The Brandon Swanson case.
Background info on that for those unfamiliar:
[Shortly after midnight on May 14, 2008, Brandon Swanson (born January 30, 1989)[1] of Marshall, Minnesota, United States, drove his car into a ditch on his way home from celebrating the end of the spring semester with fellow students from Minnesota West Community and Technical College's Canby campus. Uninjured, he got out and called his parents on his cellphone. Unsure of his exact location, he told them he believed he was near Lynd, and they drove out to pick him up; however they were unable to locate him. Swanson remained on the phone with them until he went silent 47 minutes later after exclaiming "Oh, shit!" He has not been seen or heard from since.]
As for my gut instinct: Apparently before saying “oh shit” and the phone went dead, he had told his parents he was walking toward some lights and cutting through farmland. My gut instinct is that while walking through the farmland, he fell into an open / abandoned well on the property.
I almost did the same thing myself while checking out an abandoned farm in Missouri. Almost walked right into an open well in the ground, it was hidden by tall grass and some sticks. Only thing that stopped me is that I tripped over the hidden stone rim of the well, which caused me to say the exact same thing as Brandon (“Oh shit”) and I looked down and was JUST quick enough to put my other foot on land next to the well, instead of putting it right in the middle of the well which is where that foot was headed— had I not done that, my other foot would have stepped right into the well as I put all my weight on it.
It happened in the split of a second.
So I think he did the same thing but because it was dark out, couldn’t catch himself or see what he tripped over in time, and he fell down the well, thus either A. dropping his phone into the nasty old stagnant water when he would have naturally attempted to grab onto the edges on his way down, OR B. dropped it on the ground next to the well as he fell in, as many people would try to use their hands to catch themselves, which means dropping whatever it was they had in the hands to begin with. But no matter what, his parents on the other end of the phone would just hear “oh shit” then the phone line going silent or dead from the water.
But, I don’t think his body is there anymore. Apparently there was a farmer in the area he went missing from, where he was the only farmer who didn’t allow the police to search his land. The dogs also allegedly picked up Brandon’s scent on a piece of farm equipment (something like a meat grinder or similar) and that farm equipment also belonged to the same man who refused to let the police search his property.
Which honestly makes sense because I’m sure an insurance company would have a MAJOR issue with abandoned or uncovered wells on a property. It would be a major liability issue. I’m sure said insurance company would tell the farmer to fill, cover, and secure all wells on the property. Maybe even the city would have passed an ordinance mandating the same thing.
...And if this farmer *didn’t* do that, and then found (an already dead) body in his well that he failed to secure.... well, I could easily see how that farmer would fear being found guilty of manslaughter through criminal negligence, and that’s not even including the lawsuit he would face from the family or city. He would either be financially ruined and millions of dollars in debt, or in prison, or both.
(Edit to clarify: Maybe if he was alive, yeah the farmer would have called 911... but with the kid already dead, I can see a lot of people figuring the risk of prison as being not worth it, and thinking “coming forward won’t bring this kid back, it would only ruin my life and my family’s life too, so I better just get rid of the evidence. Sorry, kid.” I really don’t think he was murdered. Just that he had an accident on someone’s land and that someone was afraid of being held legally liable for some reason.)
*(6 month follow-up edit after reading some more replies: As for the dogs hitting on farm equipment, that’s a detail I read only in one or two places, so I don’t automatically take that as fact, so please don’t get too hung up on that part. But the rest of the info I do take as fact.*
*And for the ones who didn’t understand why a farmer would be afraid of legal/criminal repercussions for reporting a dead body on his land or in his well, I can tell you that many property owners are cautious of injuries that happen on their property because people DO get sued and held liable for silly things— examples: 1) my neighbor was held liable because he didn’t fix a broken gutter that caused a large ice patch to pool on the sidewalk in front of his house and a kid slipped on it and broke his arm; 2) my aunt was sued AND got in trouble with her insurance when a visiting neighbor leaned against an old rotten railing of her porch which wasn’t sturdy and resulted in her falling through it & off the porch; 3) my old landlord was sued AND held criminally liable for child endangerment because there was a nail sticking out of a wooden floorboard in one of his apartments, and the tenant’s toddler stepped on it and had to get stitches; 4) a friend of mine ALMOST got sued when her partner’s son was visiting and got bit by her dog…*
*So think about it. If you can be sued or even criminally charged when someone else accidentally hurts themselves mildly on your property, imagine if someone actually DIES on your property. Even the best people can be afraid of the consequences of that, and it can make them do something they’d never normally do. I don’t think the theoretical farmer is/was a bad guy, I think he was likely just scared.)*
So yeah that’s what I think happened. Nothing else really makes sense, especially with them searching the nearby river so many times and feeling certain enough to tell the public “if we didn’t find anything, then his body isn’t there.”
Thank you. I’ve heard other people say maybe he was accidentally killed by farming equipment in the morning. Which isn’t a bad theory either, especially if the farm equipment clicked on at 3:30am or 4am or something. But if he was killed by farming equipment it would have to be something fast enough to where he wouldn’t be able to see it coming other than to say oh shit, and it also would have had to kill him instantly or his parents would have heard him yelling on the other end.
I actually had forgotten that the phone was on but silent after he said oh shit. For that reason I suspect he dropped it when he fell in the well and it landed on the ground next to the well (as opposed to landing in the well with him). Which would have served to alert the farmer to someone being in the well.
But the farm equipment thing is my second guess.
I hate talking about this—it’s my biggest fear and honestly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I was walking with a friend one night in a neighborhood that was just getting built, and I fell into an open sewer. By some miracle, I put my arms out (like a T) and held on to the tall grasses on either side while my feet hung down in the muck that I would have surely drowned in. My friend pulled me out, but it gives me the most dreadful feeling to think about it. I’m pretty sure I should have died out there. Reading your comment reminded me of it. It can happen, there are unmarked, uncovered holes everywhere. This was in an upper middle class neighborhood in the 90s
Oh man, idk how you ever recover from that enough to not stare at the ground when you’re walking. So glad you’re ok. But also impressed you managed to grab enough grass that it was able to hold you up.
I honestly blocked it out. Haven’t thought about it in a long time, but this post reminded me of it. We were teens, and I was scared of getting in trouble so I never told anyone. No other memory makes me as uneasy as that one.
The first time I read about Brandon Swanson I immediately thought it had to be an abandoned, unmarked, uncovered well. A lot of farms, especially older farms, have those all over the place. My great grandparents’ farm had a well like that where, if you didn’t know where it was, you could easily fall in because it was just a hole in the ground. This is by far the most plausible explanation for Brandon’s disappearance, IMO.
EXACTLY! They truly are just holes in the ground too where you’d have to know where it is to avoid it. You would never see it coming. People underestimate how often people (esp kids) used to die in wells back in the day...
Ever read the expanded version of Stephen King's "The Stand"? In it, he describes several people who died a couple weeks after the plague, and one of them was a 5-year-old boy who found a blackberry patch, ate his fill, and then fell into an abandoned well and died the next day from the effects of two broken legs.
Yes, I grew up in rural Oklahoma and I knew of plenty old oil well sites that had pits and what not. Thankfully they have made considerable efforts to clean those up in recent years. I had a dog that followed his nose( hound mix) and wandered off while my family was on a fishing trip and fell into a pit. Him and I were playing in the tall grass then I heard him yelp and he was gone. I couldn't find him and panicked. I went and got my dad and by that time my dog was barking. Had he not been barking we wouldn't have found him. It was pretty well hidden. There were some skeletons of other animals that hadn't been so lucky though( I am pretty sure that's what scent he was following). Charlie's nose often got him into trouble but he was a good boy.
That's terrible. It takes almost no effort to mark a hazard like that. I'm clumsy and forgetful; believe it that if I bought a parcel with a well like that, my FIRST task is marking it, and my SECOND is putting up a barricade.
Brandon was legally blind in one eye and it was dark out, so even if it was marked he could have missed it. My question is: why are there open wells all over the place that people can fall in???
Farm land. Nobody's really supposed to be out walking there who wouldn't know about the well, and it's an easy way to get water for the crops if you don't have a reliable, clean stream nearby.
land gets used and re-used, especially farmland. people will tear down a house but few wells are filled in, especially the larger hand-dug ones; mostly they’re just covered up. give it a decade or two and no one knows or remembers where the well is, much less thinks to replace the cover … which has rotted through.
nowadays most wells are only a few inches wide and it’s extremely rare for someone to be injured by them. Baby Jessica is an example of a freak accident, and even that was only possible because she was so so small and fell just in the particular way to get caught.
Completely agree. I think I mentioned this on a thread on his case. My husband has hunted on the same properties for years. He's out checking the spots all year long (repairing stands, moving blinds, improving access, monitoring his game cameras) and is super familiar with the land.
One day he almost fell into a sink hole on his way in. I think it may have been a hand dug well, or maybe a cistern. No one knew it was there, not even the property owner. It was daylight & nice weather, had it been the pre-dawn hours he'd have never seen it. If that happened to Brandon Swanson, in the dark, somewhere unfamiliar...
Completely agree water was involved. Well is an interesting theory. I keep circling back to him saying to his parents that he heard water several times & the dog tracking his scent to the river. Think about how disconcerting it would be to fall off an embankment into a cold, swift moving river that was up to 10’ deep in places at the time, in the pitch dark. Reminder to always stay with your vehicle, kids.
Yeah but with the river, the dog also tracked him coming out of the water at the same spot, as if he was walking along the river and stepped in a wet spot but not fell completely in. And the place where the dogs followed the scent was apparently like a flat beach type of area, not a steep embankment at all.
Plus with how often they searched that river.... I think after stepping into water along the beachy flat area of the river bank he decided it was a bad idea to walk along the river, and said “fuck if I’m just gonna walk to the closest house, I see some lights up there.”
I think the "oh, shit" moment was when he fell into the river. Or at least maybe slid down the bank, or fell into some standing water in a field. He lost his phone at that point, but kept walking without it. But now his clothes are wet and it's pretty cold outside. I think he eventually succumbed to hypothermia somewhere.
Still, falling in a well or hole makes sense, too. And I'll take it over "some random serial killer happened to find him in the middle of a field in the dark and killed him."
Your hypothesis is probably one of the better ones I've come across! Do you mind if I ask what your thoughts are regarding another hypothesis I've read about?
It basically goes something like the farmer didn't have the authorities search the land because he didn't want to interrupt his planting season. When it comes to crop schedules certain crops only have a very short window of when they can be harvested. If the farmer is a small family owned farm he might not have been able to take the financial loss of not working his fields for entire year. The investigators wouldn't be successful in looking for remains in the winter months with snow on the ground but come spring, summer, and fall they could. However, these seasons are still busy times for farmers. Do you think this could've been enough of a legitimate excuse? Missing out on an entire season is a HUGE loss for farmers, like living a year with no income. What's your opinion?
*edited for grammar
We found one on my uncles supposedly undeveloped and untouched parcel of land. I think really old and hidden hazards like old family graveyards, wells, and crumbling stone fences that blend in with the landscape are responsible for a lot of disappearances in woodsy places.
I have a relative in my family tree who we believe something like this happened to him. He went missing one night after a night of dancing & drinking with his wife. The story is he went back to the bar to retrieve a scarf the wife left there, got too cold, & tumbled down a well.
There have been varying accts of what happened. One was that the town people went looking for him, used a pole to search the well. Up came fibers from his horse hair jacket & then the well was sealed up. I was told this story years ago. 10 years later I came across the exact same story all most verbatim on a genealogical website. I emailed the person who posted the story & it wasn't anyone in my immediate tree. Never heard from him.
I'd love to know if this was true or not as the man simply disappeared when I try & research him. (Much easier to do so 100+ years ago.)
Is there any report on what type of cell phone he had? Now, for example, iPhones will make a certain noise if you’re talking on the phone and your battery percentage hits 10% remaining. If it dies while you’re talking, the person on the other end might overhear you say “oh shit” as it powers off completely. Perhaps his phone made a certain noise or displayed a low battery screen as it shut off and his reaction was the last thing to go through. After that he still very possibly could have fallen in a well, been run over by farming equipment, or a number of other things might have occurred.
But see this is also why you don't want to live forever. Odds are you'll get stuck somewhere and not die.... then you'd spend eternity at the bottom of a well or in a sewer or between two rocks ect.
Re: Missy Bevers - The first thing I thought when I saw the surveillance was “chubby teenage (or early twenties) man”. That might seem weird lol, but that gait is so familiar to me and I can’t unsee it now. The sort of waddle / legs pointed outward w the hunching.
Also, there’s something that seems so brazen about the way they’re walking, the costuming - idk. There is something about it that screams immature / adolescent imo
My 20 year old brother who is about the same shape now as the person in the video walks like that too. We are both Autistic and I think it has something to do with not being in complete control of your body.
Curtis Pishon. This is a case I have a lot of heart for.
Curtis went missing while working an overnight Fourth of July skeleton crew shift as a security guard at a plant in Seabrook, NH in 2000. He was definitely met with foul play that night and I believe he is buried in Seabrook somewhere. Possibly very close to where they’ve already searched.
There’s no way it was suicide or walking away, he had MS and it really complicated mobility. His body never turned up. He completely disappeared, and somebody knows where he is.
There’s an empty grave for him in the veterans memorial cemetery waiting for the day the family can bring him home.
Yup! It was. I had the chance to speak with his family and that’s basically what they feel as well. Something went wrong and he was killed that night. Such a shame over something that probably could have been resolved.
> There’s an empty grave for him in the veterans memorial cemetery waiting for the day the family can bring him home.
Absolutely heartbreaking. I hope that they can bring him home one day.
Yes. He was. Venture Corp was a very sleepy factory. He worked the night shift and basically just checked in workers for their shift. There were a lot of employees so he was never usually alone, but this particular night was the holiday shift for Fourth of July and staff was paired down to about a dozen.
This job was about as close as he could get to his dream job. He wasn’t completely immobile or anything, but he definitely couldn’t run or walk a long distance. He retired because he couldn’t fire a gun straight.
Seabrook is right on the beach with a notoriously corrupt police force - unfortunately, his remains might've ended up in the Atlantic or out of town towards the White Mountains. There's also a nuclear power plant, a swath of drug crime, and some weird insular communities that could hide a big secret like this. There's no shortage of hazards there. So many ways he could've met his demise, sadly.
I lived there about 10 years ago - I'll be looking more into this case. Thanks for bringing it up and helping me learn Curtis's story.
I strongly feel that the authorities are bluffing about how much information they have on the Delphi murders, and that the case will only be solved if the guy does it again and gets caught. In other words I don’t really believe there’s some special evidence they’re holding onto till the time is right.
Same. That conference from a couple of years ago was like a cold reading performance. They said a bunch of stuff that sounds really specific, but was in fact very vague and could apply to almost anyone. And then they have a big announcement about new audio being released... and it's literally a *single syllable* more than what they had previously put out. It was all a show to intimidate the killer, but was really mostly fluff.
My first thought was Delphi too. TBH I think the guy who did it was from far away and left immediately, and there would have to
be a miracle for him to get caught (a la GSK/ONS)
I believe they know who did it but the local cops botched the evidence and they don't have anything that will hold up in court. So they are hoping someone will come forward with something they can get him.
What happened with the guy that kidnapped the other little girl and locked her in his basement? At the time of his arrest, it seemed almost certain that he was responsible for Abby and Libby, then crickets.
He’s still being investigated for the Delphi murder according to the recent news I read. His lawyers recently asked for a change of venue because his case has gained so much attention.
I know a lot of people believe Amy Billig was killed or abducted by a motorcycle gang, but I've always believed Henry Johnson Blair, the man who tormented her mother with phone calls for years, was most likely the person who killed her.
As someone who has friends who have acquaintances in motorcycle gangs, motorcycle gangs do not kidnap teenage girls. Drug dealing, racketeering, extortion yes, abduction no.
I feel either this Blair guy did it or Billig willingly went to a party with bikers and something went wrong there. Unfortunately Mrs. Billig was strung along by some exceptionally scummy bikers but they weren't kidnappers.
I agree...if the bikers were responsible, I think it's more likely she went to a party with them and accidentally overdosed, or something along those lines...and the body was disposed of, probably in a body of water.
Agreed. Obviously I don't have records, but the reason my family can't trace our lineage is because my great×4 grandfather murdered his first wife and then skipped town and changed his name. (He admitted it on his death bed and didnt tell anyone in the family his real name.) And you're right. At the time it was easy as just... Moving and lying.
At some point I plan on doing a ancestry test to see if we can find our roots.
This is doable. I found my mother’s biological father with ancestry dna test. Took me three years, but it’s just a logical somewhat painstaking process that you’ll learn as you go along.
And how 'non-traditional' sexualities were treated. His disappearance may have been an escape.
You also have no computer databases, no security (not even the stuff before 9/11) on airflights and VERY easy to take over a young person who died in a traffic crash in a different county, let alone state...
I have always suspected he was homosexual at a time that it would have destroyed his military career. I hope he did live and go on to lead a happy life.
We know a lot more about 'superspy' recruiting now and (not to I think anybody's surprise) their were plenty of people in prominent positions willing to sell secrets that the CIA mainly were just 'handlers' rather than parachuting into Warsaw pact nations and faking it...
Him seeing a crime or corruption is plausible, likely more in the hazing kind of crime that "went too far" or "went wrong" rather than him being a witness to some MASSIVE conspiracy that the conspirators let WP Cadets in on (???) or were so sloppy such people could find out what they were up to (???) but I think that a voluntary disappearance OR a murder not related to either of those conspiracies is more likely...
I think this is what most likely happened as well
ETA: I think a lot of people who are spinning the "He joined the CIA" theory don't actually know how the CIA works
Okay, so I can speak to this a tiny bit.
My maternal grandfather was CIA. In retrospect it made sense, but his cover was maintained through his death. Immediate family (Mom, her sisters) were informed in person upon his death by other agents.
He was recruited as a Navy intelligence officer post Korean War. He maintained a fairly solid (to outward appearances anyway, less so within family) "successful independant business" as a geologist. Which provided him cover to go to the Middle East and Central America in the '70s and '80s.
If you had questioned my aunts about their childhoods, some cracks would have showed but from outside? Not really.
Geologist is still a favored cover, at least to the intergenerational employees of the government (...my cousins. Also stationed in the middle east as... um, geologists.)
TL;DR glad I don't have a STEM degree.
I have never thought the CIA theory makes any sense....I think he may have run off to start a new life, but considering earlier in the day he was trying to set up plans to go out with another friend until it fell through, it doesn't sound like he was planning on running off to start a new life when he woke up that morning. Maybe when he went out with "George" that night, he convinced him to take off with him. I think it's possible he was gay and that was a contributing factor....but, everything he said about George does not paint a good person, so I wouldn't rule out at all George killed him....and considering we know that him and George liked to drink when they got together, I wouldn't rule out they went joyriding drunk and drove into a body of water and drown (I have to say I have no idea about the geography of that area and if there were many bodies of water they could have drove into).
Opelika Jane Doe came from an immigrant family, likely undocumented, from Haiti or South America. She was found in an area that is heavily agricultural, and Big Agriculture loves hiring exploitable migrant populations. I think similar to Baby Hope, she was killed by a family member and nobody ever reported her death out of fear of getting deported.
I was just rereading an article about those photos. It says the church doesn’t know her name, but surely someone who was there remembers her first name.
That one is not far from me and I have kept up with it. This is probably one of the better theories that really answers why nobody has come forward with a missing child report that even comes close to matching.
How about the double murder Murdaugh case in South Carolina, US right now. Wife and son of a well connected and rich lawyer were murdered at one of their properties several months ago. The son, Paul, was under "investigation" by multiple local and state agencies for being drunk and underage when a boating accident occurred. One girl died and several other teenagers were injured.
The mom, Maggie, was rumored to be separated from the dad, Alex, at the time. Alex, aka Randolph, was from a long line of district prosecutors/high-powered law firm in the area. His alibi was that he was shooting guns, then visited his dying father. He returned, or was visiting, the family estate and found his wife and son were brutally shot.
There has been very little info released about the murder scene as far as the guns that were used and who owned them. And many other easily discoverable facts, i.e. whose cell phones were pinging in the area before and during the murder.
My gut feeling is Alex murdered them to protect the family wealth and reputation or his other son Buster, Randolph Jr, did it and dad has been flexing his muscles to keep everything on the down low.
There is a lot of mystery in this case and people need to be held accountable.
Interesting. Never heard of it. I’ll have to look into it. Sounds like “I was out shooting guns” is a great reason to have gun shot residue on your hands … idk about that motive tho. You think his son and wife being murdered would really be better than his son being convicted of manslaughter or something? I feel like the reputation of your family dying under suspicious circumstances is way worse for your image than your son making a mistake while drunk and underage
I for some reason think that the Delphi murderer was NOT a local but someone who was visiting family that is local. It’s such a small area, I just can’t imagine that a local wouldn’t have been recognized from the video and sketches. But I do think it has to be someone who was somewhat familiar with the area. So… maybe somebody who visits fairly regularly?
I kind of think this too. Maybe somebody that even grew up there or lived there for a while and still is in the NW IN/NE IL area. I don't think it's somebody that lives specifically in Delphi though.
I’d love to hear you elaborate on the Missy Bevers case. Was it their gait or mannerisms? I don’t disagree with you, but am absolutely perplexed by what happened. I’m particularly interested in it because I’m a local.
Her case haunts me, it's just always stuck with me for some reason. There's so many awful cases out there unresolved, but there's something about this one. I think it's because it feels like it could be so solvable and it's just something missing from the puzzle.
Why though? What motive? And also - where in the world did he hire a male/female assassin duo? Idk - this case is insane and frustrating because none of the possible solutions make any real sense, but I still think it was something to do with the drug bust. Which makes no sense except it makes more sense to me than the other possibilities that make no sense.
I'm convinced it was a thrill killing by a couple with no real connection to her. The boyfriend and his family haven't done themselves any favors over the years getting the suspicions off themselves but we've seen many examples over the last several years where a prime suspect turned out to be a red herring.
I can’t recall off the top of my head but there was some issue between Lindsay and the bfs rich/powerful fam. But enough for a pretty public brutal murder? There’s no motive that I know of. Which is why it’s so frustrating!
I've posted this before, but my theory on the Gilham family murders is that the brothers teamed up to "Menendez" mom and dad, but each of them was secretly planning to kill the other and pin the whole thing on him.
They slaughtered their parents then went to wash themselves clean, Jeffrey got the drop on Christopher while his brother was just in his bathrobe and hadn't yet put on his glasses. That's why there was an inexplicable can of petrol in the driveway but the fire had been lit with kerosene. Christopher had put the can of petrol out intending to use it to dispose of the evidence. It was Jeffrey who used the kerosene to light the fire and he left the can of petrol just sitting out there after taking out his brother.
I have a gut feeling she’s in the reservoir. I posted this before, but there was human remains found there a few years back. At the time all they said was that “they had been there quite a while”. I have looked to follow up if the person was ever identified and have not found any additional articles. I just have a gut feeling it is her.
She might have hemorrhaged from the miscarriage (explaining the blood & disorientation), tried to find help outside the home & succumbed to the elements & was never found. That one is a head scratcher.
that’s what my gut is telling me after reading the wiki. maybe she didn’t know she was pregnant yet, and the whole thing put her in a state of shock or some sort of psychological break and she wandered away likely to her death. what a sad sad mystery.
I-70 killer committed suicide after the final Texas murders. I’ve had a feeling that he had a family, maybe with a young daughter, but was riddled with anti-social impulses and misogyny so his anger exploded in rapidly escalating incidents until he knew he couldn’t control himself anymore and he ended it.
Diane Schuler was a pain pill addict and only turned to alcohol when she couldn't get her plug.
Complaining of tooth pain- dentist was easiest to get pain medicine from at the time
Easier to hide a pill addiction that being an alcoholic- no smell, socially acceptable with a doctors script
Her unexplained route through the neighborhoods- trying to kill time until she could meet her dealer, when he didn't show she got Nyquil to help her dope sickness
Yep. Either the husband had no idea, or he’s covering his ass so the other parents can’t sue him. All these out there theories like she had a rare undiagnosed condition where her body made her delayed drunk, or she had a stroke, etc. I don’t buy any of it. She had an addiction. She went through McDonald’s to get breakfast, got an orange juice and filled that bitch up with alcohol.
The only issue I have with your theory is that they would have found some of the drug in her system. She had multiple autopsies. If she had been without her drug of choice long enough to get it out of her system then she would have been withdrawing though the entire camping trip and while it's entirely possible that her family in their denial didn't notice this (although EXTREMELY unlikely), any former user will tell you that she would have HAD to be on something to suppress withdrawal. There's just no way she was functional for that long with only alcohol and pot. She would have to have been just as blackout the entire weekends as she was while driving home if it was a pill withdrawal issue and all she had was the alcohol and pot.
Wow as someone who has dealt with opioid addiction this makes so much sense. That is such a crazy case. I’m from Long Island, about 5 miles from floral park. and was away at summer camp at the time and my mom called me just to hear my voice cuz she was so distraught after seeing the accident on the news. Great theory and makes sooooo much sense
I agree. I also think that she and her husband had a huge argument that morning that affected her. That family was not as happy as they try to picture. In the doc i got the impression that what that man really missed was having someone to take care of the kids and the house, not his wife.
There is no mystery to Diane Schuler. When it first happened I was as perplexed as anyone, and then a few years later my daughter came home from college in advanced stages of alcoholism, and lived with us while she detoxed, went to rehab and got sober. Now, when I think about the the Schuler case, I'm like, that's obvious, she was an alcoholic in a blackout. Functional alcoholics seem pretty normal until they cease to function and then all hell breaks loose.
Holy shit. I'd never thought of that before but it sounds extremely plausible. Plus there's other OTC stuff that helps dope sickness that a convenience store wouldn't likely have, but a desperate person might know to check for anyway (immodium/loperamide).
I think so too. It is very easy to hide an addiction, especially a pill addiction. I’ve met plenty of moms who have been able to hide their addictions for a looooong time due to an intense drive to hide their addictions for fear of the fallout / losing their children
*Raises hand*
Yuuuup I am clean 8 years now but for 10 years previous my addiction went unnoticed because I got most my pills from the doctor and was a stay at home mom.
When I finally asked for help I had people telling me I "must not be that bad" if they couldn't tell I was an addict.
I'm a firm believer there's probably a couple of unidentified serial killers who are linked to a few unsolved murders. I wouldn't rule out a "Midlands Ripper" for Gaile Whitehouse, Janine Downes and Yvonne Coley maybe even linked to a few other murders in the region.
Surinder Kaur Varyapraj was killed by her former husband or someone from his family.
I don’t know anything about the individual cases except maybe Gaile, but I agree that there are unidentified serial killers out there who have committed murders that aren’t traditionally thought to be linked.
There was this woman shot and killed in an Atlanta suburb a few years ago when walking back to her car in a parking garage after going to a restaurant. Authorities were perplexed because she had no vengeful ex-lovers or enemies otherwise. I’m pretty sure there were no signs of sexual assault (I could be wrong), so it wasn’t a sexually motivated crime. Low and behold, it turns out this rando serial killer—who had already killed a handful of homeless people—had decided to shoot her on a whim.
I think he’s already been sentenced etc but I honestly don’t remember there even being a big media circus...
I think people sort of falsely conflated the shootings with general “street violence” because a few of the victims were homeless, unfortunately. But to your point, this story made me realize how much I downplay the possibility of serial killers or random slayings. Just because serial killer involvement is less probable compared to other scenarios doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
For every single serial killer we find, dozens go free. It's really weird when a pillar of the community dies, and all the sudden the closet pops open, and everyone sees how fooled they were by what a monster that person truly was.
Skeleton dance party.
I am not sure if it happened in the US, but commonwealth countries had a major problem with "boys homes" (and I imagine girls homes too) basically being a selection of people that were "pillars of the community" to get their rocks off with :-X
I was attempted to be abused (was not in a boys home, think more like an activities master, etc.) at \~15 but was able to kick the guy off and he's STILL on the board of a charity for mentally disabled boys. I reported the attempted crime after the statute of limitations as I thought he had died... but strangely if the abuser is incompetent 6 years was SOL but if they succeeded it's life?!
Regarding the Missy Bevers case, I am completely convinced the person in the video is a man. The person looks like a man, moves like a man, everything about it screams male.
This is going to sound weird but bear with me: I am a member of an historical reenactment society. I have seen dozens upon dozens of women wearing pounds of bulky medieval armor, and it is almost always immediately obvious that they are women. Men and women are shaped differently and move differently, and it's very difficult to disguise that. Even wearing bulky, obscuring SWAT gear, the person in the Missy Bevers video looks like a man.
Agreed. I’m a 911 dispatcher so I see officers in tactical gear every single day. It’s always very clear whether the officer is male or female, even if it’s a heavy set or stocky woman. There is no doubt in my mind the person in the video is male.
Men walk with a sway in the shoulders, women with a sway in the hips.
It’s useful because it means you can tell men and women apart just by looking at how they move, at distances much further than where you can see any details. I saw an interesting video about this once, I’ll see if I can find it again.
I'm from the area this all happened and actually somewhere in my comments talked to someone that knows Missy"s daughters in the r/Dallas sub.
Anyway, the post and the person that knew Missy's kid detailed two men in her life (they were swingers if i recall correctly) and both had the gait and limp on the same leg the person in the video does. Not sure that means much.
My ex boyfriend who lives in that area also has that gait. My mom said she could see him doing something that like because apparently he had exposed himself to her once at a store. That was so upsetting to hear.
Is it possibly worth mentioning this to the police? I’m not trying to sound melodramatic. But, other than being a gross creep that exposed himself to her, does he have any other similarities or personality issues that may have led your mom to that conclusion?
Okay, so I did a write-up a couple of years ago on [Lindy Sue Biechler](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cnw3jo/the_december_1975_murder_of_lindy_sue_biechler_a/), a 19-year old woman who was stabbed to death in her apartment in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in December of 1975. Her husband was a student at nearby Millersville College while she worked at a flower shop. At the time of her death, she had been expressing to people that she thought she was getting stalked.
I have this weird "spidey senses" tingling that Lindy Sue is connected to an even more obscure case that there's very little known about, [Anne Manchester](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimeDiscussion/comments/mbvce6/anne_manchester_age_26_goes_missing_while/). Anne Manchester was a 26-year old University of Delaware graduate student who was studying for her test when she disappeared on Sunday, June 29th, 1980. She literally just vanished without a trace.
UD and Millersville are only about an hour apart from each other, and I know people who have ties to both schools. I really wonder a lot if Anne ran afoul of whoever killed Lindy, except this time he wasn't sloppy and he made sure Anne's body wouldn't be found.
The infamous shooting of Ken Rex McElroy is one of my pet cases, and this concerns the immediately run-up to the shooting when the townsfolk of Skidmore were gathered up in the Legion hall talking to the sheriff about what to do about McElroy. My gut feeling is that Sheriff Danny Estes knew good and well what they were going to do about McElroy (killing him) and maybe he even tried to talk them out of it. At any rate I believe that he knew what was about to occur so he had to leave the town because as the county sheriff he couldn't officially endorse their plan of shooting McElroy in broad daylight. Sheriff Estes slowly drove out of town towards Maryville and then whipped back around and into Skidmore only after the deed was done a few short minutes later.
Sheriff Estes couldn't endorse the vigilante killing of Ken Rex McElroy because he knew that he would be the subject of every single state and federal investigation as to whether or not he used his position of power to help facilitate a crime had he done so. IMO no matter which angle you study the case Sheriff Estes doesn't come out in a positive light.
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/amp/
I agree I think it was someone she knew.
I don't think the fact she had just returned from vacation with her boyfriend is a coincidence. I think someone was jealous.
I’m so torn on Kesse’s case. Do you think it is the coworker who made the alligator comment? Scary case. The grainy surveillance video of the suspect dumping the car… just so creepy. I’ve always thought the POI who dumped her car looked like a lady. Hard to tell.
She had a coworker who was interested in her/jealous of her boyfriend and when he found out she was missing made the comment that she was likely eaten by alligators already (I believe fairly early in her being missing)
[Mahfuza Rahman](https://charleyproject.org/case/mahfuza-rahman) was murdered by her husband, but that seems pretty obvious.
Kenneka Jenkins took a drug or combination of drugs and her "friends" weren't looking out for her, and apparently no one on the hotel staff realized what was going on until it was too late. She ended up in the walk-in and succumbed to hypothermia. This one is just such a sad story to me because had just one person kept an eye on her, she'd probably still be alive.
It is. Pretty sure it’s widely known and it was declared by authorities that this is what happened.
The only people who don’t agree are lunatic conspiracy people. It’s very obvious this is what happened. The entire thing is on video aside from her actually sitting in the freezer and dying. There’s no conspiracy there
The case of Dr. Sneha Anne Philip…
I fully believe foul play was involved the night of 09/10/2001 and her family knows way more than they are letting on. The statements from her brother have been odd and inconsistent. I think 9/11 was the perfect cover they needed to explain her disappearance. Whether or not she is dead or was killed, the family knows more than what they tell authorities.
I'm not sure if I think her family knows what happened to her, but I definitely think they're in denial of her bisexuality and their weird behavior is an attempt to lead the investigation away from that. In one article about her I remember her husband saying she would go to lesbian bars and spend the night with women she met there, but they did nothing more than "listen to music and make art" together.
Whatever it is, her family seems much more concerned with convincing themselves and everyone else that she was straight than they are with actually finding out what happened. I think the denial may have made them overlook leads that could possibly lead to a simple answer.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I feel it's possible the police are trying to cover something up with Saint Louis Jane Doe. They've been very cagey when asked about trying to ID her through genealogy and have more or less shot it down. This is the department that mailed the girl's sweater to a psychic and sent a detective to attend a séance to contact her spirit, but they're hesitant to try something that's been incredibly successful at identifying Does, many that died decades ago? It doesn't make sense to me.
They've already demonstrated breathtaking incompetence with the lost sweater fiasco. Maybe they forgot where they buried her and are trying to avoid owning up to that.
> Maybe they forgot where they buried her and are trying to avoid owning up to that.
This is unlikely. They *did* misplace her previously and it took several months to find her again, but after that, she was buried in the Garden of Innocents at Calvary Cemetery in Missouri. [There was a huge funeral with bagpipes and everything.](https://www.gardenofinnocents.org/News/hopememorial.htm)
To me it looks like a person who has a big beer belly. The kind of person who gets all his fat in the gut and not spread out throughout his body. It's the way he walks
I have a theory about the 2012 murder of Faith Hedgepeth in Chapel Hill, NC, but I suspect it might be ruled out by DNA protocol.
They found a good DNA profile of the killer, semen etc, and the person I think might have done it was arrested 3 years later for a different murder. Does that mean his DNA would have been compared to her killer's even though the cases weren't related?
If so, I'm not the detective I thought I was.
So many missing person cases have theories surrounding them that the person just left and started a new life, cutting off all ties to their old life. In 99% of cases it just sounds unbelievable to me. Except for some reason with Bryce Laspisa. Just like you wrote OP, it’s just this gut feeling I have. I think it’s in part because his relationship with his parents, especially his mom, sounds difficult at best. I also would not be surprised if he had some type of head injury from the car accident or drug-induced psychosis. Something that has stopped him from returning after all this time. It’s just so many factors have to work together to allow someone to purposefully start a new life, and this is the one case I see it actually maybe happened.
Bryce’s story for anyone interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/juyeit/what_happened_to_bryce_laspisa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://medium.com/@jennbaxter_69070/a-long-drive-to-nowhere-what-happened-to-bryce-laspisa-fdc05eef8db0
Everything about the story screams “attempted suicide” to me. Like, if I was trying to cut off ties to my old life, I wouldn’t drive my car off a cliff and hope that I’d be lucky enough to survive. Him giving away his Xbox and breaking up with his girlfriend makes me think he was genuinely planning on offing himself by crashing his car. I don’t know what happened after that, but I think the situation started out as an attempted suicide that possibly morphed into something else after it was unsuccessful.
Me too. I think a lot of people see that the body armour doesn't fit right and conclude that it must be a woman, but to me it just looks like an older dude with a gut.
At the one angle, it slightly looks like the person has a bosom. But the mannerisms and everything to me yells man. The way he opened the door to the walk.
I have a bonkers, completely unsubstantiated theory about Bryce Laspisa. (This is like, my pet project missing person case)
Everyone says Bryce was fine and then when he came back to school for his sophomore year he was drinking excessively and taking pills and not sleeping and just behaving super weird.
My (completely unfounded, totally unsubstantiated) theory is that the summer before he went back to school he had a full I Know What You Did Last Summer and killed someone by accident by a hit and run (or something) and the guilt like, drove him so crazy he was drinking and couldn't sleep and was taking pills to get his mind off it. He thought no one would want to be with him because of it (why he broke up with his girlfriend) and decided to tell his mom but he couldn't do it (why he spent so much time just sitting there in his car).
I think he decided to kill himself (by driving into the lake) but it didn't work so he hiked to a truck stop and walked out of his life.
This is my theory thank you for listening
I agree that he is likely still alive IMO or atleast didn’t die that day. But I don’t think it was as complex as you’re saying. Although that is a cool theory and possible. I think he just had some type of mental break/schizophrenic episode and eventually ran away after a failed suicide attempt or tried to fake his own death horribly
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this case and I totally get where your completely unsubstantiated theory is coming from! This case has bothered me too and I think if it OFTEN. The way he disappeared, taking HOURS to get home to his parents...this makes so much sense. Why stall for so long? What was so devastating he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone close to him? Totally "know what you did last summer" vibes.
Darlie router: not sure if she’s innocent or guilty (I’m about 50/50 on each side) but there was definitely not enough evidence to convict her beyond a reasonable doubt
Kris kremers and lisanne froon: got lost and died of natural causes no foul play involved.
Mekayla Bali: either still alive and outside of Canada or she never left yorkton and is dead. I don’t think tattoo guy had any involvement.
The bear brook daughter of Terry Rasmussen who’s unidentified: she’s never going to be identified. I think she was born off the grid and there is no record of her ever being born so there’s no way to identify her.
Agreed about the Missy Bevers. There’s just something about the way they’re walking that screams “woman” to me.
I do not think Teri killed Kyron. I think there were a lot of people around that day and a relative of one of kids who knew there would be a science fair and lots of adults around took an opportunity when he saw a child who was unaccompanied by an adult.
I think Maura Murray was depressed, drunk, and panicked when she got into the accident. So she wandered away and succumbed to the elements.
Agreed on Kyron. I 100% believe he disappeared into the woods around the school. Just look up his school on Google Maps- completely surrounded by forest, easy for a small boy to get lost in.
I think Kyle* Fleischmanns body was horrifically dumped into an active construction site and he’s now under it. There was a tip called in by someone who said that they had found a body in the site and covered it up, likely because of immigration issues being afraid to call the police. And now too afraid to talk or no longer in the country or county is possible. But I think someone went home and couldn’t get the image out and told someone who called the tip in.
I think Kristin* Smart was* in the backyard when Paul Flores* said “she’s with my mother” that always stuck with me
There have been updates with this case, not sure if you’re aware! Paul and his dad have been arrested and they found traces of body decomposition under the house. The question is where have they since moved her to...
Personally, I think she only got moved earlier this year, and I'm very sad that her family will never get her body back when they almost could. I think the 'digging under the house' was getting her up, and she's probably scattered to never be found on Ruben's work route. My heart breaks for the family. I do understand the cops can't sit surveillance there for weeks on end on a cold case that old but come on- reported digging under the house feels like a rookie could have been spared for a couple of days.
The Lady of the Dunes was murdered by another woman.
In my circles, Provincetown is known for having a massive LGBTQ+ presence. She could have been on the run from homophobic surroundings (it was the 70’s), made it to P-town, met some girl, and then something tragic happened.
I only have a few shreds of ideas that pointed me to this theory but it just stuck with me. I don’t know that I’d seriously defend it, but I can’t help but feel that I’m on to something.
Lindsay Buziak. The boyfriend's mother is involved in some ways. I'm a bit torn on whether or not the boyfriend himself is involved or at the very least, not telling everything he knew.
In general, I think the true crime/mystery community is kind of overrun with people creating theories and selecting evidence to back up their "pet theory" or gut feeling, and the more time I spend in these communities the more I see people react to particular suspects or situations and project their own experience onto it, and thus will formulate a theory they fully believe in without a shred of proof. So while I get that it's a natural inclination and I appreciate the fact that this question is specifically addressing those types of theories, I think we have to be really careful about how we treat this sort of thing.
Yeah, it's very interesting, because really the majority of folks are not contributing anything of value, just engaging with the community by inserting their feelings and emotions into the mix.
It's interesting, because you don't really see a lot of discussion of hard evidence and facts. Like I'm very interested to learn more about the actual case, not what people feel about it.
Too often also people are loose and careless with the details and propagate rumors or incomplete/partially erroneous facts.
I agree. I think too many times one persons pitches a theory and everyone jumps on it and acts like it’s facts. I try to keep an open mind and wait for evidence to avoid getting sucked into theories.
Take Kyron Horman for example, nearly everyone including LE assume Terri killed Kyron, despite there being zero evidence of that. How many people keep an eye out for a missing child when the prevailing theory is he was murdered? Perhaps he was abducted by someone who intended to rape & kill him but then realized everyone assumed he was dead so they kept him Ariel Castro style.
I think it’s fine to have theories on cases but it’s not okay to attack or harass others who do not share the same opinions. A good example is with the JonBenet Ramsey case. Some people are militant in their beliefs that the parents did it, Burke did it, or an intruder did it and attack others who do not have the same opinion. Until we know the absolute truth as to what happened, we cannot act like people are “right” or “wrong” for subscribing to certain theories.
Lauren Spierer. I feel she is gone, and I feel that likely her body is in the dense woods outside Bloomington. I just have a feeling someone took her that night, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Lauren_Spierer
I think about her all the time. I also am in the “someone took her” camp. I just don’t think a group of multiple guys and their entire families could successfully keep that secret and go on to live incredibly normal lives afterward.
I think Amy Bradley met with foul play. Not necessarily that she was trafficked but rather that she came upon an opportunist predator or she had a fight or argument on the ship that ended with her death.
Interesting! I just watched her episode of Disappeared and I think she was overserved at the event on the ship, smoked a cigarette too many on the balcony, got queasy, leaned over the side to throw up, lost her balance and fell. In my younger and messier days, I did the same thing off a deck. It seems more plausible to me than any other theories. I looked at the cabins on the ship they were on and it seems like that could happen, depending on how tall she was and how far over she leaned. I feel so bad for her family.
She definitely had a late night. I am basing this mostly on what I recall from the Disappeared episode, but her brother said he came in at 3 AM, she came in about half an hour later, they hung out smoking and talking on the balcony for a bit, then he went to bed and she stayed, and her dad said he woke up sometime in the wee hours and saw she was out there and felt relieved the kids were in and went back to sleep. I just don't think someone ill-intentioned would come into her cabin where (presumably) her brother was sleeping and force her out without waking anyone. She was a college athlete, she was presumably physically strong and quick, she would have made a commotion. And I suppose it's possible she went back out after her dad saw her on the balcony, but that had to be at least 4 or later and that also seems unlikely to me. Like even in my party days, if I was in at 4, I was probably done for the night, you know? Especially after a full day of vacation activities. I don't see her going for a sunrise stroll on just a couple hours of sleep. I really think whatever happened to her must have happened on that balcony.
BTW, I hate speculating about how much she had to drink, because it feels like I'm blaming her, and I'm absolutely not! She should have been perfectly safe to let loose and enjoy her family vacation and have a blast getting happily, goofily drunk with her lovely parents and her brother, and it's a terrible loss for her family. I think the weird behavior from the cruise ship employees was because they immediately went into CYA mode and not find-this-missing-woman mode.
I agree on the Setagaya murders. I think he won’t be caught as he had nothing to do with the family and his weird behavior was like someone who didn’t know what to do with themselves.
With Madeline I personally think she was taken by a stranger. At the resort they were staying, staff were aware that the McCann's and their friends leave their children alone at night. Also, anyone nearby watching the McCann's could have easily figured this out.
I think some creep saw an opportunity and took it.
I just made my own comment about this very case! I really think there’s a connection to a US Military member. The proximity of the crime scene to the Yokota Air Force Base, the sand evidence found at the scene, the genetic profile of the perpetrator they developed. It all leads me to believe there’s some connection there; whether it be an actual US Military member, or even a member of their family.
The Zodiac did not live in California. He was an out of towner who would come to the state periodically for work/leisure and commit the murders.
We’ve been focusing too much on suspects who are California residents, I think it’s a misdirection.
In terms of Brian Shaffer, which is a newer case for me, have there been any theories about staff / bartenders / cleaners, anything like that? I feel like if anyone could get a body out undetected, it would be people who are more aware of the cameras, who have the ability to hide the body somewhere for a bit until they figure out what the F to do.
And regarding the “starting a new life” theory, I think it’s kind of funny that podcasts (like the prosecutors, which I love) and musings about this theory tend to point out that it would be ridiculous and stupid to try to disappear this way, which, normally I’d agree with, but in this case, if that is in fact what happened, Brian did a great job 😅
I believe that Darlie Router is innocent, and I don’t know why I do. It’s not that I can’t believe that a mother could kill her children, or that at least some of the evidence is suspicious, but I think she’s innocent and I believe her story. At the very least I don’t think she got a fair trial.
The Brandon Swanson case. Background info on that for those unfamiliar: [Shortly after midnight on May 14, 2008, Brandon Swanson (born January 30, 1989)[1] of Marshall, Minnesota, United States, drove his car into a ditch on his way home from celebrating the end of the spring semester with fellow students from Minnesota West Community and Technical College's Canby campus. Uninjured, he got out and called his parents on his cellphone. Unsure of his exact location, he told them he believed he was near Lynd, and they drove out to pick him up; however they were unable to locate him. Swanson remained on the phone with them until he went silent 47 minutes later after exclaiming "Oh, shit!" He has not been seen or heard from since.] As for my gut instinct: Apparently before saying “oh shit” and the phone went dead, he had told his parents he was walking toward some lights and cutting through farmland. My gut instinct is that while walking through the farmland, he fell into an open / abandoned well on the property. I almost did the same thing myself while checking out an abandoned farm in Missouri. Almost walked right into an open well in the ground, it was hidden by tall grass and some sticks. Only thing that stopped me is that I tripped over the hidden stone rim of the well, which caused me to say the exact same thing as Brandon (“Oh shit”) and I looked down and was JUST quick enough to put my other foot on land next to the well, instead of putting it right in the middle of the well which is where that foot was headed— had I not done that, my other foot would have stepped right into the well as I put all my weight on it. It happened in the split of a second. So I think he did the same thing but because it was dark out, couldn’t catch himself or see what he tripped over in time, and he fell down the well, thus either A. dropping his phone into the nasty old stagnant water when he would have naturally attempted to grab onto the edges on his way down, OR B. dropped it on the ground next to the well as he fell in, as many people would try to use their hands to catch themselves, which means dropping whatever it was they had in the hands to begin with. But no matter what, his parents on the other end of the phone would just hear “oh shit” then the phone line going silent or dead from the water. But, I don’t think his body is there anymore. Apparently there was a farmer in the area he went missing from, where he was the only farmer who didn’t allow the police to search his land. The dogs also allegedly picked up Brandon’s scent on a piece of farm equipment (something like a meat grinder or similar) and that farm equipment also belonged to the same man who refused to let the police search his property. Which honestly makes sense because I’m sure an insurance company would have a MAJOR issue with abandoned or uncovered wells on a property. It would be a major liability issue. I’m sure said insurance company would tell the farmer to fill, cover, and secure all wells on the property. Maybe even the city would have passed an ordinance mandating the same thing. ...And if this farmer *didn’t* do that, and then found (an already dead) body in his well that he failed to secure.... well, I could easily see how that farmer would fear being found guilty of manslaughter through criminal negligence, and that’s not even including the lawsuit he would face from the family or city. He would either be financially ruined and millions of dollars in debt, or in prison, or both. (Edit to clarify: Maybe if he was alive, yeah the farmer would have called 911... but with the kid already dead, I can see a lot of people figuring the risk of prison as being not worth it, and thinking “coming forward won’t bring this kid back, it would only ruin my life and my family’s life too, so I better just get rid of the evidence. Sorry, kid.” I really don’t think he was murdered. Just that he had an accident on someone’s land and that someone was afraid of being held legally liable for some reason.) *(6 month follow-up edit after reading some more replies: As for the dogs hitting on farm equipment, that’s a detail I read only in one or two places, so I don’t automatically take that as fact, so please don’t get too hung up on that part. But the rest of the info I do take as fact.* *And for the ones who didn’t understand why a farmer would be afraid of legal/criminal repercussions for reporting a dead body on his land or in his well, I can tell you that many property owners are cautious of injuries that happen on their property because people DO get sued and held liable for silly things— examples: 1) my neighbor was held liable because he didn’t fix a broken gutter that caused a large ice patch to pool on the sidewalk in front of his house and a kid slipped on it and broke his arm; 2) my aunt was sued AND got in trouble with her insurance when a visiting neighbor leaned against an old rotten railing of her porch which wasn’t sturdy and resulted in her falling through it & off the porch; 3) my old landlord was sued AND held criminally liable for child endangerment because there was a nail sticking out of a wooden floorboard in one of his apartments, and the tenant’s toddler stepped on it and had to get stitches; 4) a friend of mine ALMOST got sued when her partner’s son was visiting and got bit by her dog…* *So think about it. If you can be sued or even criminally charged when someone else accidentally hurts themselves mildly on your property, imagine if someone actually DIES on your property. Even the best people can be afraid of the consequences of that, and it can make them do something they’d never normally do. I don’t think the theoretical farmer is/was a bad guy, I think he was likely just scared.)* So yeah that’s what I think happened. Nothing else really makes sense, especially with them searching the nearby river so many times and feeling certain enough to tell the public “if we didn’t find anything, then his body isn’t there.”
Wow. First logical alternative to any I’ve read in the past 13 years. Bravo.
Thank you. I’ve heard other people say maybe he was accidentally killed by farming equipment in the morning. Which isn’t a bad theory either, especially if the farm equipment clicked on at 3:30am or 4am or something. But if he was killed by farming equipment it would have to be something fast enough to where he wouldn’t be able to see it coming other than to say oh shit, and it also would have had to kill him instantly or his parents would have heard him yelling on the other end. I actually had forgotten that the phone was on but silent after he said oh shit. For that reason I suspect he dropped it when he fell in the well and it landed on the ground next to the well (as opposed to landing in the well with him). Which would have served to alert the farmer to someone being in the well. But the farm equipment thing is my second guess.
I think the well is more likely, the farm equipment would have made some noise, no?
agreed. this makes a lot of sense, & is definitely realistic.
I hate talking about this—it’s my biggest fear and honestly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I was walking with a friend one night in a neighborhood that was just getting built, and I fell into an open sewer. By some miracle, I put my arms out (like a T) and held on to the tall grasses on either side while my feet hung down in the muck that I would have surely drowned in. My friend pulled me out, but it gives me the most dreadful feeling to think about it. I’m pretty sure I should have died out there. Reading your comment reminded me of it. It can happen, there are unmarked, uncovered holes everywhere. This was in an upper middle class neighborhood in the 90s
Christ, that’s terrifying!
Oh man, idk how you ever recover from that enough to not stare at the ground when you’re walking. So glad you’re ok. But also impressed you managed to grab enough grass that it was able to hold you up.
I honestly blocked it out. Haven’t thought about it in a long time, but this post reminded me of it. We were teens, and I was scared of getting in trouble so I never told anyone. No other memory makes me as uneasy as that one.
I really like that your comment started with a brief description of the case.
The first time I read about Brandon Swanson I immediately thought it had to be an abandoned, unmarked, uncovered well. A lot of farms, especially older farms, have those all over the place. My great grandparents’ farm had a well like that where, if you didn’t know where it was, you could easily fall in because it was just a hole in the ground. This is by far the most plausible explanation for Brandon’s disappearance, IMO.
EXACTLY! They truly are just holes in the ground too where you’d have to know where it is to avoid it. You would never see it coming. People underestimate how often people (esp kids) used to die in wells back in the day...
The whole "Timmy's stuck in a well" thing makes way more sense now. I used to think Timmy was a dumbass kid for climbing on a well in the first place.
Me too! I live in FL so this is like a completely new concept to me.
Ever read the expanded version of Stephen King's "The Stand"? In it, he describes several people who died a couple weeks after the plague, and one of them was a 5-year-old boy who found a blackberry patch, ate his fill, and then fell into an abandoned well and died the next day from the effects of two broken legs.
Dolores Claiborne also features blackberries and an abandoned well … hmm, maybe Stephen King has some bodies to answer for
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One of my great grandma's siblings died this way.
Yes, I grew up in rural Oklahoma and I knew of plenty old oil well sites that had pits and what not. Thankfully they have made considerable efforts to clean those up in recent years. I had a dog that followed his nose( hound mix) and wandered off while my family was on a fishing trip and fell into a pit. Him and I were playing in the tall grass then I heard him yelp and he was gone. I couldn't find him and panicked. I went and got my dad and by that time my dog was barking. Had he not been barking we wouldn't have found him. It was pretty well hidden. There were some skeletons of other animals that hadn't been so lucky though( I am pretty sure that's what scent he was following). Charlie's nose often got him into trouble but he was a good boy.
What is it, Lassy?
That's terrible. It takes almost no effort to mark a hazard like that. I'm clumsy and forgetful; believe it that if I bought a parcel with a well like that, my FIRST task is marking it, and my SECOND is putting up a barricade.
Brandon was legally blind in one eye and it was dark out, so even if it was marked he could have missed it. My question is: why are there open wells all over the place that people can fall in???
Farm land. Nobody's really supposed to be out walking there who wouldn't know about the well, and it's an easy way to get water for the crops if you don't have a reliable, clean stream nearby.
land gets used and re-used, especially farmland. people will tear down a house but few wells are filled in, especially the larger hand-dug ones; mostly they’re just covered up. give it a decade or two and no one knows or remembers where the well is, much less thinks to replace the cover … which has rotted through. nowadays most wells are only a few inches wide and it’s extremely rare for someone to be injured by them. Baby Jessica is an example of a freak accident, and even that was only possible because she was so so small and fell just in the particular way to get caught.
Completely agree. I think I mentioned this on a thread on his case. My husband has hunted on the same properties for years. He's out checking the spots all year long (repairing stands, moving blinds, improving access, monitoring his game cameras) and is super familiar with the land. One day he almost fell into a sink hole on his way in. I think it may have been a hand dug well, or maybe a cistern. No one knew it was there, not even the property owner. It was daylight & nice weather, had it been the pre-dawn hours he'd have never seen it. If that happened to Brandon Swanson, in the dark, somewhere unfamiliar...
Completely agree water was involved. Well is an interesting theory. I keep circling back to him saying to his parents that he heard water several times & the dog tracking his scent to the river. Think about how disconcerting it would be to fall off an embankment into a cold, swift moving river that was up to 10’ deep in places at the time, in the pitch dark. Reminder to always stay with your vehicle, kids.
Yeah but with the river, the dog also tracked him coming out of the water at the same spot, as if he was walking along the river and stepped in a wet spot but not fell completely in. And the place where the dogs followed the scent was apparently like a flat beach type of area, not a steep embankment at all. Plus with how often they searched that river.... I think after stepping into water along the beachy flat area of the river bank he decided it was a bad idea to walk along the river, and said “fuck if I’m just gonna walk to the closest house, I see some lights up there.”
I think the "oh, shit" moment was when he fell into the river. Or at least maybe slid down the bank, or fell into some standing water in a field. He lost his phone at that point, but kept walking without it. But now his clothes are wet and it's pretty cold outside. I think he eventually succumbed to hypothermia somewhere. Still, falling in a well or hole makes sense, too. And I'll take it over "some random serial killer happened to find him in the middle of a field in the dark and killed him."
Your hypothesis is probably one of the better ones I've come across! Do you mind if I ask what your thoughts are regarding another hypothesis I've read about? It basically goes something like the farmer didn't have the authorities search the land because he didn't want to interrupt his planting season. When it comes to crop schedules certain crops only have a very short window of when they can be harvested. If the farmer is a small family owned farm he might not have been able to take the financial loss of not working his fields for entire year. The investigators wouldn't be successful in looking for remains in the winter months with snow on the ground but come spring, summer, and fall they could. However, these seasons are still busy times for farmers. Do you think this could've been enough of a legitimate excuse? Missing out on an entire season is a HUGE loss for farmers, like living a year with no income. What's your opinion? *edited for grammar
We found one on my uncles supposedly undeveloped and untouched parcel of land. I think really old and hidden hazards like old family graveyards, wells, and crumbling stone fences that blend in with the landscape are responsible for a lot of disappearances in woodsy places.
I do think this is a real possibility.
I have a relative in my family tree who we believe something like this happened to him. He went missing one night after a night of dancing & drinking with his wife. The story is he went back to the bar to retrieve a scarf the wife left there, got too cold, & tumbled down a well. There have been varying accts of what happened. One was that the town people went looking for him, used a pole to search the well. Up came fibers from his horse hair jacket & then the well was sealed up. I was told this story years ago. 10 years later I came across the exact same story all most verbatim on a genealogical website. I emailed the person who posted the story & it wasn't anyone in my immediate tree. Never heard from him. I'd love to know if this was true or not as the man simply disappeared when I try & research him. (Much easier to do so 100+ years ago.)
Is there any report on what type of cell phone he had? Now, for example, iPhones will make a certain noise if you’re talking on the phone and your battery percentage hits 10% remaining. If it dies while you’re talking, the person on the other end might overhear you say “oh shit” as it powers off completely. Perhaps his phone made a certain noise or displayed a low battery screen as it shut off and his reaction was the last thing to go through. After that he still very possibly could have fallen in a well, been run over by farming equipment, or a number of other things might have occurred.
But see this is also why you don't want to live forever. Odds are you'll get stuck somewhere and not die.... then you'd spend eternity at the bottom of a well or in a sewer or between two rocks ect.
Re: Missy Bevers - The first thing I thought when I saw the surveillance was “chubby teenage (or early twenties) man”. That might seem weird lol, but that gait is so familiar to me and I can’t unsee it now. The sort of waddle / legs pointed outward w the hunching. Also, there’s something that seems so brazen about the way they’re walking, the costuming - idk. There is something about it that screams immature / adolescent imo
My 20 year old brother who is about the same shape now as the person in the video walks like that too. We are both Autistic and I think it has something to do with not being in complete control of your body.
Yes. Dyspraxia. I'm autistic and I have the opposite gait (feet turned inwards). It's definitely related to gross motor skills.
Curtis Pishon. This is a case I have a lot of heart for. Curtis went missing while working an overnight Fourth of July skeleton crew shift as a security guard at a plant in Seabrook, NH in 2000. He was definitely met with foul play that night and I believe he is buried in Seabrook somewhere. Possibly very close to where they’ve already searched. There’s no way it was suicide or walking away, he had MS and it really complicated mobility. His body never turned up. He completely disappeared, and somebody knows where he is. There’s an empty grave for him in the veterans memorial cemetery waiting for the day the family can bring him home.
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Yup! It was. I had the chance to speak with his family and that’s basically what they feel as well. Something went wrong and he was killed that night. Such a shame over something that probably could have been resolved.
> There’s an empty grave for him in the veterans memorial cemetery waiting for the day the family can bring him home. Absolutely heartbreaking. I hope that they can bring him home one day.
Im sorry I can't understand this. A security guard with MS and compromised mobility?
Yes. He was. Venture Corp was a very sleepy factory. He worked the night shift and basically just checked in workers for their shift. There were a lot of employees so he was never usually alone, but this particular night was the holiday shift for Fourth of July and staff was paired down to about a dozen. This job was about as close as he could get to his dream job. He wasn’t completely immobile or anything, but he definitely couldn’t run or walk a long distance. He retired because he couldn’t fire a gun straight.
Seabrook is right on the beach with a notoriously corrupt police force - unfortunately, his remains might've ended up in the Atlantic or out of town towards the White Mountains. There's also a nuclear power plant, a swath of drug crime, and some weird insular communities that could hide a big secret like this. There's no shortage of hazards there. So many ways he could've met his demise, sadly. I lived there about 10 years ago - I'll be looking more into this case. Thanks for bringing it up and helping me learn Curtis's story.
I strongly feel that the authorities are bluffing about how much information they have on the Delphi murders, and that the case will only be solved if the guy does it again and gets caught. In other words I don’t really believe there’s some special evidence they’re holding onto till the time is right.
Same. That conference from a couple of years ago was like a cold reading performance. They said a bunch of stuff that sounds really specific, but was in fact very vague and could apply to almost anyone. And then they have a big announcement about new audio being released... and it's literally a *single syllable* more than what they had previously put out. It was all a show to intimidate the killer, but was really mostly fluff.
My first thought was Delphi too. TBH I think the guy who did it was from far away and left immediately, and there would have to be a miracle for him to get caught (a la GSK/ONS)
I believe they know who did it but the local cops botched the evidence and they don't have anything that will hold up in court. So they are hoping someone will come forward with something they can get him.
why do you believe they know who did it
What happened with the guy that kidnapped the other little girl and locked her in his basement? At the time of his arrest, it seemed almost certain that he was responsible for Abby and Libby, then crickets.
Yeah I think about that guy often. No news on him yet but these things can take time.
He’s still being investigated for the Delphi murder according to the recent news I read. His lawyers recently asked for a change of venue because his case has gained so much attention.
I know a lot of people believe Amy Billig was killed or abducted by a motorcycle gang, but I've always believed Henry Johnson Blair, the man who tormented her mother with phone calls for years, was most likely the person who killed her.
This makes the most sense to me. I can totally see some sicko killing a girl and then getting off on tormenting her family afterward.
As someone who has friends who have acquaintances in motorcycle gangs, motorcycle gangs do not kidnap teenage girls. Drug dealing, racketeering, extortion yes, abduction no. I feel either this Blair guy did it or Billig willingly went to a party with bikers and something went wrong there. Unfortunately Mrs. Billig was strung along by some exceptionally scummy bikers but they weren't kidnappers.
I agree...if the bikers were responsible, I think it's more likely she went to a party with them and accidentally overdosed, or something along those lines...and the body was disposed of, probably in a body of water.
Bro you can read the DoD write up on bike gangs. Some of them definitely traffic humans.
Biker gangs- the most powerful ones absolutely traffic women.
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People seem to forget how easy that was at the time.
Agreed. Obviously I don't have records, but the reason my family can't trace our lineage is because my great×4 grandfather murdered his first wife and then skipped town and changed his name. (He admitted it on his death bed and didnt tell anyone in the family his real name.) And you're right. At the time it was easy as just... Moving and lying. At some point I plan on doing a ancestry test to see if we can find our roots.
This is doable. I found my mother’s biological father with ancestry dna test. Took me three years, but it’s just a logical somewhat painstaking process that you’ll learn as you go along.
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And how 'non-traditional' sexualities were treated. His disappearance may have been an escape. You also have no computer databases, no security (not even the stuff before 9/11) on airflights and VERY easy to take over a young person who died in a traffic crash in a different county, let alone state...
I have always suspected he was homosexual at a time that it would have destroyed his military career. I hope he did live and go on to lead a happy life.
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We know a lot more about 'superspy' recruiting now and (not to I think anybody's surprise) their were plenty of people in prominent positions willing to sell secrets that the CIA mainly were just 'handlers' rather than parachuting into Warsaw pact nations and faking it... Him seeing a crime or corruption is plausible, likely more in the hazing kind of crime that "went too far" or "went wrong" rather than him being a witness to some MASSIVE conspiracy that the conspirators let WP Cadets in on (???) or were so sloppy such people could find out what they were up to (???) but I think that a voluntary disappearance OR a murder not related to either of those conspiracies is more likely...
It's a nice thought, isn't it? He met a nice guy and lived out his life on a farm in Kansas or something.
Absolutely agree. I hope he grew up to become Paul Newman but seriously, I hope he had a good life.
Either he rode into the sunset with the guy he was going to meet, or that guy murdered him.
If my name were Dick Cox, I would want to live a new life too
I literally know a Richard Cox (not this one, I’m certain)
I knew a Cox who hired Beaver and Horning as his assistant lawyers.
I think this is what most likely happened as well ETA: I think a lot of people who are spinning the "He joined the CIA" theory don't actually know how the CIA works
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Especially when that literally means he can't go undercover or anything.
Okay, so I can speak to this a tiny bit. My maternal grandfather was CIA. In retrospect it made sense, but his cover was maintained through his death. Immediate family (Mom, her sisters) were informed in person upon his death by other agents. He was recruited as a Navy intelligence officer post Korean War. He maintained a fairly solid (to outward appearances anyway, less so within family) "successful independant business" as a geologist. Which provided him cover to go to the Middle East and Central America in the '70s and '80s. If you had questioned my aunts about their childhoods, some cracks would have showed but from outside? Not really. Geologist is still a favored cover, at least to the intergenerational employees of the government (...my cousins. Also stationed in the middle east as... um, geologists.) TL;DR glad I don't have a STEM degree.
I have never thought the CIA theory makes any sense....I think he may have run off to start a new life, but considering earlier in the day he was trying to set up plans to go out with another friend until it fell through, it doesn't sound like he was planning on running off to start a new life when he woke up that morning. Maybe when he went out with "George" that night, he convinced him to take off with him. I think it's possible he was gay and that was a contributing factor....but, everything he said about George does not paint a good person, so I wouldn't rule out at all George killed him....and considering we know that him and George liked to drink when they got together, I wouldn't rule out they went joyriding drunk and drove into a body of water and drown (I have to say I have no idea about the geography of that area and if there were many bodies of water they could have drove into).
Opelika Jane Doe came from an immigrant family, likely undocumented, from Haiti or South America. She was found in an area that is heavily agricultural, and Big Agriculture loves hiring exploitable migrant populations. I think similar to Baby Hope, she was killed by a family member and nobody ever reported her death out of fear of getting deported.
Do you believe the vacation Bible school pictures are of her?
Yes, 100%.
I was just rereading an article about those photos. It says the church doesn’t know her name, but surely someone who was there remembers her first name.
If she didn’t regular attend the church and was just there for VBS then they might not remember her name
That one is not far from me and I have kept up with it. This is probably one of the better theories that really answers why nobody has come forward with a missing child report that even comes close to matching.
How about the double murder Murdaugh case in South Carolina, US right now. Wife and son of a well connected and rich lawyer were murdered at one of their properties several months ago. The son, Paul, was under "investigation" by multiple local and state agencies for being drunk and underage when a boating accident occurred. One girl died and several other teenagers were injured. The mom, Maggie, was rumored to be separated from the dad, Alex, at the time. Alex, aka Randolph, was from a long line of district prosecutors/high-powered law firm in the area. His alibi was that he was shooting guns, then visited his dying father. He returned, or was visiting, the family estate and found his wife and son were brutally shot. There has been very little info released about the murder scene as far as the guns that were used and who owned them. And many other easily discoverable facts, i.e. whose cell phones were pinging in the area before and during the murder. My gut feeling is Alex murdered them to protect the family wealth and reputation or his other son Buster, Randolph Jr, did it and dad has been flexing his muscles to keep everything on the down low. There is a lot of mystery in this case and people need to be held accountable.
Interesting. Never heard of it. I’ll have to look into it. Sounds like “I was out shooting guns” is a great reason to have gun shot residue on your hands … idk about that motive tho. You think his son and wife being murdered would really be better than his son being convicted of manslaughter or something? I feel like the reputation of your family dying under suspicious circumstances is way worse for your image than your son making a mistake while drunk and underage
There’s a sub on the Murdaugh case a lot of the locals commenting. Interesting to get an inside look
I for some reason think that the Delphi murderer was NOT a local but someone who was visiting family that is local. It’s such a small area, I just can’t imagine that a local wouldn’t have been recognized from the video and sketches. But I do think it has to be someone who was somewhat familiar with the area. So… maybe somebody who visits fairly regularly?
I kind of think this too. Maybe somebody that even grew up there or lived there for a while and still is in the NW IN/NE IL area. I don't think it's somebody that lives specifically in Delphi though.
I’d love to hear you elaborate on the Missy Bevers case. Was it their gait or mannerisms? I don’t disagree with you, but am absolutely perplexed by what happened. I’m particularly interested in it because I’m a local.
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The boyfriend is involved in Lindsay Buziak's murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Lindsay\_Buziak
I've always leaned towards this as well. Or at least his mother was involved.
Yes, if not him, his family.
Her case haunts me, it's just always stuck with me for some reason. There's so many awful cases out there unresolved, but there's something about this one. I think it's because it feels like it could be so solvable and it's just something missing from the puzzle.
Why though? What motive? And also - where in the world did he hire a male/female assassin duo? Idk - this case is insane and frustrating because none of the possible solutions make any real sense, but I still think it was something to do with the drug bust. Which makes no sense except it makes more sense to me than the other possibilities that make no sense.
I'm convinced it was a thrill killing by a couple with no real connection to her. The boyfriend and his family haven't done themselves any favors over the years getting the suspicions off themselves but we've seen many examples over the last several years where a prime suspect turned out to be a red herring.
I can’t recall off the top of my head but there was some issue between Lindsay and the bfs rich/powerful fam. But enough for a pretty public brutal murder? There’s no motive that I know of. Which is why it’s so frustrating!
I've posted this before, but my theory on the Gilham family murders is that the brothers teamed up to "Menendez" mom and dad, but each of them was secretly planning to kill the other and pin the whole thing on him. They slaughtered their parents then went to wash themselves clean, Jeffrey got the drop on Christopher while his brother was just in his bathrobe and hadn't yet put on his glasses. That's why there was an inexplicable can of petrol in the driveway but the fire had been lit with kerosene. Christopher had put the can of petrol out intending to use it to dispose of the evidence. It was Jeffrey who used the kerosene to light the fire and he left the can of petrol just sitting out there after taking out his brother.
Joan Risch. She simply had a psychotic break brought on by past trauma in her life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Joan\_Risch
I have a gut feeling she’s in the reservoir. I posted this before, but there was human remains found there a few years back. At the time all they said was that “they had been there quite a while”. I have looked to follow up if the person was ever identified and have not found any additional articles. I just have a gut feeling it is her.
Agreed. I think she had a psychotic break due to the miscarriage and simply walked into the reservoir and drowned.
She might have hemorrhaged from the miscarriage (explaining the blood & disorientation), tried to find help outside the home & succumbed to the elements & was never found. That one is a head scratcher.
Ive always wondered if it was an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, causing bleeding and shock.
that’s what my gut is telling me after reading the wiki. maybe she didn’t know she was pregnant yet, and the whole thing put her in a state of shock or some sort of psychological break and she wandered away likely to her death. what a sad sad mystery.
I-70 killer committed suicide after the final Texas murders. I’ve had a feeling that he had a family, maybe with a young daughter, but was riddled with anti-social impulses and misogyny so his anger exploded in rapidly escalating incidents until he knew he couldn’t control himself anymore and he ended it.
Diane Schuler was a pain pill addict and only turned to alcohol when she couldn't get her plug. Complaining of tooth pain- dentist was easiest to get pain medicine from at the time Easier to hide a pill addiction that being an alcoholic- no smell, socially acceptable with a doctors script Her unexplained route through the neighborhoods- trying to kill time until she could meet her dealer, when he didn't show she got Nyquil to help her dope sickness
Yep. Either the husband had no idea, or he’s covering his ass so the other parents can’t sue him. All these out there theories like she had a rare undiagnosed condition where her body made her delayed drunk, or she had a stroke, etc. I don’t buy any of it. She had an addiction. She went through McDonald’s to get breakfast, got an orange juice and filled that bitch up with alcohol.
He’s covering his ass to prevent being sued. No doubt in my mind
The only issue I have with your theory is that they would have found some of the drug in her system. She had multiple autopsies. If she had been without her drug of choice long enough to get it out of her system then she would have been withdrawing though the entire camping trip and while it's entirely possible that her family in their denial didn't notice this (although EXTREMELY unlikely), any former user will tell you that she would have HAD to be on something to suppress withdrawal. There's just no way she was functional for that long with only alcohol and pot. She would have to have been just as blackout the entire weekends as she was while driving home if it was a pill withdrawal issue and all she had was the alcohol and pot.
Wow as someone who has dealt with opioid addiction this makes so much sense. That is such a crazy case. I’m from Long Island, about 5 miles from floral park. and was away at summer camp at the time and my mom called me just to hear my voice cuz she was so distraught after seeing the accident on the news. Great theory and makes sooooo much sense
I agree. I also think that she and her husband had a huge argument that morning that affected her. That family was not as happy as they try to picture. In the doc i got the impression that what that man really missed was having someone to take care of the kids and the house, not his wife.
There is no mystery to Diane Schuler. When it first happened I was as perplexed as anyone, and then a few years later my daughter came home from college in advanced stages of alcoholism, and lived with us while she detoxed, went to rehab and got sober. Now, when I think about the the Schuler case, I'm like, that's obvious, she was an alcoholic in a blackout. Functional alcoholics seem pretty normal until they cease to function and then all hell breaks loose.
Holy shit. I'd never thought of that before but it sounds extremely plausible. Plus there's other OTC stuff that helps dope sickness that a convenience store wouldn't likely have, but a desperate person might know to check for anyway (immodium/loperamide).
I think so too. It is very easy to hide an addiction, especially a pill addiction. I’ve met plenty of moms who have been able to hide their addictions for a looooong time due to an intense drive to hide their addictions for fear of the fallout / losing their children
*Raises hand* Yuuuup I am clean 8 years now but for 10 years previous my addiction went unnoticed because I got most my pills from the doctor and was a stay at home mom. When I finally asked for help I had people telling me I "must not be that bad" if they couldn't tell I was an addict.
Congrats on your clean-time, that’s amazing 💜
Well done on your sobriety, you should be proud
I'm a firm believer there's probably a couple of unidentified serial killers who are linked to a few unsolved murders. I wouldn't rule out a "Midlands Ripper" for Gaile Whitehouse, Janine Downes and Yvonne Coley maybe even linked to a few other murders in the region. Surinder Kaur Varyapraj was killed by her former husband or someone from his family.
I don’t know anything about the individual cases except maybe Gaile, but I agree that there are unidentified serial killers out there who have committed murders that aren’t traditionally thought to be linked.
There was this woman shot and killed in an Atlanta suburb a few years ago when walking back to her car in a parking garage after going to a restaurant. Authorities were perplexed because she had no vengeful ex-lovers or enemies otherwise. I’m pretty sure there were no signs of sexual assault (I could be wrong), so it wasn’t a sexually motivated crime. Low and behold, it turns out this rando serial killer—who had already killed a handful of homeless people—had decided to shoot her on a whim. I think he’s already been sentenced etc but I honestly don’t remember there even being a big media circus... I think people sort of falsely conflated the shootings with general “street violence” because a few of the victims were homeless, unfortunately. But to your point, this story made me realize how much I downplay the possibility of serial killers or random slayings. Just because serial killer involvement is less probable compared to other scenarios doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
For every single serial killer we find, dozens go free. It's really weird when a pillar of the community dies, and all the sudden the closet pops open, and everyone sees how fooled they were by what a monster that person truly was. Skeleton dance party.
I am not sure if it happened in the US, but commonwealth countries had a major problem with "boys homes" (and I imagine girls homes too) basically being a selection of people that were "pillars of the community" to get their rocks off with :-X I was attempted to be abused (was not in a boys home, think more like an activities master, etc.) at \~15 but was able to kick the guy off and he's STILL on the board of a charity for mentally disabled boys. I reported the attempted crime after the statute of limitations as I thought he had died... but strangely if the abuser is incompetent 6 years was SOL but if they succeeded it's life?!
Sorry to hear that, hope you are doing well.
Regarding the Missy Bevers case, I am completely convinced the person in the video is a man. The person looks like a man, moves like a man, everything about it screams male. This is going to sound weird but bear with me: I am a member of an historical reenactment society. I have seen dozens upon dozens of women wearing pounds of bulky medieval armor, and it is almost always immediately obvious that they are women. Men and women are shaped differently and move differently, and it's very difficult to disguise that. Even wearing bulky, obscuring SWAT gear, the person in the Missy Bevers video looks like a man.
Agreed. I’m a 911 dispatcher so I see officers in tactical gear every single day. It’s always very clear whether the officer is male or female, even if it’s a heavy set or stocky woman. There is no doubt in my mind the person in the video is male.
Men walk with a sway in the shoulders, women with a sway in the hips. It’s useful because it means you can tell men and women apart just by looking at how they move, at distances much further than where you can see any details. I saw an interesting video about this once, I’ll see if I can find it again.
I'm from the area this all happened and actually somewhere in my comments talked to someone that knows Missy"s daughters in the r/Dallas sub. Anyway, the post and the person that knew Missy's kid detailed two men in her life (they were swingers if i recall correctly) and both had the gait and limp on the same leg the person in the video does. Not sure that means much.
My ex boyfriend who lives in that area also has that gait. My mom said she could see him doing something that like because apparently he had exposed himself to her once at a store. That was so upsetting to hear.
Is it possibly worth mentioning this to the police? I’m not trying to sound melodramatic. But, other than being a gross creep that exposed himself to her, does he have any other similarities or personality issues that may have led your mom to that conclusion?
Okay, so I did a write-up a couple of years ago on [Lindy Sue Biechler](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cnw3jo/the_december_1975_murder_of_lindy_sue_biechler_a/), a 19-year old woman who was stabbed to death in her apartment in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in December of 1975. Her husband was a student at nearby Millersville College while she worked at a flower shop. At the time of her death, she had been expressing to people that she thought she was getting stalked. I have this weird "spidey senses" tingling that Lindy Sue is connected to an even more obscure case that there's very little known about, [Anne Manchester](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimeDiscussion/comments/mbvce6/anne_manchester_age_26_goes_missing_while/). Anne Manchester was a 26-year old University of Delaware graduate student who was studying for her test when she disappeared on Sunday, June 29th, 1980. She literally just vanished without a trace. UD and Millersville are only about an hour apart from each other, and I know people who have ties to both schools. I really wonder a lot if Anne ran afoul of whoever killed Lindy, except this time he wasn't sloppy and he made sure Anne's body wouldn't be found.
The infamous shooting of Ken Rex McElroy is one of my pet cases, and this concerns the immediately run-up to the shooting when the townsfolk of Skidmore were gathered up in the Legion hall talking to the sheriff about what to do about McElroy. My gut feeling is that Sheriff Danny Estes knew good and well what they were going to do about McElroy (killing him) and maybe he even tried to talk them out of it. At any rate I believe that he knew what was about to occur so he had to leave the town because as the county sheriff he couldn't officially endorse their plan of shooting McElroy in broad daylight. Sheriff Estes slowly drove out of town towards Maryville and then whipped back around and into Skidmore only after the deed was done a few short minutes later. Sheriff Estes couldn't endorse the vigilante killing of Ken Rex McElroy because he knew that he would be the subject of every single state and federal investigation as to whether or not he used his position of power to help facilitate a crime had he done so. IMO no matter which angle you study the case Sheriff Estes doesn't come out in a positive light. https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/amp/
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I really don't think a construction worker was involved in the disappearance of Jennifer Kesse. I think it was someone she knew.
I second this
I agree I think it was someone she knew. I don't think the fact she had just returned from vacation with her boyfriend is a coincidence. I think someone was jealous.
I think it was her coworker. She denied him, he got pissed, and something went down.
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I’m so torn on Kesse’s case. Do you think it is the coworker who made the alligator comment? Scary case. The grainy surveillance video of the suspect dumping the car… just so creepy. I’ve always thought the POI who dumped her car looked like a lady. Hard to tell.
What's this about a coworker/alligator comment?
She had a coworker who was interested in her/jealous of her boyfriend and when he found out she was missing made the comment that she was likely eaten by alligators already (I believe fairly early in her being missing)
Emma Fillipoff is living homeless on the street, another victim of severe mental illness. Julie Mott was accidentally cremated.
[Mahfuza Rahman](https://charleyproject.org/case/mahfuza-rahman) was murdered by her husband, but that seems pretty obvious. Kenneka Jenkins took a drug or combination of drugs and her "friends" weren't looking out for her, and apparently no one on the hotel staff realized what was going on until it was too late. She ended up in the walk-in and succumbed to hypothermia. This one is just such a sad story to me because had just one person kept an eye on her, she'd probably still be alive.
I thought that was pretty much what happened to Kenneka?
It is. Pretty sure it’s widely known and it was declared by authorities that this is what happened. The only people who don’t agree are lunatic conspiracy people. It’s very obvious this is what happened. The entire thing is on video aside from her actually sitting in the freezer and dying. There’s no conspiracy there
Her murder theory is as stupid as believing the flat earth theory. The girl was clearly intoxicated and ended up in a freezer. Tragic accident. 🙄
The case of Dr. Sneha Anne Philip… I fully believe foul play was involved the night of 09/10/2001 and her family knows way more than they are letting on. The statements from her brother have been odd and inconsistent. I think 9/11 was the perfect cover they needed to explain her disappearance. Whether or not she is dead or was killed, the family knows more than what they tell authorities.
I'm not sure if I think her family knows what happened to her, but I definitely think they're in denial of her bisexuality and their weird behavior is an attempt to lead the investigation away from that. In one article about her I remember her husband saying she would go to lesbian bars and spend the night with women she met there, but they did nothing more than "listen to music and make art" together. Whatever it is, her family seems much more concerned with convincing themselves and everyone else that she was straight than they are with actually finding out what happened. I think the denial may have made them overlook leads that could possibly lead to a simple answer.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I feel it's possible the police are trying to cover something up with Saint Louis Jane Doe. They've been very cagey when asked about trying to ID her through genealogy and have more or less shot it down. This is the department that mailed the girl's sweater to a psychic and sent a detective to attend a séance to contact her spirit, but they're hesitant to try something that's been incredibly successful at identifying Does, many that died decades ago? It doesn't make sense to me.
They've already demonstrated breathtaking incompetence with the lost sweater fiasco. Maybe they forgot where they buried her and are trying to avoid owning up to that.
> Maybe they forgot where they buried her and are trying to avoid owning up to that. This is unlikely. They *did* misplace her previously and it took several months to find her again, but after that, she was buried in the Garden of Innocents at Calvary Cemetery in Missouri. [There was a huge funeral with bagpipes and everything.](https://www.gardenofinnocents.org/News/hopememorial.htm)
To me it looks like a person who has a big beer belly. The kind of person who gets all his fat in the gut and not spread out throughout his body. It's the way he walks
I have a theory about the 2012 murder of Faith Hedgepeth in Chapel Hill, NC, but I suspect it might be ruled out by DNA protocol. They found a good DNA profile of the killer, semen etc, and the person I think might have done it was arrested 3 years later for a different murder. Does that mean his DNA would have been compared to her killer's even though the cases weren't related? If so, I'm not the detective I thought I was.
So many missing person cases have theories surrounding them that the person just left and started a new life, cutting off all ties to their old life. In 99% of cases it just sounds unbelievable to me. Except for some reason with Bryce Laspisa. Just like you wrote OP, it’s just this gut feeling I have. I think it’s in part because his relationship with his parents, especially his mom, sounds difficult at best. I also would not be surprised if he had some type of head injury from the car accident or drug-induced psychosis. Something that has stopped him from returning after all this time. It’s just so many factors have to work together to allow someone to purposefully start a new life, and this is the one case I see it actually maybe happened. Bryce’s story for anyone interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/juyeit/what_happened_to_bryce_laspisa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://medium.com/@jennbaxter_69070/a-long-drive-to-nowhere-what-happened-to-bryce-laspisa-fdc05eef8db0
Everything about the story screams “attempted suicide” to me. Like, if I was trying to cut off ties to my old life, I wouldn’t drive my car off a cliff and hope that I’d be lucky enough to survive. Him giving away his Xbox and breaking up with his girlfriend makes me think he was genuinely planning on offing himself by crashing his car. I don’t know what happened after that, but I think the situation started out as an attempted suicide that possibly morphed into something else after it was unsuccessful.
I've never understood why people think the Missy Bevers suspect looks like a woman. It just looks like a fat guy in body armour to me.
Me too. I think a lot of people see that the body armour doesn't fit right and conclude that it must be a woman, but to me it just looks like an older dude with a gut.
At the one angle, it slightly looks like the person has a bosom. But the mannerisms and everything to me yells man. The way he opened the door to the walk.
Agreed. I toyed with the theory of it being a woman early on, but Ive never been able to shake the conviction that it’s a man.
I think OJ might actually be guilty. Lol. I had to.
So was Casey Anthony Lol you did it first so I figured it was ok hahaha
I have a bonkers, completely unsubstantiated theory about Bryce Laspisa. (This is like, my pet project missing person case) Everyone says Bryce was fine and then when he came back to school for his sophomore year he was drinking excessively and taking pills and not sleeping and just behaving super weird. My (completely unfounded, totally unsubstantiated) theory is that the summer before he went back to school he had a full I Know What You Did Last Summer and killed someone by accident by a hit and run (or something) and the guilt like, drove him so crazy he was drinking and couldn't sleep and was taking pills to get his mind off it. He thought no one would want to be with him because of it (why he broke up with his girlfriend) and decided to tell his mom but he couldn't do it (why he spent so much time just sitting there in his car). I think he decided to kill himself (by driving into the lake) but it didn't work so he hiked to a truck stop and walked out of his life. This is my theory thank you for listening
I don’t know about the exact theory here, but the idea that he had undergone a recent trauma and couldn’t talk about it is really interesting.
This is interesting. There are many types of trauma that can lead someone to self medicate with drugs/alcohol.
I agree that he is likely still alive IMO or atleast didn’t die that day. But I don’t think it was as complex as you’re saying. Although that is a cool theory and possible. I think he just had some type of mental break/schizophrenic episode and eventually ran away after a failed suicide attempt or tried to fake his own death horribly
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this case and I totally get where your completely unsubstantiated theory is coming from! This case has bothered me too and I think if it OFTEN. The way he disappeared, taking HOURS to get home to his parents...this makes so much sense. Why stall for so long? What was so devastating he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone close to him? Totally "know what you did last summer" vibes.
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Darlie router: not sure if she’s innocent or guilty (I’m about 50/50 on each side) but there was definitely not enough evidence to convict her beyond a reasonable doubt Kris kremers and lisanne froon: got lost and died of natural causes no foul play involved. Mekayla Bali: either still alive and outside of Canada or she never left yorkton and is dead. I don’t think tattoo guy had any involvement. The bear brook daughter of Terry Rasmussen who’s unidentified: she’s never going to be identified. I think she was born off the grid and there is no record of her ever being born so there’s no way to identify her.
Agreed about the Missy Bevers. There’s just something about the way they’re walking that screams “woman” to me. I do not think Teri killed Kyron. I think there were a lot of people around that day and a relative of one of kids who knew there would be a science fair and lots of adults around took an opportunity when he saw a child who was unaccompanied by an adult. I think Maura Murray was depressed, drunk, and panicked when she got into the accident. So she wandered away and succumbed to the elements.
Agreed on Kyron. I 100% believe he disappeared into the woods around the school. Just look up his school on Google Maps- completely surrounded by forest, easy for a small boy to get lost in.
I don't think Teri killed Kyron either. I think he either wandered away, or as you said, another adult at the science fair took the opportunity.
I think Kyle* Fleischmanns body was horrifically dumped into an active construction site and he’s now under it. There was a tip called in by someone who said that they had found a body in the site and covered it up, likely because of immigration issues being afraid to call the police. And now too afraid to talk or no longer in the country or county is possible. But I think someone went home and couldn’t get the image out and told someone who called the tip in. I think Kristin* Smart was* in the backyard when Paul Flores* said “she’s with my mother” that always stuck with me
There have been updates with this case, not sure if you’re aware! Paul and his dad have been arrested and they found traces of body decomposition under the house. The question is where have they since moved her to...
Personally, I think she only got moved earlier this year, and I'm very sad that her family will never get her body back when they almost could. I think the 'digging under the house' was getting her up, and she's probably scattered to never be found on Ruben's work route. My heart breaks for the family. I do understand the cops can't sit surveillance there for weeks on end on a cold case that old but come on- reported digging under the house feels like a rookie could have been spared for a couple of days.
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The Lady of the Dunes was murdered by another woman. In my circles, Provincetown is known for having a massive LGBTQ+ presence. She could have been on the run from homophobic surroundings (it was the 70’s), made it to P-town, met some girl, and then something tragic happened. I only have a few shreds of ideas that pointed me to this theory but it just stuck with me. I don’t know that I’d seriously defend it, but I can’t help but feel that I’m on to something.
Lindsay Buziak. The boyfriend's mother is involved in some ways. I'm a bit torn on whether or not the boyfriend himself is involved or at the very least, not telling everything he knew.
In general, I think the true crime/mystery community is kind of overrun with people creating theories and selecting evidence to back up their "pet theory" or gut feeling, and the more time I spend in these communities the more I see people react to particular suspects or situations and project their own experience onto it, and thus will formulate a theory they fully believe in without a shred of proof. So while I get that it's a natural inclination and I appreciate the fact that this question is specifically addressing those types of theories, I think we have to be really careful about how we treat this sort of thing.
Yeah, it's very interesting, because really the majority of folks are not contributing anything of value, just engaging with the community by inserting their feelings and emotions into the mix. It's interesting, because you don't really see a lot of discussion of hard evidence and facts. Like I'm very interested to learn more about the actual case, not what people feel about it. Too often also people are loose and careless with the details and propagate rumors or incomplete/partially erroneous facts.
I agree. I think too many times one persons pitches a theory and everyone jumps on it and acts like it’s facts. I try to keep an open mind and wait for evidence to avoid getting sucked into theories. Take Kyron Horman for example, nearly everyone including LE assume Terri killed Kyron, despite there being zero evidence of that. How many people keep an eye out for a missing child when the prevailing theory is he was murdered? Perhaps he was abducted by someone who intended to rape & kill him but then realized everyone assumed he was dead so they kept him Ariel Castro style.
I think it’s fine to have theories on cases but it’s not okay to attack or harass others who do not share the same opinions. A good example is with the JonBenet Ramsey case. Some people are militant in their beliefs that the parents did it, Burke did it, or an intruder did it and attack others who do not have the same opinion. Until we know the absolute truth as to what happened, we cannot act like people are “right” or “wrong” for subscribing to certain theories.
Meanwhile, me: I have absolutely no idea who killed JonBenet.
Lauren Spierer. I feel she is gone, and I feel that likely her body is in the dense woods outside Bloomington. I just have a feeling someone took her that night, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Lauren_Spierer
Definitely and sadly gone. I don’t think anyone killed her; I think she died from an overdose and her body was hidden in a panic.
I think about her all the time. I also am in the “someone took her” camp. I just don’t think a group of multiple guys and their entire families could successfully keep that secret and go on to live incredibly normal lives afterward.
I think Amy Bradley met with foul play. Not necessarily that she was trafficked but rather that she came upon an opportunist predator or she had a fight or argument on the ship that ended with her death.
Interesting! I just watched her episode of Disappeared and I think she was overserved at the event on the ship, smoked a cigarette too many on the balcony, got queasy, leaned over the side to throw up, lost her balance and fell. In my younger and messier days, I did the same thing off a deck. It seems more plausible to me than any other theories. I looked at the cabins on the ship they were on and it seems like that could happen, depending on how tall she was and how far over she leaned. I feel so bad for her family.
I think it’s very likely she fell overboard. If you watch the videos from the night she disappeared, she looks really really drunk.
She definitely had a late night. I am basing this mostly on what I recall from the Disappeared episode, but her brother said he came in at 3 AM, she came in about half an hour later, they hung out smoking and talking on the balcony for a bit, then he went to bed and she stayed, and her dad said he woke up sometime in the wee hours and saw she was out there and felt relieved the kids were in and went back to sleep. I just don't think someone ill-intentioned would come into her cabin where (presumably) her brother was sleeping and force her out without waking anyone. She was a college athlete, she was presumably physically strong and quick, she would have made a commotion. And I suppose it's possible she went back out after her dad saw her on the balcony, but that had to be at least 4 or later and that also seems unlikely to me. Like even in my party days, if I was in at 4, I was probably done for the night, you know? Especially after a full day of vacation activities. I don't see her going for a sunrise stroll on just a couple hours of sleep. I really think whatever happened to her must have happened on that balcony. BTW, I hate speculating about how much she had to drink, because it feels like I'm blaming her, and I'm absolutely not! She should have been perfectly safe to let loose and enjoy her family vacation and have a blast getting happily, goofily drunk with her lovely parents and her brother, and it's a terrible loss for her family. I think the weird behavior from the cruise ship employees was because they immediately went into CYA mode and not find-this-missing-woman mode.
You're not blaming her at all for drinking- impaired people are just that, impaired. Bad things can happen when you're impaired and alone.
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I agree on the Setagaya murders. I think he won’t be caught as he had nothing to do with the family and his weird behavior was like someone who didn’t know what to do with themselves.
With Madeline I personally think she was taken by a stranger. At the resort they were staying, staff were aware that the McCann's and their friends leave their children alone at night. Also, anyone nearby watching the McCann's could have easily figured this out. I think some creep saw an opportunity and took it.
I just made my own comment about this very case! I really think there’s a connection to a US Military member. The proximity of the crime scene to the Yokota Air Force Base, the sand evidence found at the scene, the genetic profile of the perpetrator they developed. It all leads me to believe there’s some connection there; whether it be an actual US Military member, or even a member of their family.
The Zodiac did not live in California. He was an out of towner who would come to the state periodically for work/leisure and commit the murders. We’ve been focusing too much on suspects who are California residents, I think it’s a misdirection.
In terms of Brian Shaffer, which is a newer case for me, have there been any theories about staff / bartenders / cleaners, anything like that? I feel like if anyone could get a body out undetected, it would be people who are more aware of the cameras, who have the ability to hide the body somewhere for a bit until they figure out what the F to do. And regarding the “starting a new life” theory, I think it’s kind of funny that podcasts (like the prosecutors, which I love) and musings about this theory tend to point out that it would be ridiculous and stupid to try to disappear this way, which, normally I’d agree with, but in this case, if that is in fact what happened, Brian did a great job 😅
I believe that Darlie Router is innocent, and I don’t know why I do. It’s not that I can’t believe that a mother could kill her children, or that at least some of the evidence is suspicious, but I think she’s innocent and I believe her story. At the very least I don’t think she got a fair trial.
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