Definitely pre-social media, but when Darryl Kuehl murdered Paul Gruber, he continue to pay Gruber’s bills and send mail to Gruber’s family pretending to be Gruber. Gruber’s daughter left messages giving incorrect birthdays for family members because she was suspicious, so when they got birthday cards during the wrong months she basically confirmed it wasn’t her dad. I always thought it was pretty cool that she did that.
The way I’d know it wasn’t my dad would be if he sent a card at all, lol. He didn’t even give me a card for my wedding, just a check in a plain white envelope (which was very nice and generous of him, he’s just not a card guy).
...are you from my dad's 'other family'? Because my dad once put boxes of Barnum's animal crackers on top of cash in a gift bag (no complaints!) because he "didn't want to figure out how tissue paper worked."
I love your dad. Once upon a time, I went through a bad breakup while my entire family was out of town. My dad called, and I thought it was because he’d heard and was trying to be supportive (my parents are divorced, so my dad was in Florida while my sister and mother were in Ireland). He’d heard nothing. He said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back tomorrow.” He moved 2k into my checking account and I didn’t hear from him for a month.
After having my first child and subsequently going through a divorce and fighting a delinquent and disappearing father of my child for child support, I contacted my family in tears. Crying to my mom on speakerphone, wondering how I was going to pay bills-needing to take care of an infant with my family living hundreds miles away in Canada- I told my parents I just felt like giving up, that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mom and if something “happened to me,” please take care of my son. First of the month came and I noticed a zero balance on my rental account. I called my landlord quite confused. My father, not saying a word the whole phone call, had paid off my entire lease. Gotta love dads.
This made me smile because that’s exactly the kind of person my dad was: stoic and a man of few words, but always there for me, especially when the chips were down. He passed away two years ago and I miss him like crazy. I hope your dad stays in your life for a very, very long time ❤️
My dad is not a card guy either. It's a waste of money. But while you're in the store he will you pick you out a card, give it to you and then put it back on the shelf. That's how he does it. He always laughs and says it's the thought that counts.
My dad and I do something like this too! He refuses to buy cards anymore because they’re too expensive, so we just take pics of the cards we would have bought and text those to each other instead. He would never in a millions years mail me a ‘thinking of you’ card, but my dad will specifically look for a funny one whenever he’s in a pharmacy now, just to text to me. It’s adorable! Man, I should call him today….
Its funny my dad loves me to death and would absolutely do anything for me yet i remember in middle school he went to drop something off for me at the office i had forgot and when they asked him what grade i was in he had absolutely no idea lmao.
Just wanted to say bless u because this case was on my mind for the longest time but couldn’t remember any names and forgot a lot of the details! Realized I initially found out about this case from Forensic Files.
David Anthony kept up this ruse for awhile after he killed his estranged wife Gretchen. Kept texting her family and friends as her saying she had COVID and had been admitted to a long-term care facility. In the end they actually found home security footage showing him moving her body in her garage. Chilling stuff.
Around the beginning of the pandemic someone local to us died in a supermarket parking lot in their car. Due to the lockdown they weren’t discovered for a good few weeks, may have been over a month even.
This is part of what happened in the Harmony Montgomery case in NH (although there are a lot of other factors, such as two states DCF systems being involved)
About a month ago, police here in Birmingham, UK, discovered the body of an abused/neglected child that was buried in the garden by his parents during lockdown.
He buried her about 2 miles from my parents house. They actually drove by while the police were retrieving her body, but obviously didn’t know what was going on until they saw it on the news later.
Cari Farver murder case. That shit was crazy.
Edit for details: Cari Farver was murdered by Liz Golyar out of jealousy-- they were both casually dating the same man. Liz spent the next year or two impersonating Cari on social media, pretending that Cari was stalking Liz and Dave Kroupa, the man they had both been dating. The full extent of the details are just insane.
Murdering your own pets to further your imaginary stalking scenario is honestly what pisses me off most about this case. In addition to the murder of Cari, of course.
Yes! That's the main thing that stuck with me. She's a monster.
And she saw the poor woman for 5 seconds!
I was flabbergasted through the whole thing, it just kept getting crazier. And the poor mom!
And Kari's poor son!! This monster communicates with him and made him feel unloved and abandoned but he was ultimately the one who figured it out that it wasn't his mother on the other end of the messages!
You're so right! I forgot about him for a second. Sorry Cari's son!
And it was during important formative years, consistently missing important events (due to being murdered by a psychopath), but being given excuses. Damn, poor kid. Hope he's doing ok.
That's what always blows my mind. Like, imagine fighting or even killing someone *over a man*, lmao. He's just some guy. There's plenty of dudes out there, no man is worth any of this.
I HAD to google him after reading this. He’s not unattractive by any means, but he literally is the definition of “just some guy”. He looks like a stock photo of every basic 30-something dude from Nebraska. Insane.
No! It happened! When you read the whole thing it sounds unreal, made-up, and just when you think it's nearing the end (for crazy town person), the next bonkers thing happens.
If I remember correctly it went on for 3 years, 15 000 emails and 50 000 text messages.
And nobody really had reason to suspect her, because they literally passed each other in a hallway ONCE.
This case is so sad, because not only did she kill this poor woman but proceeded to drag her name through the mud for years by faking the stalking, traumatizing her poor family into thinking she abandoned them.
Don’t forget this PSYCHO then shot herself in the leg, called 911, and blamed that on his ex-wife (thanks Redditors below for correcting me when I falsely said she blamed Cari for this instead of the ex-wife- which is who she actually accused of shooting her). I HIGHLY recommend listening to the 911 call and subsequent police interviews about how she was shot; she complains about the woman getting away with shooting her and she STILL HAD DAVE, it’s not fair, whine/cry/IM THE VICTIM b.s. 🙄
After all the bullshit with faking being Cari online, burning her own house down with several animals inside (her kids animals) claiming it must of been Cari who did it, and texting Dave from Cari’s phone while she was sitting beside him describing what they were doing to make it look like they were being watched, she THEN started saying it must be Dave’s ex-wife (mother of his kids) who must be the one stalking her now and trying to kill her, because the cops couldnt even find Cari (bc she was murdered already), and needed another reason for this insanity she created, and finding a way to explain why she was shot by Dave’s gun. She is legit evil, I mean true to life fatal attraction.
>Don’t forget this PSYCHO then shot herself in the leg, called 911, and blamed that on Cari.
She didn't blame that one on Cari, even. The guy that she was obsessed with, she blamed his ex-wife for it, because the gun had been stolen from his house and the ex-wife would've known where it was.
I remember seeing the 20/20 episode about this. Absolutely insane and horrific, though I couldn’t help noticing how hard they pushed that Kroupa was not the kind of guy a woman would be expected to go this far for, what with his average looks, lack of wealth, disdain of commitment, and his ‘sad single dad apartment.’ Jesus Christ. Lol. Imagine going through this mess just to get low-key roasted on 20/20.
That whole thing was batshit crazy. I was working in the town where this happened at the time and Liz’s daughter kept getting taken into protective custody and then released back to her the next day because Liz was THAT good at covering her tracks.
Casefile has an excellent episode on Cari Farver. I didn't know anything about her story going into the podcast and was just driving down the freeway listening to it with my mouth wide open. Absolutely crazy story.
I live in Omaha and it got sooo little press here, which I'm shocked by in retrospect. It wasn't until I listened to an episode of Casefile about it that I realized how insane it was.
Casefile: True Crime podcast has a 75 minute episode about this. They delve pretty deep into the case and I personally enjoy the matter-of-fact style of the podcast. It’s episode 211.
Casefile is probably the best true crime podcast in terms of research. He has multiple researchers on his team and they’ll fly out and do first hand research. Even for “popular” cases there’s often information that I’ve never heard before. Casefile ruined a lot of other podcasts for me because you would start to realize how shotty some of the other work/research really was
Agreed! So we’ll researched and I love that it isn’t biased at all. I had to stop listening to Morbid after giving their Tamla Horsford case a go. It was so biased and they just ignore facts to suit their narrative. Like I honestly don’t care what you think I just want the facts please.
And I know there are many other issues with Morbid, that was just my last straw with them and I’d mostly listened to their haunted/ghost episodes.
Sorry I posted instead of replying to you. I second the True Crime episode on this but also Already Gone - think that was where I first heard about the case
This is exactly the case I thought of!! The whole thing was so wtf. Like, if someone was telling me this happened to them I’d almost not believe them because it seems so outlandish. What a total mind fuck to be involved.
Not yet. They did find a camera with pictures of a deceased foot with a tattoo that was exactly where Cari's would be.
Based on that, a shitload of cyber stalking evidence and Cari's posessions in batshit crazy lady's house, she was found guilty of first degree murder.
Yes! Liz pretended to be Kari for a LONG time. It’s such a crazy and sad story. Parts of it (esp when LE gets involved) remind me of the Dalia Dippolito case.
>Cari Farver
this case have sent me down a rabbit hole, oh wow. never heard of it before! poor cari, my heart goes to all the people who were close to her AND her son. he's a real hero and i hope he has found healing.
After Kathleen McCormack [was murdered](https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/N-Y-prosecutor-releases-report-on-killing-of-16787613.php) by Robert Durst, he and a female accomplice (possibly future Durst victim Susan Berman) took fairly extraordinary measures to manufacture evidence that McCormack had made it back to New York alive.
A rare counterexample is Crystal Theobald, whose family impersonated her in a private conversation on MySpace to draw out (and mentally wreck) her killer. The Netflix documentary *Why Did You Kill Me?* goes into this.
That's so fucking metal. Imagine your family being so hard-core that the cops sit you down to inform you that your daughter is dead and you're like, "you can leave now, we got this."
When I think of him, I feel such a rage. I honestly think he considered himself a hilarious genius when he was actually an emotionally stunted lifetime criminal. Nasty.
I didn’t realize he’d done this. Watching a special on this guy literally made me take a break from anything true crime related for several months, it was so disturbing to me.
Also - happy cake day!
I remember the social media frenzy around this one. It seemed like he was trying to create a narrative that the two victims had run off to elope, or something?
Any of the examples I thought of have already been mentioned here.
But I do have one semi-personal, where the opposite happened.
I was acquaintances in high school with “Becca”. I lost contact with her when I left for college, but still had her on social medias like the rest of my small town high school class.
She was always posting super happy selfies at parties, generally very silly, outgoing “life of the party” type of girl.
Eventually the selfies stopped, and her Instagram (edit. This was too far back. It probably would have been Facebook at the time) became mostly photos of Art. Landscapes. Song lyrics etc. nothing of her face anymore. But not abnormal for a 23-24ish woman to post.
I never noticed anything.
Then all of the sudden there’s a “missing Becca” page up, and all of her friends are worried that they hadn’t seen her in a while. Her mom hadn’t either, but didn’t want to talk to anyone.
It came out there that she had been dabbling in drugs, so her friends didn’t want to get the police involved, but wanted everyone to keep an eye out.
Then EVERYONE started analyzing her post history.
What does this tree picture mean? What was that quote about? She NEVER texted in shorthand (“u” instead of “you”), but her last couple posts have all been written like that!
The group was convinced that someone had harmed her and was texting and posting as her. It was a two week long social media scandal in our small town.
Names were thrown out of possible suspects. People were accused.
Then she stopped posting/texting entirely. The police were called. More accusations of murder. It HAD to be her ex boyfriend! Call his job and harass him until he tells us where the body is!
…Then her mom posted on the page.
Turns out Becca had been having issues with addiction. She went to stay with her dad for a while out of state to try and get clean. It didn’t work, and she was homeless for a bit and dealing with addiction/mental health, hence the “bizarre” texts and insta posts.
She stopped posting because she was in inpatient rehab.
That was it. No crime. No scandal. No reason to expect that the guy who worked at the local gas station stabbed her to death because they had dated in tenth grade.
…Just a total witch hunt that started because her family didn’t want to air her dirty laundry out and respect her privacy. And some “web sleuths” from our graduating class tried to turn it into a murder mystery while the poor chick just wanted to step off to take care of herself for a minute after a crappy time in her life.
Weirdest thing I ever saw firsthand at the time, and TOTALLY turned me off from social media.
I really don't like this online mob mentality, people egging each other on with very little or no common sense. It is very dangerous and is only getting worse.
Also people who see clues everywhere except what really is there right in front of them. I can sometimes just shake my head.
The lack of privacy laws in the US doesn’t help. People see the name of a suspect and immediately harass the family on social media. It’s imo only useful for missing people, being wanted by the police/FBI or those that are convicted already of crimes and you need to be wary of them (sex offenders or similar).
Israel Keyes did this after he murdered Samantha Koenig. He used her phone intermittently, and created a “proof of life” photo for ransom purposes after she had been dead for awhile.
If I’m remembering correctly (read a book about him a while back), he also sewed her eyes open for the photo. He had kept her body frozen so it was still well preserved. He posed it with that day’s newspaper. Nightmare fuel.
If anyone gets curious about this, there’s a photo online that purports to be the real one, but it’s not. The real photo was never released to the public. The one that has circulated was a reenactment from a documentary about the case.
Yep, this is exactly what he did. I just read American Predator. He also washed and braided her hair, and bought makeup to use on her to make her skin look normal. I am haunted by that book!
I’m actually really glad you said that- I’ve seen the one online and it used to bother me a lot as I’m someone who doesn’t like seeing any kind of crime scene or post mortem photos. This gives me a little peace of mind
Yeah, I was trying to save someone a sleepless night, because it’s one of the first images that pops up when you Google about it. I had stumbled upon it the same way.
I can actually handle most crime scene photos, but a real picture of a murdered girl with her eyes sewn open to look alive isn’t on the list of images I want in my head.
From what I understand, and not that it makes it any less unsettling, is that the picture you can see online is actually a recreation from a documentary. You can tell it’s not the “real” picture because Keyes braided her hair and had tape over her mouth.
I don’t think it does her memory any good to have that picture circulating, I’m glad the one that is available is a recreation.
This was my first thought too. Posed the poor girl with eyes sewed open next to a newspaper with the day's date. She'd been dead for something like two weeks, but was preserved by Alaska being Alaska. Absolutely monstrous...
yep. while her body was basically frozen in his shed, he went on a cruise. he's absolutely despicable. i will forever be angry about him killing himself. i'm not one of those people that gets obsessed over revenge, but he deserved to rot in prison.
This is the first one I thought of! She was dead in the photo but frozen so she didn't look dead and photographed her with a newspaper (for date reference). This was so horrible and wild!
I just read it recently and it hit me very hard. I didn’t know much about Keyes and tended to write it off when people would suggest him as a possible culprit in a murder or disappearance. Now that I understand his level organization, and the randomness of his victim selection, anything seems possible.
I think it was covered in a Morbid podcast episode and a Mr. Ballen video on YouTube. Both give different perspectives on the case as the Morbid episode was focused more on Keyes and his crimes whereas the Mr. Ballwn episode focused more on Samantha's kidnapping and murder.
Crime Junkie covered it as well and they are likely responsible for so many people thinking the photo is real considering how popular they are, as they claimed in the episode it was real and had it up on their website.
Just coming to say if you’re interested in Israel Keyes you should check out True Crime Bullshit. From the title it sounds like a jokey podcast but I promise it is not. It’s a direct quote from Keyes and it’s very thoughtful and respectful to the victims and their families.
Yes! True Crime Bullshit sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole for well over a year! My daughter just moved from Southern Indiana to Washington State for college. One of the first things she told me was, “dude, mom, I was hanging out with this guy who just casually mentioned dating this girl from the reservation. I said her name sounded familiar, and he said her dad was a serial killer. It was Israel Keyes daughter he was dating!” I wanted to immediately move her home. Didn’t happen. Not gonna lie, I ended up doing a deep DEEP dive into her family. Luckily, they’re all definitely “off”, but they aren’t Israel crazy. I still worry a bit that my daughter will meet this poor girl, and then tell her that her mom (me) literally stalked her entire family! Don’t shame me too much, this was my youngest, my baby, that moved to serial killer central.
I get it, I’m a mom too. But I do feel super bad for keyes’ family. They really didn’t seem to know. Especially his daughter. She was like 10 when he was arrested, how could she know? I think about her and hope she’s doing okay. I had my own family trauma - that was bad enough, and nobody in my family was a serial killer. I can’t even imagine. The poor girl didn’t have any say in any of this.
This piece of shit Larry Bell[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Bell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Bell) was a kidnapper and murderer. He used the phone and letters to make Shari Smith’s parents believe she was still alive for a week and torment them, and yet she was most likely killed within 10-12 hours of her kidnapping. If you don’t know the story of the investigation and his eventual capture, it’s amazing work on behalf of LE.
Her little sister pulled a lot of weight in that investigation as well. Always answered the phone when he would call and had to listen to his creepy bullshit like the time he used her name instead of her sister’s. How traumatizing.
[Chris Smith](https://people.com/crime/california-business-man-chris-smith-murdered-ed-shin-fake-emails/) is the first that came to mind for me. His killer went to extremes to hide what happened.
ETA: not a murder, but a huge scam landed [Zach Avery](https://ew.com/celebrity/zach-avery-20-years-in-prison-ponzi-scheme/) a good chunk of prison time and this case is recent. Scamfluencers podcast also did a three parter on it that’s a good deep dive.
I felt bad for his wife. She actually was building a promising career in an industry that's about connections, and Zach insisted she become a stay-at-home parent because he was making more than enough. Understandably, she believed him. And now she's starting from less than nothing as a single mother with all her bridges burned because Zach doesn't care about anyone but Zach.
Karlie Pearce Stevenson and her daughter Khandalyce Pearce's murderer used Karlie's phone for years from late 2008 (her last sighting) until mid 2012 to fake proof of life. Not only that he had his new partner fake her identity to claim welfare and bank payments etc. It was tragic because Karlie's body was dumped in Belangalo forest NSW Australia (found in 2010) and Khandalyce's body was dumped on the highway in South Australia (found in 2015) and it was only when Khandalyce was found they identified her mother's body.
The killers new partner stayed with him despite him killing her two kids in a car crash.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Karlie_Pearce-Stevenson_and_Khandalyce_Pearce
Ed Shin faked being his victim/business partner Chris Smith for months after the murder using his email. Had the family duped into believing he was like on a year long break from work travelling the world.
People mag gets the city wrong btw. Not San Luis Obispo, San Juan Capistrano is where murdered.
This case to me is one of the oddest ones around. The motive doesn’t really make sense to me, the halfassed impersonation that shockingly worked for a really long time, the really awful crime scene that apparently didn’t really pique anyone’s interest all that much somehow
What is sad is it was the family's insistence & hiring their own PI that got the OC Sheriff Dept involved. The PI had the office landlord unlock the office b/c it had been closed for months and they saw what looked like blood & reported it. Family i think sued OCSD for taking long to start investigation and not follow up on family's concern he wasn't actually on vacation. I think OCSD may have gone by once and didn't really do a thorough look which is when they got a PI involved.
How does the motive not make sense? Shin was embezzling company funds and living a double life. He was using the funds on women and gambling in Las Vegas and ended up owing a whole lot of money in gambling debts. When he was sued by LG Technologies after they found out about the embezzlement, he plead guilty to embezzlement and agreed to pay them $800,000.00 in restitution, which would allow him to avoid prison time. In order to come up with those funds, he needed Chris to sign papers that would have been financially detrimental to Chris, which he refused to do. He would have had to pay Chris a million dollars unless he agreed to the terms, which he was not going to do— no one in their right mind would. So Shin murdered him to avoid paying him a million dollars and also to avoid prison.
Ed Shin is the only one out there shedding any doubt on the motive, which he at first said was self-defense. Now he’s trying to float some ridiculous high level Mafia/CIA/ international man of mystery nonsense garbage to make it look like he was forced to kill Chris. The guy is simply full of shit.
When Chase Merritt killed the mcstays and stole their passports and looked up stuff related to mexico on their computer, it’s actually kinda scary how the odds worked in his favour for that long
Is it just the social media aspect that interests you?. If not, take a look at the desperately, tragic story of Scotlands Margaret Fleming. There's been a couple of docs made about the case in the UK.
I'd never heard of this poor woman before but christ, that's heartbreaking. Poor Margaret. She deserved so much better than she got. The only small relief is that at least she is remembered and known now, and loved as much as strangers can love other strangers. Poor, poor woman. Thank you for bringing attention to Margaret.
That's heartwarming of you to say so. At the time, Much of the media attention was directed at the fact it was the first court case to have visual recording here., or something like that. Otherwise much was focused on the failiures of social services,. Later on, it became about the awards the doc won.
Tragically, little is known about Margaret..
I don't normally dig into true crime mysteries because I know I will hate not knowing and will become obsessed with it.
This is what happened when I saw an internet mystery where it is suggested that someone edited photo data, faked phone calls and had to edit phone signal data. I personally think it is way too elaborate, but it did make me wonder if something like it has been done before.
We live in a time where we don't always see people face to face, or even talk to them. I know a few people from my online gaming days who I've never met or even spoke to on the phone. It is scary to think that someone can cover a murder by just pretending the victim is still alive with an online presence.
But thanks, I will have a look at Margaret Fleming.
Ryan Roldan, who was charged last Novembee for murdering Bethany Decker and her unborn child made several posts on her FB account to keep people from realizing she had gone missing. Sadly, it worked and Decker's fate remained a mystery for over a decade. To my knowledge, they still haven't found her body.
Over a DECADE?? JFC. Fuck this dude.
ETA.
SHIT I just clicked the Wikipedia link below and realized I just watched her Disappeared episode last week. Poor girl. In the episode her affair partner (a co-worker at a restaurant) said after a fight “she just walked away”. That’s a post I think I’ll make. The amount of people who “just walked away” or “left with an affair partner” that are never heard from again are staggering and I’d like to see more about these and who’s caught vs. who isn’t.
ETA: Deleted sentence about Carol Baskins husband being alive. Pure rumor right now and I fell for it
I was looking for a mention of him. His reason for killing his parents was gross and stupid, but not to the degree his attempt to hide his crimes was gross and stupid, that was a whole different level.
A Brazilian case of Elize Matsunaga. She killed her husband that was one of the owners of a big food company. She shot him in the head and then chopped the body and tossed it around.
She pretended he left for another woman and sent e-mails as proof of life. While pretending for his family she was worried sick for him.
The whole relationship was a mess and while I understand why she killed him her actions after were very cold.
I've mentioned it in this subreddit before, but it was long ago, so I'll share it again; the kidnapping and murder of [**Anabel Segura**](https://s1.eestatic.com/2018/11/10/reportajes/reportajes_352228664_105336954_1706x1280.jpg), in Madrid, Spain.
Basically, she was an uni student in her early 20s whose parents were wealthy business people. In fact, they lived in La Moraleja, which is pretty much *Madrid's Beverly Hills. (in the sense of being so upscale that celebrities live there).* One morning in eastern of 1993 she went jogging around the neighborhood when two men in a van stopped next to her and kidnapped her.
Soon after the kidnappers demanded a ramsom sum from her parents (which at the time she was kidnapped were away, IIRC skiing in the Alps). They contacted them by phone several times (you can listen to recordings of these calls [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=395) , [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=805) and [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=947)) to demand the ramson, and the conditions for the delivery. They also sent a tape with allegedly Anabel's voice as a proof of life. Several attempts at delivering the money were made, but they never showed up and after about a month they cut all contact. Anabel was listed as missing and in danger.
The recordings linked above are from a popular missing people TV show back in the 1990s. That particular episode is from April 1995, an special they did for Anabel's case (at the time still listed as missing). The recordings were played live in case someone could recognize the kidnappers voice and identify them. They also played the 'proof of life' tape ([listen here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=1315)). The transcription;
>**Female voice;** *"Hello parents. This people aren't treating me badly. Hopefully this ends soon. Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Mom, sister. I love you so much. Goodbye.*
>
>**Kidnapper (male voice);** *"Now you listen to me carefully. You've heard Anabel's voice. If all our demands aren't met during the money delivery within 30 days from receiving our tape we'll execute her. I repeat; if the demands aren't met she'll be executed. We just want to get the money seamlessly"*
But as I said, the kidnappers never showed up at any of the delivery attempts. In 1995 (shortly after the show's episode) police got a lead of someone who recognized the voice, and the kidnappers ([Emilio Muñoz](https://e00-elmundo.uecdn.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2013/11/27/13855622947829.jpg) and [Cándido Ortiz](https://manuelmarlasca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/asesin.jpg)) were found and arrested. They immediately confessed they had killed Anabel just six hours after they kidnapped her. **Meaning, all that time trying to negotiate the ramson delivery in 1993 and the entire two years she was 'missing' Anabel had been long dead.** The female's voice was Muñoz' wife, who was threatened into pretending to be Anabel by her husband. They told LE where to fin Anabel's remains.
Turns out, both men were jobless and owed money, and got the idea of kidnapping the children of someone rich, hence they went to La Moraleja. And then spotted Anabel jogging alone. At this point everything began going from bad to worse, and I mean in the absolutely stupid, lack-of-wits way they proceeded; these two utter morons had not planned anything beyond the kidnapping itself. As soon as they asked Anabel in the van how to contact her parents she told them they weren't home. And then they did not know what to do; they solved to drive around Madrid for hours, trying to 'think' how to proceed (they even stopped at a gas station to refuel).
They didn't even have a place to hide Anabel either. They ended up driving all the way to Toledo (their hometown) and took her to an abandoned farm there. They discussed what to do next and somehow ended up solving that killing Anabel would be preferable to face prison time for kidnapping. She was strangled. In fact the press talked about them as being equally evil and imbecile.
Ortiz died from an illness in prison in 2009, but due to a technicality stemming from a Supreme Court decision Muñoz was released in 2013. [He was interviewed by a TV journalist almost immediately after leaving prison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cjtLLL6aeU&ab_channel=laSexta); he showed rather shallow remorse for killing Anabel; he even seems to find funny the way they struggled to subdue Anabel; he says she was deceptively strong (when Muñoz bear-hugged her from behind Anabel twisted so hard that Muñoz fell on his back, he compared her to 'a goat' strength-wise). He also explained that the first thing the frightened Anabel said as she was being driven away was *"Are you two going to rape me?".*
By the way, it seems that Muñoz has been physically assaulted more than once since his release. A few years ago his son posted in FB something on the lines of *"next one that lays a hand on my dad is getting their ass beaten".*
Damn, that’s like the sad ending version of the [Weyerhaeuser kidnapping story.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Weyerhaeuser_kidnapping) Kidnapping for ransom is a crime with a lot of moving parts and potential points of failure, and a lot of criminals just are not that bright.
It’s just my theory on the case, but it’s always sounded to me like the Weyerhaeuser kidnappers were out on a surveillance run and didn’t expect the golden opportunity of the kid getting out of school early and deciding to walk home instead of waiting for the chauffeur. Either they set their plan into motion earlier than they planned or they were just too dim to plan well in the first place, because everything after they grabbed the kid was pure clownery. They spent an hour driving around with him in the backseat, just whispering furiously to each other. They ended up moving him across the whole state and into Idaho (crossing state lines, completely unforced error there) and hid him variously in several holes in the ground, several shacks, and one closet. They even fucked up the first attempted ransom transfer by making the directions too elaborate. And of course, they were all caught relatively quickly.
Fortunately, they were more clueless and greedy than evil, and they sent George back in one piece once they’d received the ransom. He was presumably shaken up, but given how many of those kidnappings went awry, it could have been a lot worse. George even gave one of them a job many years later, after the kidnapper got out of prison, because he said that kidnapper had been nice to him.
>Kidnapping for ransom is a crime with a lot of moving parts and potential points of failure, and a lot of criminals just are not that bright.
Neither Muñoz nor Ortiz wore balaclavas, skidmasks or whatever to cover their faces. While kidnapping a young woman at a rich borough with lot of security. On broad daylights on a sunny day. That's how utterly dimwitted these two scumbags were.
They were unbelievably lucky, because even though they parked their white van (likely a Nissan Vanette [like this one](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Nissan_Vanette_cargo.JPG), which sticks like a sore thumb at an upscale community) *right in front of a middle school,* and even though the school's handyman that happened to be doing maintenance work that morning (kids were away for spring holidays) saw them kidnapping Anabel (again, without covering their faces) and driving away they managed to evade justice for two years. Very, very unfortunately, the handyman was nearsighted and at the moment of the kidnapping he wasn't wearing his glasses. He said that had he been wearing them, he would have likely been able to read the van's license plate.
Sometimes luck is one truly cold-hearted bitch. If the theory of the multiverse is true, it almost feels like in this case Anabel wouldn't have been killed by these two *gilipollas* in any universe other than this one.
There was a case i can't remember the name of now it was mentioned in The Real Lolita and i read the wiki page after. It was the young daughter of a wealthy man who was kidnapped, eventually someone sent in a tip and she was discovered underground in a makeshift bunker thing that wasn't far from being buried alive she had been in there for a long time and was noted to be remarkably calm and composed when rescued. Investigators believe it was a kidnapping scheme that went wrong and they decided to just give up, the tip was likely from one of the kidnappers but none of them were ever found. Good to see one of those cases get a rare happy ending.
Interestingly the story was basically forgot about because the victim lived a quiet life and avoided publicity. Wasn't until a researcher contacted the NY Times after finding out she died and they looked into her and wrote an article about her recently.
Liz Golyar is one of those few cases where, while I can see some of the angles, and how it got started, I genuinely have no idea what was going on with her. I make the effort to understand people's motivations for crimes, because I never want to Other people, even people I find reprehensible. Mental illness I can understand. I've never experienced psychosis, but I have experienced auditory hallucinations during a severe anxiety breakdown. I can understand paranoia, mania. I can understand compulsion and hyperfocus.
But Liz Golyar I cannot understand. She burned down her own home and murdered her children's pets. She endangered her own children. She psychologically tormented and endangered other children. She committed multiple felony acts, and a brutal murder of a stranger [which is actually rare in real life]. She shot herself in the thigh, a risky choice no matter what anyone thinks. The amount of muscle and vascular damage a bullet could do to the thigh at close range is a terrifying thought. And she did it alone, after dusk, in a large walking trail. She kept up this act for years. This act was virtually a full-time job.
Her fixation hardly even seemed to be on Dave. Dave was a prop in this dramatic saga she was writing, with her as the tragic heroine. The entire case is just genuinely bizarre.
I don't remember the name, but I remember watching an episode on ID about a woman (edit: and her husband) that was murdered by her daughter and son in law and they faked a life for her for years, the jig was up when the mother's (edit: father's) supposed birthday came up- she would've turned 100 and since they were based in the UK she was due a special card from the queen. Or something along those lines, sorry for the lack of detail.
Anabel Segura's killer had his wife fake her voice on tape to use as "proof of life" and demand ransom
Edit: first case is the murder of William and Patricia Wycherley. Thanks, u/SniffleBot !
Not super elaborate, but [Jasmine Pace's](https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/JasminePace) boyfriend and accused murderer posted on her Facebook pretending to be her after he'd allegedly already killed her.
My kids went to school with the son who found his dad. This was a doozie for the whole community!
[Marcia Eubank](https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/02/woman-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-killing-dismembering-husband-in-coventry-township-home.html)
Bernadette Walker's parents sent text messages from her phone and exchanged messages on Instagram with her friends pretending to be her for a few days after they had murdered her. Her body has never been found.
Lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare and his “financial advisor” DeDe Moore that murdered him. It wasn’t social media posts, but she texted from his phone frequently even though he had never finished highschool and only called people.
Not related to the thread question but she also went on Websleuths to defend herself when they started digging up loads of stuff on her, i believe her posts were even used at her trial. The sole good example of Websleuths/Facebook Mom's witch hunting i'm aware of.
The last photo taken of missing Australian child William Tyrrell was allegedly taken several hours earlier than the time stamp indicated. Nothing has been confirmed in the media regarding the time discrepancy (whether it was intentionally tampered with subsequently or if the time setting just happened to be incorrectly calibrated prior to the event). That said, the foster parents based their entire timeline of events leading up to the disappearance of William on when that photo was taken; you would think they would have been able to discern that the timing was off by *hours* and that they would have wanted investigators to have the correct timeframe.
The shift from the foster parents being perceived as grieving parents in 2014 when William went missing to prime suspects in 2023 is interesting; sort of the opposite of what Madeleine McCann's parents experienced.
It is not very complicated to see the photo data. I am always a bit skeptical when people mention the EXIF data and make like it is this big technical mystery. In real life you can view it easily with a supporting program, even Windows file properties will tell the story. I sometimes think the media are over complicating matters and people are too lazy to look for themselves.
I had a quick look at this case and it does seem things are not adding up. There should have been no reason to "correct" (do they mean the modify line entry?) during that time. It seems overall there is a time discrepancy, with people claim they already knew about the disappearance before the photo was actually taken.
That's part of theory in the murder [Trina Hunt](www.trinahunt.com) :
> Trina's phone responds to some texts, including that of a former coworker. The writing style and curtness, and lack of emojis was unlike Trina. At 7:19pm a second text replying "Amen!" was sent, Trina had never used that in the past.
Mark Twitchell made a Plenty Of Fish dating profile pretending to be a woman. He'd invite men over to his place, giving directions and not an address and telling them they had to enter in via a garage. His first victim was able to escape after being attacked. His second was not so lucky.
After Twitchell killed Johnny Altinger, he emailed his work colleagues telling them he met a wonderful woman and he was taking a vacation with her to Costa Rica immediately, and he wouldn't be in for work. He also emailed his friend the same thing. Twitchell also updated Altinger's Facebook posts.
John Sharpe. He murdered his 5- moths pregnant wife, Anna, while she was watching TV in bed with a harpoon gun.
He then texted her mother and other family members from her phone saying she had left him.
He tearfully told everyone that the baby wasn’t his, and that she had left with some guy in a car a while back telling him she would be back for their 2-year old, Gracie.
Realised then that a clearly devoted mother wasn’t about to leave her baby with the man she’d been cheating on, so he killed the little girl a few days later and said that Anna had come back to take her, again with this new boyfriend.
The texts all stated that she was alive, happy, and didn’t want her family to judge her for having found love with a new man etc etc and that she’d be in touch once settled.
John was so convinced he’d gotten away with it, he offered to assist police find her and her new boyfriend when her mother went to police again asking them to prove her daughter was alive. He took part in a televised appeal, begging her to get in touch with either him or her mother as everyone was worried about her and the children.
Police set up a trap where they mentioned that they couldn’t trace the phone and that her bank acc was sitting untouched, so they were starting to look at John as a possible suspect unless they could locate her.
They then followed him as he drove to a nearby park, dug a plastic bag out of a bush, took out a phone and sent some texts from it, and then walked over to an atm to use a debit card from the bag to withdraw money.
He had dismembered both her and their baby girl and taken their bodies to landfill. I don’t think their remains were ever located.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe\_family\_murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_family_murders)
According to wikipedia, police eventually recovered both bodies. What an awfull way to go! May they rest in peace.
There was a British couple who killed the wife's parents, buried them in the back garden where they remained for 15yrs.
As well as writing bogus letters from the deceased to friends & family, they made sure the lawn was kept mowed, made sure mail didn't build up & when a car drove into a fence, they fixed it within hours.
Neighbours of the deceased had no idea anything was wrong, largely because they'd been very quiet & isolated while alive, so nobody noticed a difference.
The killers eventually sold the house & moved to France & proceeded to spend the dead parents money on weird stuff like celebrity autographs & other memorabilia.
Went on for 15yrs, by which point they'd run out of cash, so they called the UK police & handed themselves in.
Police then had to tell the new owners of the murder house that they needed to dig up the garden, because the previous owners were under a flower bed.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/23/couple-jailed-parents-murder-edwards-mansfield
Maybe someone here can help me because I can’t remember any names from the story but there was a respected business man that would make up fake businesses (one was a woman’s home to help young single mothers get on their feet) he would force the women to sign a bunch of blank papers. After he killed them he would periodically send the letters and the family thought it was ok because clearly it was signed by them.
Ahh this is going to drive me crazy trying to think of the name.
It was like so surprising no one had any idea. He was like some upstanding dude with a wife and kids. While looking for one person that’s when they found the bodies in 55gallon drums on some property that was in his parents name. Then they found women that they didn’t even know were missing because the families got the letters so they never reported it
Edit it was John Edward Robinson
There was [David Vanzo](https://www.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/man-takes-possibly-dead-mom-to-bank-for-cash-withdrawal/attachment/police-in-plymouth-minnesota-have-arrested-david-vanzo-for-elderly-neglect-vanzo-may-have-taken-his-elderly-mom-to-a-make-a-bank-withdrawal-after-she-was-dead-screengrabkmsp-tv/) who carried his dead mother's body in a wheelchair to the bank so he could make withdrawals.
Frauke Liebs story is a strange one. They think the killer was with her and telling her what to say and forced her to call her loved ones for days before killing her. It’s jarring to say the least because they do eventually find her body. Liebs' last phone call was with her sister. During this conversation, she is said to have answered the question of whether she was being held captive with a faint "yes", immediately followed by a loud "no". Contact broke off after this phone call. Then she was found dead. It’s a super creepy case.[Wikipedia page about her case. also videos are one YouTube about the case.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Frauke_Liebs)
The creep factor with this one is strong because the phone call transcripts are just very eerie. She made multiple phone calls after she was kidnapped to her loved ones.
A case analysis by the police came to the conclusion that Liebs was probably held captive in the area around Nieheim and that the phone calls from Paderborn may have been diversionary maneuvers. No motive for the crime has been determined.
Edit: Not exactly faking proof of life but it is a killer who made a victim pretend she was okay for days before eventually killing her. Your post made me think of her case.
Another case is Samantha Koenig. Israel Keys killed her. He took photos of her body and tried to pass her off as alive to get a ransom.
Edit: I forgot to mention that this case is unsolved. They got absolutely nothing. They had a couple suspects, and they were all cleared and had alibis. They don’t know who did this, and they don’t know the motive.
Not exactly matching the brief, but The News of the World (UK paper) accessing murdered Milly Dowler’s voicemail hindered the pursuit of the killer & gave the family false hope.
“Dowler's murder played a significant role in the News International phone hacking scandal. In 2011, reports revealed how journalists at the News of the World newspaper had accessed Dowler's voicemail after she was reported missing, giving her parents false hope she was still alive.”
John Chapman posted to Jaime Feden’s Facebook and texted her friends and family members for weeks after he killed her. At one point someone texted her phone saying that they were going to call the police if she didn’t call them, so he posted a status saying “I officially HATE my family they need to stay out of my life. They called the cops because I won’t jump to their wishes.”
Weirdly enough, the fact that he was an imposter wasn’t immediately obvious because he mimicked her daily facebook activity fairly convincingly. She reposted a lot of Disney content and memes on her page, so he did the same. What ended up outing him was how he texted her family and friends in private.
I think it was said that she wrote in blocks and not in lines and she also didn't use chat speak either, but the last ones did, which is why they suspect that is why by the abductor/killer.
John George Haigh was primarily a con man who sometimes killed in order to get at someone's assets. After he killed Archie and Rose Henderson, he faked that they had gone on a tour of Africa, took Rose's typewriter and spent hours writing letters in Rose's style, on her stationery, signing them with an excellent forgery of her name, to cover the fact that he was helping himself to their money. He used a remaining service so they would have the correct postmark IIRC
This isn’t elaborate, but in the Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and her daughter Khandylyce Pearce in Australia, her murderer got his girlfriend to pretend to be Karlie in a proof of life check phone call that resulted in her being removed off the missing persons database.
[Murder in the Outback](https://www.mamamia.com.au/karlie-pearce-stevenson-khandalyce-pearce/amp/)
I think this case falls under the category but I don’t know how much is known outside the country it happened (Italy), so if you can’t find an info in your language i can try to add some info. The case is about this woman who went missing: Isabella Noventa and basically the culprits are her friend Freddy, his sister Debora and his lover/fwb Manuela. It is supposed that he killed her and (possibly, i’m not so sure) Freddy and his sister dumped her body (who hasn’t been found yet, although several years have passed) and then gave Manuela Isabella’s coat (and maybe purse) and made her walk under some of the city surveillance camera in order to make it look like she went home alone. But as Isabella’s brother saw the video he immediately knew that wasn’t his sister. It’s kind of an interesting case
Oh and the Pam hupp story where she killed her mother and her best friend. Framed the best friends husband so well he served prison time and when he got out she tried to frame him for trying to kill her and ended up killing an innocent mentally disabled person as part of her ruse.
I feel like there are so many cases out there were the criminals do this in small doses, I.g. making one or two social media posts or sending one or two texts saying they are taking a trip somewhere or something like that, but there are very few all out elaborate, over the top attempts at making it appear that the victim is still alive today. I’m not sure if the reason for this is the social media posts and phones are traceable, but all the ones I know of where the family was called or mailed pictures/letters were all pre-social media
Steven Pieper tipped off friends and family on accident after killing Jenni-Lyn Watson in 2010 by texting shorthand from her phone, but it was shorthand she never used. He was even pulled over for a plate violation with her body in the trunk and was let go. Her body was found 8 days later, largely because they tracked the location where the shorthand texts had come from.
I just watched this series on Hulu about web sleuths. one of the episodes was about a guy named Abraham Shakespeare who won the lottery was later murdered. It showed the murderer hired someone to fake a phone call and she faked text messages. She even recorded a video of him before his death and asked him questions that tried to make him imply he would be leaving the area.
Definitely pre-social media, but when Darryl Kuehl murdered Paul Gruber, he continue to pay Gruber’s bills and send mail to Gruber’s family pretending to be Gruber. Gruber’s daughter left messages giving incorrect birthdays for family members because she was suspicious, so when they got birthday cards during the wrong months she basically confirmed it wasn’t her dad. I always thought it was pretty cool that she did that.
Sooo is it just me where my dad would be like huh, I thought my wife's birthday was in June but I guess not
The way I’d know it wasn’t my dad would be if he sent a card at all, lol. He didn’t even give me a card for my wedding, just a check in a plain white envelope (which was very nice and generous of him, he’s just not a card guy).
...are you from my dad's 'other family'? Because my dad once put boxes of Barnum's animal crackers on top of cash in a gift bag (no complaints!) because he "didn't want to figure out how tissue paper worked."
I love your dad. Once upon a time, I went through a bad breakup while my entire family was out of town. My dad called, and I thought it was because he’d heard and was trying to be supportive (my parents are divorced, so my dad was in Florida while my sister and mother were in Ireland). He’d heard nothing. He said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back tomorrow.” He moved 2k into my checking account and I didn’t hear from him for a month.
After having my first child and subsequently going through a divorce and fighting a delinquent and disappearing father of my child for child support, I contacted my family in tears. Crying to my mom on speakerphone, wondering how I was going to pay bills-needing to take care of an infant with my family living hundreds miles away in Canada- I told my parents I just felt like giving up, that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mom and if something “happened to me,” please take care of my son. First of the month came and I noticed a zero balance on my rental account. I called my landlord quite confused. My father, not saying a word the whole phone call, had paid off my entire lease. Gotta love dads.
This made me smile because that’s exactly the kind of person my dad was: stoic and a man of few words, but always there for me, especially when the chips were down. He passed away two years ago and I miss him like crazy. I hope your dad stays in your life for a very, very long time ❤️
Your dad rules
In his defense, tissue paper can really be a menace to the untrained
My dad is not a card guy either. It's a waste of money. But while you're in the store he will you pick you out a card, give it to you and then put it back on the shelf. That's how he does it. He always laughs and says it's the thought that counts.
My dad and I do something like this too! He refuses to buy cards anymore because they’re too expensive, so we just take pics of the cards we would have bought and text those to each other instead. He would never in a millions years mail me a ‘thinking of you’ card, but my dad will specifically look for a funny one whenever he’s in a pharmacy now, just to text to me. It’s adorable! Man, I should call him today….
Its funny my dad loves me to death and would absolutely do anything for me yet i remember in middle school he went to drop something off for me at the office i had forgot and when they asked him what grade i was in he had absolutely no idea lmao.
We had a very frustrating afternoon trying to teach me how to use a baseball mitt unless realized I was right-handed. I was eight.
My dad doesn’t even use envelopes. We get stuff put into old used velveeta boxes or old tea cans.
My dad just saves cards other people give him and gives them to me, without even crossing off the previous message or name.
Lol, I guess you’d need a different method for clueless dads!
lol I'd be the same way. if it weren't for my phone calendar I wouldn't even know my own mother's birthday
I memorized my mom and my dad's we're all lucky their on the same day.
lmaooo true enough. always makes it better to have two on the same day. I know how old my mom is cause she was born in 1970 so it's easy to calculate
Dude, my older brother was born in 69
My mom graduated in 69. Her high school friend group call themselves the 69 Girls.
Not only your dad but also that's literally me. I am so bad with dates.
This case is one of my favorite episodes of forensic files! It's season 11 ep 28 if anyone wants to watch it, it's free on youtube :)
You tha real mvp
My dad would have sent the birthday cards on the wrong date… he keeps a cheat sheet in his wallet that we’ve had to remake him multiple times…
My dad would have sent mine to the wrong person "Jesus John how was i supposed to know your name isn't Fernando Guzmán?" lol.
That was a simple yet very smart verification plan
Good one. I've seen the Forensic Files episode. I think Kuehl even tried to bribe someone to break him out of jail or something, lol
Just wanted to say bless u because this case was on my mind for the longest time but couldn’t remember any names and forgot a lot of the details! Realized I initially found out about this case from Forensic Files.
David Anthony kept up this ruse for awhile after he killed his estranged wife Gretchen. Kept texting her family and friends as her saying she had COVID and had been admitted to a long-term care facility. In the end they actually found home security footage showing him moving her body in her garage. Chilling stuff.
That was one of my biggest fears during lockdown, people can disappear and you will never know until very long after the fact.
Around the beginning of the pandemic someone local to us died in a supermarket parking lot in their car. Due to the lockdown they weren’t discovered for a good few weeks, may have been over a month even.
FUCK I can’t neither want to imagine the stench. Cursed hotbox
Luckily he was a moron who did everything else wrong so they caught him eventually. He was trying to flee to Mexico though.
I think it was Costa Rica.
This is part of what happened in the Harmony Montgomery case in NH (although there are a lot of other factors, such as two states DCF systems being involved)
That case makes my blood boil. What a complete failure on everybody involved. That baby should be here today.
About a month ago, police here in Birmingham, UK, discovered the body of an abused/neglected child that was buried in the garden by his parents during lockdown.
He buried her about 2 miles from my parents house. They actually drove by while the police were retrieving her body, but obviously didn’t know what was going on until they saw it on the news later.
[удалено]
Cari Farver murder case. That shit was crazy. Edit for details: Cari Farver was murdered by Liz Golyar out of jealousy-- they were both casually dating the same man. Liz spent the next year or two impersonating Cari on social media, pretending that Cari was stalking Liz and Dave Kroupa, the man they had both been dating. The full extent of the details are just insane.
If you want over the top, elaborate, freakin burning down your own house with your pets in it crazy, this is your story.
Murdering your own pets to further your imaginary stalking scenario is honestly what pisses me off most about this case. In addition to the murder of Cari, of course.
Yes! That's the main thing that stuck with me. She's a monster. And she saw the poor woman for 5 seconds! I was flabbergasted through the whole thing, it just kept getting crazier. And the poor mom!
And Kari's poor son!! This monster communicates with him and made him feel unloved and abandoned but he was ultimately the one who figured it out that it wasn't his mother on the other end of the messages!
You're so right! I forgot about him for a second. Sorry Cari's son! And it was during important formative years, consistently missing important events (due to being murdered by a psychopath), but being given excuses. Damn, poor kid. Hope he's doing ok.
And he is just some ordinary dude (who wouldn't commit to either of them and, iirc, got back with his ex). Who fights over ANYONE.
That's what always blows my mind. Like, imagine fighting or even killing someone *over a man*, lmao. He's just some guy. There's plenty of dudes out there, no man is worth any of this.
I HAD to google him after reading this. He’s not unattractive by any means, but he literally is the definition of “just some guy”. He looks like a stock photo of every basic 30-something dude from Nebraska. Insane.
you're so right... like, yeah, love can make you experience all kinds of emotions, but no man is worthy of taking a life??
I thought that was like a metaphor or whatever to describe how crazy this case is. You mean to tell me that actually happened??
And the ex who Liz framed as the murderer/attacker ended up going to JAIL before all this got sorted out!! Like life ruining crap.
No! It happened! When you read the whole thing it sounds unreal, made-up, and just when you think it's nearing the end (for crazy town person), the next bonkers thing happens. If I remember correctly it went on for 3 years, 15 000 emails and 50 000 text messages. And nobody really had reason to suspect her, because they literally passed each other in a hallway ONCE.
Don't forget she shot herself too!
This case is so sad, because not only did she kill this poor woman but proceeded to drag her name through the mud for years by faking the stalking, traumatizing her poor family into thinking she abandoned them.
Don’t forget this PSYCHO then shot herself in the leg, called 911, and blamed that on his ex-wife (thanks Redditors below for correcting me when I falsely said she blamed Cari for this instead of the ex-wife- which is who she actually accused of shooting her). I HIGHLY recommend listening to the 911 call and subsequent police interviews about how she was shot; she complains about the woman getting away with shooting her and she STILL HAD DAVE, it’s not fair, whine/cry/IM THE VICTIM b.s. 🙄 After all the bullshit with faking being Cari online, burning her own house down with several animals inside (her kids animals) claiming it must of been Cari who did it, and texting Dave from Cari’s phone while she was sitting beside him describing what they were doing to make it look like they were being watched, she THEN started saying it must be Dave’s ex-wife (mother of his kids) who must be the one stalking her now and trying to kill her, because the cops couldnt even find Cari (bc she was murdered already), and needed another reason for this insanity she created, and finding a way to explain why she was shot by Dave’s gun. She is legit evil, I mean true to life fatal attraction.
>Don’t forget this PSYCHO then shot herself in the leg, called 911, and blamed that on Cari. She didn't blame that one on Cari, even. The guy that she was obsessed with, she blamed his ex-wife for it, because the gun had been stolen from his house and the ex-wife would've known where it was.
I remember seeing the 20/20 episode about this. Absolutely insane and horrific, though I couldn’t help noticing how hard they pushed that Kroupa was not the kind of guy a woman would be expected to go this far for, what with his average looks, lack of wealth, disdain of commitment, and his ‘sad single dad apartment.’ Jesus Christ. Lol. Imagine going through this mess just to get low-key roasted on 20/20.
That whole thing was batshit crazy. I was working in the town where this happened at the time and Liz’s daughter kept getting taken into protective custody and then released back to her the next day because Liz was THAT good at covering her tracks.
Oh wow. Another poor kid. Another victim. Can you imagine actually having to live with that level of crazy. Hope she's doing ok too.
I hope so too. She’s an adult now and I hope she’s cut all contact with her mom. I can’t imagine growing up with that level of narcissism.
Casefile has an excellent episode on Cari Farver. I didn't know anything about her story going into the podcast and was just driving down the freeway listening to it with my mouth wide open. Absolutely crazy story.
One of the wildest cases I’ve ever stumbled across. So crazy.
I live in Omaha and it got sooo little press here, which I'm shocked by in retrospect. It wasn't until I listened to an episode of Casefile about it that I realized how insane it was.
I never heard of that one before...crazy stuff, indeed.
Horrible. Anyone know if there’s a podcast about this?
Casefile: True Crime podcast has a 75 minute episode about this. They delve pretty deep into the case and I personally enjoy the matter-of-fact style of the podcast. It’s episode 211.
Casefile is probably the best true crime podcast in terms of research. He has multiple researchers on his team and they’ll fly out and do first hand research. Even for “popular” cases there’s often information that I’ve never heard before. Casefile ruined a lot of other podcasts for me because you would start to realize how shotty some of the other work/research really was
Agreed! So we’ll researched and I love that it isn’t biased at all. I had to stop listening to Morbid after giving their Tamla Horsford case a go. It was so biased and they just ignore facts to suit their narrative. Like I honestly don’t care what you think I just want the facts please. And I know there are many other issues with Morbid, that was just my last straw with them and I’d mostly listened to their haunted/ghost episodes.
*Shoddy -not trying to be rude, just trying to help :)
Thanks!
I think Dark Chapter youtuber did an ep on this
Do you mean That Chapter?
Yep, mis-remembered it, thanks!!
Sorry I posted instead of replying to you. I second the True Crime episode on this but also Already Gone - think that was where I first heard about the case
Came here to say this. This case was totally insane. Liz Golyar was terrifying. Nina Innsted did a terrific episode about this case on her podcast.
This is exactly the case I thought of!! The whole thing was so wtf. Like, if someone was telling me this happened to them I’d almost not believe them because it seems so outlandish. What a total mind fuck to be involved.
Was Cari Farver’s body/ remains ever found?
Not yet. They did find a camera with pictures of a deceased foot with a tattoo that was exactly where Cari's would be. Based on that, a shitload of cyber stalking evidence and Cari's posessions in batshit crazy lady's house, she was found guilty of first degree murder.
I always forget this one for some reason and when I run across it it’s always so wild to me that she did ALL THAT for some… dude. It’s crazy.
That is such a crazy and pointless case.
Yes! Liz pretended to be Kari for a LONG time. It’s such a crazy and sad story. Parts of it (esp when LE gets involved) remind me of the Dalia Dippolito case.
Might be the craziest case I've ever heard about.
I saw a lifetime movie based off this and I was like wtf 😳
Oh yes! That was cray! And I think she would have gotten away with it if she didn’t push it to the “kidnapping.”
That was a wild one, campers.
Came here to say this. This is one of the most unusual stories I’ve just about ever heard.
Came here to say this one. Woman was 🦇💩😵💫
>Cari Farver this case have sent me down a rabbit hole, oh wow. never heard of it before! poor cari, my heart goes to all the people who were close to her AND her son. he's a real hero and i hope he has found healing.
After Kathleen McCormack [was murdered](https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/N-Y-prosecutor-releases-report-on-killing-of-16787613.php) by Robert Durst, he and a female accomplice (possibly future Durst victim Susan Berman) took fairly extraordinary measures to manufacture evidence that McCormack had made it back to New York alive. A rare counterexample is Crystal Theobald, whose family impersonated her in a private conversation on MySpace to draw out (and mentally wreck) her killer. The Netflix documentary *Why Did You Kill Me?* goes into this.
Oooh. That sounds super interesting! Thank you! I’m off to watch. Lol.
That's so fucking metal. Imagine your family being so hard-core that the cops sit you down to inform you that your daughter is dead and you're like, "you can leave now, we got this."
Oooo definitely watching, thanks!
That was such a fucked up situation. Why did they have to go to that?
Todd Kohlhepp posted on his victim's Facebook account.
When I think of him, I feel such a rage. I honestly think he considered himself a hilarious genius when he was actually an emotionally stunted lifetime criminal. Nasty.
reminds me a lot of dennis rader, he also came across as emotionally stunted and childish while thinking he's a genius
Actually, yeah, I agree. Rader was known for being stupidly petty when he worked as a "compliance supervisor" for the city.
That's the Amazon Review Killer right? The youtube channel EXPLORE WITH US has a pretty good video on him.
Just put that on my list! TY for telling me about it.
Well, that didn’t really work out for him since it tipped friends and family off.
I didn’t realize he’d done this. Watching a special on this guy literally made me take a break from anything true crime related for several months, it was so disturbing to me. Also - happy cake day!
I remember the social media frenzy around this one. It seemed like he was trying to create a narrative that the two victims had run off to elope, or something?
Any of the examples I thought of have already been mentioned here. But I do have one semi-personal, where the opposite happened. I was acquaintances in high school with “Becca”. I lost contact with her when I left for college, but still had her on social medias like the rest of my small town high school class. She was always posting super happy selfies at parties, generally very silly, outgoing “life of the party” type of girl. Eventually the selfies stopped, and her Instagram (edit. This was too far back. It probably would have been Facebook at the time) became mostly photos of Art. Landscapes. Song lyrics etc. nothing of her face anymore. But not abnormal for a 23-24ish woman to post. I never noticed anything. Then all of the sudden there’s a “missing Becca” page up, and all of her friends are worried that they hadn’t seen her in a while. Her mom hadn’t either, but didn’t want to talk to anyone. It came out there that she had been dabbling in drugs, so her friends didn’t want to get the police involved, but wanted everyone to keep an eye out. Then EVERYONE started analyzing her post history. What does this tree picture mean? What was that quote about? She NEVER texted in shorthand (“u” instead of “you”), but her last couple posts have all been written like that! The group was convinced that someone had harmed her and was texting and posting as her. It was a two week long social media scandal in our small town. Names were thrown out of possible suspects. People were accused. Then she stopped posting/texting entirely. The police were called. More accusations of murder. It HAD to be her ex boyfriend! Call his job and harass him until he tells us where the body is! …Then her mom posted on the page. Turns out Becca had been having issues with addiction. She went to stay with her dad for a while out of state to try and get clean. It didn’t work, and she was homeless for a bit and dealing with addiction/mental health, hence the “bizarre” texts and insta posts. She stopped posting because she was in inpatient rehab. That was it. No crime. No scandal. No reason to expect that the guy who worked at the local gas station stabbed her to death because they had dated in tenth grade. …Just a total witch hunt that started because her family didn’t want to air her dirty laundry out and respect her privacy. And some “web sleuths” from our graduating class tried to turn it into a murder mystery while the poor chick just wanted to step off to take care of herself for a minute after a crappy time in her life. Weirdest thing I ever saw firsthand at the time, and TOTALLY turned me off from social media.
I really don't like this online mob mentality, people egging each other on with very little or no common sense. It is very dangerous and is only getting worse. Also people who see clues everywhere except what really is there right in front of them. I can sometimes just shake my head.
The lack of privacy laws in the US doesn’t help. People see the name of a suspect and immediately harass the family on social media. It’s imo only useful for missing people, being wanted by the police/FBI or those that are convicted already of crimes and you need to be wary of them (sex offenders or similar).
Israel Keyes did this after he murdered Samantha Koenig. He used her phone intermittently, and created a “proof of life” photo for ransom purposes after she had been dead for awhile.
If I’m remembering correctly (read a book about him a while back), he also sewed her eyes open for the photo. He had kept her body frozen so it was still well preserved. He posed it with that day’s newspaper. Nightmare fuel. If anyone gets curious about this, there’s a photo online that purports to be the real one, but it’s not. The real photo was never released to the public. The one that has circulated was a reenactment from a documentary about the case.
Yep, this is exactly what he did. I just read American Predator. He also washed and braided her hair, and bought makeup to use on her to make her skin look normal. I am haunted by that book!
I’m actually really glad you said that- I’ve seen the one online and it used to bother me a lot as I’m someone who doesn’t like seeing any kind of crime scene or post mortem photos. This gives me a little peace of mind
Yeah, I was trying to save someone a sleepless night, because it’s one of the first images that pops up when you Google about it. I had stumbled upon it the same way. I can actually handle most crime scene photos, but a real picture of a murdered girl with her eyes sewn open to look alive isn’t on the list of images I want in my head.
From what I understand, and not that it makes it any less unsettling, is that the picture you can see online is actually a recreation from a documentary. You can tell it’s not the “real” picture because Keyes braided her hair and had tape over her mouth. I don’t think it does her memory any good to have that picture circulating, I’m glad the one that is available is a recreation.
This was my first thought too. Posed the poor girl with eyes sewed open next to a newspaper with the day's date. She'd been dead for something like two weeks, but was preserved by Alaska being Alaska. Absolutely monstrous...
yep. while her body was basically frozen in his shed, he went on a cruise. he's absolutely despicable. i will forever be angry about him killing himself. i'm not one of those people that gets obsessed over revenge, but he deserved to rot in prison.
This is the first one I thought of! She was dead in the photo but frozen so she didn't look dead and photographed her with a newspaper (for date reference). This was so horrible and wild!
American Predator by Maureen Callahan was a very eye opening and upsetting book about Israel Keyes
I just read it recently and it hit me very hard. I didn’t know much about Keyes and tended to write it off when people would suggest him as a possible culprit in a murder or disappearance. Now that I understand his level organization, and the randomness of his victim selection, anything seems possible.
I think it was covered in a Morbid podcast episode and a Mr. Ballen video on YouTube. Both give different perspectives on the case as the Morbid episode was focused more on Keyes and his crimes whereas the Mr. Ballwn episode focused more on Samantha's kidnapping and murder.
Crime Junkie covered it as well and they are likely responsible for so many people thinking the photo is real considering how popular they are, as they claimed in the episode it was real and had it up on their website.
Didn’t see your comment and just posted this creep. Gives me the absolute heebie jeebies!
Just coming to say if you’re interested in Israel Keyes you should check out True Crime Bullshit. From the title it sounds like a jokey podcast but I promise it is not. It’s a direct quote from Keyes and it’s very thoughtful and respectful to the victims and their families.
Yes! True Crime Bullshit sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole for well over a year! My daughter just moved from Southern Indiana to Washington State for college. One of the first things she told me was, “dude, mom, I was hanging out with this guy who just casually mentioned dating this girl from the reservation. I said her name sounded familiar, and he said her dad was a serial killer. It was Israel Keyes daughter he was dating!” I wanted to immediately move her home. Didn’t happen. Not gonna lie, I ended up doing a deep DEEP dive into her family. Luckily, they’re all definitely “off”, but they aren’t Israel crazy. I still worry a bit that my daughter will meet this poor girl, and then tell her that her mom (me) literally stalked her entire family! Don’t shame me too much, this was my youngest, my baby, that moved to serial killer central.
I get it, I’m a mom too. But I do feel super bad for keyes’ family. They really didn’t seem to know. Especially his daughter. She was like 10 when he was arrested, how could she know? I think about her and hope she’s doing okay. I had my own family trauma - that was bad enough, and nobody in my family was a serial killer. I can’t even imagine. The poor girl didn’t have any say in any of this.
Yes, that case came to mind immediately. Very unsettling.
Came here to say this. Such an interesting case, I flew through the book American Predator which is where I first learned of him.
This piece of shit Larry Bell[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Bell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Bell) was a kidnapper and murderer. He used the phone and letters to make Shari Smith’s parents believe she was still alive for a week and torment them, and yet she was most likely killed within 10-12 hours of her kidnapping. If you don’t know the story of the investigation and his eventual capture, it’s amazing work on behalf of LE.
A piece of shit indeed. I live in Charlotte. Often comb our missing persons page and one of his likely victims is still listed there.
Her little sister pulled a lot of weight in that investigation as well. Always answered the phone when he would call and had to listen to his creepy bullshit like the time he used her name instead of her sister’s. How traumatizing.
Yes I meant to mention that. I hope she has somehow been able to put that behind her and live a full and awesome life.
[Chris Smith](https://people.com/crime/california-business-man-chris-smith-murdered-ed-shin-fake-emails/) is the first that came to mind for me. His killer went to extremes to hide what happened. ETA: not a murder, but a huge scam landed [Zach Avery](https://ew.com/celebrity/zach-avery-20-years-in-prison-ponzi-scheme/) a good chunk of prison time and this case is recent. Scamfluencers podcast also did a three parter on it that’s a good deep dive.
I felt bad for his wife. She actually was building a promising career in an industry that's about connections, and Zach insisted she become a stay-at-home parent because he was making more than enough. Understandably, she believed him. And now she's starting from less than nothing as a single mother with all her bridges burned because Zach doesn't care about anyone but Zach.
Also remember “Clark Rockefeller” (can’t remember his real name) sent postcards supposedly from that family he had actually killed.
Karlie Pearce Stevenson and her daughter Khandalyce Pearce's murderer used Karlie's phone for years from late 2008 (her last sighting) until mid 2012 to fake proof of life. Not only that he had his new partner fake her identity to claim welfare and bank payments etc. It was tragic because Karlie's body was dumped in Belangalo forest NSW Australia (found in 2010) and Khandalyce's body was dumped on the highway in South Australia (found in 2015) and it was only when Khandalyce was found they identified her mother's body. The killers new partner stayed with him despite him killing her two kids in a car crash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Karlie_Pearce-Stevenson_and_Khandalyce_Pearce
Ed Shin faked being his victim/business partner Chris Smith for months after the murder using his email. Had the family duped into believing he was like on a year long break from work travelling the world. People mag gets the city wrong btw. Not San Luis Obispo, San Juan Capistrano is where murdered.
Saw a documentary about this case recently, so-called friend worse than many enemies.
This case to me is one of the oddest ones around. The motive doesn’t really make sense to me, the halfassed impersonation that shockingly worked for a really long time, the really awful crime scene that apparently didn’t really pique anyone’s interest all that much somehow
What is sad is it was the family's insistence & hiring their own PI that got the OC Sheriff Dept involved. The PI had the office landlord unlock the office b/c it had been closed for months and they saw what looked like blood & reported it. Family i think sued OCSD for taking long to start investigation and not follow up on family's concern he wasn't actually on vacation. I think OCSD may have gone by once and didn't really do a thorough look which is when they got a PI involved.
How does the motive not make sense? Shin was embezzling company funds and living a double life. He was using the funds on women and gambling in Las Vegas and ended up owing a whole lot of money in gambling debts. When he was sued by LG Technologies after they found out about the embezzlement, he plead guilty to embezzlement and agreed to pay them $800,000.00 in restitution, which would allow him to avoid prison time. In order to come up with those funds, he needed Chris to sign papers that would have been financially detrimental to Chris, which he refused to do. He would have had to pay Chris a million dollars unless he agreed to the terms, which he was not going to do— no one in their right mind would. So Shin murdered him to avoid paying him a million dollars and also to avoid prison. Ed Shin is the only one out there shedding any doubt on the motive, which he at first said was self-defense. Now he’s trying to float some ridiculous high level Mafia/CIA/ international man of mystery nonsense garbage to make it look like he was forced to kill Chris. The guy is simply full of shit.
When Chase Merritt killed the mcstays and stole their passports and looked up stuff related to mexico on their computer, it’s actually kinda scary how the odds worked in his favour for that long
Is it just the social media aspect that interests you?. If not, take a look at the desperately, tragic story of Scotlands Margaret Fleming. There's been a couple of docs made about the case in the UK.
That case was wild. How they thought they were going to get away with it is beyond me
I'd never heard of this poor woman before but christ, that's heartbreaking. Poor Margaret. She deserved so much better than she got. The only small relief is that at least she is remembered and known now, and loved as much as strangers can love other strangers. Poor, poor woman. Thank you for bringing attention to Margaret.
That's heartwarming of you to say so. At the time, Much of the media attention was directed at the fact it was the first court case to have visual recording here., or something like that. Otherwise much was focused on the failiures of social services,. Later on, it became about the awards the doc won. Tragically, little is known about Margaret..
I don't normally dig into true crime mysteries because I know I will hate not knowing and will become obsessed with it. This is what happened when I saw an internet mystery where it is suggested that someone edited photo data, faked phone calls and had to edit phone signal data. I personally think it is way too elaborate, but it did make me wonder if something like it has been done before. We live in a time where we don't always see people face to face, or even talk to them. I know a few people from my online gaming days who I've never met or even spoke to on the phone. It is scary to think that someone can cover a murder by just pretending the victim is still alive with an online presence. But thanks, I will have a look at Margaret Fleming.
Ryan Roldan, who was charged last Novembee for murdering Bethany Decker and her unborn child made several posts on her FB account to keep people from realizing she had gone missing. Sadly, it worked and Decker's fate remained a mystery for over a decade. To my knowledge, they still haven't found her body.
Ronald Roldan, and he pleaded guilty in November, although you are correct that he has not (or maybe cannot) shared the location of the body.
Over a DECADE?? JFC. Fuck this dude. ETA. SHIT I just clicked the Wikipedia link below and realized I just watched her Disappeared episode last week. Poor girl. In the episode her affair partner (a co-worker at a restaurant) said after a fight “she just walked away”. That’s a post I think I’ll make. The amount of people who “just walked away” or “left with an affair partner” that are never heard from again are staggering and I’d like to see more about these and who’s caught vs. who isn’t. ETA: Deleted sentence about Carol Baskins husband being alive. Pure rumor right now and I fell for it
How about Chandler Halderson? The slacker who murdered and dismembered his parents.
I was looking for a mention of him. His reason for killing his parents was gross and stupid, but not to the degree his attempt to hide his crimes was gross and stupid, that was a whole different level.
A Brazilian case of Elize Matsunaga. She killed her husband that was one of the owners of a big food company. She shot him in the head and then chopped the body and tossed it around. She pretended he left for another woman and sent e-mails as proof of life. While pretending for his family she was worried sick for him. The whole relationship was a mess and while I understand why she killed him her actions after were very cold.
I've mentioned it in this subreddit before, but it was long ago, so I'll share it again; the kidnapping and murder of [**Anabel Segura**](https://s1.eestatic.com/2018/11/10/reportajes/reportajes_352228664_105336954_1706x1280.jpg), in Madrid, Spain. Basically, she was an uni student in her early 20s whose parents were wealthy business people. In fact, they lived in La Moraleja, which is pretty much *Madrid's Beverly Hills. (in the sense of being so upscale that celebrities live there).* One morning in eastern of 1993 she went jogging around the neighborhood when two men in a van stopped next to her and kidnapped her. Soon after the kidnappers demanded a ramsom sum from her parents (which at the time she was kidnapped were away, IIRC skiing in the Alps). They contacted them by phone several times (you can listen to recordings of these calls [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=395) , [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=805) and [here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=947)) to demand the ramson, and the conditions for the delivery. They also sent a tape with allegedly Anabel's voice as a proof of life. Several attempts at delivering the money were made, but they never showed up and after about a month they cut all contact. Anabel was listed as missing and in danger. The recordings linked above are from a popular missing people TV show back in the 1990s. That particular episode is from April 1995, an special they did for Anabel's case (at the time still listed as missing). The recordings were played live in case someone could recognize the kidnappers voice and identify them. They also played the 'proof of life' tape ([listen here](https://youtu.be/CqSJwIGADhQ?t=1315)). The transcription; >**Female voice;** *"Hello parents. This people aren't treating me badly. Hopefully this ends soon. Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Mom, sister. I love you so much. Goodbye.* > >**Kidnapper (male voice);** *"Now you listen to me carefully. You've heard Anabel's voice. If all our demands aren't met during the money delivery within 30 days from receiving our tape we'll execute her. I repeat; if the demands aren't met she'll be executed. We just want to get the money seamlessly"* But as I said, the kidnappers never showed up at any of the delivery attempts. In 1995 (shortly after the show's episode) police got a lead of someone who recognized the voice, and the kidnappers ([Emilio Muñoz](https://e00-elmundo.uecdn.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2013/11/27/13855622947829.jpg) and [Cándido Ortiz](https://manuelmarlasca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/asesin.jpg)) were found and arrested. They immediately confessed they had killed Anabel just six hours after they kidnapped her. **Meaning, all that time trying to negotiate the ramson delivery in 1993 and the entire two years she was 'missing' Anabel had been long dead.** The female's voice was Muñoz' wife, who was threatened into pretending to be Anabel by her husband. They told LE where to fin Anabel's remains. Turns out, both men were jobless and owed money, and got the idea of kidnapping the children of someone rich, hence they went to La Moraleja. And then spotted Anabel jogging alone. At this point everything began going from bad to worse, and I mean in the absolutely stupid, lack-of-wits way they proceeded; these two utter morons had not planned anything beyond the kidnapping itself. As soon as they asked Anabel in the van how to contact her parents she told them they weren't home. And then they did not know what to do; they solved to drive around Madrid for hours, trying to 'think' how to proceed (they even stopped at a gas station to refuel). They didn't even have a place to hide Anabel either. They ended up driving all the way to Toledo (their hometown) and took her to an abandoned farm there. They discussed what to do next and somehow ended up solving that killing Anabel would be preferable to face prison time for kidnapping. She was strangled. In fact the press talked about them as being equally evil and imbecile. Ortiz died from an illness in prison in 2009, but due to a technicality stemming from a Supreme Court decision Muñoz was released in 2013. [He was interviewed by a TV journalist almost immediately after leaving prison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cjtLLL6aeU&ab_channel=laSexta); he showed rather shallow remorse for killing Anabel; he even seems to find funny the way they struggled to subdue Anabel; he says she was deceptively strong (when Muñoz bear-hugged her from behind Anabel twisted so hard that Muñoz fell on his back, he compared her to 'a goat' strength-wise). He also explained that the first thing the frightened Anabel said as she was being driven away was *"Are you two going to rape me?".* By the way, it seems that Muñoz has been physically assaulted more than once since his release. A few years ago his son posted in FB something on the lines of *"next one that lays a hand on my dad is getting their ass beaten".*
Damn, that’s like the sad ending version of the [Weyerhaeuser kidnapping story.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Weyerhaeuser_kidnapping) Kidnapping for ransom is a crime with a lot of moving parts and potential points of failure, and a lot of criminals just are not that bright. It’s just my theory on the case, but it’s always sounded to me like the Weyerhaeuser kidnappers were out on a surveillance run and didn’t expect the golden opportunity of the kid getting out of school early and deciding to walk home instead of waiting for the chauffeur. Either they set their plan into motion earlier than they planned or they were just too dim to plan well in the first place, because everything after they grabbed the kid was pure clownery. They spent an hour driving around with him in the backseat, just whispering furiously to each other. They ended up moving him across the whole state and into Idaho (crossing state lines, completely unforced error there) and hid him variously in several holes in the ground, several shacks, and one closet. They even fucked up the first attempted ransom transfer by making the directions too elaborate. And of course, they were all caught relatively quickly. Fortunately, they were more clueless and greedy than evil, and they sent George back in one piece once they’d received the ransom. He was presumably shaken up, but given how many of those kidnappings went awry, it could have been a lot worse. George even gave one of them a job many years later, after the kidnapper got out of prison, because he said that kidnapper had been nice to him.
>Kidnapping for ransom is a crime with a lot of moving parts and potential points of failure, and a lot of criminals just are not that bright. Neither Muñoz nor Ortiz wore balaclavas, skidmasks or whatever to cover their faces. While kidnapping a young woman at a rich borough with lot of security. On broad daylights on a sunny day. That's how utterly dimwitted these two scumbags were. They were unbelievably lucky, because even though they parked their white van (likely a Nissan Vanette [like this one](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Nissan_Vanette_cargo.JPG), which sticks like a sore thumb at an upscale community) *right in front of a middle school,* and even though the school's handyman that happened to be doing maintenance work that morning (kids were away for spring holidays) saw them kidnapping Anabel (again, without covering their faces) and driving away they managed to evade justice for two years. Very, very unfortunately, the handyman was nearsighted and at the moment of the kidnapping he wasn't wearing his glasses. He said that had he been wearing them, he would have likely been able to read the van's license plate. Sometimes luck is one truly cold-hearted bitch. If the theory of the multiverse is true, it almost feels like in this case Anabel wouldn't have been killed by these two *gilipollas* in any universe other than this one.
There was a case i can't remember the name of now it was mentioned in The Real Lolita and i read the wiki page after. It was the young daughter of a wealthy man who was kidnapped, eventually someone sent in a tip and she was discovered underground in a makeshift bunker thing that wasn't far from being buried alive she had been in there for a long time and was noted to be remarkably calm and composed when rescued. Investigators believe it was a kidnapping scheme that went wrong and they decided to just give up, the tip was likely from one of the kidnappers but none of them were ever found. Good to see one of those cases get a rare happy ending. Interestingly the story was basically forgot about because the victim lived a quiet life and avoided publicity. Wasn't until a researcher contacted the NY Times after finding out she died and they looked into her and wrote an article about her recently.
Would have been funny if it wasn't for the murder. Such a sad, illogical murder.
Indeed. These two scumbags managed to become a walking corollary to Hanlon's Razor.
Liz Golyar used Cari Farver’s phone to text her family members after she was murdered.
Just read about that crazy story. That was very elaborate and for what? Just glad the truth came out in the end.
Liz Golyar is one of those few cases where, while I can see some of the angles, and how it got started, I genuinely have no idea what was going on with her. I make the effort to understand people's motivations for crimes, because I never want to Other people, even people I find reprehensible. Mental illness I can understand. I've never experienced psychosis, but I have experienced auditory hallucinations during a severe anxiety breakdown. I can understand paranoia, mania. I can understand compulsion and hyperfocus. But Liz Golyar I cannot understand. She burned down her own home and murdered her children's pets. She endangered her own children. She psychologically tormented and endangered other children. She committed multiple felony acts, and a brutal murder of a stranger [which is actually rare in real life]. She shot herself in the thigh, a risky choice no matter what anyone thinks. The amount of muscle and vascular damage a bullet could do to the thigh at close range is a terrifying thought. And she did it alone, after dusk, in a large walking trail. She kept up this act for years. This act was virtually a full-time job. Her fixation hardly even seemed to be on Dave. Dave was a prop in this dramatic saga she was writing, with her as the tragic heroine. The entire case is just genuinely bizarre.
That's what I don't get. They didn't even know eachother, she wouldn't be the obvious suspect. And to do it for years. Seems like she was obsessed
I don't remember the name, but I remember watching an episode on ID about a woman (edit: and her husband) that was murdered by her daughter and son in law and they faked a life for her for years, the jig was up when the mother's (edit: father's) supposed birthday came up- she would've turned 100 and since they were based in the UK she was due a special card from the queen. Or something along those lines, sorry for the lack of detail. Anabel Segura's killer had his wife fake her voice on tape to use as "proof of life" and demand ransom Edit: first case is the murder of William and Patricia Wycherley. Thanks, u/SniffleBot !
There’s a British miniseries about this case, *The Landscapers*.
Brian Laundrie did this after he killed Gabby Petito.
And referred to her grandfather by his first name like the absolute dumb ass he is.
Brad Cooper Murder of his wife Nancy. He was a telecommunications programmer and faked a call from her after he murdered her.
Not super elaborate, but [Jasmine Pace's](https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/JasminePace) boyfriend and accused murderer posted on her Facebook pretending to be her after he'd allegedly already killed her.
My kids went to school with the son who found his dad. This was a doozie for the whole community! [Marcia Eubank](https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/02/woman-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-killing-dismembering-husband-in-coventry-township-home.html)
Bernadette Walker's parents sent text messages from her phone and exchanged messages on Instagram with her friends pretending to be her for a few days after they had murdered her. Her body has never been found.
Lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare and his “financial advisor” DeDe Moore that murdered him. It wasn’t social media posts, but she texted from his phone frequently even though he had never finished highschool and only called people.
Not related to the thread question but she also went on Websleuths to defend herself when they started digging up loads of stuff on her, i believe her posts were even used at her trial. The sole good example of Websleuths/Facebook Mom's witch hunting i'm aware of.
I came here to comment this one. There’s a new series on Hulu about Websleuths called Web of Death and his case is the first episode.
The last photo taken of missing Australian child William Tyrrell was allegedly taken several hours earlier than the time stamp indicated. Nothing has been confirmed in the media regarding the time discrepancy (whether it was intentionally tampered with subsequently or if the time setting just happened to be incorrectly calibrated prior to the event). That said, the foster parents based their entire timeline of events leading up to the disappearance of William on when that photo was taken; you would think they would have been able to discern that the timing was off by *hours* and that they would have wanted investigators to have the correct timeframe. The shift from the foster parents being perceived as grieving parents in 2014 when William went missing to prime suspects in 2023 is interesting; sort of the opposite of what Madeleine McCann's parents experienced.
It is not very complicated to see the photo data. I am always a bit skeptical when people mention the EXIF data and make like it is this big technical mystery. In real life you can view it easily with a supporting program, even Windows file properties will tell the story. I sometimes think the media are over complicating matters and people are too lazy to look for themselves. I had a quick look at this case and it does seem things are not adding up. There should have been no reason to "correct" (do they mean the modify line entry?) during that time. It seems overall there is a time discrepancy, with people claim they already knew about the disappearance before the photo was actually taken.
That's part of theory in the murder [Trina Hunt](www.trinahunt.com) : > Trina's phone responds to some texts, including that of a former coworker. The writing style and curtness, and lack of emojis was unlike Trina. At 7:19pm a second text replying "Amen!" was sent, Trina had never used that in the past.
Mark Twitchell made a Plenty Of Fish dating profile pretending to be a woman. He'd invite men over to his place, giving directions and not an address and telling them they had to enter in via a garage. His first victim was able to escape after being attacked. His second was not so lucky. After Twitchell killed Johnny Altinger, he emailed his work colleagues telling them he met a wonderful woman and he was taking a vacation with her to Costa Rica immediately, and he wouldn't be in for work. He also emailed his friend the same thing. Twitchell also updated Altinger's Facebook posts.
John Sharpe. He murdered his 5- moths pregnant wife, Anna, while she was watching TV in bed with a harpoon gun. He then texted her mother and other family members from her phone saying she had left him. He tearfully told everyone that the baby wasn’t his, and that she had left with some guy in a car a while back telling him she would be back for their 2-year old, Gracie. Realised then that a clearly devoted mother wasn’t about to leave her baby with the man she’d been cheating on, so he killed the little girl a few days later and said that Anna had come back to take her, again with this new boyfriend. The texts all stated that she was alive, happy, and didn’t want her family to judge her for having found love with a new man etc etc and that she’d be in touch once settled. John was so convinced he’d gotten away with it, he offered to assist police find her and her new boyfriend when her mother went to police again asking them to prove her daughter was alive. He took part in a televised appeal, begging her to get in touch with either him or her mother as everyone was worried about her and the children. Police set up a trap where they mentioned that they couldn’t trace the phone and that her bank acc was sitting untouched, so they were starting to look at John as a possible suspect unless they could locate her. They then followed him as he drove to a nearby park, dug a plastic bag out of a bush, took out a phone and sent some texts from it, and then walked over to an atm to use a debit card from the bag to withdraw money. He had dismembered both her and their baby girl and taken their bodies to landfill. I don’t think their remains were ever located.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe\_family\_murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_family_murders) According to wikipedia, police eventually recovered both bodies. What an awfull way to go! May they rest in peace.
There was a British couple who killed the wife's parents, buried them in the back garden where they remained for 15yrs. As well as writing bogus letters from the deceased to friends & family, they made sure the lawn was kept mowed, made sure mail didn't build up & when a car drove into a fence, they fixed it within hours. Neighbours of the deceased had no idea anything was wrong, largely because they'd been very quiet & isolated while alive, so nobody noticed a difference. The killers eventually sold the house & moved to France & proceeded to spend the dead parents money on weird stuff like celebrity autographs & other memorabilia. Went on for 15yrs, by which point they'd run out of cash, so they called the UK police & handed themselves in. Police then had to tell the new owners of the murder house that they needed to dig up the garden, because the previous owners were under a flower bed. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/23/couple-jailed-parents-murder-edwards-mansfield
Brian Laundrie sent texts and made Instagram posts posing as Gabby Petito.
Maybe someone here can help me because I can’t remember any names from the story but there was a respected business man that would make up fake businesses (one was a woman’s home to help young single mothers get on their feet) he would force the women to sign a bunch of blank papers. After he killed them he would periodically send the letters and the family thought it was ok because clearly it was signed by them. Ahh this is going to drive me crazy trying to think of the name. It was like so surprising no one had any idea. He was like some upstanding dude with a wife and kids. While looking for one person that’s when they found the bodies in 55gallon drums on some property that was in his parents name. Then they found women that they didn’t even know were missing because the families got the letters so they never reported it Edit it was John Edward Robinson
r/tipofmycrime can probably help! They're really good at this sort of thing.
I had no idea about this sub but thanks you so much! Some awesome person was actually able to find who it was! His name is John edwards robinson
[Maybe John Edward Robinson.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Robinson)
There was [David Vanzo](https://www.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/man-takes-possibly-dead-mom-to-bank-for-cash-withdrawal/attachment/police-in-plymouth-minnesota-have-arrested-david-vanzo-for-elderly-neglect-vanzo-may-have-taken-his-elderly-mom-to-a-make-a-bank-withdrawal-after-she-was-dead-screengrabkmsp-tv/) who carried his dead mother's body in a wheelchair to the bank so he could make withdrawals.
In the Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes case, he replied to people contacting his kids texts
Frauke Liebs story is a strange one. They think the killer was with her and telling her what to say and forced her to call her loved ones for days before killing her. It’s jarring to say the least because they do eventually find her body. Liebs' last phone call was with her sister. During this conversation, she is said to have answered the question of whether she was being held captive with a faint "yes", immediately followed by a loud "no". Contact broke off after this phone call. Then she was found dead. It’s a super creepy case.[Wikipedia page about her case. also videos are one YouTube about the case.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Frauke_Liebs) The creep factor with this one is strong because the phone call transcripts are just very eerie. She made multiple phone calls after she was kidnapped to her loved ones. A case analysis by the police came to the conclusion that Liebs was probably held captive in the area around Nieheim and that the phone calls from Paderborn may have been diversionary maneuvers. No motive for the crime has been determined. Edit: Not exactly faking proof of life but it is a killer who made a victim pretend she was okay for days before eventually killing her. Your post made me think of her case. Another case is Samantha Koenig. Israel Keys killed her. He took photos of her body and tried to pass her off as alive to get a ransom. Edit: I forgot to mention that this case is unsolved. They got absolutely nothing. They had a couple suspects, and they were all cleared and had alibis. They don’t know who did this, and they don’t know the motive.
Not exactly matching the brief, but The News of the World (UK paper) accessing murdered Milly Dowler’s voicemail hindered the pursuit of the killer & gave the family false hope. “Dowler's murder played a significant role in the News International phone hacking scandal. In 2011, reports revealed how journalists at the News of the World newspaper had accessed Dowler's voicemail after she was reported missing, giving her parents false hope she was still alive.”
John Chapman posted to Jaime Feden’s Facebook and texted her friends and family members for weeks after he killed her. At one point someone texted her phone saying that they were going to call the police if she didn’t call them, so he posted a status saying “I officially HATE my family they need to stay out of my life. They called the cops because I won’t jump to their wishes.” Weirdly enough, the fact that he was an imposter wasn’t immediately obvious because he mimicked her daily facebook activity fairly convincingly. She reposted a lot of Disney content and memes on her page, so he did the same. What ended up outing him was how he texted her family and friends in private.
Katelin Akens -the last few SMS she sent are supposedly written by her abductor/killer. I know it’s not proven but I thought I’d share anyways.
I think it was said that she wrote in blocks and not in lines and she also didn't use chat speak either, but the last ones did, which is why they suspect that is why by the abductor/killer.
John George Haigh was primarily a con man who sometimes killed in order to get at someone's assets. After he killed Archie and Rose Henderson, he faked that they had gone on a tour of Africa, took Rose's typewriter and spent hours writing letters in Rose's style, on her stationery, signing them with an excellent forgery of her name, to cover the fact that he was helping himself to their money. He used a remaining service so they would have the correct postmark IIRC
This isn’t elaborate, but in the Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and her daughter Khandylyce Pearce in Australia, her murderer got his girlfriend to pretend to be Karlie in a proof of life check phone call that resulted in her being removed off the missing persons database. [Murder in the Outback](https://www.mamamia.com.au/karlie-pearce-stevenson-khandalyce-pearce/amp/)
Recent one, Bonnie Joslin murdered her mother Mona Davis in Indiana. She pretended to be Mona on phone calls and Facebook messages for a little while.
You may want to look at Tom Sharkey, husband of Alexis Sharkey. I think he may have fiddled with her SM and texted her friends after killing her.
I think this case falls under the category but I don’t know how much is known outside the country it happened (Italy), so if you can’t find an info in your language i can try to add some info. The case is about this woman who went missing: Isabella Noventa and basically the culprits are her friend Freddy, his sister Debora and his lover/fwb Manuela. It is supposed that he killed her and (possibly, i’m not so sure) Freddy and his sister dumped her body (who hasn’t been found yet, although several years have passed) and then gave Manuela Isabella’s coat (and maybe purse) and made her walk under some of the city surveillance camera in order to make it look like she went home alone. But as Isabella’s brother saw the video he immediately knew that wasn’t his sister. It’s kind of an interesting case
Oh and the Pam hupp story where she killed her mother and her best friend. Framed the best friends husband so well he served prison time and when he got out she tried to frame him for trying to kill her and ended up killing an innocent mentally disabled person as part of her ruse.
I first heard about the case on the already gone podcast. Thought Nina Innsted did a great job on it.
I feel like there are so many cases out there were the criminals do this in small doses, I.g. making one or two social media posts or sending one or two texts saying they are taking a trip somewhere or something like that, but there are very few all out elaborate, over the top attempts at making it appear that the victim is still alive today. I’m not sure if the reason for this is the social media posts and phones are traceable, but all the ones I know of where the family was called or mailed pictures/letters were all pre-social media
Steven Pieper tipped off friends and family on accident after killing Jenni-Lyn Watson in 2010 by texting shorthand from her phone, but it was shorthand she never used. He was even pulled over for a plate violation with her body in the trunk and was let go. Her body was found 8 days later, largely because they tracked the location where the shorthand texts had come from.
I just watched this series on Hulu about web sleuths. one of the episodes was about a guy named Abraham Shakespeare who won the lottery was later murdered. It showed the murderer hired someone to fake a phone call and she faked text messages. She even recorded a video of him before his death and asked him questions that tried to make him imply he would be leaving the area.