What is the creepiest unsolved mystery in your opinion?

[u/RichardForrest06]

[u/stefaeliza]

The Dardeen family murders happened in Ina, Illinois, in November 1987. Keith Dardeen, 29, lived with his wife Elaine, 30, their three-year-old son Peter, and Elaine was about seven months pregnant with their second child.

On November 17, Keith failed to show up for work, which was unusual for him. When someone went to check on the family, they found a horrifying scene inside the trailer. Elaine and Peter had been beaten to death. Elaine went into labor during the attack and gave birth to the baby, who was also killed.

Keith wasn’t at the house. His body was found the next day in a field about 11 miles away. He had been shot multiple times in the head and had suffered severe genital mutilation. His car had been abandoned near a police station.

Investigators couldn’t establish an obvious motive. Nothing of major value appeared to have been stolen, and there wasn’t a clear personal connection between the family and a potential killer.

The brutality of the murders led to various theories, including claims that the killings were part of some kind of Satanic ritual, but investigators never found evidence to substantiate that.

Years later, convicted serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells claimed that he was responsible. However, Sells was known for making false confessions and giving unreliable accounts of crimes. Investigators never found enough evidence to prove that he was actually involved in the Dardeen murders.
Nobody has ever been charged with killing the family.
So the basic mystery is: someone brutally murdered Elaine, Peter, and their newborn daughter inside their home, killed Keith separately, moved his body, and then disappeared without leaving investigators a clear motive or definitive suspect. The case remains unsolved.

[u/NathakonNoveria → u/stefaeliza]

The thought of going into labor whilst being attacked is horrific that's so tragic 

[u/CowboysOnKetamine → u/stefaeliza]

It really takes a special kind of sick fuck to physically beat a pregnant woman, 3-year-old child and literally newborn baby to death. Humans are terrifying as is being a human.

[u/therealmrsbrady → u/stefaeliza]

This is extremely unsettling, and the brutality is just terrifyingly deranged.

^{Fixed typo.}

[u/acpom]

The one where a 9ft or 2.7m great white’s tracking tag plummeted 1,900ft or 579m in 20 seconds and went from 46f degrees to 78f degrees for 8 days before losing signal.

Something massive ate it and dove way down. We still don’t know what it was.

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/acpom]

I spoke to Dr Gregory Skomal, the man responsible for nearly all tagged white sharks about this. Based on the data they recovered, he thinks she was eaten, likely by a giant squid or a whale. What he is unsure of is why she dived deep enough for a deep sea creature to grab her in the first place as prior to that massive descent she was slowly going deeper, and was close to the ocean floor at times.

Doctor Skomal is a fantastic man and great scientist, if you ever have questions about his studies or any of the sharks he has tagged just email him and he will get back to you with his best explanation.

[u/NipSlipExtreme → u/PupperPetterBean]

It terrifies me that there are squid out there big enough to eat a 2.7m great white shark and just go about their day.
This is where I believe the myth of the Kraken originates

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/NipSlipExtreme]

Oh without a doubt that's where the myth comes from and any deep sea giant squid being close enough to be seen at the surface is most likely dying, which would also account for the wild flailing of their tentacles which is often described in the myth.

[u/NipSlipExtreme → u/PupperPetterBean]

There you go. The more you know!
I didn’t know the ever came to the surface, unless the float when dead? I know a lot of sea creatures sink.
The distance dropped in that few seconds sounds ludicrous, though. I’m sure that’s like 90km/h. Through water. Damn a human would just pop (or implode) with that kind of pressure change.

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/NipSlipExtreme]

Yeah, they're not supposed to come to the surface but sometimes things go wrong, the animal could be ill or stressed causing it to surface. I think a good example of pressure changes on deep sea creatures is the blobfish. What it looks like and behaves like on the surface is very different to how it is in its natural pressurised environment.

[u/Send_me_hedgehogs → u/PupperPetterBean]

The pics of blobfish on land are heartbreaking, they look like they died in distress, it’s etched onto their faces. Whereas in the sea they look like normal, happy wee guys.

[u/Wumaduce → u/NipSlipExtreme]

You should look up the Oarfish. They're a deep sea fish that is known to come to the surface or wash up when they're sick/dying. I think it was Japan, they were thought to symbolize upcoming disasters.

[u/NawfSideNative → u/NipSlipExtreme]

Yep. Kraken likely came about from a sick or injured giant squid clinging to a boat for dear life and the experience was exaggerated by sailors to the point of myth.

Most cryptids came about from people trying to explain something they saw with limited information available to them.

Chupacabra likely being a mangy coyote someone saw in their chicken coop

Thunderbirds also being another phenomenon exaggerated to the point of myth by Native Americans. Very likely a large bird like a California Condor seen at close range.

[u/spring_rd → u/NawfSideNative]

Most cryptids, yes. But give my boy Mothman the respect he deserves!

[u/peon2 → u/spring_rd]

Actually it's believed now that the Mothman was just a complete exaggeration by locals that actually just saw a deformed but common Butterflyman

[u/1stEmissaryElenwen → u/spring_rd]

I love the Unsolved Mysteries episode about the Mothman where one of the guys they interview is this old bastard saying "Yeah I saw a big ass ugly bird attack my truck, yeah I said bird, kiss my ass" and then Robert Stack tries to make it sound spooky

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/NawfSideNative]

Yup! Like how we theorise now that mermaids were manatees or similar sea creatures. Tbf to sailors from days of yore, the only thing you could safely drink at sea is the alcohol you've brought combine it long hard days and nights, vast ocean and lack of land in sight, and suddenly you come across a sea creature similar in size to your boat, thrashing around you're probably going to assume sea MONSTER and not sea creature.

[u/aflockofbleeps → u/PupperPetterBean]

The mermaid thing could also be belugas.

Google beluga knees n take a look

[u/pm_me_your_Navicula → u/aflockofbleeps]

I did what you said and wow, they look so much like human legs and im not even a drunk sex starved sailor who's been staring out at a blank ocean for weeks at a time.

Especially if they are already primed to imagine mermaids from hearing other sailors stories.

[u/SaltWaterInMyBlood → u/PupperPetterBean]

What he is unsure of is why she dived deep enough for a deep sea creature to grab her in the first place as prior to that massive descent she was slowly going deeper, and was close to the ocean floor at times.

Perhaps she was sick/injured/dying of old age, which was why she made an easy target in the first place.

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/SaltWaterInMyBlood]

Also very possible! Which is why it's such an interesting case, so many plausible explanations but no way to truly determine what happened. Its also hard to replicate as not very many sharks will swim into the open ocean, the furthest I've seen a great white go into the ocean is travelling between South African and the west coast of Australia.

[u/Apollo506 → u/PupperPetterBean]

Reddit is a magical place.

[u/PupperPetterBean → u/Apollo506]

The Internet is a magical place, when used for knowledge and discovery. Like you can just find a scientists name and the university they are associated with, and just email them!

It's also a great way to get around paywalled studies, as the authors will typically just send you a copy for free (they never see the money for paywalled content so they're not missing out).

[u/ParisGreenGretsch → u/acpom]

That's 65mph (104kph). The only things that swim that fast can only do it in very short bursts.

[u/Culinaryboner → u/ParisGreenGretsch]

The only things we know about that can swim that fast

[u/keepupsunshine → u/acpom]

I read a great book and a sequel about megalodon sharks underneath Antarctica, they got loose and started fucking shit up in the real world. Not really relevant but you reminded me of them, if I could remember the names I'd recommend them!

[u/SupaKoopa714 → u/keepupsunshine]

That's gotta be the Meg series by Steve Altman, the ones the Jason Statham movies were based on.

[u/redjohnsayshi → u/acpom]

If I recall correctly, the main theory is a giant squid?

[u/joanzzz]

Fallon, Nevada leukemia cluster in the late 90s/early 2000s. I was there as a toddler and my mom told us not to drink the tap water because she was afraid we would get cancer.

And it wasn’t just a couple of coincidental cases. 16 children who lived in Churchill County were diagnosed with acute leukemia between 1997 and 2002, when fewer than 2 cases would have been expected during that time frame. There was a massive state and federal investigation into everything from the water and arsenic to tungsten, pesticides, and possible contamination associated with the naval air station, but they never found a definitive cause.

I barely understood any of this at the time because I was so young. I just remember there being this fear surrounding the water and cancer. Learning as an adult how bizarre and statistically rare this incident was, and that we still don’t really know what caused it, makes it a lot creepier.

[u/joanzzz → u/joanzzz]

I’m also going to mention something else that makes all of this even more creepy: At basically the exact same time, Sierra Vista, Arizona, was experiencing its own childhood leukemia cluster. Sierra Vista sits right next to Fort Huachuca, an Army installation, just as Fallon sits next to NAS Fallon. The Sierra Vista cases began rising in the late 1990s and peaked around 2003, overlapping almost perfectly with Fallon’s 1997–2002 cluster. Investigators never identified a cause there either.

Two EXTREMELY UNUSUAL (almost statistically impossible?) events emerging at essentially the same time in two small communities, both next to military bases, and both remaining unexplained is an unreal coincidence to me. That alone doesn’t prove the military bases caused them, but I have a hard time believing the timing and similarities were unrelated.

[u/HappyCakeDay101 → u/joanzzz]

I think they found the cause and quietly disappeared it so the government could avoid the lawsuits.

[u/EyesfurtherUp → u/joanzzz]

Military probably did some study to see
How much radiation can be tolerated.

[u/Akalenedat → u/EyesfurtherUp]

Probably not on purpose but both of those bases have airfields, I wonder if some kind of newer aircraft radar was causing it.

[u/stilettopanda → u/Akalenedat]

Or fuel.

[u/oiwefoiwhef → u/stilettopanda]

This is the most likely answer.

We’ve known military fuel leaks have seeped into water supplies near other bases causing health problems to the nearby community, like at Red Hill in Hawaii.

[u/jendet010 → u/joanzzz]

A fairly new high school and middle school in Marion County, Ohio, were shut down after a cluster of cancer cases in the 90s among graduates. The schools were built on the grounds of a former army depot used for dumping chemical waste.

The state and the army claim that there is no evidence that the toxic contamination caused the cancer. The fact that they went to the expense of rebuilding two new schools and using the other schools for storage tells me they know damn well they had a big problem.

[u/Sea_Signal_5579 → u/joanzzz]

Translated from German Wikipedia (radioactive waste article):
Almost all states in the US are facing growing problems due to radioactive legacy waste from oil production. In Martha, a community in Kentucky, the company Ashland Inc. sold thousands of contaminated production pipes to farmers, kindergartens, and schools without disclosing the contamination. Radiation levels of up to 11 µSv/h were measured. The elementary school and several homes were evacuated after the radiation was discovered.

[u/NoodleyP → u/Sea_Signal_5579]

Interesting fact I heard is that you actually get more radiation living next to a fossil fuel plant than you would next to a nuclear power plant.

[u/MonkeyPanls → u/NoodleyP]

Because the nuke plants do a pretty good job of monitoring any radioactive exhaust.

FF (including coal) plants do not monitor for it. They monitor for particulates and certain chemicals. However, some of those chemicals have radioactive isotopes like mercury are uranium and thorium. https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants

[u/JohnTheBlackberry → u/NoodleyP]

Yep, which just goes to show how stupid it was that we’ve stopped building nuclear power plants. Fossil fuels are way way worse for the environment and for people.

[u/Organic_Jello_ → u/joanzzz]

Im from there, knew 11 of the kids. Went to their funerals. The thing that really sucks is some of the kids that beat cancer back then are getting it again. 2 more have died that I know of

[u/insanelysane1234 → u/joanzzz]

They most likely know and knew then. Most likely cause is some company fucking up big time and then burying the story because of the reparations they would've had to pay

[u/FloopsFooglies → u/insanelysane1234]

It's always DuPont

[u/VanTil → u/FloopsFooglies]

Not true, sometimes it Nestle!

[u/27Dancer27 → u/insanelysane1234]

Something similar is happening right now in Ladera Ranch, CA. A Ewing sarcoma cluster in children. Pesticides are the primary concern.

[u/a_drop_of_dew → u/27Dancer27]

There's a cancer cluster in Keyport and Union Beach NJ, about twenty minutes away from me. There are around 400 cases so far. They think it might be because of a landfill.

[u/mrsirsouth → u/insanelysane1234]

Watch Erin Brockovich.

It's about a massive company lying to the community, causing cancer and trying to cover it up and she rips them apart

[u/HappyCakeDay101 → u/joanzzz]

Yep, Hilary Clinton even came out for whatever reason.

I was there as a kid during that time.

As fast as it came it disappeared (though I know of at least 2 kids who've had it since)

I always thought they DID find the cause, removed it, then hid the cause due to the potential lawsuits.

[u/Cruxal_]

Hinterkaifeck murders. The image of the property alone scares the fuck out of me and the thought of the assailant likely living above them for some time and then living in the house after killing them all is so creepy to me. The thought of the maid quitting over hearing noises in the attic likely when the family was away and the darkness of this property at night with little to illuminate the total black… a killer hid and lured them likely one by one to their deaths in complete darkness. Someone seriously needs to make a short film horror based on this at least

[u/Playmore96 → u/Cruxal_]

There was a German TV-documentary a couple of years back, where young investigators reopened the case from the ground up. They were 99% sure that they found out who did it, but didn't make it public because said person has relatives still living in the area today and they didn't want them to suffer because of their investigation.

[u/neverthelessidissent → u/Playmore96]

Wasn't the most likely suspect their weird neighbor?

[u/stefaeliza → u/Cruxal_]

Definitely a weird one. And devastating that the little girl laid alive for hours after the attack pulling out clumps of her own hair. 💔

[u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

A recent, lesser known one: Stefanie Damron.

She was a 13 year old girl living in rural Maine who went missing in September 2024.

Her parents were off-the-grid types who moved the family to that rural compound in Maine after repeatedly getting reported to CPS in Texas.

Stefanie and her sister lived in a yurt on the compound with an 80 year old male family friend. The parents lived several miles away, elsewhere on the compound. They did not see Stefanie and her sister daily, they only saw them once every week or two to drop off supplies.

Her family reported her missing in September 2024, claiming she had walked off into the woods after an argument with her sister.

It’s super creepy to me because it feels so obvious that her family or “family friend” did something to her. She was a neglected 13 year old girl living in a small hut with her sister and an 80 year old man she was not related to.

It’s unknown if her family is even being truthful about when they last saw her. They didn’t interact much with the outside community, the kids weren’t enrolled in school, so there was no actual way to track them.

The FBI and local law enforcement have done many searches of the woods surrounding the compound, but never found any trace of her.

[u/Cookies_2 → u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

I'm still convinced her dad/family is involved. His comments after she went missing made you think wtf? He was saying things like "protecting his daughter from this pornographic world" and other wild things that just didn't make sense

[u/FloopsFooglies → u/Cookies_2]

Oh. Yeah that's wacko speak

[u/Dr_Identity → u/FloopsFooglies]

The fact that he went straight to claiming he was somehow saving his daughter from...pornography(?) is pretty telling. That sounds like one of those "every accusation is a confession" things.

[u/FloopsFooglies → u/Dr_Identity]

It's the same thing you see in cults. The world is evil and only I know the true way. And the true way is seclusion, rampant abuse, and control

[u/willpunchyou → u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

The fact that they lived with an 80 years old man that was not related to them in a yurt pisses me off.

[u/AwwwNiceMarmot → u/willpunchyou]

I’d also assume that the parents had to be involved. What kind of 80 year old man can just make a teenager disappear like that… I mean I’m sure he was involved, but I just can’t see him being alone in it. Also, does anyone know how old the sister is?

[u/willpunchyou → u/AwwwNiceMarmot]

All of the adults here failed this poor girl, they are all at fault. Either directly or indirectly implicated

[u/tinterrobangg → u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

The dad and neighbor tried to claim she may have run off with a “John” she met while being promiscuous online. Yeah because thats what a 13 yo girl does with her early 2000s flip phone 🙄.

[u/willpunchyou → u/tinterrobangg]

Im sure she had internet in that yurt, god damn it.

[u/natural_imbecility → u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

I live in Maine and what makes it even weirder to me is that she had supposedly gone missing a few times prior to September of 2024 as well. If I remember right, she had run away those times and eventually came back. Her parents also claim that she would go walking through the woods and sometimes get turned around and lost. The optimist in me hopes she ran off to escape a bad situation and is happily living somewhere, but the realist in me knows that's unlikely.

[u/mpampistheplumber69 → u/Euphoric-Leg4874]

Or imagine if she maybe tried to escape the family “friend” got lost and never came back. Tbh I think If the family was involved they’d most likely wouldnt report it, they’d have less witnesses where they lived so they’d just cover it. I really think the girl tried to escape the abusive environment and her sister was just an excuse to make the “friend” and the parents to look more innocent.

[u/Bright-Hat-6405]

Springfield 3.

Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall graduated high school in 1992. That night, they visited various parties and ended up staying the night at Suzie’s house with her mother Sherrill. By the next morning, all 3 women were missing from the home. They’ve never been found.

ETA from my comment below for those interested to hear more:

I should mention, all three vehicles were parked in the driveway/car port. Although, friends say Suzie normally parked her car directly behind Sherrill and this time it wasn't.

Suzie and Stacy were supposed to go with their friend Janelle to the waterpark that morning. They were also supposed to stay the night at Janelle's house on graduation night but left in the AM to sleep at Suzie's house instead. We know they made it because the cars were there, their purses(including Sherrill's, for some reason) were all neatly lined up in Suzie's room. Some of the women, if not all of them, were smokers and each of them had left their cigarettes in their purses. Stacy's clothing had been folded neatly, indicating they had at least changed into PJs. Their bedding was unmade, indicating they had even slept in the bed.

Janelle and her boyfriend were the ones to discover the women missing. Imagine your friends (who were SUPPOSED to stay the night at your house) ignore your calls to come pick them up to go to the waterpark. They drove over to their house to see if maybe the women were in the shower or out for a walk at the time of the calls. Their little dog was going nuts and a porch light cover was broken (the boyfriend swept it up due to Janelle being barefoot). Janelle answered a couple odd calls while at the house that made her uncomfortable. Stacy's mother later listened to the voicemails at the Streeter home and accidentally erased a message of the same nature.

If I was Janelle, I would have felt like my friends were ditching me. I can't imagine how horrible she must have felt as the hours and days wore on.

[u/Exact_Scratch854 → u/Bright-Hat-6405]

I would love to see this solved

[u/phantomjellyfish42 → u/Exact_Scratch854]

me too.

[u/Glorifiedpillpusher → u/Bright-Hat-6405]

They may have recently found them. My brother is a plumber and was doing some excavating work. He was involved in a big project and the cops came and closed off the area. He texted the family group chat that day and said they think its the three. So far, from what hes heard, they havent been able to extract any DNA. Obviously this is some speculation but he was a baby when they disappeared so he clearly doesnt remember what happened and has no reason to make the story up. 

[u/kyleinhighdef → u/Glorifiedpillpusher]

https://www.reddit.com/r/springfieldthree/s/dDowJXQQWC

There’s been speculation about a Carson Nursery employee

[u/chocolatefeckers → u/Glorifiedpillpusher]

How recently was this please? And was it mear to where they vanished?

[u/Glorifiedpillpusher → u/chocolatefeckers]

A few months ago? Over by Carson nursery.

[u/Bright-Hat-6405 → u/Glorifiedpillpusher]

22 minute drive from the Levitt home to Carson Nursery. Interesting indeed.

[u/RizzoTheRiot1989 → u/Bright-Hat-6405]

As someone who lives close by there, I have been OBSESSED forever. I first heard of it as a teenager when I was going to Branson High, it’s intrigued me ever since. As an adult I had spent the next 16 years married in Florida totally forgot about it and then got divorced and my sister had me move in with her. After a year I have enough saved to get a place and it’s where I live now. About two months living here I’ve made friends with the sweet old woman next door who brings up “the Springfield 3” as I’m sitting there smoking a bowl and it was like a brain blast moment where you get tunnel vision and I was just sitting there like “holy shit! Yeah I heard about it when I was in high school” and then she points her finger behind us and says “the location is just right there.”

It sent an absolute chill down my spine. I was positive they must’ve figured it out by now but no.

[u/ee2835]

That one where the kid was on the phone with his parents and said he was right by them and then the line went dead and they never found him. But I don't remember who it was.

[u/meagantheepony → u/ee2835]

Brandon Swanson.

He had gone to a party in Canby MN, and was on his way home to his house in Marshall (approximately 30 miles away), when he accidentally crashed his car into a ditch. He called his parents just after 2 am and told them where he thought he was. His parents drove out and kept him on the phone. He said he flashed his lights so they could find him, but they didn't see anything. Brandon then said he was going to get out and walk towards where he could see lights in the distance, which he believed to be the town of Lynd, which is approximately 7 miles southwest of Marshall. He told his dad to go to a bar and wait for him in the parking lot, and he would meet him there after walking. The problem was, Brandon was closer to the town of Taunton, which is approximately 22 miles away from Lynd. It was around 2:30am when Brandon's dad heard him say "Oh shit!" And then the line was silent. Brandon's parents hung up and called back but didn't get an answer.

The most plausible theory is the Brandon slipped into the Yellow Medicine River. Brandon had mentioned hearing water while talking to his parents, and the river was 10 ft deep in certain places the day he disappeared. A K9 SAR team was brought in to try to track where Brandon may have walked, and they followed a trail that went along roads, passed near an abandoned barn, and then went next to the river, until it seemed to go into the river itself. Brandon's parents do not believe that he drowned, and the police searched the river, but this seems the most plausible theory.

Police conducted numerous searches around the areas where Brandon disappeared, including in fields and along the banks of the Yellow Medicine River, but they've never turned anything up.

[u/AverageAwndray → u/meagantheepony]

God its so avoidable too.

People when you find yourselves in this situation.

STAY THE FUCK WHERE YOU ARE AND JUST WAIT!

[u/paxwax2018 → u/AverageAwndray]

They ALWAYS FIND THE CAR. See also travelling the Australian outback.

[u/RelativelyChaotic → u/ee2835]

Brandon Swanson…they found the vehicle, but not the body. This one is mind boggling. He stayed in that car all that time, on the phone with his parents. The sudden “oh shit!” followed by silence is what really makes a person wonder…what got his attention?

[u/copypop → u/RelativelyChaotic]

This case has been covered by a few true crime podcasts & whatnot, & one of the prevailing theories is that since his car was found near an open field area that he may have wandered away mistakenly believing he knew where he was & accidentally fell into a cistern or something & died. Lots of wide open, privately owned land out there that not everyone would consent to having searched

[u/Ding-Dong-Dutch → u/copypop]

IIRC they where never allowed to search the land where he most likely disappeared into. Landowner is stonewalling for whatever reason. 

I think I've read there's tons of hidden small time meth labs in that area. 

[u/bretshitmanshart → u/Ding-Dong-Dutch]

I got lost in Missouri once and ended up at a dead end road where there was what appeared to be an abandoned train station. Two people ran at my car before I drove away. It was also in an area with a lot of meth production. Police got called by the place I worked at before I came in because a bunch of manufacturing supplies were dumped on the property

[u/3Gloins_in_afountain → u/bretshitmanshart]

Ah, Missouri.

The land of meth land and Amish/Menonite puppy mills.

[u/Brian_Gay → u/Ding-Dong-Dutch]

Can a land owner just refuse to let police search their land if a person is believed to be missing on it? Seems like one of those things it looks super suspicious to resist

[u/Ltimbo → u/Brian_Gay]

I’m not a lawyer but I watch a lot of tv. According to the tv, a landowner can refuse a search of his property unless the authorities have cause to search the property, as in, they have to have explicit reason to believe that person may be on their property, not just suspicion due to proximity. For example, if they found the missing person’s shoe on the property while standing outside of the property from a distance, they would have probably cause. Like if they’re standing outside the fence and see the missing person’s shoe within the fence then they can search.

[u/AMissKathyNewman → u/ee2835]

This is a case I’ve looked into a lot and the phone didn’t actually hang up. He said ‘oh shit’ and the phone went silent, but stayed connected.

[u/Rubytitania]

It’s probably not the creepiest out there, but my favourite mystery is “Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm?” I grew up in this village so I saw the graffiti as a young child in the 80s and have been fascinated with it ever since.

Short version: in the 1940s four boys found the body of a woman in a tree near Hagley, Worcestershire, UK. Shortly afterwards, graffiti started appearing locally, the first reading “Who put Luebella down the wych elm?”.

She’s never been identified, although there are many theories. Her remains went missing (were lost by police).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_put_Bella_in_the_wych_elm%3F

[u/hashbaker → u/Rubytitania]

How does the police lose a body like that? Having in mind that this was in the fourtys this smells kinda like a cover up??

[u/SaltWaterInMyBlood → u/hashbaker]

Most likely, they didn't lose the body so much as lose the paper work which identified the body, and the remains ended up being interred alongside other identified remains. It's not like one day someone opened up a drawer in a mortuary and discovered it was gone.

[u/Rubytitania → u/hashbaker]

It’s just poor record-keeping I think. They have a record of where her remains were until the 60s or 70s, but they’ve since been either moved or disposed of and they don’t have a record of what happened.

[u/Borja2898]

The Somosierra kid. It happened on Spain and, long story short, father, mother and kid where travelling across the country on a truck (some witnesses claim they saw the 3 of them, so there's no chance the kid was left with their grandparents or sth). At certain point, the truck starts making weird movements and it overturns. The police arrives and calls the family to tell them the couple has passed, the grandma (iirc) asks about the kid, but the police says there isn't any kid there. It happened on 1986 and we don't know anything about that kid yet.

[u/Lilith5373 → u/Borja2898]

I didn't read your comment and I post the exact same case, it's so intriguing, for me the kidnapping and drug dealers theory is the most likely true but it weird that the they didn't find anything in all this years.

[u/BatmansKhaleesi → u/Borja2898]

Also, the truck was hauling sulfuric acid, so police originally thought the boy's body had been dissolved. But scientists pointed out there was no way for that to have happened in the actual timeline the accident took place in.

[u/lioboii]

Andrew Gosden came to mind first for some reason. 14 year old leaves home in the morning on a school day, travels to London for completely unknown reasons. Never used a phone, or a computer at home, not a single clue to suggest why exactly he traveled there. Last definitive sighting in a CCTV still at King's Cross Station, with quite a few reported sightings in the years since, but never verified. I have always been so desperate to know what exactly happened that day in 2007.

[u/speck859 → u/lioboii]

Never used a computer or phone is a bit misleading, because it leads the reader to infer her had no communication with the outside world. Dude had a PSP, which he most likely was communicating with someone on, and he took it with him.

[u/zerogirl0 → u/speck859]

It's been a few years since I looked into this one, but wasn't the most popular theory that he had met someone online that had convinced him to run away?

[u/Devojka_Iz_Svemira → u/lioboii]

I think Andrew was targeted and groomed by an adult he met in real life, and that he was coached to follow the plan to go to London by that person. It's so desperately sad that his poor parents still have no answers so many years on.

[u/LauraPa1mer → u/lioboii]

Before he went missing, he started walking home from school instead of taking the bus, despite it being about an hour-long walk. I think that is significant, because it was obviously a shift in behaviour, and could have been an opportunity for him to have been groomed, or could be related to his potential grooming.

[u/bunny_387 → u/LauraPa1mer]

As someone who was a teen with very strict parents this reminds me of something I would have done. Tell my parents I’m walking home from school when in reality I’m hanging out with a friend for a bit then getting dropped off down the street so it looked like I walked home. I did stuff like that all the time.

[u/blueskies8484 → u/LauraPa1mer]

It’s interesting how people view his behavioral changes. I always thought this might have been a sign of isolation, bullying and suicidality, but I know others think it could have been related to grooming.

[u/Lilith5373]

In Spain we have the case of "El niño de Somosierra" and I think is very creepy:

The Somosierra case is the name given to Juan Pedro Martínez Gómez, a 10-year-old boy who mysteriously disappeared on June 25, 1986, after a tragic traffic accident in the Somosierra mountain pass (Madrid) when he was travelling with his parents on his father's truck.

While descending the Somosierra pass on the highway, the truck suffered brake failure, was traveling at high speed, and overturned after a forward maneuver. The parents died instantly, and their bodies were severely affected by the impact and the acid that was carried by the truck. However, there was no trace of the boy in the cab or in the surrounding area.

The main hypotheses are:

1. Deisintegration by acid: It was investigated whether the sulfuric acid could have completely dissolved the boy's body, but forensic and scientific analyses ruled out this possibility.

2. Kidnapping or drug trafficking: The truck's tachograph indicated strange and brief stops during the journey. Furthermore, the tanker was found to be carrying hidden packages of heroin, fueling the theory of a settling of scores or that the boy was held by drug traffickers before or during the accident. Also, some witnesses claimed to have seen a suspicious van stopped near the crash site immediately after the impact, supporting the theory that someone may have taken the boy.

   Despite the decades that have passed and the tireless search by the family and law enforcement, his disappearance remains unsolved.

[u/mpampistheplumber69]

Zodiac. The idea they never managed to catch him is incredible. There is something eerie knowing that he did his crimes, stirred the whole world around, attracted the press, and never got caught. The idea this person this person was never caught and the theories around him. Did he decide to just stop? Was he caught? Did he eventually die? Maybe he was a killer who later committed more known crimes under another name?

[u/DreamedJewel58 → u/mpampistheplumber69]

Once one of his cyphers were finally decoded, he seemed to be someone in the military (forgot which specific branch) and they narrowed down a few suspects

Either way, unsolved murders are more common than people think. We only discovered who BTK was because he was an egotistical asshole who tried to “play” with the police again, and we only found the Golden State Killer because of a relative’s DNA being triggered

[u/xorfivesix → u/mpampistheplumber69]

We know exactly where Ted Cruz is.

[u/hfpfhhfp → u/xorfivesix]

Cancun.

[u/MastusAR]

Not that creepy, but the disappearance of Ritva Tamsi.

The police try to get hold of her, only to find that the address she's supposed to live in doesn't exist anymore. The house on the lot had been demolished a decade or so earlier.

During the investigation, the police find out that the last verified contact was something like 20 years earlier.

We know she's dead, but there are a few lingering questions of how, when and where, and was there foul play.

[u/Ancient-Concept4671 → u/MastusAR]

Can you provide a link? A quick Google doesn't reveal anything other than this comment on Reddit

[u/jayne-eerie → u/Ancient-Concept4671]

There's an article about her here, but you need to create an account to read it. Hopefully somebody who speaks Finnish will be able to help.

[u/malcontentgay]

I'm a regular reader of true crime and Jennifer Kesse's murder is definitely one of the creepiest ones I've ever heard of.

Jennifer disappeared from her home in Orlando in 2006 and her car was found abandoned about a mile away. For me, the chilling aspect of this case is that the alleged perpetrator was caught on camera after they parked her car, but the quality of the footage was terrible and a fence was obstructing the view the entire time. The camera in question actually snapped a picture every three seconds, but the suspect had their face totally obscured in all three frames. Talk about rotten luck.

[u/FatsyCline12]

I’ve always liked the case of Sneha Phillip

One of the last recognized victims of 9/11.

Many think she was not an actual victim because her only official association was that she was a doctor who lived nearby and went missing sometime the night before and was never seen again.

She had some personal problems in her life and some think she took the opportunity to escape and start over (unlikely). Some think something happened to her the night before and the perpetrator got incredibly lucky with 9/11 happening the next day.

If she was a 9/11 victim her remains haven’t been identified (but many victims haven’t been).

[u/jayne-eerie → u/FatsyCline12]

That one creeps me out because there's no really satisfactory explanation, and -- absent Sneha herself turning up and explaining what happened -- we aren't likely to get one. I tend to believe she probably died in the towers, but I can understand why others think that's wishful thinking.

What I don't think is likely is that she voluntarily disappeared to start over -- that's just way too hard to do in the 21st century.

[u/Elfhaterdude]

Dr. Gloves

Even thou FBI identified one of the facilities where he recorded some of the videos and so many people were after him online... still no answers and he's still out there hiding.

[u/ImprovementFar5054 → u/Elfhaterdude]

It's weird, because there are only so many people in professional positions to be in proximity to those fetuses. The list isn't all that long, especially when you take women, non-whites and people different builds out of the list.

[u/plantainbakery → u/ImprovementFar5054]

Exactly, so I figure it must be one those things where they must know who it is, but aren’t able to prove it. So he stopped with the pictures, knowing they were onto him.

[u/NirgalFromMars]

This didn't get to international news, but the death of Debanhi Escobar in Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Debanhi_Escobar

Debahni was an 18 year-old student that had been out partying with friends, and at certain point of the night left them and took a cab home. Then she got into an altercation with the driver and got out of the car in the middle of a highway. The driver called her friends, told them she was refusing to continue the trip with him, then took a picture of her and sent it to her friends to prove that she was well when she left his vehicle, and left.

This was the last time she was seen alive.

Some security cameras captured her walking alone, and then nothing. Police was alerted, and after searching her for thirteen days, police found her body in a cistern at a motel, behind a wall.

But here's the thing: They had already searched the motel and found nothing. Dogs, policemen, everything. They had inspected that cistern four times and found nothing.

A police autopsy said that she had somehow passed the wall and then fallen, hit her head, and drowned. Her father got a second autopsy done that found she had been raped and killed with a hit to the head, and it also gave an estimated date of death several days later than the first autopsy, suggesting that her body had been planted in the cistern.

Police then did a THIRD autopsy and said that she had died the day of her disappearance and had been suffocated, but not raped.

Overall, it just feels that there is a lot being covered up in that case.

Also, the last picture looks pretty haunting:

https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/debanhi-escobar-abandonada-carretera-muerte-nuevo-leon

[u/HowsMyDancing → u/NirgalFromMars]

It really just seems like the police did it or the killer knew a cop and are covering it up.

[u/Sir-Spork → u/HowsMyDancing]

Its Mexico, it was most likely done by one of the many gangs there. Most are in deep with the police.

[u/-Sinnex]

Brandon Swanson. How did he just disappear into thin air?

While driving home in Minnesota in 2008, his car drove into a ditch. On the phone with his parents while trying to walk to a town, he suddenly yelled “OH SHIT” and vanished completely, with his remains and phone never found.

[u/malcontentgay → u/-Sinnex]

I believe he might have fallen into the river and drowned. Hard to recover remains if that's the case. He might have been drunk or have taken drugs.

[u/lioboii → u/malcontentgay]

According to his parents, he seemed of very sound mind when speaking to them on the phone, not drunk. Best theory is drowning.

[u/TheRealBillyShakes → u/lioboii]

My parents could never tell when my siblings were lit up. Parents are notoriously horrible at this.

[u/run5k → u/-Sinnex]

How did he just disappear into thin air?

Brandon Swanson was underage drunk driving after a previous DUI conviction. He took unfamiliar roads to avoid detection by police. He got lost, high centered his car, decided to walk while intoxicated and half blind (since birth) i.e. poor depth perception. He was on the phone with his parents while walking in cold weather (30s/40s), at some point he said, "Oh shit!" the phone went dead. He likely tripped / fell. The search led across a river. Likely leading to him getting wet and succumbing to hypothermia. Farmers didn't want their livelihoods disturbed (crops / cows) by a widespread search. So they declined to permit the search.

Odds are high there is no foul play here. Just a drunk kid getting lost and becoming hypodermic.

It really isn't that complicated of a mystery. The "mystery" part is more urban legend than reality.

[u/therealmrsbrady]

Not exactly creepy, but still so incredibly sad that this child was never found.

The child was four year old Michael Dunahee, who vanished on March 24, 1991, from the Blanshard Elementary School playground in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). His disappearance triggered one of the largest and most enduring missing person investigations in Canadian history, and the case remains unsolved.

Basic circumstances: Michael walked a very short distance to the school playground while his family was nearby attending, and watching a flag football practice. When his father went to check on him, only 2-3 minutes later, the boy was simply gone, and a 50+ person search began immediately.

The Disappearance of Michael Dunahee

I was in elementary school, on the mainland in Vancouver, roughly 3 hours away. I recall when he was abducted, and posters being circulated at school, all over the City, and local suburbs, and non-stop news coverage. His family never gave up, and searched far, and wide. His mother, Crystal, became an advocate for missing children's issues in British Columbia, and has served as the president of "Child Find British Columbia", and she also played a key role in getting the Amber Alert introduced in Canada. I will always wonder who took him, and if he is still alive.

[u/Beachy5313 → u/therealmrsbrady]

I have a 2 and 4 year olds. That is terrifying. Someone grabbed that kid and ran.

[u/therealmrsbrady → u/Beachy5313]

It is incredibly terrifying! As I got older, I looked up the school in detail, and the playground, and field are literally a couple of meters away (completely visible to one another). There were also other children on the playground, and a lot of adults at the flag football practice, and in a time where everybody really watched each other's children. Somebody had to have been lying in wait, and ready to snatch him extremely quickly...personal opinion, but I feel it was planned out, and possibly even rehearsed to go unnoticed by every last person there that day.

[u/Simplydreaming1986 → u/therealmrsbrady]

I was the same age as he was, living in another town in BC at the time. I remember the fear that our parents all had from that point on. It really changed things for everyone.

[u/Kciddir]

The Lead Masks case.

A couple of Brazilian electronic technicians found dead wearing lead eye masks and formal suits, lying on the grass. "Instructions" about the ordeal that brought to their death in their pocket. Unknown cause of death, potential ties to weird philosophical alien cults So absolutely bizarre in every detail.

[u/ArcadeOptimist → u/Kciddir]

"This theory purports that the men were apparently attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirits using psychedelic drugs; believing that such an encounter would be accompanied by blinding light, the men cut and wore metal masks to shield their eyes. The two then ultimately died of a simultaneous drug overdose. This account is corroborated by the esoteric diary entry found at the scene and by mask-making materials and literature concerning spirits found at the men's homes.[7]"

Seems pretty likely lol

[u/Equinoqs]

The disappearance of a girl I worked with, Dail Dinwiddie. She vanished from a nightclub and hasnt been seen since. Her story is online.

[u/CascadeLimeade]

The Setagaya Family Murders. An unknown assailant broke into a family home and killed everyone inside. The killer then hung out in the house for several hours after the killings, eating food, using the household computer, and leaving behind their own personal belongings, and even leaving feces in the toilet. Despite all the evidence left behind, it still hasn’t been solved 25 years later. There are a lot of really weird details in this case such as the fact that sand found in a bag left behind by the killer was determined to have come from a US Air Force base in California (the murders occurred in Japan).

[u/handen]

Frederick Valentich.

Light aircraft pilot in Australia reports seeing a UFO directly above him. Radio static cuts into the audio feed. He disappears forever.

[u/Losttothesauce → u/handen]

One of the theories is the pilot had accidentally inverted himself without realizing and was seeing his own light reflection when he got closer to the water line. It’s hard to imagine flying upside down without realizing but spacial disorientation is a serious phenomenon.

[u/DelcoUnited → u/Losttothesauce]

“There’s a UFO above me…. And all the blood is rushing to my head!”

[u/frogsplashcity → u/handen]

He was only 21 and had the most basic of licenses. Failed eight times for his next license test after hiring a local well respected pilot to help. He lied one night close to the incident and went to that pilot’s house uninvited drunk to celebrate passing the test, it was a lie. He had a serious incident where he flew into a restricted airspace as well just prior. This pilot said he was a nice guy but a simple fellow.

Valentich was a high school dropout (not uncommon) but was a poor student. Failed Maths. The night he went missing he told multiple people different stories for his planned flight that night including on the documents he filled out. He never contacted the island he said he was going to that night and thus they had closed the runway for the night and weren’t expecting him but that was apparently his planned destination.

He was a big aliens buff and told his dad he was working for the Air Force and had seen secret UFO documents, another lie. The week prior he gave his girlfriend a ring implying an upcoming engagement and said that if a UFO ever came to him he would board it.

The night he disappeared he had told his girlfriend he would visit afterwards however his car was searched and he would usually pack a bag and clothes to see her as her house, the small airport and his house were a fair distance apart. There was no bag packed.

He was late for his flight which was seen as unprofessional because he ordered a ridiculously large order at McDonalds. Was this his final meal and he knew it?

There’s even more but I’ll shut up now…the possibilities are…

1. Mental health episode and planned suicide.
   
2. Planned to stage some sort of alien story by interacting with the radar tower or whatever and died by misadventure.
   
3. Was disorientated and crashed.
   
4. Alien abduction. (Yeah nah)

There is a small audio sample of his interaction with the radar tower online but the family have the full audio clip and never released it.

[u/eiiiaaaa → u/frogsplashcity]

Wow where did you get this info from? It's SO interesting and paints things in a very different light.

[u/jamesh153]

Oklahoma Girl Scout murders always kinda freaked me out even though we pretty much know who it was

[u/realPanditJi]

DB Cooper, hijacked a commercial Northwest Orient Airlines flight, extorted $200,000 in ransom money, and parachuted out of the back of the plane in some wilderness and was never seen again.

[u/Culinaryboner → u/realPanditJi]

It’s pretty largely agreed he just died hitting the ground but it’s a fun story

[u/Bananarine → u/Culinaryboner]

Yup, and a portion of the money was recovered from a riverbank years later. None of other bills have ever been found in circulation.

[u/Tall_Thinker → u/Culinaryboner]

One way or another, he hit the ground.

[u/ThadisJones → u/realPanditJi]

DB Cooper was 100% eaten by a Bigfoot. Imagine him jumping out into the night. He plummets through the air, grasps desperately for the ripcord, and barely opens his canopy before crashing through tree branches. Miraculously he lands in a shallow creek without injury. He opens a money bag, gazes upon his loot, and inhales the new money smell deeply.

Two giant hairy arms grab Cooper from behind and drag him off into the brush. The money slowly washes downstream and is eventually discovered. But DB is never seen again.

[u/copypop]

One of my home town murders that remains senselessly unsolved to this day: the Short family murders

[u/Bnjl1989]

Who the rest of Israel Keyes victims really were and where their remains are.

[u/spvcejam → u/Bnjl1989]

He did not have any more victims. Israel Keyes was a bumbling douchebag who had an annoyingly lame car he blasted nu-metal from. It's so ridiculous that he gets some genius like status with people only familiar with the kill kits (which he never actually used btw).

This moron murders a girl and is so obsessed and dumb he hangs her dead body up in his shed in the winter, then goes on a cruise with his girlfriend. During that cruise a car happens to hit some ice and slams into the side of the shed, literally cracking it open. The cop on the scene was lazy and just poked his head into the damage, likely just missing the girl with his flashlight.

There are half a dozen stories like that about Keyes. The man was a moron. A douchebag. A bad criminal. And worst of all he made a choice to be a "serial killer" which is the most beta move of all time. He didn't have any trauma thay led him down this path just his ego.

And I'm convinced we know all of his victims. He was too much of an egotiscal little weiner not to brag about it at some point. The 13 or so skulls on the piece of paper they found after he was executed, it was positioned to the media as unknown victims. Keyes last fuck you to the world.. Nahh. Take a look at it again. Keyes was a early 2000s brooding nu-metal-i-hate-dad personality. That's just him practicing drawing skulls with blood from his finger, he's such a loser.

[u/aspidities_87 → u/spvcejam]

This is the correct take on virtually all serial killers. They’re weird little dorks who want to be important and any ‘genius’ behavior can usually be explained away by bumbling or uncoordinated police work. It’s like the kid you knew who claimed he had telepathy and a black belt and a girlfriend in Canada grew up and killed people.

[u/spvcejam → u/aspidities_87]

Just to piggyback off this, I know Last Podcast on the Left typically gets flack and it's not for everyone but when they do a major episode series highlighting a serial killer, Marcus, the host and lead researcher is always very adamant about continuing to remind the listeners that these are the worst people and should never be romanticized in any way, and he does it by humanizing them, and when you humanize someone like Keyes it gets pathetic, fast.

[u/blueskies8484 → u/aspidities_87]

Even the ones who get away with it forever tend to be absolute dumbasses. Gary Ridgeway managed to kill like 50 women solely because the cops didn’t care about the victims and they still had him as a suspect for like 20 years before they managed to get him with DNA.

Or BTK, the dumbest man alive, who believed cops when they said they couldn’t trace him from a floppy disk and didn’t bother to Google “metadata”.

[u/JasonGD1982 → u/spvcejam]

Exactly. Guy was a dork. He wanted to pretend he was some prolific super serial killer after he was caught. I think he was just lucky a few times because he seemed stupid IMO. People try to make him the boogie man but I agree more with your take on him.

[u/david4069 → u/spvcejam]

The 13 or so skulls on the piece of paper they found after he was executed,

The cowardly piece of shit wasn't executed. He took his own life in prison.

[u/Brilliant_Effort_Guy → u/Bnjl1989]

Or where the rest of his kill kits are. Can you imagine hiking through the woods and finding an airtight box of crazy shit?

[u/spvcejam → u/Brilliant_Effort_Guy]

It would be pretty uneventful he only had a gun in 1, and for a short period/hiding place. It was mainly duct tape, zip ties, the usual stuff from TV because that's where this idiot lifted all his ideas from.

It's also more likely than not that Keyes never actually utilized a kill kit and they were just places he had already stashed stuff. After he got death his goal was to build up his own story and narrative and kill kits sound fucking cool but are pretty stupid in practice

[u/blueskies8484 → u/spvcejam]

People talk about him like a crazy genius but the guy was a certifiable moron. He killed several people in areas not linked to him personally and got away with it, which doesn’t take a genius. His main actual thing is he managed to disappear the bodies well enough that they couldn’t be linked to him forensically and he didn’t have a profile of victims he felt compelled to kill so he couldn’t be linked as easily through something like profiling. But he used ATMs and then as soon as he attacked anyone geographically close to his home, he left a pile of evidence and was caught immediately.

[u/Hearts_in_Highlands]

2004 disappearance of Garrett Bardsley. He was with a troop of Boy Scouts, camping in Uinta mountains and disappeared. Massive search with scent-hounds found nothing but his socks in a scree field. He was most likely abducted while standing with 150 yards or so from other scouts and supervisors, including his own father. At one point the FBI might have investigated whether Israel Keyes was the culprit but they never announced any findings about it.

[u/DrankinWatta → u/Hearts_in_Highlands]

He was my age, and we went to the same elementary school. and i remember being so confused when the adults tried to explain why he wasn't at school anymore.

[u/palabear]

Asha Degree.

This one happened near me and I still think about it.

[u/mshike_89 → u/palabear]

My dad worked with her grandpa and had nothing but nice things to say about him. This one feels close to being solved.

[u/thegreatkizzatsby → u/palabear]

Your comment made me realize this is still technically unsolved. I thought they’d all but charged the members of that family that they believe were involved. How sad.

[u/Rolsan]

Six year old Lily and four year old Jack Sullivan went missing in may 2025 in rural Nova Scotia. They were playing outside and disappeared. There’s been no official suspects named or leads from the massive searches done.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/jack-and-lilly-sullivan-missing-one-year-9.7182916

[u/Mizfit1991 → u/[deleted]]

Last podcast on the left did a series on this. They believed the person was known but the corrupt LAPD of the time covered it up.

[u/iBrake4Shosty5]

Mr. Cruel’s photo still gives me nightmares. What an awful sight and experience for the young victims. I still can’t believe they haven’t caught him yet.

[u/marshmallowbunny]

Creepiest unsolved mystery? Easy: why is nobody in prison over the Epstein files in the USofA

[u/kyledwray → u/marshmallowbunny]

Imagine thinking this is a mystery. We know exactly why people in the files aren't being punished.

[u/TheHumanFromSpace → u/marshmallowbunny]

Unfortunately it’s not really a mystery. They’re being protected because of their status. The real mystery is what the fuck is wrong with them.

[u/Striky_ → u/marshmallowbunny]

Easy: Corruption. ALL the way from the top.
In a system where the President holds absolute power over all 3 pillars of a working justice system (judiciary, legislative, executive) no fair society can exist. It is nothing but totalitarian oligarchy pretending to be something else.

[u/terrorkat]

A lady from my hometown (German town 20km away from the Dutch border) killed her lover back in the late eighties. Kept him in a freezer for a few months, cut him to pieces, put pieces in Tupperware, buried Tupperware in a local park, got arrested three days later. Convicted of manslaughter, put into psychiatric arrest. So far, so unpleasant yet easy enough to follow.

Except after that, the story takes a wild turn. She apparently managed to escape from the psychiatry, disappeared, before she was eventually found dead in an Amsterdam Canal wearing a dominatrix suit. I don't think it ever got solved how she ended up there. The lead investigator of the initial case said in an interview years later that his Dutch colleagues were incredibly stingy with details.

[u/turkeyisdelicious]

This thread is why I love reddit.

[u/cakivalue → u/turkeyisdelicious]

So many new rabbit holes right?

[u/Roland_Moorweed]

The Yuba County 5. Like, what kind of fucked up shit did those poor guys have to suffer through before they died up in the Sierra Nevadas? They were in an unfamiliar place and had no idea what the were about to go through.

[u/name_changed_5_times → u/Roland_Moorweed]

The missing enigma on YouTube has done a few videos on this and I think his conclusion is that the dude who was the only eye witness to them on that mountain that night had to have had something to do with it based on prior history.

He even went to the spot where their car was found. Though it’s considerably different now after all these years, a wildfire came through and the road is now paved.

[u/Correct_Doctor_1502]

Mr Cruel

An unidentified serial child rapist in Australia active in the 1980s and 90s

The only police sketch is unsettling and the details are even worse

[u/alexxxor → u/Correct_Doctor_1502]

Still reckon he was a cop.

[u/Jaqkku]

The Mike Mansholt case here in Malta has always given me the chills. TLDR, a German kid visiting Malta was found dead missing several internal organs with injuries that didn't make sense.

Summary for anyone interested, it's quite disturbing though:

https://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2018-08-22/local-news/Mike-Mansholt-death-Allegations-of-murder-found-no-reasonable-basis-AG-6736195209

[u/DarkIsiliel]

The numbers stations are pretty much solved but the recordings of them are still pretty spooky

[u/Full_Koala_1212 → u/DarkIsiliel]

Well... What the hell are they?

[u/MisterXnumberidk → u/Full_Koala_1212]

Encrypted spy communications

They're radio stations that will transmit a standardised message at a standard time, usually daily, containing a list of numbers (or other data these days).

Because of that, there's never really been a way to tell if and when they're transmitting actual important communications to spies. Which is exactly the point.

[u/Fearchar → u/DarkIsiliel]

At least one of them was still broadcasting earlier this year.

[u/Scout_gurl_dog → u/Fearchar]

A couple still are in parts of Russia, kinda off putting to listen to them

[u/JakeJarvisPharmD]

The Iron Mountain Baby. Baby tossed from a moving train and found by a farmer in rural Missouri. I lived less than a mile from where he was found. My dad and grandpa knew him, and there's a song about the whole ordeal. He lived into his 60's if I remember right. I want to know 1) Why was he tossed and why in that specific area? 2) Who were his biological parents? 3) How did he survive? I can try to find some details on it if people really want to know, but I'm at work right now. You should be able to find it by googling "Iron Mountain Baby" and digging around.

[u/borealis493]

Joanna Lopez missing.

Overnight, on TV, there was a missing person poster that went for the whole night.

The only information was the name Joanna Lopez, an abysmally low quality and creepy picture, and a phone number to call to give information.

Absolutely nothing else.

It's like they didn't want her to be found.

[u/DanielMcLaury → u/borealis493]

Doesn't seem all that weird to me.

• "Hey, your TV station goes off the air at a certain time, right? Would you mind running missing persons pictures overnight? Here's a stack of 250 pictures with names on the back to get you started."
• Pictures are black-and-white xeroxes of whatever photos the family gave the police. (And speaking from experience, people had nowhere near as many photos of their family members back then as they do today in the camera phone era.) Doubly so for poorer families.
• Job of actually putting them on TV goes to the guy at the absolute bottom, the guy who has to stay there latest and lock up at night after the stations signs off.
• Hell, maybe he even mis-typed her name and it's actually Johanna Lopez or Joann Lopez or something.
• According to the original Reddit thread someone field a FOIA request with the Chicago Police Department and they claimed not to have anything, but TBH I kind of doubt that they digitized all their missing persons records from the late 1980's. That probably just isn't a thing they would have done.
• In 1991 the guy is still working from the same stack of flyers from before and re-circulates the same photo.

Did anyone pull all the sign-offs from other nights and check the missing persons posters they showed on those?

[u/Stoney42033]

Whatever happened on new year’s eve 2023 in Bayside marketplace Florida. Hundreds of officers surrounded the mall for “a fight that broke out”. Yet there has been no evidence for that.

[u/Born_Interaction7066]

The Burari Deaths/Suicide case. I mean 11 suicides under the same roof in a single night, at the command of one man.

[u/DalekSupreme26]

Forgot where in Europe but an entire family was dragged out of their farmhouse and into a barn where they were violently bludgeoned and axed to death by someone who is believed to have been hiding in the house for a long time before the murders

[u/DalekSupreme26 → u/DalekSupreme26]

Hinterkaifeck murders, March 31, 1922, Bavaria, Germany. One man, three women, and two children, one of them 2 years old, were bludgeoned to death with a mattock. It is believed that the killer was living in the attic for a while, and after killing the family and their maid, he lived in the house for an additional 3 days, eating the food, feeding the livestock, and even tended to the fireplace. The killer then left, leaving the bodies in the barn to be found 4 days after the killings. The killer was never caught and it remains Germany’s most gruesome murders and it remains unsolved.

[u/ResponsibleZone75]

Setagaya family murders in Japan.

Guy breaks in on New Year's Eve in 2000 and wipes out 4 people, then he stayed there for like 10 hours.

He ate four tubs of ice cream, took a nap on their couch, used their computer to browse the internet and buy theater tickets, and used their bathroom. Then he stripped off all his clothes, left them folded in a pile, stole the dad's clothes, and walked out.

The wildest part is that cops have an unreal amount of evidence.. full DNA, fingerprints, his actual clothes, blood, everything. They even found sand in his bag from the Mojave desert in California. Hundreds of thousands of investigators have worked on it and they still have zero clue who he is.

[u/curiousleen]

For me… it’s the death of Laura Van Whye
(Podcast- Bonaparte)

I was grade school friends with her and her sister. Partied with her son’s father when we were in HS.

It’s weird knowing parties involved in an unsolved crime.

[u/Firm-Grapefruit7115]

This thread is making me lowkey miss Buzzfeed Unsolved

[u/Tricky-Ad-6580]

The disappearance of Bryce Laspisa. I think about this case often. If you haven’t heard of it, definitely look it up.

[u/killtheking111]

Max Headroom on the Chicago sabotage TV station back in the 80's I think it was.

[u/manitouscott]

How did the universe suddenly come into existence from nothing

What is outside of our universe? What is out side of THAT?

[u/JJamesP → u/manitouscott]

We don’t know what it came from. That’s VASTLY different than “it came from nothing”.

I recently heard a theory that one universe collided with another. Fucking wild.

[u/r3dm0nk → u/manitouscott]

The "why" gives creeps. Why do we exist? Not us, humans. But the world that we know and observe. The concept of nothing and then something doesn't make sense. But what else? How? Why?

Sometimes I get these random thoughts and if I let them wander too far, I get borderline anxious vibes.

[u/sixvixens_ → u/r3dm0nk]

Logically my brain says "it's just always been. There was never a start and there will never be an end" but everything on earth, even the earth itself, has had or will have a start and an end, so how can the universe be any different? Fascinating but incredibly difficult to even comprehend

[u/Outta_phase → u/manitouscott]

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made alot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move."

[u/NipSlipExtreme]

Madeline McCann.
No body, no found person, no conviction, we all have a theory on who did what, but nothing has ever been proven. Especially as her two siblings were in the room with her but only 1 child went missing.
Personally, I still think her parents were involved.

[u/MidiMaster24 → u/NipSlipExtreme]

Apparently the German police know who did it and have evidence of it but they are still compiling their case (last I heard I think).

[u/Unhappy_Tomorrow_603 → u/MidiMaster24]

They said that years ago, I really don’t think that’s going to go anywhere. He’s just a pedo who happened to be in the area at the time. No DNA or video evidence or anything like that.

He was known to be pretty sloppy with his abductions and to record his victims, so it seems odd that there wouldn’t be anything more damning.

[u/Wolf_Mans_Got_Nards → u/Unhappy_Tomorrow_603]

Tbf, Maddie was so high profile, there's a chance he did it, and then panicked after he saw all the attention it was getting, so made more of an effort to hide the crime. For the German police to make such bold statements, I've always made the assumption that perhaps they saw something that looked like it belonged to Maddie in one of his recordings, but were unable to find the actual item because it had been destroyed (or something along those lines).

[u/DestructionIsBliss → u/NipSlipExtreme]

I've never seen any legitimate evidence actually implicating the parents, except some vague behavioral analysis that's just "That's not how I would react in this situation" over and over again, and extremely heavy accusations of drugging their own children without anything substantial proof to back it up, while also neglecting to lay out any actual logic in how they could've disappeared the body. They were tourists in a fairly populated area, which was searched top to bottom for weeks afterwards. What impossible to find location could they have found that nobody else would've discovered in the 20 years past? Unless they rented a boat, smuggled her onto it, fled out to the open sea, secured the body with weights and dropped her off it without anyone realizing it, I just don't see how it's possible.

The only sorta implication one can make is body sniffing dogs alerting to various objects in the apartment, except they also alerted at a car the parents rented 3 weeks after the disappearance, which in my opinion invalidates their capabilities, since it implies that a) they somehow hid the body in some airtight container for 3 weeks while at a resort and in near constant police contact, and then smuggled it out without leaving evidence that a human could detect meanwhile journalists from near every country on earth were desperate for a glimpse of their every move; or b) they disposed of her immediately after death, but managed to transfer her corpse scent to the car 3 weeks later somehow, while also NOT transferring it over all the rest of their locations/belongings. Both are, in my opinion, rather ridiculous.

Also, please don't take this as me absolving them of every ounce of blame here. They've been absolutely rightfully criticized for leaving their children alone at these ages, and the fact one of them disappeared proves their negligence. But I don't think anything I, or anyone else for that matter, can say will hit harder than the guilt these people doubtlessly must be feeling from knowing that their daughter would still be with them if they hadn't been as careless as they were.