Tag: unsolved mysteries

How a Medieval Murder Map Helped Solve a 700-Year-Old London Cold Case

ON FRIDAY, MAY 3, 1337, Chaplain John Ford was strolling down the bustling market street of London Cheapside during golden hour—when three men assaulted him. As one man stabbed Ford in the throat with an 11-inch-long dagger, the other two slashed his stomach open. Ford was left to die in a puddle of blood under the arches of what once was Greyfriars Church as the assailants escaped. Among the crowds, a hatter, a rosary-maker, and a third man called for help.

When local officials filed a report detailing the murder, a mysterious “longstanding dispute” was mentioned alongside one name: the rich and famous Ela FitzPayne.

But what could the churchman possibly have done for the noblewoman to order the man’s murder in broad daylight on a crowded London street?

These are the kinds of questions that Manuel Eisner, the deputy director of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, asks himself daily. In 2018, Eisner founded the Medieval Murder Maps—an interactive medieval murder map plotting the sudden deaths of thousands across the medieval towns of London, York, and Oxford. For Eisner, cracking 700-year-old cold cases, like the murder of John Ford, can provide an invaluable snapshot into medieval life, helping us understand the origins of the modern criminal justice system, what life was like for the past’s everyday people, and how crime patterns have, or haven’t, changed.

“I call it a distant mirror,” says Eisner. “You don’t just read it as violence. You have these little stories that are taking you on a time travel [adventure].”

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Breakthrough in search for Amelia Earhart’s plane after ‘wreckage found on seabed’

The mystery around what happened to Amelia Earhart – the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean – may be finally solved.

Divers believe they have finally discovered her plane lying on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near where the American aviator vanished in 1937.

Since her disappearance – during her most ambitious journey – millions of dollars have been spent on finding the wreckage.

Experts have long wondered where the missing adventurer lies – and this may be a huge breakthrough in he case.

After scanning 5,200 miles of seabed near Earhart’s last known position, surveyors Deep Sea Vision believe they may have located her Lockheed 10-E Electra.

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‘It was creepy’: Woman found in prone position with no head or thumbs and blood drained from entire body is identified

Nearly 13 years after cops found a woman without her head or thumbs and with her blood drained from her body, they now know her name.

The Kern County Sheriff’s Office last week said it identified the woman found dead in a grape vineyard in Arvin, California, on March 29, 2011, as 64-year-old Ada Beth Kaplan. The scene that day in Arvin, which is about 30 miles south of Bakersfield, was brutal. In addition to having her head and thumbs chopped off, the woman now known as Kaplan also was nude and placed in a prone position that investigators considered sexual.

Detectives believe she was killed elsewhere and carefully placed in the vineyard. Coroners categorized the death as a homicide but could not determine the cause of death.

Ray Pruitt, then an investigator with Kern County Sheriff’s Department, described the scene as “surreal” in a 2018 interview with NBC affiliate KGET.

“I remember looking at the detectives and the sergeant on scene and the coroner investigator who had arrived on the scene and we were all kind of speechless,” Pruitt said. “We were all just looking at each other trying to get our minds around what we were looking at.”

Pruitt said the murder was one “that you come across maybe once in an entire career, maybe never.”

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New evidence discovered in D. B. Cooper skyjacking case

A microscopic metal fragment found on the tie of infamous plane hijacker D. B. Cooper could help reveal his true identity. Private investigator and researcher Eric Ulis is ringing in the new year with new breadcrumbs to share.

“I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was,” said Ulis.

This particle is part stainless steel, part titanium. Ulis believes the itsy-bitsy discovery can be traced to a sophisticated metal-fabric shop.

According to Ulis, after his legendary disappearance 52 years ago, the man known as D.B. Cooper left behind a critical clue: a clip-on tie. After the money and the man vanished without a trace, this possession was spotted on Cooper’s seat on the back row of the plane, 18-E to be exact. Ulis says the tie was purchased at a J.C. Penny around Christmas 1964 for $1.49.

The evidence is currently under federal lock and key, but scientists who examined it were able to pull more than 100,000 particles from it.

“He applied these sticky stubs, they’re like little carbon circles that he could apply to portions of the tie and then when you pull them off, you’re pulling off some of the particles from the tie,” explained Ulis. “You apply modern state-of-the-art technology to it, things they didn’t have back 1971 when this occurred, it tells a story.”

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‘It was a heinous act’: Police now believe missing pregnant teen and boyfriend were executed and dumped at location where bodies were found 

Police have revealed new details regarding Savanah Nicole Soto, the pregnant 18-year-old in Texas who was reported missing last week when she failed to show up at the hospital to be induced and was later found dead in a car alongside her 22-year-old boyfriend, Matthew Guerra.

San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus on Thursday gave a press conference during which he confirmed that Soto and Guerra’s bodies were both found inside the couple’s gray Kia sedan and both victims died from fatal gunshot wounds. Their unborn baby was also pronounced dead at the scene.

“Clearly, it was a heinous act,” McManus said. “It was unspeakable, the tragedy of it.”

Soto was last seen alive on Friday, Dec. 22 at the apartment complex where she and Guerra both lived. She had been scheduled to go to the hospital the following evening with her mother to be induced, but never made it to the appointment. Her family then reported her missing and a CLEAR alert was issued.

Soto and Guerra’s bodies were found in the vehicle located in the 5900 block of Danny Kaye Drive on Tuesday, with police saying that the car appeared to have been at that location for several days.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that the cause of death for Guerra was a gunshot wound to the head. While authorities said that the manner of Guerra’s death has not been officially determined, McManus said that both deaths are being investigated as capital murder. He later clarified that investigators currently do not believe it was a murder-suicide, but noted that the possibility still “exists.”

In response to a question from a reporter, McManus further explained that investigators currently believe Soto and Guerra were killed at a different location and then driven to the area where their bodies were later discovered.

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Oscar Zeta Acosta: The Wild Life and Strange End of Dr Gonzo

In the annals of counterculture history, certain figures emerge as both mysterious and iconic, leaving an indelible mark on the zeitgeist of their time. Oscar Zeta Acosta, an attorney, politician, and writer, is one such figure.

Best known as Hunter S. Thompson’s larger-than-life companion, Acosta’s life is a tapestry woven with activism, literature, all leading to a mysterious disappearance. There are numerous theories as to what happened with Acosta but with a figure so controversial in his own time it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.

What happened to Oscar Acosta? Was it an accident, a drug deal gone wrong or something even more sinister?

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Major claim missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could be found in ‘a matter of days’ finally bringing an end to the nine year mystery

The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 could be solved in a matter of ‘days’ if there was a new search, experts have revealed.

Flight MH370 disappeared about 38 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur airport in southern Malaysia en route to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014.

Despite a frantic search by governments and private companies, the plane was never found and the fate of its 237 passengers remains unknown.

In September, aerospace expert Jean-Luc Marchand and pilot Patrick Blelly called for a new search based on revelations about the fate of the flight.

During a lecture before the Royal Aeronautical Society, the pair said the new search area could be canvassed in just 10 days in an open call for help.

‘We have done our homework. We have a proposal … the area is small and considering new capabilities it will take 10 days,’ Mr Marchand said.

‘It could be a quick thing. Until the wreck of MH370 is found, nobody knows (what happened). But, this is a plausible trajectory.’

The pair called on the Australian Transport Safety Authority, Malaysian government, and exploration company Ocean Infinity to begin a new search.

Last year, Ocean Infinity revealed it was interested in a restarting its search having canvassed swathes of Indian Ocean on a ‘no find, no fee’ basis.

Mr Marchand said the ‘swift’ search could be a good proving ground for the company’s new unmanned sub-nautical search technology.

Importantly, the pair told the RAS the new search area was based on the belief the plane was purposefully hijacked and downed in deep ocean.

Mr Marchad described it as an ‘atrocious one-way journey’, which he believed was likely carried out by an experienced aeroplane pilot.

‘We think, and the study that we’ve done has shown us, that the hijacking was probably performed by an experienced pilot,’ Mr Marchad said.

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What Was the Purpose of a Roman Dodecahedron?

One of the significant advantages any historian of ancient Rome has is a wealth of written material that has survived from 2,000 years ago to help explain to us what the remains of the Roman Empire mean.

For instance, we know how the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum ended up buried under volcanic ash because Pliny the Younger wrote about Mount Vesuvius erupting in 79 AD and destroying the two settlements.

Likewise, we know that the giant concrete arches dot Italy and France today’s landscapes today because many Roman authors dedicated sections of their work to the discussion of the aqueducts.

Julius Sextus Frontinus, a Roman engineer, even wrote a book called On Aqueducts in the first century AD.

But occasionally, historians are stumped by something from Roman times because there is no obvious answer for what it is, and there is also no documentary material from the time that discusses it. Such is the case with the Roman dodecahedra.

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12 Unsolved Mysteries from 2023

This past year featured an array of peculiar events and curious cases that defied explanation. From a wondrous piece of artwork (seen above) found near Las Vegas that was visible from space and an eerie black vertical line seen in the sky over a British town to an exhumed nun’s body that was found to be intact four years after her death and a series of drone incursions that left a Maryland family unsettled, 2023 saw a slew of inexplicable incidents emerge and leave us scratching our heads. With that in mind, here are 12 unsolved mysteries from 2023 that remain truly confounding…

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NEW suspect in case of DB Cooper is named as Pittsburgh engineer Vince Petersen – 52 years after hijacker got away with $200,000 ransom by parachuting out of the plane

A sleuth has named a new suspect in the case of DB Cooper – the hijacker who got away with a $200,000 ransom by parachuting out a plane 52 years ago never to be seen again.

Eric Ulis, a citizen investigator who sued the FBI for access to the case’s files and evidence, claims the man behind the November 24, 1971, mystery was engineer Vince Petersen from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Petersen worked as a Boeing subcontractor at a titanium plant and fits the evidence left behind by the infamous hijacker, the DB enthusiast told told The U.S. Sun. He would have been 52 at the time of the crime and has been long dead.

Ulis – who was five when the plane-jacking occurred – first landed on Petersen’s name after analyzing microscopic evidence left on the clip-on black tie DB left before he parachuted out of the plane.

Several of the particles found were consistent with specialty metals used in the aerospace sector, such as titanium, high-grade stainless steel and aluminum, Ulis explained.

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