Unsolved mysteries and True Crimes

[EH 110]

Like many of you, I grew up with the show "Unsolved Mysteries." I'm always reading about missing persons and unsolved murders. One of my favorite stories is about a woman named Elfrieda Knaak:
http://strangeco.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lady-and-furnace.html

There's a very long thread about her on "Websleuths," with a lot of links to newspaper articles and info about the case. I'm amazed that so much info exists online from an almost 90 year old case, which I don't think is very well-known.
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...rieda-Fritzie-Knaak-29-Lake-Bluff-30-Oct-1928


I'd also like to share a link to a really great YouTube channel called "Criminally Listed." They usually upload 2 videos a week. Very good stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs3iFCPtX0gzkKxCrobO4ig

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Like many of you, I grew up with the show "Unsolved Mysteries." I'm always reading about missing persons and unsolved murders. One of my favorite stories is about a woman named Elfrieda Knaak:
http://strangeco.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lady-and-furnace.html

There's a very long thread about her on "Websleuths," with a lot of links to newspaper articles and info about the case. I'm amazed that so much info exists online from an almost 90 year old case, which I don't think is very well-known.
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...rieda-Fritzie-Knaak-29-Lake-Bluff-30-Oct-1928


I'd also like to share a link to a really great YouTube channel called "Criminally Listed." They usually upload 2 videos a week. Very good stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs3iFCPtX0gzkKxCrobO4ig

I love Criminally Listed but the narrator always sounds like he's bored out of his goddamn mind

 

[Rumpled Foreskin]

Cases like this were always intriguing, this one may take the cake for me:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case

The theories are so wildly varied. Take a look.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

The Vanished Podcast is pretty interesting.

http://www.thevanishedpodcast.com/

They tell the stories of the missing people and include audio clips from family members and friends. They also talk about not so known cases.

 

[Tootsie Bear]

One I like while not being as sordid as those you guys talked about is the UVB-76 radio signal. While it's semi-official explanation (a radio frequency used by the Russian army for communications) makes sense, that shit and the fact that Moscow never confirmed nor denied it is creepy to hear.

The Russians seems to love their weird radio stations though, two more have been found, nicknamed The Pip and The Squeaky Wheel.

These are usually called "number stations". Basically spies would tune in at a certain time, listen to a message, then write down and do what the message instructed them.

For example North Korean spies have been reported using number stations to send and receive messages as recent as last year. If I recall, it's challenging to pinpoint the receiver spy, because you can only succeed in finding the general area where they were when they received the message, but by then they would be gone and you wouldn't even have the faintness clue what to do next. Simple yet it works to pass on secret messages.

 

[AnOminous]

Has there ever been a verified case of someone staging their suicide to look like a homicide in order to frame someone innocent?

This scenario shows up now and then in crime fiction, but has it ever occurred in real life?

Agatha Christie was accused of doing just that, though she just disappeared and was found hiding under an assumed name later.

 

[DavidFerrie]

Here's one I just heard about today, even though I live in Northern California and have been following unsolved mysteries and enigmatic disappearances for years. It's usually known as The Mathias Group Mystery or The Yuba City Five Disappearance, and is often compared to the Dyatlov Pass Incident in Russia as an example of a snowy-wilderness mass-disappearance/-death that makes absolutely no sense.

 

[glass_houses]

Here's one I just heard about today, even though I live in Northern California and have been following unsolved mysteries and enigmatic disappearances for years. It's usually known as The Mathias Group Mystery or The Yuba City Five Disappearance, and is often compared to the Dyatlov Pass Incident in Russia as an example of a snowy-wilderness mass-disappearance/-death that makes absolutely no sense.

I've never heard of it before now. You'd think all the conspiracy nutjobs would be all over this like a rash. I suspect that it might have something to do with these men being mentally impaired. It's far too easy to just say, "Didn't they have down syndrome or something? They were re.tarded, that explains everything," and wave it away. Something awful happened to those men and not even the tinfoil hat brigade gives a fuck. Well... at least their families were able to find the remains, rather than agonising for years about where they were and if they still lived. It's something, I guess.

Even with their respective impairments I doubt very much that they went to the cabin on their own. Someone else forced them to walk.

 

[FemalePresident]

The Springfield Three is a very scary one.

 

[glass_houses]

The Springfield Three is a very scary one.

Once you take into account the broken porch light it's pretty obvious how they were lured out of the house and why they left everything behind them when they were taken. The abductor/s broke the light, flattened themselves against the wall either side of the door so they couldn't be seen, waited for the women to come and investgate, and pounced before any of the three knew that someone else was there.

It's almost certain that whoever took the women knew them personally, or at the very least had been watching them for some time.

 

[AnOminous]

Here's one I just heard about today, even though I live in Northern California and have been following unsolved mysteries and enigmatic disappearances for years. It's usually known as The Mathias Group Mystery or The Yuba City Five Disappearance, and is often compared to the Dyatlov Pass Incident in Russia as an example of a snowy-wilderness mass-disappearance/-death that makes absolutely no sense.

People subject to extreme cold who are dying of hypothermia often do pretty crazy shit that makes no sense. For instance, you might find them stark naked after they took off all their clothes despite freezing to death. Apparently, one of the body's last ditch attempts to survive involves pumping a lot of blood out to the extremities, and this can make someone who is actually freezing feel extremely hot. Also, their brain is basically dying, too, so they'll do bizarre things in the delirium. That's at least one theory about the Dyatlov Pass incident.

I have no idea about that other one, though. Starving to death next to a mountain of survival rations is just bizarre unless someone was keeping that one guy from eating it. Or maybe he didn't even realize it was food. The fact that he had apparently lived long enough to lose half his weight from starvation is just strange. If someone was there keeping them, why let some of them escape? Why not just kill them?

 

[Andrew Neiman]

Here's my contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Night_Stalker

The East Area Rapist assaulted 50-odd women around Sacramento beginning in 1976. He was extremely methodical and organized; he would case victims' houses for weeks before making an attack, doing things unloading weapons and unlocking windows for easier access later. He was described as appearing extremely young, perhaps in his late teens, when the attacks began. He apparently attempted to mislead police by telling his victims that he needed drugs or money for drugs, and by "letting slip" other presumably false details about his real identity. (In one instance, he stole codeine tablets from a victim that were later found discarded in a neighbor's yard.)

There are a lot of strange details to this case. For instance, at a town hall meeting held (in 1977, I think) to address the rapes, one area resident stood up and berated the police for mishandling the investigation, claiming that they must be concealing some information about the attacks, because no man would sit passively by and allow his wife to be assaulted. Then, seven months later, the rapist targeted this man and his wife. Quite possibly a coincidence, but, even so, remarkably weird. There are also various letters and phone calls that may or may not have come from the rapist. There were numerous close calls-- police pursuing a masked man riding a bicycle near a possible ERA crime but losing track of him, residents encountering suspicious people resembling descriptions of the rapist in areas where homes were later attacked, etc. etc.

Anyway, from 1979-1986 there were 12 murders in Southern California attributed to a killer later called the Original Night Stalker. DNA testing later showed that the Original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist were the same person.

In 2016, the FBI revived the investigation and announced a $50,000 reward.

 

[glass_houses]

People subject to extreme cold who are dying of hypothermia often do pretty crazy shit that makes no sense. For instance, you might find them stark naked after they took off all their clothes despite freezing to death. Apparently, one of the body's last ditch attempts to survive involves pumping a lot of blood out to the extremities, and this can make someone who is actually freezing feel extremely hot. Also, their brain is basically dying, too, so they'll do bizarre things in the delirium. That's at least one theory about the Dyatlov Pass incident.

I have no idea about that other one, though. Starving to death next to a mountain of survival rations is just bizarre unless someone was keeping that one guy from eating it. Or maybe he didn't even realize it was food. The fact that he had apparently lived long enough to lose half his weight from starvation is just strange. If someone was there keeping them, why let some of them escape? Why not just kill them?

Hypothermia doesn't explain why all of them abandoned their car and walked out into the snow. One of their parents said that she was convinced they witnessed some kind of crime, even though chances were good that they might not have realised what they'd seen to begin with. The distance from any roads, along with the snow, meant that if any of the men did escape they'd be completely disoriented and dead from exposure very, very quickly.

Yes, their intellectual impairments would have greatly affected their social skills, maybe to the point where they'd witnessed a crime without knowing that it was a crime. But given that they did have enough intellectual function to drive a car and plan trips to watch and play sports without minders, they certainly would have known not to leave their car and walk into the forest and snow in the dark. If you spend enough time around individuals who are impaired, it quickly becomes obvious that regardless of the nature of the impairment, they all have certain beliefs and behaviours that are cast iron. A lot of those behaviours are indeed weird and pointless, but along with that there will be safety rules, of which, "Don't abandon your car and walk into the snow covered forest in the dark".

Quite a few years back I took a friend with mild Aspergers to a combination horse care and riding workshop for a club I'd been a member of for a while. Before she left her father told her never to walk behind a horse, very sound advice. But two of the demos had exactly that: one was for horse massage, and the other was platting a horse's tail for a show. And she wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, no matter how I tried to explain to her that the demonstrators knew their horse and horse body language in general to stand behind them and work. It drove me fucking insane and everyone else there kept giving us the side eye the entire fucking day. Never walk behind horses, that was it, no exceptions, exchanges or refunds.

The fact that the men were impaired is actually one of the strongest indications that they met with foul play, IMHO.

 

[Andrew Neiman]

Here's my contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Night_Stalker

The East Area Rapist assaulted 50-odd women around Sacramento beginning in 1976. He was extremely methodical and organized; he would case victims' houses for weeks before making an attack, doing things unloading weapons and unlocking windows for easier access later. He was described as appearing extremely young, perhaps in his late teens, when the attacks began. He apparently attempted to mislead police by telling his victims that he needed drugs or money for drugs, and by "letting slip" other presumably false details about his real identity. (In one instance, he stole codeine tablets from a victim that were later found discarded in a neighbor's yard.)

There are a lot of strange details to this case. For instance, at a town hall meeting held (in 1977, I think) to address the rapes, one area resident stood up and berated the police for mishandling the investigation, claiming that they must be concealing some information about the attacks, because no man would sit passively by and allow his wife to be assaulted. Then, seven months later, the rapist targeted this man and his wife. Quite possibly a coincidence, but, even so, remarkably weird. There are also various letters and phone calls that may or may not have come from the rapist. There were numerous close calls-- police pursuing a masked man riding a bicycle near a possible ERA crime but losing track of him, residents encountering suspicious people resembling descriptions of the rapist in areas where homes were later attacked, etc. etc.

Anyway, from 1979-1986 there were 12 murders in Southern California attributed to a killer later called the Original Night Stalker. DNA testing later showed that the Original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist were the same person.

In 2016, the FBI revived the investigation and announced a $50,000 reward.

Here's some supplementary material:

Spoiler: A call thought to have been made by the rapist

Spoiler: Composite sketches

A tasteful and well-produced podcast episode on the case: http://casefilepodcast.com/case-53-east-area-rapist-1976-part-1/

 

[glass_houses]

Here's some supplementary material:

Spoiler: A call thought to have been made by the rapist

Well, there's the inspiration for tonight's night terror.

 

[FemalePresident]

Once you take into account the broken porch light it's pretty obvious how they were lured out of the house and why they left everything behind them when they were taken. The abductor/s broke the light, flattened themselves against the wall either side of the door so they couldn't be seen, waited for the women to come and investgate, and pounced before any of the three knew that someone else was there.

It's almost certain that whoever took the women knew them personally, or at the very least had been watching them for some time.

I don't really know. At least someone had to go inside to put the purses in the same room.

Anyway, looking into this mysteries is like getting into a rabbit hole.

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

My personal favorite is the Death Valley Germans. Four German tourists in Las Vegas rented an SUV to visit Death Valley. The SUV was found in a remote part of Death Valley National Park with three flat tires, and no trace of the passengers. They found the skeletons of the two adults in 2009, but the children's remains have never been found.

There's also the disappearance of Albert Fountain and his son outside Las Cruces, New Mexico.

 

[glass_houses]

There's also the disappearance of Albert Fall and his son outside Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I think you mean Albert Fountain? Albert Fall, a politian with more bends than a bisexual convention, is the primary suspect in Fountain and his son's disappearance. And even if Fall didn't personally arrange Fountain's fate, Fountain had been a royal pain in the arse of high profile cattle rustlers in the area, so he had enemies in abundance. Fountain and his son's disappearance might not be a mystery so much as missing bodies.

 

[FemalePresident]

First time I heard of this. It's creepy and it seems like there was foul play involved, but I also think a murder-suicide might be possible.

 

[Rand /pol/]

I always thought the disappearance of Paul B. Fugate was a really interesting case, he was a Park Ranger who went missing in 1980 despite being Armed and having a radio on him at the time, and the area was a suspected location for Smugglers.