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Looking at the abundance of TV shows and all sorts of podcasts on the topic, it’s no secret that true crime has lately been on the rise. For many people, there seems to be something bizarrely fascinating about the terrible stories of what has happened to people.
It might have something to do with the fact that many of the stories, known as ‘cold cases,’ were never solved. The added mystery seems to captivate people’s minds even more, sometimes even years or decades after the terrible events take place.
One member of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community has delved deeper into the spine-chilling topic, asking fellow redditors to share what true crime cold cases don’t sit right with them, and quite a few people replied. If you’re interested in their answers, scroll down to find them on the list below, but do it at your own risk, as some of the stories can be quite disturbing.
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#1
About three years ago there were suddenly a rash of ladies throwing themselves down garbage chutes in Chicago to commit s*icide. All within a year or so timeframe. Generally in the same area downtown.
Everyone was saying it was random s*icide or just bad luck.
I don't buy it.
I think there was a serial k*ller or something operating in the city.
If you've ever lived in a high rise you know it's damned near impossible to accidentally throw yourself down a garbage chute. And I just don't see most women choosing that as their way out.
RELATED:
#2
I don't remember her name, but I saw one on a cold case tv show that left me screaming at the detectives.
Woman mysteriously vanished from her work without a trace and they found her body a few weeks later. During this time, they showed interviews with her husband, who she married pretty recently, I think. And the way he talked about her was terrifying. He went on and on about how he hated her kids, they were taking her away from him, she wasn't allowed to be anyone else's, etc. Never made any sort of expression other than a blank stare.
Near the end of the episode, he talked about how he slept with her urn every night and "frolicked" in the ashes every morning. He lied to her son that he lost the urn so that the kids wouldn't have access to their mom's memorial. His last statement was that he was glad she was dead cause it meant that nobody else could have her. The episode concluded with the narrator saying that they currently had no suspects.
rosescript:
This sounds exactly like an episode of the recent reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, “13 Minutes” about Patrice Endres. She disappeared from work one day and was found dead later, her husband was an absolute creep and her poor son never got an closure.
#3
Heather Teague. She was dragged into the woods from a riverbank. The abduction was witnessed from across the river by a man using a telescope.
Upstaged75 6 hours ago
Here's more info. Another case mishandled by police: https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2024/08/28/kentucky-woman-heather-teague-has-been-missing-for-29-years-state-police-sarah-teague-marty-dill/74967148007/
#4
The disappearance of Kyron Horman. The kid was at school with his stepmom, she saw him walk down the hall in the school and he was never seen again. Gone. Disappeared without a trace.
There's no evidence at all. People like to believe the stepmother k*lled him or something but there is no sound evidence, and I believe the search for him was the most money Oregon has spent on a missing person case. Over 10 years later and there's still nothing.
#5
The owner of a funeral home business went to Camden, Maine with his wife. They had some kind of altercation. The wife disappeared, and was never found.
Police in the home town think they know that there was foul play, but have no leads that they can follow. The case is closed.
#6
The Mary Morris murders. Two women both named Mary Morris that were both killed just a few days apart in a really close proximity to each other.
#7
Jessica Chambers. She was set on fire inside her vehicle, and was found by paramedics walking down the road fully engulfed in flames.
-RadarRanger-:
Thanks, I came looking for this one. She tried to speak the name of the guy who burned her alive but her scorched flesh could no longer produce the sounds correctly. She was seen on cctv at the gas station, but whoever she was with was not visible in frame.
#8
Ayla Reynolds. An 18 month old baby with a broken arm disappears from her dad's house in the middle of the night while her dad, his sister and his girlfriend are “asleep”. Blood was found in the basement. It’s been 10+ years and no arrests have been made and her body has never been found. This happened in Maine.
#9
The Black Dahlia case, the fact that such a gruesome act of murder was committed, and that the lead suspect is very likely the killer, but didn't serve jail time sickens me. Also its quite interesting how one of the suspects died on the anniversary of the last time she was seen alive.
PennyoftheNerds:
I know there were several suspects, but I assume you are referring to George Hodel. And if so, it baffles me that his family even thinks he did it. So much so that his son became a detective in part to try and prove his father was guilty.
Delicate Fcuking Flower 10 hours ago
The crime scene photos from The Black Dahlia case are nuckin futs! If you have a strong stomach, I recommend checking them out
#10
Sky Metalwala was 2 years old when he disappeared. His mother concocted an obviously false story, but was never charged in his disappearance.
What happened to the child is one question. Why the police have obviously chosen to give the mother a pass is a much bigger question.
#11
Most of these answers seem to come from the US so here's one from the UK: the murder of Jill Dando.
Jill Dando was a well-known British TV presenter and journalist, who was shot dead in broad daylight, on her doorstep on 26th April 1999. They still don't know who killed her or why. Someone was convicted and imprisoned, but later acquitted.
#12
My aunt was on a trip across some of Asia with her friends. The one friend had planned to go to Hong Kong, but the rest didn’t want to, so they decided they would all just meet up at the next country and let her go to Hong Kong by herself.
They heard from her when she got off the plane, and not again.
It’s been about 15 years.
#13
Michael Dunahee. Posters for this kid were everywhere when I was a kid. He disappeared from a playground in Victoria BC in 1991. The latest theory is that he's out there somewhere with no memory of who he was. RCMP recently released a composition of what he might look like now in hopes that it will trigger him to remember and come forward.
#14
The case of Joshua Maddox.
In 2008 Joshua Maddox left his house to go for a walk and never returned. 7 years later in 2015, his body was found in the chimney of a cabin that was in the process of being demolished.
There are multiple weird elements to the case:
-Josh was found in the fetal position facing head-first into the chimney
-In order to have gotten into the chimney he would have needed to scale the building and remove a metal grate that was blocking the entrance, placed there so that animal were not able to get in.
-Josh was found completely nude except for a thermal shirt
-the cabin was still locked and secured.
And strangest of all:
-His clothes were found neatly folded inside of the cabin, sitting right in front of the fire place.
There's so may weird details of the case that just don't make any sense whatsoever.
#15
Shannon Paulk. 11yo girl kidnapped and later found m*rdered in my hometown, Prattville Alabama. It’s been 20 years and they still don’t know who did it.
#16
In 1991 the body of a man James Allen Killam was found by hikers close to a path in New Brunswick, Canada. According to newspapers they had no suspects.
However, someone I know was a former roommate that owed Killam money. Killam even told his mother that someone was out to get him. After his death Killam’s car was found in the parking garage of a building the person I know worked in. This same person was caught and charged with credit card theft/fraud for using Killam’s credit cards after he went missing. The murder weapon was determined to be a knife. The person I know gave a knife to their friend to hold for “safe keeping”.
The person I know went to trial which ended in it being thrown out due to circumstantial evidence. I can’t prove it but I am convinced the person I know is a murderer…and he got away with it.
#17
Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Tx. False confessions, overturned convictions, DNA not giving the answers, this case is so confusing. But someone raped and killed 4 teenage girls before setting a fire and we still don’t know who they are. It’s not okay.
#18
Amy Lynn Bradley always freaks me out. She went missing from a cruise ship. Later a soldier in the US military likely came across her in a brothel and did nothing to help her because he was afraid of getting in trouble. No one has seen her since.
#19
A local case from 1977. A small Indiana town with a population of less than 2,000 had 3 unsolved child m*rders committed in the same year. After the third m*rder, the k*llings stopped and the cases remain unsolved.
#20
That family that got murderd in the French alps and the cyclist who came across the scene and the little girl stayed still under her mums dress for 8 hours
Does anyone have a update on this.
Chetanzi:
Her sister survived also, despite being shot multiple times and pistol-whipped on the head. They're teenagers now and being re-interviewed for any new leads. Poor girls. I kind of agree with the other commenter who replied to you... sounds like it was a professional hit. Left the gun (shattered, in pieces) at the scene of the crime. Shot the cyclist execution-style. Freaking horrible.
#21
The boy in the box always makes me very sad. No one ever found who he was and it just hurts my heart so much that there’s some family out there that will never know what happened to their little boy, and that he died in such a horrific and scary way.
Finnrip:
Yep. Wikipedia says: “Another theory was brought forward in February 2002 by a woman identified only as "Martha." Police considered "Martha"'s story to be plausible but were troubled by her testimony, as she had a history of mental illness.[12][14] "M" claimed that her abusive mother had "purchased" the unknown boy (whose name was Jonathan) from his birth parents in the summer of 1954.[8][15] Subsequently, the boy was subjected to extreme physical and sexual abuse for two and a half years. One evening at dinner, the boy vomited up his meal of baked beans and was given a severe beating, with his head slammed against the floor until he was semiconscious. He was given a bath, during which he died. These details matched information known only to the police, as the coroner had found that the boy's stomach contained the remains of baked beans and that his fingers were water-wrinkled.[8]”
OpheliaPoe 18 hours ago (edited)
There were advancements in the case in 2022 as a result of DNA testing. Although his murder remains unsolved he at least has his name back: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Eta: this case always bothered me more than others but now that I have my own 4 year old who looks similar to Joseph it haunts me on a deeper level. I can't begin to comprehend someone hurting him. Then the level of torture and terror he endured is so far beyond sickening; I just have no words...
#22
It’s not necessarily a cold case, but There were several (2-5) of John Wayne Gacy’s victims who went missing while Gacy was confirmed to be out of town. IIRC, the bodies of those victims were all under his house. That means someone else had to at least kidnap and hold the victim until Gacy returned if the accomplice(s) didn’t actually m*rder the boys.
#23
Alexandra Wiwarchuk. Young nurse who went for a walk in Saskatoon, SK, Canada in 1962 and never came home. Two weeks later she was found partially buried in a shallow grave a few blocks from her apartment. What doesn’t sit right with me is her next door neighbour across the alley was a 48 year old postal carrier who was involved with an infamous California murder case in the 20s. The 20s case was made into a Hollywood movie. But his name is never brought up in the 62 investigation or now as a cold case. Even in a biography about the guy, the nurses death is glossed over in a single sentence.
#24
The disappearance and death of Patrice Enders
Check out the Cold Case Files reboot on Netflix. The husband maintains his innocence but he’s creepy as f******ck. There’s a lot of things he’s said and done that just doesn’t sit right. For starters he seemed to have some kind of personal jealous vendetta against Patrice’s teenage son because he was the main focus of her life. Even in interviews he’d openly say the kid is a loser and he just didn’t feel like he was going anywhere in life. Then when Patrice went missing from her hair stylist business he went ahead and changed all the locks in the house so the son couldn’t come in the house. Since then the kid’s basically been banned from entering the house, and the creepy husband has said that he would snuggle with the ashes of Patrice like a teddy bear as he sleeps…but then when asked where her remains were he had to go dig it out of an old cardboard box in a closet. If you loved someone so dearly why would you keep their remains in a plastic bag in a cardboard box in a closet??? It’s just weird and creepy all around.
#25
Laurie Depies. Vanished in Wisconsin in 1992. No viable suspects and her body was never found. She just vanished one night shortly after she arrived at her friend's apartment complex, car door open and no sign of a struggle.
For true crime buffs, one potential suspect is Chuck Avery, the older brother to Steven Avery, subject of Netflix's docu-series Making a Murderer. Turns out Chuck is violent rapist and ped*phile.
#26
Springfield three.
This is a case where 3 girls went missing shortly after graduation, they were all supposed to attend after parties and activities, and out of thin air they just disappear.
What’s mind boggling is there is no connections between a single piece of evidence that was gathered. The weird/sexual “prank calls”, the ex bf involvement, and C*x weird hints.
YEARS later, aside from being completely unsolved, anytime ANYONE comes close to figuring it out, something ends up stopping it. Whether it’s police regulations, media censors etc.. Or they’d immediately retreat once reaching a certain point. One journalist even said herself she knows what happened but is afraid of speaking out. Whether she’s lying for attention or not (journalist), it’s still weird how many people came in with tips or clues and it’s still somehow a dead-end. Someone out there knows a lot more than they’re giving.
#27
In my town, there was a girl in her early 20s. It's a small town, 1,000 people maybe. Most of everyone lives in the boonies, super rural place.
Anyway, she worked at a restaurant/bar in the village. Her boss and coworkers said her shift ended and she punched out. She didn't show up the next day for her shift. They actually never found her. Sure, they found hair, blood, and a shoe. They found her car parked at an abandoned house outside town. But they never found her body.
Search parties through out the woods, police dogs, everything. My mother and I searched for a good few weeks, as well. We all found nothing.
My mother worked at a mountain resort for a bit a couple years later. She was in the backroom on break when her coworker came in. He sat at the employee computer. My mom got ready to head back out to the front desk. She turned to ask her coworker a question. He was scrolling a missing persons website. And there she was, my mother saw her smiling face. The girl in her 20s. The coworker turned and made eye contact with my mom. He smiled and turned back and said, "they never did find her. Pretty little thing, huh?" He turned back to my mom and said, "I wish I could have seen her one more time." And my mom quit. That night, she quit her job. She drove home. She sat on her bed for hours, wouldn't talk to us. She swears to this day, he murdered the girl. She just got this feeling. He moved a couple weeks later after he said that weird s**t.
She actually only told me all this a couple years ago. When this happened I was like 10 years old, I'm 25 now.
OpheliaPoe 18 hours ago
If she'll share his name you could submit it as a tip to the police. There is still a chance he could be found and convicted. You never know. Cold cases get reopened often enough with the right leads.
#28
Not typically a cold case, because the case was closed as far as I knew although there is chatter about new leads.
Gareth Williams, an ex-spy for the British secret service, was found dead in his flat a week after he went missing.
His naked body lay stuffed in a duffle bag in his flat’s bathtub, the zipper pad locked on the outside.
Although the coroner thought it was likely the result of foul play, the police declared his death an accident. An unfortunate result of Williams locking himself in the dufflebag and unable to get out. After which he died.
Still seems like a bad coverup to me.
EDIT: I just now learned that Williams was known to have a fetish for auto asphyxiation, bondage and total enclosure. Which may have had a thing to do with how he ended up in the dufflebag.
But it still doesn’t explain how the zipper got padlocked from the outside.
There has been a call to analyse existing evidence (hair and dna from the padlock) to maybe get a new lead, but I haven’t heard about anything turning up yet.
Although it may have been an assisted accidental s*icide, there are still questions unanswered.
Bat cat in a hat 7 hours ago
I seem to remember a documentary about this case, they even got a contortionist to try and get in the same position as Gareth and it was impossible, so it's very likely someone else was involved; maybe not murder, but manslaughter
#29
The deaths of Lisann Froon and Kris Kremers.
They were two young Dutch women who disappeared from a hiking trail in Panama. Some of their belongings and bones were found weeks and months later. The eerie part is that one of them had a digital camera and had been taking pictures of their hike. It showed them reaching the summit then continuing down the trail where it becomes much more treacherous. Then ten days later there's a flurry of photos in the dark. Most of them showed nothing but a few showed their surroundings and the bloody scalp of one of them. Their cell phones were also used to attempt emergency calls for several days.
The case was never solved and likely never will be. The two main theories are that one or both of them suffered an accident that incapacitated them or some form of kidnapping/human trafficking gone bad.
A̷͇̘̓͜l̷̼͇̣͒̌ͅȩ̷͍͙͗̅̀͊̏̾͘x̶̋̍ 7 hours ago
Oh, I've seen this one before. The details are a bit fuzzy, but I remember that they'd been working as volunteers for the community and were staying. When they went on the hiking trip and disappeared, their belongings were found, and the camera had pictures of the surroundings and the back of one of their heads. I don't think their bodies were found, but one of their boots was found with their foot inside it, washed up from a river.
#30
Brianna Maitland. This happened near where I live, I was very young but that case still bothers me. Beautiful 17 year old girl just vanishes, her car was found crashed into an abandoned building and she was just gone. Real life Without a Trace type s**t.
Note: this post originally had 60 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
What do you think ?
Carilyn Beverly 6 hours ago (edited)
Elisa Lam comes to mind (Hotel Cecil, 2013, Los Angeles, Ca.)
Pencil 1 hour ago
That one was solved, though. But the Netflix series is still worth watching: "The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel."
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Carilyn Beverly 6 hours ago (edited)
Elisa Lam comes to mind (Hotel Cecil, 2013, Los Angeles, Ca.)
Pencil 1 hour ago
That one was solved, though. But the Netflix series is still worth watching: "The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel."
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