Tag: unsolved mysteries

Strange and Mysterious Vanishings at Mount Shasta


Looming over the landscape of Siskiyou County, California is the imposing and majestic figure of Mount Shasta. Towering alone over 14,000 feet above its surroundings, it is a solitary, formidable presence that has since time unremembered been seen as a hallowed place by Native Americans, who believe it to be the home of various gods and spirits, and feature it in many of their creation myths. The mountain has also long been saturated with tales of all manner of mysterious phenomena, including lost cities populated by refugees from a lost continent, Bigfoot, ghosts, lizard people, portals to other dimensions and vortices, and it has long been a UFO hotspot. Among the many mysteries this towering behemoth holds are the many people who have come here to never return, and the mountain seems to be in a sense a hungry place with a habit of making people vanish off the face of the earth. 

By far one of the most famous tales of a vanishing at Mount Shasta revolves around a retired mining engineer by the name of J.C. Brown in the 1930s. At the time, there was much talk among occultists and Theosophists that the mountain was the home of an ancient race of enlightened, white-robed spiritual beings called the Lemurians, who were said to have escaped their sinking continent of Lemuria millions of years ago to take refuge at first at Atlantis, and then when that sank too in a lost city within the bowels of Mount Shasta. It was a popular notion for various New Agers at the time, and although it was dismissed out of hand by the scientific community and general public, there were many accounts of people encountering these enigmatic entities and even visiting their hidden city. It was against this backdrop of strangeness that one day in 1934 Brown pushed the lost city and the Lemurians onto headlines and into the public consciousness. 

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‘Ripper Diary’ Confirmed to be Real?

A controversial memoir suspected of being the diary of Jack the Ripper has allegedly been confirmed to be real.

Discovered in 1992, the book was purportedly penned by a Liverpool cotton merchant named James Maybrick, who confessed in the diary to being Jack the Ripper.

Details surrounding how the book had been found were shrouded in secrecy, leading many to suspect that the diary was simply a clever forgery.

However a new book claims to have successfully traced the origins of the book back to Maybrick’s home and, thus, strengthens the case that he was, indeed, Jack the Ripper.

Researchers looking into the memoir determined that the Ripper suspect’s home was being renovated in 1992.

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Cops probe if case of naked man stuffed in barrel along Malibu beach is tied to 2020 murder of rapper Pop Smoke

Los Angeles authorities are investigating a potential connection between the 2020 murder of Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke and a naked body that was found stuffed in a barrel floating off a Malibu beach this past week.

Family members have identified the remains stuffed inside the barrel as those of singer-songwriter Javonnta Murphy, 32, who was the brother of Jaquan Murphy — one of five people arrested in the wake of Pop Smoke’s murder.

Jaquan had originally been charged in the attempted murder of the rapper, but was later cleared of any wrongdoing. He is, however, awaiting trial for an unrelated murder in Los Angeles County. 

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is now looking into the possibility that Javonnta was killed in retaliation for Pop’s murder, TMZ reported.

The star, whose real name was Bashar Barakah Jackson, 20, was killed in a suspected home invasion at a Hollywood Hills home he had rented by a group of masked men at around 4.30am in February 2020. 

That July, two men and two teenagers were charged with his killing. All four defendants were members of the same street gang and are said to have learned of Pop Smoke’s whereabouts from his Instagram account. 

They were able to see the address of the rapper’s Airbnb on a gift bag label and saw  that he had a stack of cash with him.

A friend of someone staying in the house had called 911 to report the intruders, according to police.

The rapper’s body was discovered shortly afterward, and he was subsequently declared dead after being taken to a hospital. 

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Missing millionaire crypto influencer found dismembered in suitcase

Police have launched a murder investigation after the dismembered remains of missing millionaire Fernando Pérez Algaba, 41, were discovered by a group of children in Argentina over the weekend.

The grisly case came to light after the kids found a red suitcase filled with body parts while playing by a stream in the town of Ingeniero Budge, Buenos Aires Province, on Sunday, Jam Press reported.

The children’s parents notified the Buenos Aires police, who inspected the package and reportedly found the victim’s legs and forearm inside, discovering another whole arm in the stream.

On Wednesday, authorities discovered the missing head and torso, El País reported.

The body parts were cleanly amputated, suggesting the work of a professional, local media reported.

Meanwhile, a subsequent autopsy revealed that the victim had been shot three times before the dismemberment.

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Former pastor charged with killing 8-year-old girl who was walking to Bible camp nearly 50 years ago

An 83-year-old former pastor has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of a neighboring pastor’s daughter in 1975, Pennsylvania officials announced Monday.

The suspect, David Zandstra, was arrested on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where investigators say he confessed to killing 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington nearly five decades ago when he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania.

His confession came after investigators presented him with new evidence gathered early this year, which came from an interview with a confidential informant and a diary entry the informant wrote in 1975 when she was a 10-year-old girl, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

Zandstra has been charged with criminal homicide, murder, kidnapping of a minor and the possession of an instrument of crime, the release said.

“Justice has been a long time coming, but we are proud and grateful to finally be able to give the community an answer,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a statement.

This case has “haunted” members of law enforcement and the small area of Marple Township since Gretchen went missing, Stollsteimer said. The girl was last seen walking to summer Bible camp on August 15th, 1975, the release said.

The camp was held at both the Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church – where Zandstra was a pastor – and the Reformed Presbyterian Church – where Gretchen’s father was a pastor, the release said. Gretchen’s father became concerned when she failed to appear at his church, the release says, and it was Zandstra who then called police to report Gretchen’s disappearance.

Investigators noted there were inaccuracies in Zandstra’s early statements and they had questions about how the pastor knew so much about what Gretchen was wearing that day, even though she never arrived at camp, according to a newly released criminal complaint.

At the time, Zandstra denied knowing anything about the disappearance, the complaint said.

Two months later, Gretchen’s skeletal remains were found in nearby Ridley Creek State Park. Her cause of death was homicide, and the medical examiner said Gretchen suffered “two or more blunt impacts to the skull,” according to court documents.

Nearly five decades went by as the case laid dormant. Ultimately, an interview with a woman who was friends with the suspect’s daughter in the 1970s – and her diary entries from that time – led to a pivotal break in the case.

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Relative of original Jack the Ripper investigator claims to know never-caught serial killer’s ID

A relative of a former investigator of the Jack the Ripper case claims she knows the real murderer is.

Sarah Bax Horton, who is a relative to an officer who conducted the original investigation, claims a man named Hyam Hyams is the real mysterious serial killer who went on a spree in London in 1888.

Horton, a former police volunteer, said her detective work has led her Hyams, who lived in the area at the same time as the murderer, and that he was a cigar worker, therefore, would give him the knowledge of how to use a knife, the Telegraph reported.

In addition, Hyams had a dark past littered with alcoholism, epilepsy, and paranoia. He was also arrested after he attacked his wife and his mother with “a chopper,” the Telegraph said.

But what really convinced Horton that Hyams was the real serial killer was his medical records, which gave “distinctive physical characteristics.”

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Cops search Las Vegas home as part of investigation into rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder

Las Vegas police searched a home Monday as part of an investigation into rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder.

Detectives served a search warrant at a home in Henderson near Interstate 11 and Wagon Wheel Drive.

Shakur was shot and killed just one block from the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996. He was 25 years old.

The case remains unsolved.

Police have declined to comment any further. 

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Zodiac witness speaks out for first time to claim the murders were the work of multiple killers – because the man she saw did not match criminal sketches made after notorious cab driver shooting

The Zodiac killings of the late 1960s and 1970s may have been the work of more than one murderer, a witness has suggested. 

The terrifying new theory was revealed by a woman who believes she saw the man responsible for one of the gruesome murders in the new Peacock docuseries, ‘Myth of the Zodiac Killer,’ which premiered on Tuesday. 

‘The Zodiac’, as the killer became known, was believed to be responsible for five deaths and two more attempted murders in the San Francisco bay area, but his correspondence claims he killed 37 people.  

The supposed murderer wrote confessional letters to local news outlets and four cryptic ciphers, but his identity has never been revealed. 

Now a witness at Lake Berryessa in Napa County – where Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22, and Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, were stabbed in broad daylight on September 27, 1969 – has spoken publicly for the first time. 

Shepard survived but Hartnell died, and before leaving the park the killer left the dates of two previous murders on the side of Hartnell’s car. 

Linda Jensen, who was sunbathing at Lake Berryessa that day, claims the man she believes she saw is inconsistent with police sketches from other supposed Zodiac murders. 

‘There are other drawings that came out, of the Zodiac, that looked nothing like what I saw that day,’ Jensen told the documentary. 

Jensen was at the lake sunbathing with friends when a strange man had stalked the group and hid behind a tree for around 45 minutes. 

The group pretended he wasn’t there, for their own safety, she explained. 

Jensen believes the man she saw had notably different hair, eyes and facial features to another sketch produced after the murder of a 29-year-old cab driver named Paul Lee Stine who was shot by a passenger on October 11, just a few weeks later. 

‘He had very smooth, parted hair and combed [it] really straight…[he looked] just very intense, like focused,’ Jensen, said of the man she saw.  

‘The vibes coming off of him were bad, were dark. All of us felt that’ she said. 

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FBI to exhume body of woman featured on Netflix series ‘The Keepers’

The FBI will exhume the body of a woman whose mysterious death was detailed in Netflix’s true-crime series “The Keepers,” as law enforcement officials explore a potential link with the cold case murder of a Baltimore nun. 

“The Keepers” investigated the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and Baltimore high school teacher, and allegations of sexual abuse by an influential Baltimore priest named Father Joseph Maskell in the 1960s. 

In November 1969, before Cesnik seemingly vanished, Joyce Malecki was strangled, stabbed and found submerged in a body of water at Fort Meade.

Malecki’s body will be exhumed from Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore with her family’s permission as the FBI explores an unspecified lead possibly connecting the two cases, Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, confirmed to news outlets. 

“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say the purpose of the exhumation is to collect evidence,” Wolfgang told WBAL-TV. “Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it up with a potential suspect they may already have.”

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The strange death of Josh Maddux, the Boy in the Chimney

On May 8, 2008, Joshua “Josh” Maddux, 18, left his house to take a walk. He was a nature lover, so this was nothing unusual. He was never seen alive again.

Seven years later, in August 2015, less than a mile away from Josh’s home, property developer, Chuck Murphy, was demolishing an old wood cabin to make way for 32 new family homes. The cabin hadn’t been used in years and the inside was damp and rotten. Work to demolish the chimney inside the cabin started and to the surprise of the demolition team, crammed inside the brickwork was a mummified body, which later was confirmed as Josh. His body was naked apart from a thin shirt and his clothes were neatly stacked inside the cabin.

What happened to Josh? Did he climb in, was he forced in? The story of Josh Maddux continues to stir debate amongst armchair detectives.

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