Tag: unsolved mysteries

‘Trunk Lady’ murder victim identified over 50 years after she was found strangled to death with bolo tie

After over half a century, investigators in St. Petersburg, Florida, say they have learned the identity of the city’s oldest and most notorious cold case victim. Sylvia June Atherton, a 41-year-old mother of five from Arizona, was the woman whose body was discovered in a wooden trunk 53 years ago on Halloween, authorities announced.

According to a press release from the St. Petersburg Police Department, two officers found a black steamer trunk in the woods behind a restaurant on Oct. 31, 1969, in the 4200 block of 34th Street South.

Inside, officers found a woman wrapped in a large plastic bag. She had visible head injuries, was strangled with a man’s Western-style bolo tie, and was partially clothed in a pajama top. The unnamed victim was buried as “Jane Doe” in Memorial Park Cemetery.

The case quickly gained notoriety, with the victim being dubbed the “Trunk Lady,” and was featured in various television shows, articles, and cold case conferences.

Forty years after discovering the “Trunk Lady,” a doctor with the University of Southern Florida’s Department of Anthropology assisted authorities in exhuming her remains. Efforts to identify the victim using teeth and bone samples over the years proved challenging due to their degraded state. However, earlier this year marked a breakthrough when a St. Petersburg police cold case detective discovered original samples of the victim’s hair and skin, which had been taken during the victim’s initial autopsy.

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Titanic sinking mystery ‘finally solved’ by fatal design flaw in unsinkable ship

The mystery surrounding why the “unsinkable luxury liner” The Titanic sank back in 1912 has long been subject to speculation, but was it simply a design flaw that caused the downfall of such a majestic ship on its maiden voyage.

Scientists previously believed the fate of the Titanic wasn’t down to the course chosen by Captain Edward Smith or a faulty rudder – but now it’s thought it could simply be down to poorly designed rivets holding the ship together.

The rather mundane reason was proposed by Jennifer Hooper McCarty and Timothy Foecke in their book What Really Sank the Titanic.

McCarty and Foecke are a pair of scientists and academics who have studied the downing of the cruise liner for decades.

Their work analysed 48 rivets found in the wreck of the Titanic and they believe the shipbuilders used cheaper iron to make them than was originally planned.

Speaking on the Early Show, an early morning news show in the US, Ms McCarty, who started researching the Titanic’s rivets while working on her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 1999, explained why they were so vital.

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FBI has IDENTIFIED Zodiac Killer as Air Force veteran Gary Francis Poste – who died in 2018 – and has partial DNA sample that could link him to five serial murders, cold case investigator claims

A cold case investigator is claiming that the FBI has identified the man suspected to be the infamous ‘Zodiac Killer’, who killed at least five people in the late 1960s.

Journalist Thomas Colbert alleges that an FBI whistleblower confirmed to him that Air Force veteran Gary Francis Poste, who has been previously posited as the killer, is currently listed by the bureau as a suspect.

Colbert claims FBI labs have a ‘partial’ DNA sample on Poste – who has been dead since 2018 – that links him to the murders, and believes authorities didn’t look into him enough when he was alive.

‘The felon has been secretly listed as the Zodiac “suspect” in Headquarters’ computers since 2016,’ Colbert’s organization, Case Breakers, said in a statement.

While the Zodiac killer is known to have killed five people in Northern California, the true figure is believed to be between 20 and 28 people, while the killer themselves claimed to have killed 37 in taunts sent to officials.

The FBI has long denied that the long-open case has been solved, confirming it remains open as recently as October 2021.

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50 Chilling Unsolved Mysteries Of The 1970s 

The 1970s were full of glorious parties at Studio 54 and post Vietnam celebrations, but it was also a decade full of chilling crimes that remain unsolved to this day. From gruesome murders to raucous heists and supernatural sightings, the mysteries chronicled here will leave you scratching your head and wondering exactly what happened in each of these stories.

Many of these stories are too upsetting for younger readers, so keep younger eyes shielded from the gruesome stuff. Keep in mind that many of these unsolved mysteries are cases that remain open, if you or someone you know can shine a light on these eerie crimes from the ’70s don’t be afraid to reach out… you could change everything.

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Autopsy Reveals New Details in Death of Detroit Neurosurgeon Who Was Found Dead in His Home

On April 23, Police found the body of Dr. Devon Hoover, 53, wrapped in a sheet in the attic of his home. Dr. Hoover, a notable neurosurgeon, lived alone in a large home in the historic Boston-Edison District of Detroit. 

A welfare check was requested when he did not respond to calls or meet with family members in Indiana as expected on April 22. Police report Dr. Hoover was shot inside his home and that they recovered his abandoned vehicle several miles away.

Police have not revealed a motive or information on possible suspects. 

On Wednesday, April 10, Police reported that Dr. Hoover had been shot twice in the head, then dragged naked into the attic. The Detroit Free Press reported that Dr. Hoover was “shot behind his right ear and then again in the back of the head.”

Dr. Hoover was on staff at Ascension Michigan Hospital—A spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “Devon Hoover, MD, was a dedicated and well-respected member of the Ascension Michigan family and will be greatly missed by our community.”

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A Series of Strange and Eerily Similar Unsolved Deaths in Minnesota

Jelani Dante Brinson had a lot going for him. The 24-year-old Jelani had a new, 9-month old baby daughter with his girlfriend Dena Anderson and they were trying to plan a life together, and he had just been promoted at his place of work at a cell phone shop. The devoted Christian was planning on becoming a minister and moving in with his girlfriend and child, but his life was about to lead down a dark path towards a tragic and perplexing unsolved mystery, that may or may not link to another mystery. 

On the evening of April 17, 2009, Jelani met up with some friends and went to a co-worker’s house in Anoka, Minnesota, in the United States. They then went to another friend’s house and Jelani was described as being in good spirits and his usual cheerful self. They then went to yet another acquaintance’s house, and after about 5 minutes there Jelani received a call on his cell phone. It isn’t known what he talked about on this call, but shortly after this he abruptly left the home and went off on his own without explanation and without saying goodbye. It was fairly strange and out of character for him, but they just assumed that he had been called away for something important and he would be back. He never did come back, but at the time they still did not realize that they would never see him alive again.

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US Risks Becoming First World Power Where Most Murders Go Unsolved

The United States is on its way to becoming the first developed country where most murders go unsolved, according to a Murder Accountability Project report.

Despite solving more murders in any year since 1997, solved homicide cases dropped to below 50% in 2020, the lowest recorded level, according to a Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project, report drawn from FBI data. In 1980, 71% of homicide cases were solved.

“Do we have to go to the status of most murders going unsolved? No, we don’t but the trend line certainly suggests we might,” Hargrove told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The truth is that we’re already there in dozens and dozens of major cities. It’s plain and simple that in many major American urban areas, most murders go unsolved and have done so for several years now.”

In 2019, 77% of homicides were solved in the Netherlands while 98% were solved in Finland, according to European Journal of Criminology report. Canada had a 75% success rate in solving murders, and Germany’s success rate ranged from 88% to 94%.

The cities with the most homicides in 2020 included Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to the report. Most of the homicide cases in 202o and 2021 involved guns.

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Newlywed Republican councilwoman, 30, was shot ‘SEVEN TIMES in the face as she drove her SUV outside her New Jersey home’ – as FBI investigates ‘personal attack’

FBI agents are now investigating after a Republican councilwoman was ‘shot in the face seven times’ while driving her SUV home – as Governor Phil Murphy said it was ‘not politically motivated’.

Eunice Dwumfour, 30, was shot outside of her home in Sayreville, New Jersey on Wednesday night, with friends calling it a ‘targeted and personal attack’.

According to friends, the mother-of-one was shot seven times in the face and seven times in the body.

She crashed her SUV with her slumped over the wheel, with horrified neighbors hearing multiple gunshots and then a crash.

Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and Sayreville Police are leading the investigation, with the FBI now becoming ‘involved’ in the investigation.

Dwumfour was found inside of her white Nissan SUV with multiple gunshot wounds on Samuel Circle just before 7.30pm.

She recently married a pastor who lives in Nigeria, just before Thanksgiving, and lived in the apartment with her 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

Friend and Pastor Nelia Rodriguez told The Ingraham Angle that she believes the incident was a ‘personal attack’.

She added: ‘We believe it [was] very personal because she was shot seven times in the face and another seven shots were hitting everywhere else.

‘So for somebody to get so close to somebody and shoot them so many times, it has to be personal.’

The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said the investigation into Dwumfour’s death is ongoing and officials have not released a motive or any information about a suspect.

There have been no arrested in the case, with officials seen searching a wooded area near her home after witnesses claimed they saw a man run off in that direction after the shooting.

Police received a tip that the murder weapon had been dumped in the area, so brought in police dogs to search the area.

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Rare Discovery Of Roman Dodecahedron Fragment Adds To Archaeological Mystery

A chance find by an amateur metal detectorist has added to a long-running mystery of archaeology, as a fragment of an Ancient Roman dodecahedron has been found in the small town of Kortessem, in Belgium. 

The piece, originally part of a dodecahedron measuring 5-6 centimeters (2–2.36 inches) in size, shows signs of having been repaired in the past, with local archaeologists at the Flanders Heritage Agency suggesting that it may have been broken in some kind of ancient ritual.

Roman dodecahedra are something of a puzzle: more than 100 such artifacts have been found throughout Europe over the past few centuries, each of them meticulously cast in these perfect 12-sided polyhedra. Each face of the bronze dodecahedra has a small hole through the center, though no hole is the same size as another, and each vertex is decorated with a tiny bauble – though apart from that, the little doodads seem to have no distinctive markings at all.

We can infer that they must have been important, at least to some of their owners, since several have been found among coin hoards and – the new example notwithstanding – hardly any show signs of the kind of wear and tear you might expect over nearly two millennia of history. 

And yet the simple fact is that nobody knows what Roman dodecahedra were actually used for. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that hundreds of them have been discovered, you’d never know they existed at all, since no record of them has ever been found in contemporary art or writing.

That hasn’t stopped people from theorizing. Perhaps the mysterious little objects were used as rangefinders or angle measurers, people have suggested, or maybe the Romans used them for astronomical predictions to aid in agriculture. Since the advent of YouTube, the idea that the dodecahedra were used as knitting aids has proved particularly popular – but since even knitting needles aren’t known in the historical record until a good few centuries later, that hypothesis is likely not true. 

Instead, archaeologists at the Flanders Heritage Agency favor a more esoteric explanation. “There is increasing evidence that dodecahedrons may not have been practical objects, such as measuring instruments,” the statement says. “The known specimens are too different in dimensions and details for that.”

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