Tag: unsolved mysteries

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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The Story Of Michael Rockefeller’s Disappearance And The Gruesome Theories Behind It

Michael Clark Rockefeller was born in 1938. He was the youngest son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and the newest member of a dynasty of millionaires founded by his famous great-grandfather, John D. Rockefeller — one of the richest people who ever lived.

Though his father expected him to follow in his footsteps and help manage the family’s vast business empire, Michael was a quieter, more artistic spirit. When he graduated from Harvard in 1960, he wanted to do something more exciting than sit around in boardrooms and conduct meetings.

His father, a prolific art collector, had recently opened the Museum of Primitive Art, and its exhibits, including Nigerian, Aztec, and Mayan works, entranced Michael.

He decided to seek out his own “primitive art” (a term no longer in use that referred to non-Western art, particularly that of Indigenous peoples) and took a position on the board of his father’s museum.

It was here that Michael Rockefeller felt he could make his mark. Karl Heider, a graduate student of anthropology at Harvard who worked with Michael, recalled, “Michael said he wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before and to bring a major collection to New York.”

He had traveled extensively already, living in Japan and Venezuela for months at a time, and he craved something new: he wanted to embark on an anthropological expedition to a place few would ever see.

After talking with representatives from the Dutch National Museum of Ethnology, Michael decided to make a scouting trip to what was then known as Dutch New Guinea, a massive island off the coast of Australia, to collect the art of the Asmat people who resided there.

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9/11: Whodunnit? and Why It Matters to the Peace Movement

“I have chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived — yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace . . .”— PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, JUNE 10, 1963

Sixty years later it behooves us more than ever to penetrate the tenacious ignorance of which Kennedy spoke. To honor my friend and colleague, TRANSCEND member Prof. Graeme MacQueen, who passed away in April, this editorial addresses topics he was passionate about, namely peace, justice and truth, in particular 9/11 truth.

If we’re not willing to open our minds to the abundant evidence refuting the narrative, fed to us mere minutes after the heinous crimes of 9/11 unfolded before our eyes, that a band of foreign militants from the Middle East was solely responsible for those crimes, then we risk continuing to fall prey to propaganda leading to unending wars and suffering.

Johan Galtung introduced me to Graeme at a 2011 TRANSCEND symposium in North Carolina. 9/11 was not on the formal agenda, but came up in side conversations as the 10-year anniversary approached. Galtung has always promoted open dialog on challenging topics, bucking the penchant of academic institutions and major media platforms to ignore dissenting views on 9/11 and dismiss them as crazy conspiracy theories. He thus proposed adding a session on 9/11 to the symposium and opening it to the general public. Three of us presented our views, followed by Q and A.

Galtung accepted the official narrative that 9/11 was perpetrated by foreign Muslim extremists, viewing it as blow-back from the many injustices the US had inflicted on the Middle East. He called it a public execution of 3 buildings (World Trade Center 1 and 2, and the Pentagon) that symbolized the US military-financial complex. 

Graeme and I enumerated unexplained anomalies pointing to complicity of key agents within the US Government and cast doubt on the culpability of Al-Qaeda operatives. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of 9/11, confessed involvement only after being subjected to prolonged torture via waterboarding, while videos of Osama bin Laden claiming credit for the attacks look suspiciously fake.

We all agreed, however, along with most peace activists, that the US response to the events of 9/11 was reprehensible: declaring the unending war on terror, fomenting widespread Islamophobia, curtailing civil liberties, decades-long military incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq that ruined both countries and cost countless lives. The US leadership justified its violent response by the fear, outrage and desire for revenge that swept across much of the nation, horrified at the shock and awe it had witnessed that fateful day. How could that have been prevented?

Imagine what our world might look like if the propaganda machine set in motion the morning of 9/11 had failed. What if most journalists, commentators, engineers, pilots, firefighters, police, and politicians on mainstream media had pressed for answers to valid questions, like:

How could damage and fires on the upper floors have caused both twin towers to explode and disappear into their footprints? How could World Trade Center 7, a third skyscraper not hit by a plane, have imploded symmetrically at free fall speed? How could an alleged hijacker who flunked flight school on small planes have executed a harrowing maneuver to ram a passenger jet into the Pentagon going 500 mph at ground level? How did the US, with its hundreds of billions in defense spending, fail to defend the nerve center of its military headquarters in the nation’s capital? 

Once it was announced hijacked planes were crashing into buildings, why did Secret Service agents allow President Bush to remain in a Florida classroom with children, leaving them vulnerable to attack? Who made money on a significant increase in stock market betting right before 9/11 that prices of American and United Airline stocks would drop? 

What if honest eye-witness journalists, who in the morning had reported explosions both before and during the destruction of the towers, had continued to develop that thread and ask deeper questions throughout the day and following days, rather than being diverted by select experts and pundits who silenced the “explosion” theme, supplanting it with unproven assertions that Osama bin Laden did it.

Had these questions — many raised also by 9/11 victims’ family members — been relentlessly pursued, the flimsy tale of Muslim extremists from remote parts of the world with no ties to any government being the lone perpetrators of this apocalyptic theatrical display would have soon disintegrated.

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‘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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