There are plenty of cases out there that keep us up at night. Those are perhaps the most memorable.
Personally, I've always been fascinated by cases of missing people. I find myself returning once again to the disappearance of Asha Degree. She was a young girl in North Carolina who packed a bookbag and left her family's home in the middle of the night. It was storming that night. She was spotted by passing drivers, including one who turned around and began to approach her before she took off into the woods, never to be seen again. Her bag was found a year and a half later, items undisturbed, at a construction site.
What happened to her? Many people believe Degree was groomed and coaxed outside by a member of her community, which could mean that whoever took her still lives in the same town as her parents. Creepy thought, right?
After Redditor Malikaf asked the online community, "What's your favorite unsolved mystery?" people shared some of their own.
"I truly feel..."
JonBenet Ramsey.
I truly feel like we all know her family did it, but they just won't admit it, so it's just forever gonna remain "unsolved."
We're going to debating that first one until the end of time, aren't we?
Seems likely.
"The murder..."
The murder of Ken McElroy in Skidmore, Missouri. I can't believe it, but I'm finding it strangely wholesome that they've never found who did it.
"There's a whole podcast..."
The Isdal Woman. There's a whole podcast on it called "Death in Ice Valley" and I found it fascinating. Was she a spy? A victim of random murder? Suicide?
Plus, even though the podcast has some harrowing content, the voice of the woman who does it is oddly relaxing. I've listened to it several times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isdal_Woman
"The garage door was discovered open..."
"Jonelle was dropped off by friends at her family's residence in the 300 block of 43rd Avenue Court in Greeley, Colorado on December 20, 1984 at approximately 8:15 p.m. She was returning from a Christmas choral program at a nursing home, where she had sung with her middle school choir, and was to wait for the rest of her family to arrive at the home.
Her older sister and her father, Jim Matthews, were at a basketball game and her mother, Gloria Matthews, was visiting relatives out of state. Jonelle was last heard from at 8:30 p.m., when she took a phone message from an acquaintance of her father.
Jonelle's father, Jim Matthews, arrived at the house at approximately 9:30 p.m. and discovered she had disappeared. Jonelle's stockings, shoes, shawl, and a portable heater were on the floor and the television and lights were turned on. It is believed she was interrupted while watching television.
The garage door was discovered open and investigators located footprints inside the garage and around the back of the family's home, but there were no indications of a scuffle in the snow of the yard. Authorities suspect that an unknown intruder or intruders broke into the residence and abducted Jonelle that evening. She has never been seen again.
Jonelle's biological mother, Terri Vierra-Martinez, located the child's adoptive parents in 1997. Vierra-Martinez learned about Jonelle's disappearance at that time. She also discovered that law enforcement had kept her under surveillance for six weeks after Jonelle's 1984 abduction. Authorities were not permitted to give Vierra-Martinez any information concerning her daughter's case at the time due to adoption privacy laws.
Vierra-Martinez is not a suspect in Jonelle's disappearance. She has become friends with Jonelle's adoptive parents. Jim and Gloria believe that their daughter is deceased and have held a memorial service for her. They now live in the Philippines.
Media reports stated several investigators theorized Jonelle was assaulted inside her residence on the evening of her 1984 disappearance. They believed she may have been murdered by the unknown attacker(s) and her remains were incinerated to hide the crimes. Other investigators believed that Jonelle was abducted and taken elsewhere. Her case remains unsolved."
"The church insists..."
The wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige has not been seen in 11 years. The church insists that she's just too busy to make public appearances, but former member Leah Remini has filed a missing person report for her. Some say she's straight-up dead.
"Why are we born..."
Why are we born into this particular body, with this particular set of DNA, in this exact location, in this era, as opposed to randomly starting as any other possible person?
This last one still fascinates me.
For some more background, I highly recommend checking out Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, a deep-dive into the Church of Scientology written by journalist Lawrence Wright.
Let's continue.
"He has yet to be identified..."
Somerton Man, also known as the Tamam Shud case, is really bizarre. Basic gist is a dead guy on an Australian beach is found with a torn piece of paper saying, "Tamam Shud," Persian for "ending" or "the end." He has yet to be identified but everything surrounding him after the case started is bizarre and intriguing.
That one...
...always makes my head spin, personally.
Let's continue.
"He was videotaped..."
The disappearance of Brian Shaffer drives me bonkers! He was videotaped entering a bar but no video footage of him leaving. Nobody has a clue what happened to him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Brian_Shaffer
"Nobody knows why..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Gary_Mathias
The Disappearance of Gary Mathias, aka the Yuba County Five. Not just weird, but very sad.
Five men between the ages of 24-32 were very close friends. They all either had mental issues or intellectual disabilities, and all still lived with their families. They went to see a basketball game 50 miles/80km away. After the game, they drove to a convenience store to grab some snacks and drinks, and then were never seen alive again. Their car was found on a mountain, around the snow line, 70 miles/110km away from the basketball game, nowhere near the route back home. The car was abandoned, but it still drove fine and had gas.
On the same night they went missing, a man was driving up the same road and got stuck. When he tried pushing his car out, he had a heart attack. He saw another car pull up behind him with a group of people around it, including a woman with a baby. When he called for help, they stopped talking and turned their lights off. Later on, he saw people walking around with flashlights; when he called for help, they again turned their lights off.
This all happened in February. In June, the first of the bodies were found. One man, Weiher, was found in a ranger's trailer 20 miles/31km from the car. He had lost almost 100 pounds, and the growth of his beard suggested he'd been alive in the trailer for up to 13 weeks before he starved to death. The trailer had matches, things for burning. It had heavy clothing to wear. It had enough food for all five men to survive on for a year. It had heating that was never turned on.
Bones of three of the other men were eventually found around the trail leading from the car to the trailer. They are believed to have died of hypothermia. Though Gary Mathias's shoes were in the trailer with Weiher, suggesting he was there at some point (and Weiher had been tucked into bed, so someone else was with him) his remains were never found.
Nobody knows why they were even on that road to begin with, let alone why they would abandon their car instead of just driving back down the road, or why, once they got to the trailer, they didn't use any of the supplies to stay alive.
"You can see her house..."
Jennifer Lee Martin.
"Jennifer was last seen at approximately 3:00 p.m. in the Lemmon Valley area of Reno, Nevada on June 28, 1987. She bought candy and a soda a 7-11 convenience store on Lemmon Valley Drive and disappeared while walking away from the business towards her home on Surge Street, just a few hundred feet away.
Jennifer should have arrived home in less than five minutes, but she never did. When twenty minutes passed and she hadn't come back, her older brother went to the 7-11 to look for her, and couldn't find her. She has never been heard from again.
Authorities treated Jennifer's disappearance as a possible abduction from the onset of the investigation. A white pickup truck seen in the area at the time was eventually accounted for, but witnesses also saw a light-colored Toyota Corolla that was never identified. It's unclear whether the vehicle had anything to do with her disappearance."
You can see her house from the 7-Eleven, and IIRC her parents never moved away because they knew she'd know where to go if she was alive.
"I'm pretty sure..."
Lars Mittank. Guy goes on a ski vacation, bumps his head hard enough to warrant a doctor's visit, gets diagnosed with a ruptured eardrum, which he takes care of for a couple of days with an antibotic. He's due to fly home, but while in the airport, he's spotted by the security cameras full on sprinting out of the airport with his luggage. He goes missing after that...
I'm pretty sure it was mental issues that came from bashing his head, and he got full on paranoid and ran away from his "enemies".
Other theories are that he was involved in drugs/drug smuggling, so he ran when he had the chance. Another theory is that he was the target of black market organ harvesting (young guy with good organs and a tourist, yup.), as he sees the airport doctor before boarding his plane home and the doctor advised him not to fly.
If you want to go down a rabbit hole...
...here's the Lars Mittank video and a primer on the case.
Enjoy (though I doubt that word is appropriate here).
"An individual claiming to be her killer..."
The Black Dahlia:
In 1947, an American woman by the name of Elizabeth Short was found murdered, drained entirely of blood, and cut in half completely at the hips. She had also been given a "Glasgow smile" or Joker type cuts on the sides of her mouth. Her organs and body were found to have extra cuts and flesh missing and organs moved around and manipulated, (much like the infamous Jack the Ripper victims). She was placed in a underdeveloped neighborhood, and was discovered at 10 am, by a woman walking with her three-year-old daughter. The woman actually thought Short's body was a mannequin, and only upon closer inspection did she realize she was a corpse. Her murder and the discovery of her body were highly publicized by the media.
An individual claiming to be her killer called the police claiming that he would turn himself in, but that he wanted the police to chase him a little bit more, but that he would send "souvenirs of Elizabeth". The police then received some of her personal belongings that are believed to have been sent directly by the person who murdered her. Elizabeth Short's case remains unsolved.
Creeped out yet?
We wouldn't be surprised if you are. We'd understand!
Have some unsolved mysteries that you can't get out of your head? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.
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