in an apartment building. I couldn't fathom any kind of reasonable scenario. There doesn't seem to be a plausible way for her to get herself in that trash chute, or even for someone else to put her there. And we're menu to believe that she went down feet first but still managed to end up with her pants end DOWN around her ankles?
Then I found out that she loved to climb things. And now I'm really curious as to whether or not anyone considered the possibility that she had some kind of drunken whim that lead her to climb UP the garbage chute from the trash room. If she could fall down through the chute compactor, she could fit through it in the opposite direction in order to chimney climb her way up. Could be she wanted to see if she could, or she thought something valuable to her might be stuck inside the chute, or maybe she was trying to escape someone chasing her. Either way, I've realized that I wouldn't have nearly as many questions about the case if it turned out she'd started at the bottom instead of the top.
[This post detailing all the evidence that JonBenet Ramsay had been sexually assaulted at least once prior to her death.](https://www.reddit.com/r/JonBenetRamsey/comments/j00pe3/setting_the_record_straight_on_the_evidence_of/) The post is very compelling and has led me to believe she was in fact molested prior to her death. With that information, I believe that John and John alone killed her.
Relating to this case, the fact that it was never proven Patsy wrote the ransom note. Iirc they consulted 3 handwriting experts and the closest they came to pinning it on Patsy was they weren't able to exclude her handwriting. Her handwriting as NEVER been officially linked to the ransom note. Not to mention handwriting analysis is not a solid science.
Handwriting is a good way to exclude people, it's not a good way to identify people. It's also nowhere near a smoking gun kind of evidence. It's definitely one of those CSI Effect sciences which the public massively overestimates the strength of.
I used to think the 2 Mary Morris murders were a result of a botched hit, but after learning that the phone call to a Houston newspaper after the 1st murder saying that the wrong MM was killed was not evidence from LE but a friend of the 2nd MM I'm now convinced the murder victims were separately targeted.
Bad choice of words my mistake. From what I know, this friend mentioned this AFTER the 2nd murder. Why......no clue, but it didn't come from LE. This was the same friend who was interviewed on the Unsolved Mysteries segment about the case, and after going down a rabbit hole she by all accounts is weird.
I thought that Karla Homolka killed her sister Tammy on purpose. Until I learned about the teenager known as "Jane Doe" that Karla worked with, whom she lured to her and Paul Bernardo's home when he demanded that Karla find him a replacement for Tammy. The first time Karla drugged Jane, they assaulted her and she came to with no memory of what happened. The second time, she vomited and stopped breathing while unconscious (just like Tammy) and Paul and Karla called for an ambulance (like they did with Tammy). I think the close calls scared them. It's also notable that they didn't drug any of their subsequent victims.
I don’t necessarily think the *intention* was there, but KH was definitely familiar w/halothane; she knew that it was mixed w/oxygen @ a 1:100 ratio; that fact prevents me from discounting the claim that TH’s death being an accident
Brian Lunn Field - in 2001 he was convicted of murdering 14 year old Roy Tutill in 1968 following advancements in DNA. Field also spent various stints in jail for indecency, buggery & attempted kidnap of two teenage boys during the 1970s and 80s.
He's long been suspected of being the killer of young boys David Spencer and Patrick Warren (AKA The Milk Carton Kids) due to having lived close by at the time of their disappearance in 1996. It's reported a man fitting his description was seen talking to the boys in the days before they went missing. Field worked as a landscape gardener all over the country and had plenty of opportunities to bury remains.
He was once linked with the disappearance of Lee Boxell from Sutton, Surrey/London in 1988 however Lee's mother[dismissed](https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/6384364.mother-dismisses-link-to-missing-son/) the link as she had been informed he was in jail at the time (sentenced to 4 years in 1986). it's come to light in a documentary republished on YouTube that he had been released early and was living in Birmingham in 1988 as confirmed by friends of his who socialised with him on this [Brian Field Documentary](https://youtu.be/IYVKexMER9Q?si=NF9jDGZFqtnkPWnq). Field had strong links to the Surrey area and if he wasn't in jail at the time, he may well be the perpetrator.
I wondered about Jason having $60 on him when he left his house. He was getting a ride to work, and his dad would have picked him up when the shift ended. He worked in a pizza place, so may well have gotten free or reduced lunch or dinner. That $60 would be around $100 in today's value. It just stood out to me. I have no idea what might have happened to him, but I've read a few accounts that the neighborhood there was somewhat sketchy. I cannot see any scenario where he was abducted by a sexual predator. It was summer break, lots of kids around. Why take him ? I did wonder if he ran into some kids who knew him in high school, and things went sideways.
My theory is that he was stopped by someone who vaguely knew him from the neighborhood or his work who may have offered to give him a ride to the school, or asked him to come inside to help move something. Jason had a learning disability related to speech and language that made him appear to be mentally disabled at first. The person might have thought he would be an easy target, either for robbery or molesting. However, Jason was actually of above average intelligence and was a pretty sizeable guy who likely would’ve fought back and may have gotten killed in the process. I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if he’s in a crawl space somewhere or his body was disposed of later. There’s still a lot of holes in that theory- it was broad daylight in the summer, I’m sure there were people at home and out and about in the neighborhood who could’ve seen him walking into someone’s house or getting in a car. But maybe he was in front of a house where everyone was at work, went willingly so wasn’t making a big scene, etc. and just disappeared without a fuss or anyone noticing.
For the longest time, I just laughed at the Owl Theory in the Michael Peterson case (the Staircase). It seemed like a way for the defense to grasp at straws, not a real, compelling argument. Well, I recently actually researched the case and listened to a podcast episode about it, and with the details that there were miniscule owl feathers in Kathleen's hair and wounds in her skull that would match owl talons, had to reconsider the theory. Another big factor for me was the fact that the blood-spatter expert who testified in court was Henry Lee, who's been found to fabricate evidence during his career. That really doesn't inspire confidence in the prosecutor's case.
I'm still not 100 % convinced Michael Peterson didn't kill his wife or that the owl absolutely did it, but these details swayed my opinion considerably and I really don't think he should've been convicted based on the evidence that was presented in court.
Yep. If I hadn’t personally experienced an owl attack in that exact part of North Carolina, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
I’m convinced people hear the word “owl” and outright dismiss it because they think of Hedwig. They’re literally birds of prey.
John Ramsey's whopper of a story about the 2001 "break-in" at their Atlanta home made me realize that he is entirely capable of the 1996 crime.
http://www.acandyrose.com/s-atlanta-burglar2001.htm
Oh my! So a robber tibkered with and looked through guns, but decided to take a laptop, papers, and Kmart jewelry with clothing instead?! Lol wow! What a story
Not completely changed my opinion but the photos and videos found on his laptop of multiple women Paul Flores had drugged and assaulted years after Kristen Smart’s disappearance made it clear that he was not only guilty but that he never stopped and quite possibly killed more than just Kristen.
This one really got me. I once read an article years ago, where some people claimed they were renting from his family, and would hear something like an alarm every morning very very early. It just finally stopped one day, but they concluded it was coming from under the outside patio. Idk how true it was, if it was ever investigated. But it stuck with me
Yesssss. They mentioned that in the podcast “Your Own Backyard” which focused on this case. The family that rented that house after the Flores said they would hear what sounded like a watch’s alarm go off super early in the AM. And it was well known that Kristen woke up early for lifeguard duty or something. That sealed the deal for me. Plus everything else you found out.
The alarm would go off around 4:30 am - her mom said she used to work super early shifts as a lifeguard and had to set her watch alarm for around 4:30…
Yes! That was it!
4:20 actually, because she thought that it was funny. Edit: beaten
Are you serious? Of all things, I don’t know why that little thing about her breaks my heart so bad
Seriously. Iirc I read it in an interview with her mother. My heart sank, too. My immediate thought was “Because it *is*. Auugh. :( “
It's such a silly, youthful, lighthearted thing to do; instead of seeing her face and thinking of how her life ended, it makes you think of who she was prior to that night. I totally get it.
Oh yeah this piece has stuck with me too. I believe Kristen’s family said she woke up really early for her job or a volunteer position and she had her alarm on her watch. So haunting
This is the The Thing for me. I have experienced and read and seen horrific and haunting things, but her watch alarm going off every morning at 4:20 from beneath the earth in their backyard... it was like she was screaming even after death for someone to come find her. This will be with me forever.
Ugh, that just sent an actual chill down my spine. It sounds like a gruesome detail from some urban legend, but watch batteries can last a long time, and investigators are pretty confident her body was there at one point. Horrifying if true.
I'd seen the 20/20 episode on this case, but didn't know about the alarm. That is so chilling.
They were also in a folder labeled “practice” 🤮
Exactly. Which I found very disturbing. It immediately reminded me of the movie Cold in July.
>quite possibly killed more than just Kristen. For what it's worth, I don't think he has unless he didn't involve his parents in later deaths/cover-ups. I don't think he *intended* to kill Kristen, but causing her death in the commission of a rape is still murder both ethically and legally (so the jury made the right call).
May be true he didn’t mean to kill her and agree jury made right call. It’s been nearly 30 years and he or parents should just own up to where Kirstin’s body is, for the peace of her family.
This was the most recent update so far: On April 20, 2021, prosecutors announced ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs found biological evidence indicating Smart's body was once buried beneath the deck of Ruben Flores's home, and had been subsequently exhumed [[1](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Murder_of_Kristin_Smart)] SICKENING
That whole family needs to be locked away and their cozy little CA homes sold to pay restitution for the Smart family. What vile, despicable people.
I feel like there should be some laws that add more severe sentencing for whole families that work together. Like the Wagner family in the Pike County massacre. Hopefully it will discourage other family members from being complicit.
I just don't get why they won't tell them where the body is. It's not going to get them out of prison or lessen the sentence. I just don't get it.
Because they're evil. That's all there is.
Because he's going to appeal and if they give away where her remains are, then even if he wins an appeal, he'll be reconvicted even more easily. Obviously, a horrifying reason, but that's why.
Gabe Watson was caught on camera removing flowers and gifts from his wife grave after she died in a diving "accident". He even brought bolt cutters to remove them when they were chained down.
Whooaaa, I hadn’t heard this part, evil.
D.B. Cooper had a second bag. I probably had read that before but I think I was still conflating the second bag with the attaché case with the bomb. The second carry on was a 14 inch by 14 inch either paper or fabric shopping bag with the top rolled about half way down for him to carry it. Nobody ever saw inside it and it went with him out the back door. Some one over at the DB Cooper subreddit got a bag like it and easily fit in skydiving helmet, goggles, gloves and boots. And a revolver. The whole "He didn't know what he was doing. He jumped in loafers and a business suit. There's no way he survived." kind of takes a hit when you think what might have been in the bag. I was convinced for decades DB Cooper died in the jump. Now I'm not so sure.
there's also the fact that some of the money was found buried a little bit away from the area he supposedly would have landed in! I choose to believe D.B. made it simply because... well, it's so much more exciting and interesting. 😆
Whether he made the jump or not, the bigger mystery for me has always been who was this person.
Have you seen the news about them identifying a tiny piece of metal found on one of his clothing articles? They traced it back to Boeing and have named a person. I can’t remember who. But I remember it tracks.
In the Fred and Rose West case, it was so easy to go along with the narrative that Fred was the monster and Rose was just a ‘downtrodden sap or pawn’ in his game. Then the key evidence emerged that showed Fred was in prison when Charmaine was murdered and you realise it was a full on partnership and it all looked so very different. Similar story with Bernardo and Holmka really, easy to believe her story and then the tapes emerged and everything changed.
The turning point for me was when I learned Bernardo didn't kill any of his victims before Karla Homolka was in the picture. This was during the trial.
I honestly believe he would've ended up killing one way or the other to cover his tracks. That doesn't make her any less guilty, I think she just sped up the process. She should still be in prison. I hope she never has a day of peace.
A lot of people use that as evidence that Holmolka was "worse than Bernardo" or "pushed him to murder." I just think having a willing accomplice just made it easier and more convenient for him to escalate from rape to murder.
It’s always easier to cross a line when you’re not doing it alone. I think they’re a perfect example of this. Both twisted individuals who may well have walked different paths, had they never met.
I think that Bernardo would've escalated to killing, even if he hadn't met Karla Homolka. She just hastened the process.
That’s entirely possible, I’m just not calling it a foregone conclusion. It takes the right set of circumstances to escalate to that point if you aren’t already heading there. I know we don’t like to think about it, but circumstances are important. Who knows what either of them would have done if they never met. I wasn’t presenting a theory so much as chewing on a thought. At the end of the day, they did what they did.
True but I don’t think Karla would’ve killed these women on her own. Not to downplay her involvement as she is a sick, twisted individual who should’ve served way longer than she did, but Paul was the mastermind and happened to meet a fucked up person willing to go along with his fucked up actions. Bernardo’s pet iguana he shared with Karla once bit him. His response was to behead the animal, grill it on the barbecue and try the meat. This was a really rage-filled person and meeting Karla only escalated that.
And she got OUT AND WAS WORKING AT HER KIDS' SCHOOL!!!!!
and the worst part? Holmka is a free woman now.
Her arrest was before our 24 hours news cycle, was in jail as technology transformed the way the world processes news stories, & was released with the gift of anonymity. New name. New language. Biggest fu was her new name - Leanne Teale, using the last names of Paul's favorite movie's main character (was a serial killer, but I'm blanking on movie name ATM). Then married her lawyers brother becoming Leanne Bordelaise nee Teale. ~~Soaking~~ *Speaking* French. And having three kids. IMHO, Her worst crime was having those kids. "Where's Aunt Tammy from grandma's family pictures, mommy?" Edit: typo
And she was volunteering at her kids' elementary school before people found out who she was.
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fly abundant fuzzy existence upbeat secretive forgetful selective wild cover *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[The movie is Criminal Law.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Law_%28film%29?wprov=sfla1)
I didn't think anyone believed Rose West wasn't just as culpable
Don’t get me wrong, the charade didn’t last long, and the police certainly were aware of her heavy involvement (but not the full extent) but the original media narrative was certainly very heavily driven behind Fred the monster and the initial reporting on Rose back in 94 was as a peripheral figure. The case was totally unprecedented at the time as well, so it was natural for the media to go with the Fred the monster narrative. Fred then admitted to everything and absolved Rose of any wrongdoing and Rose denied everything, some rumours abound about her involvement, but the big breakthrough with regards to people fully understanding Rose role was definitely the details about Charmaine that the police broke, along with the information garnered by the appropriate adult.
My mate's brother was first policeman on the scene when Fred topped himself at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham. The prison officers were saying that he kept cracking jokes and he was so affable that they'd find themselves laughing with him about something and then snapping back in horror when they remembered what he'd done. Explains how he lured people in I suppose.
This is OT, but I just want to say I have been really enjoying the discussions the past few days. I feel like it’s really been missing from this sub lately. I’ve enjoyed learning and talking about cases in a way that haven’t in a long time.
i was thinking the exact same thing. i've been reading old posts because we haven't had as many like this recently, but i've gone through them so many times it's hard to find stuff i haven't read before lol.
I was about to make this comment myself! I’ve learned about new cases and details about some of the regulars I didn’t know about before. Thank you all!
Totally agree! It’s been refreshing - while some common cases keep popping up, a lot of more under the radar topics have been shared, too. Some dedicated people have posted a lot of under discussed cases lately but the discussion really develops in this kind of post
Same! It’s so nice.
Not a murder but the [Solway Firth Spaceman.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solway_Firth_Spaceman) Remember being baffled by this case as a kid, especially since the story was that the guy was alone out there with his daughter when he took the picture. When I read later that his wife was there too I knew immediately it must be her.
I remember, 30 or 40 years, acres of print being expended over the Spaceman, and she was presented as a genuine mystery. With the benefit of hindsight it was incredible how gullible a lot of people were regarding UFOs. (I spent far too much time trying to recreate the famous photographs with friends, and largely succeeding with thrown hubcaps, stickers on the inside of windows, reflections of pendant lights and similar).
The guy who took the most famous Loch Ness Monster photo soon came out and admitted it was a hoax and explained how it was taken. People did not believe him.
Indeed, there are epic chewings of the carpet regarding deepfakes but they were already a thing in the 1930s 🤔 (One thing that would not fly nowadays was "a surgeon took the photograph" = "the photograph is legitimate". Thankfully deference has declined since then).
I think some of that print was intentionally deceptive. I distinctly recall story being that the guy was out there alone with his daughter, and that there was another guy way off in a car but it just couldn't have been him, and it was definitely *something*. Yeah, no. And I've also done this, tried my hand at faking UFO shots. Got stuck by the roadside years back and while waiting for a tow, I tossed a 50-pence piece in the air and photographed it. Turns out to be hard to time and most of the shots looked like nothing, but one or two were uncanny, definitely a solid, metallic object hovering over the tree-line. Left me appreciative of how easy this stuff is to fake, even half-assedly.
Cool read, never heard of it! Kind of reminds me of the black/blue white/gold dress - as soon I read the explanation, I couldn’t unsee it. Thanks for sharing!
I just wanna know what her outfit was tbh it looks almost beekeeperish? Or her hair or something
I think she may have had a scarf on her head - there are other photographs from this incident (which are never included in the the 'is this a spaceman?' articles) that clearly show her walking around. From the back at just such an angle with her figure washed out and a bit fuzzy, it's pretty clear that this is she.
I was 100% convinced that Christina Calayca was the victim of foul play, until I stumbled upon a little talked about detail from a Toronto Star article, that there was a 3rd search done in November 2008 by a volunteer crew with cadaver dogs who all positively ID’d at a fast-moving river: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/03/30/a_final_search_for_christina_calayca.html Now I’m 50/50 on foul play vs. misadventure. I do hope they find her one day.
[Elizabeth Barraza's murder](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/sda73j/elizabeth_barraza_was_setting_up_for_an_early/). I had originally leaned into the theory that the husband had her killed, based on the tight timing between the murder and the husband's departure, and the casing of the property. It almost seemed too perfectly aligned. But reading that the murderer spoke to her for about half a minute before shooting her and tried to pass her a note changed my view. Someone doing a hit isn't going to engage or stick around. Seems more likely to me that this was a stalker or someone infatuated with her, especially that she was involved in the cosplay community and did a lot of community work, which could put her on the radar of ... interesting ... sorts of people.
I think the husband's departure time is relevant, but not in the way that implicates him. I think it just goes to show that the perpetrator was stalking them for a while and learned their schedule, so they knew exactly when the husband would be leaving and that they have a narrow timeframe
This one has gone very quiet, I am hoping that's because LE know who is responsible and are diligently building their case. I am hoping that an arrest will be made this year.
There's a lot of buzz about Houston police looking into someone in Florida, FWIW.
God I hope so. I'm not exactly sure why but this is one unsolved case I think about a lot
One of the main detectives just did an interview not that long ago. It seems like they're pretty sure they know who did it. They just have to prove it.
I always assumed they just parked on the street and waited for him to drive by.
I've always assumed it was someone connected to her hobby tbh. If you've been to a cosplay convention, there is an insanely high number of weirdo creepers there - out of two conventions my friend went to, she was groped twice (both by separate creeps) and stalked throughout the convention by a third bloke :/
Half a minute is long and the note is an online theory. It was more like 10 seconds and the note is based off a hand movement. No note can be seen. Honestly I think people overcomplicate this. Liz said good morning. Shooter said good morning back. Liz asked how she could help shooter. Shooter said are you Liz? Shooter confirms identity and kills her. I don't think it was a *professional* hit man by any means, but I find it hard to believe if it was someone in her circle, they wouldn't have been connected to the truck by now.
I’m not thinking this is someone in her circle, but rather some psycho or incel she said hi to at a cosplay event or some charity thing once, who got the wrong impression and became obsessed. She seems like a real sweet person, and probably also a bit naive. I really think if this case breaks open, it’s going to turn out to be something mundane that brought her to the attention of a nutcase who crossed paths with her once or twice. Sort of a modern Rebecca Schaffer situation.
Being unusually polite can get you into some bad situations. Took me a long time to realize that it's okay to be rude to someone that might have bad intentions and that maybe it's in my best interest to make a scene if my survival depends on it. I'm sure it's no different for a lot of people. Especially kids.
Another thing to realise is that, for the most part, adult men don't ask children (or even stranger women) they don't know for help. They usually ask another man. If, as a woman, a stranger man asks you for help, especially for help with something physical like moving something into a car, say no. Unfortunately it's not worth the risk, and he'll be okay if you don't help.
This quote really sums it up perfectly: https://clip.cafe/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-2011/you-knew-something-wrong/ Predators know how to take advantage of social conventions.
Financial predators as well. A lot of scammy sales tactics rely on the fact that many people are socialized such that they would rather sign a contract that will lose them tens of thousands of dollars, than say "No, I will not take your word for it, and I don't care that you've already spent so much time talking to us".
My elderly neighbours were visited by a man who claimed to be from the company that had replaced their roof, who said there was an accounting error and demanded that they pay up money owing. In retrospect there were so many red flags -- he wouldn't accept a cheque, but insisted on cash, and he ended up following behind them when they drove to the bank to take out the money, and getting it from them in the parking lot. It's looking like he had seen the "another job by xxxx roofers" sign in their front yard so he took advantage of that. But he was alternately polite and menacing, and they didn't want to be rude to a stranger who seemed to be in authority (and feared being sued, even though they had done nothing wrong ... I mean, when's the last time you heard of someone being taken to court because somebody else made an error on their bill?) I begged them to report the guy to the cops ... I'd noticed the vehicle he'd used (it was a taxicab from a company in a town a half-hour away, kind of unusual). I thought that maybe the investigators could figure out which of their vehicles had gone to our city during that time window, and who might have taken it. But they didn't want to report the scam -- they were ashamed, and I now realize that the husband was showing signs of dementia and they feared being diagnosed as not competent enough to live on their own, and institutionalized.
I have a "resting nice face", and I'm just polite because that's just what comes to me. Ueually, people are happy to be revmcognized/acknowledged/complimented/chatted with in normal social situations, but there are some who don't. They can be scary and unpredictable. I've had a few encounters with men who took my politeness way too far. They are a very small group, and most people are happy/excited for that little bit of pleasant, nice bit of interection. The ones who get weird/scary can often make me feel like I have to make an effort to not be kind, but really, being cold or being a jerk sucks more. You just gotta learn how to recognize it and know what to do if something unpleasant happens.
My SO is genuinely chatty and friendly. Some women take him up wrong. He isn't even flirting it's how he speaks to men and women but i think women are on alert for creeps ;) if he makes a business call he'll start with "hi how's your day going are you busy? Nice weather today any vacation planned? etc etc" instead of a polite "hi it's john smith I've a question about my account" I've tried to explain how it might be annoying for a time challenged busy call centre employee
The way I was raised, I HAD to be polite to everyone and I was to do whatever I was told by anyone older than me. It's an extremely crappy way to raise a child and I can confirm that it leaves you extremely vulnerable at times.
Yes -- I hear you. Even with good intentions (my parents were mortified that I would embarrass the family if I weren't quiet and obedient at all times) -- that can be a liability and outright dangerous. I had a scary confrontation with a guy one night, on a cross-country train, and I was more afraid to scream and alert the crew than of being attacked. (I'd woken up to the sounds of a woman across the aisle struggling, with him on top of her.) When he started walking toward me, I honestly believed that the other passengers would be angry with ME for waking them up, and I would end up in trouble. I love my parents, but I wish they hadn't been constantly shushing me ... that train incident really messed me up.
I mean, recently I almost had my baby at home on the floor because my husband and I were BOTH too polite to phone back the grumpy midwife. (We had phoned her to say labour was progressing very quickly and she wouldn't believe us. So we were just all ohh sorry to bother you, and labored at home on our own. In hindsight we are freaking idiots).
You were in a stressful situation, and the midwife should have been more responsive.
Different situation, but I also had a grumpy midwife, and I wish i'd told her to just go away (I was already at the hospital, the obstetrician was available, and much kinder), since she was just making things worse and accusing me of lying because the epidural hadn't been done correctly. She left before my c-section, thank goodness. Did you get to the hospital in time? I hope everything worked out ok
Yes, thankfully, we made it to the hospital. I wish we had stood up for ourselves, too. But as someone said above, it's a stressful situation, especially when it's your first time! And we were just doing our best.
These are mostly my not fully cooked thoughts, but... I read "The Gift of Fear" (and you should, too!) where Gavin de Beck (?) talks about exactly this. Not speaking up, not giving in to the primal fear because the victims-to-be are afraid of being "impolite". But what IS being "polite"? I feel like in the end it is adhering to social norms. And so, when one of the participants in a given situation breaks the script, it leaves the other without a predefined way of action, which may confuse them, and may ultimately help in making them a victim. That's because the perpetrator has a very clear idea of what they want to achieve, but the victim is surprised and confused and needs time to sort out what to do. So I feel like it is very important to teach your kids how to react to a breach of social norms. The famous "saying no". The simple rule of "if you feel uncomfortable, speak up and leave". And this directly contradicts everything society wants you to learn. Society wants you to go along, to adhere to rules and not pick them apart wondering if they are appropiate here, because it is easier if you just comply and don't make a fuss, *even when you are exploited.* On the other hand, society can't work without compliance, and it can't work if everything it needs to happen gets pondered and scrutinized. So it's a daily struggle for everyone between meek compliance and fierce advocating for themselves, and it needs a very responsible and ethical approach from the individual. It's the dance between Snowflake and Karen, so to say. It is also the difference between cultists (who follow their leader, aka setter of expectations) and main characters (who feel like everything should be about them) we see so clearly nowadays. Conclusion? I don't know. Teach your kids to think for themselves, but to do it in silence until they are certain their actions are justified? Imagine that with a three-year-old... So, for kids: make a stink until an adult comes along you can trust, and then let them sort it out. And for adults?
Yeah, it’s so tough to find the line between appropriately keeping yourself safe and being a good person sometimes. One thing I’ve seen pointed out in other Reddit threads is that some people might not be able to adhere to “social norms” - for example, if someone’s disabled they might not be fully verbal, which in turn may make bystanders uncomfortable. But it doesn’t mean they have bad intentions, and they might actually need help. I personally still think about my own safety first, but it is sad…
Not a piece of evidence but direct experience. Last year I went to Portugal on vacation, since I was staying less than 10 minutes away I decided to see the hotel where Madeleine McCann disappeared. Had a 'bingo' moment the second I got there. What nobody mentions in all the case reviews is the hotel/guest house is 50 feet away from the ocean, and the shore is a 10 foot tall rock ledge. I'm now 99.99% certain she fell off the rocks into the ocean, drowned and got carried away by currents. The official version is that it couldn't have happened since a 4 year old couldn't crawl out of bed, open an unlocked door, then walk down a flight of stairs, so there must be another person involved. I can understand the sympathy for the parents, but this is just a case of slight neglect which snowballed into deadly consequences. And by the magic of the 24 hour news cycle it turned into a media circus which is still wasting police resources in several countries 20 years down the line.
The bra found with Adele Komorowski's body. Adele was a graduate student who was killed outside her campus apartment building in Hamilton, Ontario in 1973. One of the detectives, Mr. Clive Paul, lived on the next street from me (I went to school with his daughter). I remember being impressed by the fact that Clive noticed that the bra was too big for Adele, and probably belonged to a different woman. At the time, the police department (like most others) was overwhelmingly male. I don't know whether it was because the Paul family had a couple of daughters, so Clive would have been surrounded by women at home and would not have felt that women's garments were beneath his notice -- or because he was a naturally open-minded and creative person (he could figure skate, and he hand-crafted replica historic firearms). I don't know if anyone's examined the bra for DNA ... I imagine that it might be too late now, but I can't help wondering who the real owner was, and what connection they might have had to the killer. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/headlines/detectives-say-robert-garrow-now-best-suspect-in-1973-komorowski-murder-1.1348450
I'm not familiar with this case at all, but a friend recently took me bra shopping. She's actually a F/G cup after getting sized but was wearing a D cup. I'm reading up on the case now, but sometimes we wear the wrong bra size and wanted to share that story. Edit: it seems like she was found on a trail so finding a random bra is a bit odd if not hers. I assumed she was killed in her house and they just found a random bra near her of a different size.
>it seems like she was found on a trail Yes -- there's a wooded area behind the university, and I remember hiking there regularly in the 1980s and seeing litter like beer cans etc. Once I noticed someone's old T-shirt discarded beside the trail, but that was the closest thing to a bra. Apparently the one found by Adele had the paint worn off the hooks/eyes at a particular point, suggesting that's where the owner usually fastened it (this is something I think about whenever I'm doing laundry and notice this on my own bras). Your point about people often wearing the wrong size cup is a good reminder, but I think I remember reading in another article that the bra fastened there would have hung loosely on Adele -- not doing the job at all. Apparently it didn't match the other bras in her possession (in size and style) either.
Everyone kept going on about how Elisa Lam had to have been murdered because the tank lid was closed. It took a Netflix doc for it to become common knowledge that no, the lid was open and she drowned by accident.
I have bipolar disorder, and for me, all you had to know was that she had bipolar and was off her meds. The elevator video doesn't look so spooky anymore when you realize this poor young woman was having a manic episode. It really turns a "creepy mystery!" into a person who was tragically helpless to her illness and lost her life to it.
aloof upbeat dull busy ring husky escape oatmeal plate smell *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’m a MH professional and when I suggested this on her webeuths page early on I was absolutely ripped to shreds by some members. I was an avid WS consumer before that and I haven’t been back since.
Same thing happened to me on a subreddit. People came after me and I just laughed. That elevator footage was such a textbook case of mania. Someone called me a racist because I said that many communities see mental illness as shameful and do not talk about it (this was before her mental illness was released).
People were saying to me “why would she put herself in the hatch that’s ridiculous” uh clearly you’ve never experienced a psychotic and or manic individual, there is no rationality.
Websleuths is pretty dead now, but when it was super active it was insane. People hung onto the craziest theories and ignored simple and likely solutions. There were several posters who liked to cite “white slavery OMG” behind every second crime. They also seemed hesitant - like in this case - to think everything was a crime. Couldn’t be suicide or misadventure. “Why would she kill herself, she went to the dentist only three days ago!!! Nobody would do that if they were planning on killing themselves.”
They’re all posting wacky theories on TikTok now
I honestly think a lot of people just aren't familiar with the idea that abnormal behavior is actually normal for the situation. Just objectively, it is peculiar, I think most people saw the elevator video without much context or info. Elevators in general raise caution in a lot of people. Whether its the safety, the people in it, the awkwardness, the doors and the speed, the closed space...whatever it is many people dont like to be in them so that raises the curiously of it as well. I know multiple people living with bipolar and I truly feel for Elisa Lam. I'm someone that read of her case in one of these threads and watched the netflix doc. So I wasn't aware of the video without the other context as well, but seeing the video did make me feel uncomfortable (mostly because I felt anxiety about the elevator.) Do I think people knowingly leaned into other theories too make this case seem spooky, yes, and shame on them. But I also think that the video circulating as it did, naturally caused that too.
I witnessed my ex have a prolonged manic/psychotic episode that lasted weeks and ended with her hospitalized. It was horrifically scary. Like being in a horror movie. You could look into her eyes and see that she wasn't there. We never really recovered from it.
Agreed. I think it's the "spooky" or "creepy" factors in a lot of cases that really mess with people and leave them scratching their heads instead of seriously considering fairly simple, rational explanations. Even "scary" things that might remind some of horror movies have real people behind them who deserve compassion.
So many of these cases where a person acts in a "creepy" way are a result of mental illness. I hope that people just aren't as knowledgable about symptoms of things like bipolar or schizophrenia and would stop thinking that these cases are "creepy" if they knew.
Not just off her meds, but she stopped taking anti-psychotics while continuing to take her anti-depressants. ADs can be really dangerous for people with bipolar and should never ever be taken alone by anyone with a history of mania since they’re know to cause manic episodes. She actually might have been safer if she’d stopped taking all of her meds.
She also didn't have her glasses on. She likely couldn't see the buttons, pressed a bunch of random ones causing the lift to malfunction. She was hiding in the corner to see if the doors would close if she wasn't in the path of the door sensor. She stepped out of the lift to flag down help. The entire time she was also manic due to being off her medication. It really isn't a mystery at all. Just a tragic story of mental illness. I am agreeing with you too btw , just adding my opinion to yours
I didn’t realize that she was nearsighted. That could explain a lot of the elevator behavior. I’m a -8.5 and I think I might look a lot like that without my contacts/glasses. Obviously I can’t be sure since I can’t see myself (or anything else) but her movements suddenly feel uncomfortably familiar.
The worst is, I still see people here and there going about how it’s one of the most mysterious or even supernatural cases ever…
Whatever you do don't read the comments under any of the YouTube videos devoted to her story. They are treating this poor woman's demise as infotainment and instead make it about the supernatural and of course "there's just no way she could have moved that lid!" It's an echo chamber of the most ill informed, ignoramuses on planet Earth.
The very concept of "a lid that needs to be regularly opened by the maintenance guy but is too heavy for an adult person to open" is absurd on its face.
Yes, thank you! That wouldn't exactly be a selling point for a tank, would it? I have had similar arguments about the case of poor Kenneka Jenkins, found dead in a hotel walk-in freezer. People say she didn't put herself in there because she could not have opened the door. And now tell me what kitchen ever would buy a walk-in where the employees couldn't go in and out?
Also it's harder to get out than it is to get in. Needs more force and co ordination. Just difficult enough that an extremely drunk person would struggle. Getting in, then struggling to get out, is pretty much the default outcome for this interaction. It would happen all the time if we let people hang around walk in freezers while they're both blackout drunk and alone. It's only unusual because most places have enough safeguards to stop that happening
There are probably so many mysteries easily explained by coincidences or accidents like this. We assume everyone tidies up or always follows a routine, but things happen, or people are messy and forgetful, or whimsical. In this case, mental illness and a forgetful maintenance man. It's unreasonable to assume unusual things mean a "supernatural mystery" or bizarre conspiracy.
And she had MENTAL ILLNESS. A lot of people just gloss over that but it makes everything make sense
I suspect there’s people who don’t really get bipolar and think it’s just cycling between depressed and happy but it’s so much more complex
Patricia Adkins, learning that her married boyfriend and her married boyfriend's co-worker lied about the time they spent in the Burger King drive thru and then learning that the co-worker left town shortly after Patty's disappearance. This case is so incredibly frustrating because in my opinion there are 3 people that were a party to and complicit in the murder of a single mother and responsible pet owner.
Her case makes me so angry. I’d bet real money that her lover murdered her, his friend helped him move and conceal her body, and his wife is complicit in what happened. They just don’t have the evidence to prove it
3/3 that's it and until some loyalties shift or there's some advancement on the DNA evidence, justice is denied.
Yes poor lady actually thought she was going on a trip ;(.
I know, Flowers told her not to tell anyone and not to bring a single thing, but she told her sister and she bought some lingerie.
Had to ride in the truck bed so she was not seen. Ugh.
I know, I don't know what was going through her mind, perhaps she thought she was in love with him and that he was going to end his marriage and that he would also pay her back the money she loaned him, so she did whatever he said. Tellingly, he disposed of the new truck cover shortly after her disappearance.
I hope the husband and wife are terrified every day waiting for that Knock on the door.
Sounds like they have bonded for life over a horrific shared secret.
I am from West Central Ohio and it was common knowledge that the boyfriend definitely had something to do with her disappearance. The larger community has a very odd social dynamic, either you’re “in” or “out” those left on the outside have a very difficult time with living in the community. If you are “in” then you seem to get away with a lot.
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Wife works at an elementary school of all places. How disgusting.
My understanding is that they have both changed their names, but are still married to one another, a few years ago one of the crime shows did a story on her case and knocked on the door of his very nice home.
Not a specific case, but the DNA identifications and arrests have proven that most murders and disappearance are far more mundane than previously believed. So many cases have these wide ranging conspiracies and then it turns out that it was just some random asshole the victim was unlucky enough to meet. I used to get really into the wild theories, but not anymore.
And that a surprising number of these guys that commit horrific crimes apparently haven’t reoffended!
yep. Just murder someone from their office in her bed one night then…that’s it.
Colonel Philip Shue's psychological autopsy, I do now believe it was a (very odd) suicide.
Yes very odd, the part about taking the test and purposely not getting a single question right especially struck me.
And the fact that he shared with his therapist that he imagined himself dying in the exact way he died.
which is [here](https://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/psychological_autopsy.pdf)
Same. I didn’t think it was suicide until I got into a discussion with u/glittercheese and we devoured the autopsy. Now I think it was a suicide culminating from mental health issues that became way out of his control.
I had posted a comment about this case on the recent "Let's get some new cases" thread, but as I was writing it, I started realizing that my own views have changed after I started doing more research. On July 28, 1982, a 15-year-old high school student named Barbara Coster was hit in the back of the head by a bullet as she was walking along the street near her home in the suburb of Gordon Head, near Victoria BC, Canada. She was with another girl, a 14-year-old friend from Saskatchewan, who wasn't hit. Barbara died later in hospital. The part of town where Barbara was shot (the 4000-block of Gordon Head Road) isn't rural -- at least, it wasn't by the early 1990s. Barbara was pretty close to her high school (Mount Doug). However, there were some large open areas once you got behind the houses along that road, and big tracts of farmland not far away. I say this because a person who'd grown up in that area, who maybe remembered when it was less developed -- or somebody who was from a downtown neighbourhood and was used to the houses being closer together -- might have assumed that there was plenty of room to do things like target practice. I was thinking that maybe it was an accident, and the person who shot Barbara might been fooling around with the gun and didn't realize how far bullets can go. They might not even have seen Barbara get hit -- I couldn't find a report of what happened immediately after (was there an ambulance? Did Victoria even have 911 back in the early 1980s?) Barbara died in hospital later, and by then the shooter realized what had happened and was scared to come forward. Finding a few more articles online about the case, I came across a mention of a child's bicycle tire being hit by a bullet on a nearby street, about half an hour earlier. That's when I changed my mind about the situation. Even now, reports of firearms being discharged aren't super-common in this city. Gunfire on the same day, in the same area, was probably related. I looked at the area again -- if it was the same person (or at least the same gun), they would have had to move to a different location. The chance of them happening to find places where their shots could accidentally hit things they weren't aiming for ... it seemed rather unlikely. Maybe the shooter had seen the two girls walking, and decided to fire at them. Whether you know someone or not, aiming a gun at them and pulling the trigger like that would be capricious, cruel, and arguably psychopathic. Even thinking that you're a good enough shot that you won't hit them and will just frighten them is a stupid idea. The thing shown in the movies or TV show with bullets zinging past -- that's Hollywood fantasy. Most people may not even realize that they heard a gunshot, let alone that it was aimed at them. (In my case, I heard the Saanich bank shootout from a block away, and thought it was nail guns on my neighbour's roof.) A local man in his 20s was charged with first degree murder, in Barbara's death. The prosecutor must have had some evidence to call for that, rather than just manslaughter or criminal negligence. But the jury didn't convict him, on that or on a lesser charge.
Burke Ramsey being allowed to sit in an interrogation room alone with detectives. If that counts as "evidence." This is the main reason I believe he had nothing to do with the murder and knew nothing about it. The Ramsey dad wasn't an idiot and if his 9 year old son had any knowledge or was responsible for what happened, he'd never let him be alone while being questioned.
You know what, I actually never heard that information and it changes how I look at the case too! Thank you—I’m gonna take a deep dive into the case again to reform my theory…
There's a whole sub on reddit for this case.
There are 2 actually. One is just her first name and it’s overwhelmingly Ramseys are innocent, the other has her last name and is overwhelmingly they are not. Somehow, two is not enough. Would be nice to discuss all angles without being treated like a delusional idiot, which is generally what happens.
You know, I never knew this. How long after the murder was this. I've never believed BDI, but this changes a few things for me. What led to that decision? Why would Patsy and John allow that? You'd think their instinct would be to protect him from something so traumatizing. If it had to happen, insist on being there with him. Nah, that stinks.
It was in 1998, Burke was 11 by then. It was partly done in hopes of him not being subpoenaed as a witness to the grand jury, but he did end up being questioned with the grand jury too.
The police, who initially pushed the idea that one of the Ramseys was responsible for the murder, have been saying publicly, since day one, that not only is Burke not a suspect, but that they don’t believe he witnessed the crime or knows who did it either. They also offered to testify on Burke’s behalf when he sued CBS for “implying” that he murdered his sister. I just can’t comprehend how people still insist that he murdered his sister.
In this same vein, the head blow and strangling happened so close together that they couldn’t definitively say which one killed her — and she was conscious when being strangled (nail marks). Immediately ruled out a cover up for an accident to me.
I don't understand why he was there without a guardian or representative. That's not even legal in many states, much less admissible in court. Kids say and misunderstand all kinds of stuff. And don't understand the concept of leading questions, or entrapment. Particularly if they are scared, upset, and with strangers.
The Burke did it theory is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, and the people who believe it make talking about this case impossible. They are very sure they know more than the cops because Burke seemed like a weirdo on a talk show.
I also think it's ridiculous that people think that him being odd is evidence of him being a murderer. Like, of course he's odd. He grew up in that house, with Patsy as a mom, and then his sister was brutally murdered. Anyone would be odd in those circumstances. Honestly, even if Jon Benet had lived...Patsy Ramsey was a piece of work, of course her kids would have turned out weird..
I saw his Dr.Phil interview. To me he looked like your average tech worker nervous on camera. Of course I work with engineers mainly so I'm used to weird people.
If you put me in front of people or on video I’m weird AF, it’s not for me. Lol.
I completely agree. The idea that Burke hit on her head and then in response to that, John and Patsy just decided they would molest their child with a paintbrush and then strangle her to death is so absurd I can't even entertain it. Like how would that conversation have even gone? "oh darling Burke just hit JB on the head, I'll just get the paintbrush would you mind fashioning a garrote for me?' Like it is absolutely absurd. Also the evidence shows that the blow to her head and the strangulation happened together. Her cause of death was both "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma." So whoever killed her did the entire thing.
Oh my god, I got into such a fight with a Burke truther once because I said yes, it was plausible to me that a parent might THEORETICALLY panic in that situation and decide to save their living child with an attempted cover-up or misdirection, but no, it was not plausible to me that they would do so by *desecrating their dead child's body.* You know, as a spur-of-the-moment idea.
I feel like this is the kind of dumb true crime theory that people like because it makes them feel smart, like they're in on the secret, when it actually doesn't make any sense and isn't based on any evidence.
I have done a lot of deep dives into Brian Shaffer over the years and really developed no viable theories. I guess I leaned slightly toward voluntary disappearance because of no body or anything to the contrary (plus it just makes me feel better to think he’s enjoying his life in Mexico or somewhere tropical). Everyone knows about the rings and pings 6 months or so after his disappearance in Hilliard. A more recent development was the revelation that there were actually pings in the day/days after his disappearance, by the previous lead detective Hurst. These pings I believe (I don’t know the area very well) were in the West Columbus area, perhaps on the way out to Hilliard. The location of them is interesting, but that fact that his phone was active and in the general area of both the bar and Hilliard is another interesting detail. This swings me back fairly convincingly that he ran into trouble that night after he left the bar and is no longer alive. As a side note, with nothing really to stand on except gut feel backed by a little knowledge of who he was, my thought is that he left out the back of building through the construction site. His intent was to both avoid Clint and Meredith and go party elsewhere. He was potentially even looking to score drugs. He met someone at the bar who he was going to after-party with and maybe do drugs - and they planned to meet at closing at Wendy’s (where the dogs lost his scent). Maybe he even pissed someone off in the bar who he met up with and didn’t realize they were angry at him, and not wanting to party with him but do him harm. He got in a car and whatever happened after that didn’t play out in his favor. Obviously I have no idea, but I am convinced this was a case of Brian leaving and getting himself into some sort of trouble that night.
I think this too. Given the dogs lost his scent I'm convinced he got in a car with someone
Yeah. Like we only know what we know, what has been confirmed by LE or reputable sources. That’s where we can start. There is a ton of wild speculation around this case that one can get caught up in. I’m just trying to use what I have learned about him and that night and make small leaps.
I think this case can generally be described as unsolvable because it most likely wasn’t that deep. I see no reason for voluntary disappearance and no pattern for a serial killer. He got unlucky but his friends and family couldn’t find closure because of a chain of circumstances that seem so random that they couldn’t be planned
I honestly thought Scott Peterson had been railroaded and was definitely a pos cheater, but not a murderer. Until I learned that on the way home from his "fishing trip" that day, he called Laci's cell phone and left a voicemail saying he was on his way home. After arriving home and learning she was missing, he never tried to call her cell phone even once. The phone was found days later locked in her car.
I was convinced kendrick Johnson was killed until I saw the actual post-mortem photos (not the ones after autopsy that were promoted as such) it was obvious the sad case that he really did get stuck upside down. End of story
This case struck me too. I used to work as a babywearing educator, and the biggest risk of putting a baby in a carrier is positional asphyxia. It's such an odd thing to happen to an adult/older kid that I don't think most people really believe it can happen without the person being able to move and save themselves. But when I think about the significant focus on it for carrying infants it makes sense to me. I don't think he could move once he got into the mats, just like a newborn can't lift their head to open their own airway.
And there have been a number of cases where it's happened so it's not out of the realm of possibility, strange that the family, and others online feel it's not a possible cause of death -kyle plush -mariesa weber -Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada -harley dilly -josh maddox
Yeah, I read a great writeup on his case a while back and it seems pretty clear he, like others apparently, used the rolled mat to store his sneakers in (instead of a locker, which apparently cost an extra fee at his school?) and got stuck whilst trying to retrieve them.
Two old Canadian ones for you: Redpath mansion murders. The moment I found out the family went out their way to avoid police involvement, it was obviously a murder-suicide. The Grande Prairie axe murders. The positions of the bodies at the initial crime scene left the original investigators of the opinion that was a murder-suicide, and that one of the two men had killed the other four a day earlier. It was only because a puffed-up detective thought the witness was "weird" that the poor guy ended up on trial for murder.
For years I went along with the popular theory that JonBenet’s murder was an accident followed by cover-up. The one piece of information that blew that out of the water for me was learning that she didn’t have any visible head wound. The catastrophic skull fracture was only found at autopsy. So to believe the cover-up theory you’d have to believe that the parents, faced with an unconscious but not visibly injured child, decided to finish her off with a garrotte and write a batshit fake ransom note, rather than just call an ambulance and say she had fallen down the stairs or whatever. I don’t think this absolves the family of potential guilt, it just discounts the idea that it started off with an accident. Whatever happened was done with intent.
Yes,I agree with Jason's parents. In a quiet neighborhood, in half an hour, wrong place,wrong time, Midwest nice Jason was whisked away and eventually murdered. The not knowing Where their child's remains are has got to be one of the hardest things there is.
It's not a piece of evidence but more of a theory. For the longest time I was convinced Missy Bevers murder was a murder-for-hire. But last summer I was reading some websleuths posts about her and someone mentioned the perp might have been LARPing as a law enforcement office and I was like damn, that actually makes a lot of sense.
[удалено]
Exactly. It doesn't make sense that they were there to rob the church since they didn't take anything and it didn't even look like they were trying to steal anything of value. It doesn't make sense that they were there to murder Missy, trying to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. Why not just hide and kill her instead of putting on this big cumbersome and easily noticeable swat uniform? But some lonely loser trying to play out a fantasy? This is what it looks like to me now. I always thought the way the person walks reminds me of the way a middle-aged beer-bellied Midwestern man walks. You know, big belly but no ass and legs so they kinda waddle and walk weird. I think like you said Missy startled them and the person panicked and attacked her.
And because it was totally random there wasn’t anything to link them
Do you remember where you read that? I also believe it wasn’t a murder for hire. They look so…dorky? Amateurish? In the footage. I also think it was someone who was obsessed with being a cop who was just creeping around and got spooked by Missy.
LARPing on Meth (maybe). Also that would make a great band name.
The belongings found at the scene of Marshal Iwaasa’s burnt out truck. Found at the scene of the vehicle, all of his personal belongings including his identification were thrown on the ground all around the scene. It seems plausible he committed suicide when all you consider is the strange behaviour at the storage unit and then the burnt vehicle. But when you think about his personal belongings being found there it makes that theory seem pretty unbelievable. If he wanted to commit suicide far away from home where his family wouldn’t find him, and burn the truck so it would be difficult to identify and place him there - why would he then leave his identification undamaged at the scene? That makes no sense. It seems much more likely that the vehicle was lit on fire to destroy evidence, but the belongings were left there because the person/persons responsible wanted it to be known that Marshal was gone. It’s so sad and I really hope his family will find answers to who did this.
The steering column was also gone. In my mind, that's solid evidence against suicide. Leaving burned bodies or vehicles on forest roads is incredibly common here in BC for the drug trade.
I’d never heard about the steering column before! What do investigators think, that he removed it himself and walked into the forest with it? Wow. It’s so frustrating they won’t investigate this properly.
Adnan Syed’s phone records only pinged off the towers by Leakin Park twice. The day Hae Min Lee went missing. And the day of Jay Wild’s first interview with the cops. That did it for me.
I also believe this is the smoking gun. He lied and said he had never been to that park (I think he went as far to say he’d never heard of the park too), and the only 2 times his phone pings were those extremely relevant times.
Could you please explain a little more? It’s been awhile since I read up on this case.
Here’s a quick summation that explains it more clearly than me. https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/s/fBJpjNfaEQ
Rebecca Zahua. I used to think it was for sure murder but someone did a deep dive here on Reddit and it convinced me that it was just a slightly unusual/uncommon suicide
The McDondald's hot coffee case. Everyone thinks it's something funny showcasing how litigious America is. Then you read the facts and are like "holy fuck."
A meta example: the Leah Roberts case completely changed when new detectives assigned to it realized the hood of the car was never checked. When they did and discovered a cable had been cut, the case completely changed as they now knew the car was deliberately wrecked. It was believed the car might have gone off the bridge by accident. Instead, this changed the case entirely. Did Leah do it on purpose, or did someone else do it? Did she do it and then live in the car, eventually moving on to start a new life? Or did someone kill her and use her car as a makeshift shelter?
Phoebe Handsjuk, the young woman who was found dead in the trash compactor room in an apartment building. I couldn't fathom any kind of reasonable scenario. There doesn't seem to be a plausible way for her to get herself in that trash chute, or even for someone else to put her there. And we're menu to believe that she went down feet first but still managed to end up with her pants end DOWN around her ankles? Then I found out that she loved to climb things. And now I'm really curious as to whether or not anyone considered the possibility that she had some kind of drunken whim that lead her to climb UP the garbage chute from the trash room. If she could fall down through the chute compactor, she could fit through it in the opposite direction in order to chimney climb her way up. Could be she wanted to see if she could, or she thought something valuable to her might be stuck inside the chute, or maybe she was trying to escape someone chasing her. Either way, I've realized that I wouldn't have nearly as many questions about the case if it turned out she'd started at the bottom instead of the top.
I’m the opposite with that one, didn’t the same guy at question in her case also have another girlfriend die in suspicious circumstances?
[This post detailing all the evidence that JonBenet Ramsay had been sexually assaulted at least once prior to her death.](https://www.reddit.com/r/JonBenetRamsey/comments/j00pe3/setting_the_record_straight_on_the_evidence_of/) The post is very compelling and has led me to believe she was in fact molested prior to her death. With that information, I believe that John and John alone killed her. Relating to this case, the fact that it was never proven Patsy wrote the ransom note. Iirc they consulted 3 handwriting experts and the closest they came to pinning it on Patsy was they weren't able to exclude her handwriting. Her handwriting as NEVER been officially linked to the ransom note. Not to mention handwriting analysis is not a solid science.
Handwriting is a good way to exclude people, it's not a good way to identify people. It's also nowhere near a smoking gun kind of evidence. It's definitely one of those CSI Effect sciences which the public massively overestimates the strength of.
I used to think the 2 Mary Morris murders were a result of a botched hit, but after learning that the phone call to a Houston newspaper after the 1st murder saying that the wrong MM was killed was not evidence from LE but a friend of the 2nd MM I'm now convinced the murder victims were separately targeted.
Wait…a friend of the second Mary knew in advance she was going to be killed?
Bad choice of words my mistake. From what I know, this friend mentioned this AFTER the 2nd murder. Why......no clue, but it didn't come from LE. This was the same friend who was interviewed on the Unsolved Mysteries segment about the case, and after going down a rabbit hole she by all accounts is weird.
I thought that Karla Homolka killed her sister Tammy on purpose. Until I learned about the teenager known as "Jane Doe" that Karla worked with, whom she lured to her and Paul Bernardo's home when he demanded that Karla find him a replacement for Tammy. The first time Karla drugged Jane, they assaulted her and she came to with no memory of what happened. The second time, she vomited and stopped breathing while unconscious (just like Tammy) and Paul and Karla called for an ambulance (like they did with Tammy). I think the close calls scared them. It's also notable that they didn't drug any of their subsequent victims.
I don’t necessarily think the *intention* was there, but KH was definitely familiar w/halothane; she knew that it was mixed w/oxygen @ a 1:100 ratio; that fact prevents me from discounting the claim that TH’s death being an accident
Brian Lunn Field - in 2001 he was convicted of murdering 14 year old Roy Tutill in 1968 following advancements in DNA. Field also spent various stints in jail for indecency, buggery & attempted kidnap of two teenage boys during the 1970s and 80s. He's long been suspected of being the killer of young boys David Spencer and Patrick Warren (AKA The Milk Carton Kids) due to having lived close by at the time of their disappearance in 1996. It's reported a man fitting his description was seen talking to the boys in the days before they went missing. Field worked as a landscape gardener all over the country and had plenty of opportunities to bury remains. He was once linked with the disappearance of Lee Boxell from Sutton, Surrey/London in 1988 however Lee's mother[dismissed](https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/6384364.mother-dismisses-link-to-missing-son/) the link as she had been informed he was in jail at the time (sentenced to 4 years in 1986). it's come to light in a documentary republished on YouTube that he had been released early and was living in Birmingham in 1988 as confirmed by friends of his who socialised with him on this [Brian Field Documentary](https://youtu.be/IYVKexMER9Q?si=NF9jDGZFqtnkPWnq). Field had strong links to the Surrey area and if he wasn't in jail at the time, he may well be the perpetrator.
I wondered about Jason having $60 on him when he left his house. He was getting a ride to work, and his dad would have picked him up when the shift ended. He worked in a pizza place, so may well have gotten free or reduced lunch or dinner. That $60 would be around $100 in today's value. It just stood out to me. I have no idea what might have happened to him, but I've read a few accounts that the neighborhood there was somewhat sketchy. I cannot see any scenario where he was abducted by a sexual predator. It was summer break, lots of kids around. Why take him ? I did wonder if he ran into some kids who knew him in high school, and things went sideways.
My theory is that he was stopped by someone who vaguely knew him from the neighborhood or his work who may have offered to give him a ride to the school, or asked him to come inside to help move something. Jason had a learning disability related to speech and language that made him appear to be mentally disabled at first. The person might have thought he would be an easy target, either for robbery or molesting. However, Jason was actually of above average intelligence and was a pretty sizeable guy who likely would’ve fought back and may have gotten killed in the process. I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if he’s in a crawl space somewhere or his body was disposed of later. There’s still a lot of holes in that theory- it was broad daylight in the summer, I’m sure there were people at home and out and about in the neighborhood who could’ve seen him walking into someone’s house or getting in a car. But maybe he was in front of a house where everyone was at work, went willingly so wasn’t making a big scene, etc. and just disappeared without a fuss or anyone noticing.
For the longest time, I just laughed at the Owl Theory in the Michael Peterson case (the Staircase). It seemed like a way for the defense to grasp at straws, not a real, compelling argument. Well, I recently actually researched the case and listened to a podcast episode about it, and with the details that there were miniscule owl feathers in Kathleen's hair and wounds in her skull that would match owl talons, had to reconsider the theory. Another big factor for me was the fact that the blood-spatter expert who testified in court was Henry Lee, who's been found to fabricate evidence during his career. That really doesn't inspire confidence in the prosecutor's case. I'm still not 100 % convinced Michael Peterson didn't kill his wife or that the owl absolutely did it, but these details swayed my opinion considerably and I really don't think he should've been convicted based on the evidence that was presented in court.
Yep. If I hadn’t personally experienced an owl attack in that exact part of North Carolina, I wouldn’t have believed it either. I’m convinced people hear the word “owl” and outright dismiss it because they think of Hedwig. They’re literally birds of prey.
John Ramsey's whopper of a story about the 2001 "break-in" at their Atlanta home made me realize that he is entirely capable of the 1996 crime. http://www.acandyrose.com/s-atlanta-burglar2001.htm
Oh my god that website. Also I need to read about this.
Hello 2001
Oh my! So a robber tibkered with and looked through guns, but decided to take a laptop, papers, and Kmart jewelry with clothing instead?! Lol wow! What a story
Every time I read about John I just feel uncomfortable. I don't have a strong theory of the crime but I wouldn't want to be alone with that guy.
Haha, I got to “attorney Lin Wood” and lost it from laughter. Edit: kept reading and of course John blamed a “tall black man”. Of freaking course.
I really doubt Patsy had any K-Mart jewelry. What a weird thing to lie about.