People Break Down Their Favorite Solved Mysteries Of All TIme

There was closure for these cases involving missing persons and murder.

The McStay Family

"The McStay family disappearance and murders. In February of 2010, the McStay's, a family of 4 (Mom Summer, Dad Joseph, and sons Gianni and Joseph jr) seemingly vanished from their home- abruptly. A carton of eggs was left open on the counter and the family dogs were still outside in the backyard. The scene was eerie, and complicated because the home the McStays lived in was in the process of being renovated- so a 'neat and orderly' home wasn't the norm at this stage. It appeared there was missing furniture and the usual mess that comes with construction (some freshly painted or redone surfaces mixed with older versions). From the outside- it appeared the family just took off. Neighbor had surveillance that captured what appeared to be the bottom of the family SUV leaving the driveway."

"Since they were living in California, the border to Mexico wasn't far and authorities found footage of what appeared to be the McStay's walking into Mexico with their two little boys in tow. The family SUV was found abandoned in a mall parking lot near the Mexico border. 3 years passed before the bodies of the McStay's were found buried in shallow graves in the California desert. The bodies appeared to be in advanced decomposition and there were signs of blunt force trauma. A sledgehammer was also found buried with one of the bodies. Chase Merritt, a business partner to Joseph McStay, was arrested and charged with their murders on 11/5/2014. His trial was delayed for years until 2019. He was sentenced to death. Motive: Chase had a gambling addiction and had been and continued embezzling money from the business. His DNA was found in the McStay's abandoned vehicle. He bludgeoned this beautiful family to death for money."

"ETA link with more info - https://people.com/crime/mcstay-family-murders-killer-sentenced-death/"

– Zombiemoon78

Screenwriter's Alleged Suicide

"The Case of Adrienne Shelly - screenwriter for Waitress. Husband came home to find her hanging in the shower - ruled suicide."

"He insists she was happy and would never kill herself promoting another view of crime scene where they found a shoe print that matched a construction worker in the building."

"Sure enough the construction worker went to rob her and thought he killed her so staged a suicide when the hanging ended up being the actual thing that killed her."

– Juniper338

Abducted Japanese Girls

"In the 1970s, a number of Japanese citizens disappeared from coastal areas in Japan. After many years it was found out that North Korea had abducted them."

"North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens"

"Most of the missing were in their 20s; the youngest, Megumi Yokota, was 13 when she disappeared in November 1977, from the Japanese west coast city of Niigata."

– your-playboy

A Baby's Death

"The death of Azaria Chamberlain - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain"

"She was a two-month old girl who disappeared while camping with her parents near Uluru. Prosecutors successfully tried her mother for murder and father as an accessory. During the entire ordeal it was insisted by her mother that Azaria was taken by dingoes, native wild dogs in Australia. This was disregarded, as before this there were no records of dingoes showing any hostility towards humans or causing any attacks or fatalities nearby."

"Several years later, an unrelated search not far from the campground found a child's coat, of the exact brand and description Azaria's mother gave to the police, in an area littered with Dingo dens. The parents conviction was overturned and the case was established that in reality, she had been taken from her parents tent during the night, killed and eaten by dingos."

– XtwVAlllO

The Attack On Dan Rather

"Dan Rather was attacked and beaten on a New York street by two men who kept demanding, 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' He was rescued by a doorman, and the two guys got away. For years, no one knew who they were."

"Then a man invaded NBC Studios and killed a stage hand. When captured, he explained that the networks were beaming radio messages into his head. He wanted to know the frequency they were using so he could jam the signals. Dan Rather was shown a mugshot and positively identified his attacker."

"Here's a New York Times article on it."

"https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/30/nyregion/belatedly-the-riddle-of-an-attack-on-rather-is-solved.html"

– SpecificMost19

The water kept these mysteries unsolved for years.

Antoine deSaint-Exupery

"The disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, who was also a French reconnaissance pilot during World War II."

"In 1944, he took off on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica and never made it back, and there was never any evidence of what might have happened to him and his plane."

"Finally, in 1998, a French fisherman pulled up his net and found wrapped in it a silver bracelet engraved with Saint-Exupery's name, and in 2004, a diver searched in the area and found the remains of his plane, which had apparently been shot down by a German fighter after all."

– BitterestLily

People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know

More Than A Century Later

"The Erebus and the Terror were found a few years ago. The two ships were part of an artic expedition and dissapeared 150 years ago."

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition"

– No_Condition_1623

Icy Grave

"1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply 'STENDEC.' After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. For years conspiracy theories and talk of Alien abduction circulated."

"Till 1998, when mountain climbers on a remote mountain found an engine, pieces of metal, and clothing at the bottom of a glacier on the side of Mount Tupungato. Turns out the aircraft got caught flying the wrong way in the jet stream while it was flying at night and using a system of timing when to start their decent. Being in the jet stream reduced their airspeed in relation to the earth and they smacked themselves straight into the side of a mountain, after which an avalanche covered the wreckage. The wreckage took decades to flow down the side of the mount with the glaciers. The glacier preserved the wreck so well that 50 years later the recovery team found identifiable remains, personal items, and could read serial numbers on the engines. Amazing one of the landing gear tires was still inflated, and that teams continued to visit the site for periodically as more of the aircraft, cargo, and remains of passengers are still emerging from the ice."

– OldWhoFan

The Windsor Hum

"Residents of Windsor (Canada) have been saying they could hear a hum coming from across the river in Detroit for the better part of a few decades. Well turns out that when a steel producer turned their furnaces off recently (when they were closing up shop) the Hum stopped. People had no idea what the noise could be until the factory closed."

"Edit: also a little fun fact; Zug Island (where the factory was located) was mentioned in Robocop and was also the destination of the SS Edmond Fitzgerald before it sank."

– FrighteningJibber

Where The River Runs

"Devil's Kettle Falls: A stream separates into two sections, one continues normally the other spirals deep into a hole. All sorts of things were thrown down the hole in an effort to discover where the water went. Ping pong balls, various dyes, it was even rumored that someone stuck an old car down there. Eventually someone came up with a clever idea, they measured the total water flow above and below the falls and discovered they were similar enough to deduce the two streams join back up relatively quickly."

– 3riversfantasy

We'll Never Let Go, Jack

"Where is the Titanic? (Most people don't realize that half of the people in the world grew up when the ship's location was still a complete mystery. Now, it's old news."

– SyzoBAZ

There were logical explanations for these seemingly otherworldly phenomena.

What The "Bloop?"

"The Bloop"

"In 1997 a really weird and loud noise was detected underwater and everyone was all 'WTF was that?.' In 2012 it was determined it was an iceberg breaking and/or rubbing against the seabed."

– Herp_derpelson

Misinterpreted Legend

"El Dorado or the lost city of gold turned out to be a mistranslation. It was just the name of some guy that got mistranslated to the name of a city."

– Myalltimehate

Fake Tears

"Weeping Jesus statue in India mystery. Apparently a Jesus statue started crying and all Christians along with Hindus started to drink it. It turned out to be sewage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeping_crucifix_in_Mumbai"

– beingbond

The Prophet Hen Of Leeds

"A hen was laying eggs with messages like "Christ is Coming" and people thought the world was ending. Turned out the farmer was actually writing on the eggs herself, and then reinserted it back into the chicken. edited for gender of the farmer."

– Incomnia_

For Christ's Sake

"The tomb of Jesus' previously unknown brother turned out to be a hoax to try to sell the tomb of a nobody for a lot of money."

– Myalltimehate

The North Atlantic Vortex

"Bermuda Triangle / devils sea... a triangle shaped section of ocean where airplanes and boats were known to disappear."

"Apparently most stories were embellished, and there is so much traffic that goes through the area it's actually a very small amount of vessels that go missing (percentage wise)."

– Weak_Independence793

The "Terrible Hand"

"What Deinocheirus looked like."

"When I was a kid in the 80s, all that was known were the bones of the arms with enormous claws. Hence its name, 'terrible hand.' They were mostly shown grasping a small car because they were so freaking huge. The rest of the animal was a complete mystery. Was it like a giant Allosaurus, one that'd make the T-Rex look like a puppy in comparison? A few years later it seemed more likely to be ostrich-like and an omnivore. Either way, given how rare it is for fossils to form at all, I was convinced I'd die never knowing what this dinosaur actually looked like."

"Then surprisingly in 2014, they found more bones and it was just the weirdest thing."

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinocheirus"

– riceandvegetable

The Pioneer Gravity Anomaly

"Space probe wasn't accelerating away from Earth the way we'd predicted, but it didn't get noticed until the probe got way the f'k out there."

"Next space probe gets launched, gets way out there, same thing happens. WTF? How does acceleration not work right? Does gravity just change really far away?"

"Turns out the heat from the radioactive death generator was all coming off the same side of the space probe, and the extra particle radiation gave a 'thermal recoil force' resulting in an extra acceleration of -- no kidding -- about 0.000000000874 m/s2."

"Over enough distance, it all counts."

– Laceogra

Closed cases and logical explanations are all well and good, but there is one phenomenon that continues to plague me.

Where do missing socks go? Seriously. It's a common occurrence where I'm left with a lone sock and the other is never caught in the lint trap or lost in the pile. They just vanish without a trace, I know I'm not alone in this.

Solving that mystery is not about having closure or putting my mind at ease so I can sleep at night.

I'm just tired of repeatedly buying new pairs of socks just because one sock goes rogue. Is it a New York laundry thing? Who knows?

But please enlighten me before I give up on socks and go with Crocs all the way.