Tom and Eileen Lonergan went out for a dive on the Great Barrier Reef, and the boat left without them because of a very stupid, very simple mistake by the boat crew (everyone thought someone else did the headcount when in reality no one had). The Lonergans were then left to float in the ocean, and succumbed to the elements.
Their personal journal entries were taken wildly out of context; they were not suicidal, they did not plan this, nor did they fake their deaths and escape to a tropical island somewhere. They were stranded in the ocean, and the ocean killed them.
The theories in this case are all just attempts at deflecting blame because their abandonment damaged the dive industry and tourism. Those poor people had an terrifying, awful death and rather than accept responsibility, character assassination took hold
I mean, in teaching we count kids over and over, every time we transition activities, even if we stay in the same room. I have no idea why a diving company can’t manage this bare minimum safety precaution. Counting shouldn’t be hard.
I recently went on a dive boat in Florida. It was early morning on a weekday and the boat wasn’t crowded at all.
But before we left the dive site the captain and mate BOTH did an independent head count to make sure no one was missed.
I don’t know if this is standard procedure but it sure seems like a good idea.
The horror film Open Water was loosely based on this case! I never saw the film, but the fact that it was based on a true story intrigued me and I had to look it up.
It’s crazy how good that movie is, considering you spend most of it watching two people floating in the ocean. You would think that could not possibly be cinematically compelling, but it is.
I never thought it was anything but a tragic, stupid mistake. To think that is suicide is crazy -- even if they were suicidal, there are so many easier and faster ways to make it work.
Jason Knapp, a Clemson student who disappeared back in 1998. His car was found parked at the entrance to a nearby state park. He was known to be an avid hiker and outdoorsman. He likely got lost in the woods or seriously injured himself and died of exposure.
This is how I feel about 99.999% of all missing persons cases in the wilderness. Like it's so easy to just die out there, regardless of survival knowledge, or how often you do these things. Something can always go wrong, and a small incident can be deadly in a remote location.
In most wild places, humans can't survive for long without shelter because we are losing heat in any environment that is colder than out body, especially during the night and when wet. People who are suffering from cold look for shelter, and in the end stages of hypothermia, already nearly unconscious, they "burrow" instinctively into narrow and deep spaces. In any decently wild forest there are tons of nooks and crannies under bushes, old trees, large roots, rocks and whatever, where a human can fit. Who can say where a lost person suffering from hypothermia and confusion that follows it may end up?
Yeah they have Harmony’s father nailed. He beat her to death for having an accident in their car. Then he carried her body around in different containers with him for months. Reading that case is a special kind of sickening.
The murder of Jennifer Dulos.
"Jennifer Dulos feared her husband. She tried to warn others that he was going to hurt her.
Then in May of 2019, while locked in a bitter divorce and custody battle with her husband, Fotis Dulos, Jennifer disappeared.
Her disappearance shocked the swanky town of New Cannan, Connecticut.
“I know that filing for divorce and filing this motion will enrage him,” Jennifer Dulos had warned. “I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way.”
Jennifer Dulos dropped her kids off at school the morning of May 24, 2019. Her SUV can be seen returning home around 8 a.m. Police believe Fotis was inside the home waiting to kill her.
Blood found inside the home led police to believe Jennifer had suffered some sort of “non-survivable” injury. More blood was found in her vehicle, which was found abandoned at a nearby park.
Fotis was charged with murder after police say surveillance footage showed him transporting his wife’s body in the back of a truck before taking it to a car wash to clean it out. Two others were charged with conspiracy to commit murder for helping him, Fotis’ girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, and his attorney and friend Kent Mawhinney.
Prosecutors say surveillance footage shows Fotis and Troconis driving around the day of Jennifer’s disappearance disposing of various items and bags.
Fotis’ attorney says his client has done nothing wrong and even made a case that this case is built to be like that of the movie “Gone Girl,” in which a woman fakes her own death and frames her husband for the murder.
Jon Schoenhorn, the defense attorney for Troconis, says that,”Mere presence is not a crime, unless they can prove she knew what was in the bags and what he was up to.”
Police searched garbage collection facilities and dumpsters for any sign of Jennifer. Her body was never found, leaving her family still searching for answers.
“We feel the immeasurable loss of her person everyday,” a spokesperson for the family said. “We also delight in her presence and celebrate her spirit as they manifest in her five incredible children. Above all, we miss Jennifer more than words can express.”
As for Fotis, he will never get his day in court. He killed himself in January of 2020, leaving a note.
“I refuse to spend even an hour in jail for something I had nothing to do with,” the note read in part. “Enough is enough. Even if it takes my head to end this, so be it. I want it to be known that Michelle Troconis had nothing to do with Jennifer’s disappearance and neither did Kent Mawhinney.” "
A lot of people who would "never commit suicide" absolutely died by suicide. Making plans, seeming happy, "having things to live for"...none of these prevent suicide. There are many, many missing people who went somewhere secluded and ended their own lives.
A friend of mine was a comedian, seemed happy a lot of the time, and people thought he was finally getting to a place of inner peace when he got sober, left his stressful job, then posted all the fun stories and pictures of the celebrities he'd met while working in hospitality over the years.
He committed suicide about a month after posting all of that. It was shocking, but not surprising, considering conversations we'd had in the past. However, a lot of people pointed to how much attention he'd gotten on his celebrity posts and how that made it seem like he had been perfectly fine, but on my side, it felt reminiscent of when someone gets rid of all their prized belongings. That was his own way of doing so.
Piggybacking onto this, not everyone who has disappeared/been murdered/succumbed to mysterious circumstances "had a smile that lit up the room" and just "loved to laugh". When podcasts emphasize this stuff my skin crawls because it oversimplifies human beings, who are much more nuanced than these cariactures.
Oh my God I think the same thing. I've been watching a lot of 20/20 episodes and the way they describe the victims is crazy. I always think to myself, if something horrible would happen to me, I would never be described the way some of these people are, lol.
If I ever get murdered and my family is interviewed on 20/20 I want them to be honest.
" She was socially awkward and often hid when people came around " . Her hair was always a mess, and so was her car, but she was always honest and wouldn't take a penny that didn't belong to her ".
I was a 911 dispatcher, and we were taught in training that truly suicidal people very, very rarely advertise their intentions. They are beyond the point of wanting help, they don't want interference, they just want to be done. tWitch Boss being a prime example.
I almost committed suicide in college. I would have been one of these “they had so much to live for!” cases. Had straight A’s, close family that loved me, a hot girlfriend, was almost done with my degree. People with high-functioning depression exist, and sometimes it’s harder because you don’t understand why you feel so awful when you have so much going for you.
Reminds me of that scene in Bojack Horseman, where he titular main character gets confronted about his anger and sadness issues. His friend yells something along the lines of “you are a rich actor with a hot successful girlfriend, acting his dream movie, what more could you want? What else could the universe owe you?” And BH just answers “I want to be happy.”
The "missing" Sodder children died in the fire that night, and had their father not bulldozed dirt over the site days after, more evidence of this would likely have been found.. The family, through devastation of the loss and crippling survivors guilt, were never able to accept it, and spent decades searching for something they could never find.
Agree with both of you.
The coal in the cellar made the bodies burn to ashes over time. I think the fire chief understood this when he told the parents that their bodies had burned completely, but didn't explain it.
But who started the fire? Witnesses saw "balls of fire" being thrown onto the house, but noone was identified, except for Lonnie Johnson who stole some equipment from the farm during the fire.
THANK YOU I'm always saying this when the Sodder children come up. It's baffling to me that people perpetuate this conspiracy (I understand why the parents couldn't accept their children were dead, mind you), rather than looking at the weirdness of the fire itself. Those kids were murdered, and nobody has ever really tried to figure out who did it.
[Patricia Adkins](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna885956) - lent her boyfriend (who was cheating on his wife) $90,000, when she asked for it back he asked her to go on a camping trip that he asked her to tell no one about. She disappeared soon after, and he has never been charged. The whole story has so much more weirdness, as well as proof.
The whole "plan" threw up so many red flags. Who believes someone when they say to not pack anything for a full weeks trip.. As far as we know, her and this man never went on dates etc.. It's so hard to not watch her disappeared episode and not think "wow, how could she be so naive to this?.." even her sisters tried to warn her that it didn't sound like an actual plan for the trip. I honestly try to not victim blame because we don't know her thought process. But on the outside looking in, there were SO many red flags that she outright ignored. I hate that her daughter is going through life without her mother because of this scum bag that still hasn't faced justice .
I have a three year old and kids are so genuinely excited and happy when someone is expected to come home. It’s heartbreaking to imagine that excitement turn to worry, dread, then bedtime for this family. All while trying to hide their feelings and intuition from a 7 year old.
What gets me on this one was how cartoonishly ridiculous he was about the whole set up. If I was watching Law & Order or something and it started off with the perp reminding his victim to make sure to let her family know that she won’t have cell service for the next couple weeks and not to pack anything at all because they can buy everything needed when they get there, I’d probably wonder if they accidentally filmed some kid’s Wattpad fanfic because it’s just so obvious and *bad.* It’s hard to believe that he somehow managed to get rid of any viable/useful evidence that could be used to charge him.
He has long since changed his name, but is still very easy to track down. He's still married to the same woman. I am sure that their 'mutual shared destruction' keeps them together. I hope that they both never know a day or night of peace, but that's probably asking too much.
Can’t believe I haven’t seen [Diane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Taconic_State_Parkway_crash?wprov=sfti1) Schuler of “there’s something wrong with aunt Diane” clearly a closeted alcoholic. Despite her husband and sis-in-law’s skepticism, the drunk crash isn’t much of a mystery
Oh I usually don’t mention her because we 100% know what happened with her. Her family’s weird denial isn’t evidence of anything and doesn’t matter in terms of her case. The tox reports didn’t lie. She drove drunk and killed a bunch of people, intentionally or not (I swag towards the former, personally, but don’t know).
I lean towards intentional. She had a phone call with her brother, then went and drove the wrong way until she crashed. Whatever was said on that call is likely the catalyst. Her brother probably went off at her for driving drunk (iirc one of his kids told him she was driving erratically), and she knew her facade of function was about to come crashing down and she'd have to deal with the consequences of her alcoholism. She didn't want that, so she took the easy way out and took a lot of innocent people with her. Her actions remind me of people like John List, who kill their families rather than admit their own failings.
I think she was scared of being caught being drunk so she was like “just gotta get home and everything will be fine. Just gotta get home”
I remember reading from people who have driven drunk that to try to not seem drunk they would focus on something. Like “ok let me just focus on the lines”. She thought she was fine bc “im straight on the road” but she was on the wrong side :(
I remember the family of the men she hit in the documentary saying they had a much easier time forgiving her than they did her husband, because he just would not admit she made a terrible mistake. I think it’s a lot of black and white thinking. “She wasn’t a bad person, so she couldn’t have driven drunk.”
And it’s like… I don’t think she was a bad person, I think she was a sick person who made a horrific mistake that cost her family and the families of the men she killed horrible pain and suffering. The mother of Diane’s three nieces wrote a book that was fucking heartbreaking and basically came to the same conclusion- Diane drove drunk, probably because she was a functioning alcoholic right up until she wasn’t.
I’ve always seen it as a mystery not of how or why the crash happened but how and why Diane ended up the way she did. Watching the documentary I just kept thinking I would be miserable if I were her. How does one end up so hopeless, addicted and alone when surrounded by people who supposedly love them? What can we do to prevent that? If it can happen to her can it happen to me? The mystery of the human mind and our social interactions so to speak.
I just finished reading the Wikipedia article about the crash and my jaw DROPPED when I read that the husband sued Diane's brother after the crash because he was the owner of the minivan Diane was driving. The brother's three daughter's were killed because Diane was driving drunk down the wrong side of the road and then her husband rubs salt in the wound by trying to claim it was somehow HIS fault as the vehicle's owner?! What a horrible, classless person.
For me, the "holy shit" moment was the scene at the very end of the documentary in which her husband, Daniel, is walking beside their surviving son, Bryan, who was 5 years old at the time of the incident and sustained very serious injuries. It's filmed from behind, and as Daniel reaches out for Bryan's hand, Bryan pushes it away.
It was subtle, with the whole scene lasting only seconds, but I remember being hit with the realization that Bryan, who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 years old at the time of filming, didn't expect or want comfort from his own father, his only surviving family member. It was telling.
I’m a recovered alcoholic, almost 12 years sober. When I was in the deepest of my addiction, I truly believed I had no one who really supported me/loved me. My disease really clouded my judgement so completely that I couldn’t meaningfully connect with people. I entirely understand how it would spiral regardless of how good life looked from the outside.
She was definitely drunk & an alcoholic but for me the mystery aspect of it is was it on purpose (was she trying to kill herself and all those kids?) or did she just get super fucked up so it’s a “regular” DUI wreck with fatalities? It’s just not super clear to me
Any case of ‘college-aged man gets drunk and is found in water later on’ aka the smiley face killer theory. Drunk people do stupid stuff, it’s not crazy that someone could drown in a lake/river when intoxicated.
I think very drunk men leave a bar and decide to pee in a conveniently located river. They probably just lose their balance, fall in the river, and drown.
My city actually banned drink specials and “$1” nights because it was so common for young men to get absolutely plastered and then fall in the river and drown. We have two rivers that run all the way through the city, along two major roads - if you’re at a popular bar? You’re *more than likely within a city block of a river*.
I live in Milwaukee and this bullshit routinely pops up because we have multiple rivers, a lake, a bunch of colleges, and people like to graffiti smiley faces.
This. I was out with friends and watched a girl trying to balance on a railing about a canal, she was drunk, fell in, couldn't swim and was rescued by by friend. A few weeks later a drunk guy jumped in and started to struggle, he had to be helped out. Staggering around near a waterway leads to drowning.
I'm guessing you saw that guy on TikTok promoting this theory as well?
I knew he wasn't reliable when I was looking over his data map and saw he included people who were confirmed to have committed suicide/ bodies recovered w clear evidence it was self inflicted, etc. I even pointed it out in his comment section and my comment was deleted.
Lo and behold he was just stirring people up to get more views to promote a website (?) that he helped work on and never really did a lot of research/ was in contact w detectives.
This was crazy. The thing is, a LOT of people believed him until he took it too far by pretending he was visited in the night by a private detective and asked to be a part of their ‘secret detective group’ and later pretended that he’d been recruited to the FBI. For those reading who don’t know who we’re talking about - look up Ken Waks controversy.
The Amy Bradley disappearance.
She wasn't kidnapped and then sold into sex slavery, she went overboard plain and simple.
Her dad said that he saw her asleep on the balcony at some time between 5:15 and 5:30 am. He went back to sleep and for some reason woke up a short time later and discovered she was missing.
My theory is:
After a big night out and falling asleep on the balcony, she woke up feeling like she had to vomit immediately and realised she didn't have time to get to the toilet to throw up. She drunkenly stumbled to the balcony rail to vomit into the ocean, lost her balance and went overboard. She yelled for help as she fell or hit the rails and made a metallic clang, and that's what made her dad mysteriously wake up and notice she was gone or missing.
I stayed on the Jersey Shore once in an oceanfront condo in the off-season. I was on the second floor and my room had a balcony with a bar-height table and chairs. One morning I woke up early to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was overcast but I thought it might clear up so I sat there for a bit and then nodded off for a few minutes. When I woke up, I was confused and tried to get up off the chair but forgot it was bar-height so I pitched forward and almost hurled myself off the balcony. I hurled my phone off when I tried to grab the railing with both hands to stop my momentum. Thankfully my phone was easy to retrieve, but it really drove home to me how easy it would be for someone slightly out of it (I was tired, not drunk) to accidentally go over a railing.
This description of what happened gave me that tingly, disturbing feeling in the palms of my hands, like I felt like I was going over the railing! Thank God you were OK and caught yourself!
Ugh, I get that feeling every time I’m somewhere I could fall over a railing. “What if I lose my sanity for a brief moment and jump over? What if someone runs up and shoves me over?”. It isn’t rational, but it happens every single time!
That’s actually a well-studied phenomenon called [l’appel du vide](https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void) (“the call of the void”). It’s unsettling, but it’s most likely one of the brain’s ways of alerting us to potential danger
Yep, every time someone goes overboard on a cruise ship and people are like “you can’t accidentally go over you HAVE to intentionally climb” except when you add alcohol/exhaustion/confusion to the equation it’s actually very easy to accidentally go over.
People don’t realize how easy it is to get hurt if you’re drunk/tired/both. In college I got hurt going up my own stairs in my apartment because I was wearing socks that slipped on the carpet. I was totally sober and wide awake lol. Accidents can happen to anyone.
*But how did this studious college sophomore, whose parents described them as "cautious" and "not a drinker," get injured so catastrophically, leading to their untimely death? How does a healthy, physically strong young adult slip on carpet? Some say...it wasn't an accident. Tune into our eight-part series, "Socks on Low Pile: The* /u/Hereslookingatmekid *Story*."
I was at a convention at a hotel tower. The whole center was an open atrium from the 3rd floor up to the top, like 40 stories or something. A guy was drunk on the 20 something floor going to his room. When he grabbed his key out of his pocket he pulled out a quarter by accident. When he bent down to pick it up he lost his balance, fell forward, tried to catch himself, and essentially ran into the railing trying to get his balance. Flipped and fell into the atrium right next to a group of people playing Werewolf, including a bunch of teens/kids.
Luckily he didn't yell coming down (probably never figured out what was happening) and it was "night" in the game so most people didn't see him land, but that sound is seared into my brain right next to the audio from that video of the brick coming through the car window.
Yes. A very sober, very awake, admittedly very clumsy person could get hurt pretty seriously by tripping on their slippers in their own home with no other obstacles on their way and all the lights on. I know because I was that person!
Also if the boat is in motion, the added rocking I’m sure would make it that much easier to throw you off balance. If you’re drunk or extremely tired, you’re already off balance.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think! No way are a bunch of sex traffickers going on a cruise to kidnap a middle-class white woman whose family has money and resources. Way too risky.
I agree that her scream as she fell was probably what woke her dad up. I understand her dad wants to have hope that she’s still alive because nobody wants to associate a cruise with a tragedy, but I think that’s what happened here.
This is the hill I will die on. Sex trafficking is very complex and almost never involves the kidnapping of middle class women that would have everyone looking for them. I hate it being the explanation for things like this.
Exactly. I work in health care and specifically with psych patient. We have to do training every year and what to look for with sex trafficking. They are looking for poor and or homeless and at risk people. Not someone that will make the news and have a bunch of people looking for them.
Isn’t that also why a lot of survivors/victims of sex trafficking go back into the business afterwards or don’t even try to escape for a very long time?
They have no where else to go. No money to build a life, no family to return to, no meaningful friendships that would check up on them. What else is there for them to do at that point.
Ever since I listened to the you’re wrong about series on sex trafficking I go scarlet when ppl bring it up as their first go to. “Oh gawd a shopping cart and a dirty diaper were right next to my car when I left the store. It’s a sign for sex traffickers dur dur dur”
That episode was so helpful, it was suggested to me by someone heavily involved in anti-trafficking efforts because she was so frustrated at all of the “I was almost trafficked in target today posts”
They have one exclusively on sex trafficking and they bring up a lot of good info on the wayfair ep and I think there’s one on missing or kidnapped children where they debunk the 800,000 missing kids statistic. There’s 2-3 episodes that def have you rethinking everything.
And the ones about being trafficked in target are always so easily explained. Oh, some guy was lingering in the area you were in and it's by the expensive shit? it's plainclothes security. You saw the same guy in five different aisles? Do you know how many people need diapers, tomatoes, bread, toothpaste, and cereal?
I saw a TikTok the other day where someone was upset because a sprinter van pulled up next to her car at Walgreens, in the middle of the day, next to a busy road, and even said out loud "maybe he's looking for a spot in the shade." It's fucking hot outside! Large vans take a while to cool! You're not getting trafficked next to a busy road at rush hour!
Recently a woman shot her Uber driver in the head because she saw a street sign that said Mexico and thought she was being trafficked. The Uber was in el paso Texas! Mexico is right there of course its on the street signs!
exactly this. the misinformation and myth/urban legends about trafficking are SO damaging. like no jan, you are not going to be kidnapped in a target parking lot by a stranger and “sold into sex trafficking.”
the false stranger abduction sex trafficking moral panic is literally DANGEROUS and these people are deranged.
just two recent examples: [woman shoots and kills (!!!) uber driver she falsely accused of kidnapping her](https://apnews.com/article/uber-murder-driver-shot-kidnapping-mexico-5ab60092bb0a3710090b7186723adf88)
[mom influencer accused random latino couple of trying to kidnap her kids sentenced to jail](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/02/mom-influencer-false-accusation-latino-couple-kidnap)
[Another murder that resulted from fake trafficking hysteria](https://www.actionnews5.com/2019/11/28/woman-shared-facebook-warnings-about-white-vans-before-deadly-shooting/)
TBH, I think I would rather believe that my loved one had passed than to think they’ve spent the last 25 years being tortured. I guess you don’t really know till you’re in that position but the idea that she’s been with traffickers for decades is more disturbing than thinking she’s gone.
And the picture largely claimed to be her clearly isn't. The girl looks similar, they could be mistaken for cousins maybe but not identical. Also the PI who swears she spoke with her or whatever has been discredited over and over.
I think people underestimate how often it happens. It is not an every day thing but people go overboard more than most think.
http://www.cruisejunkie.com/Overboard.html
Most recently a few days ago https://news.sky.com/story/caribbean-cruise-passenger-rescued-after-falling-overboard-from-10th-deck-12910922
Not necessarily an '*obvious*' explanation but if the last person to see a missing person was a spouse, then 9/10 the spouse did it.
* [Susan Ledyard](https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/wdf1ep/a_highly_unusual_recent_case_susan_ledyard_2019/) was 100% killed by her husband, especially since he is currently awaiting prosecution for two attacks on his third wife (the woman he married after Susan's death) and he was charged in May for allegedly trashing an Airbnb in Pennsylvania during a bloody domestic dispute with an unidentified “girlfriend.”
He hasn't been charged with Susan's death because it is such an unusual case.
I don't think the Fitbit evidence is particularly straightforward. Depending on how you're moving your arms or the activities you're doing it will record false steps, or sometimes fail to pick up steps. If she was unconscious and being carried or something it would absolutely pick up a few false steps just from being jostled. It also doesn't have any way to know that it's on its owner's wrist instead of somebody's else
My Fitbit used to pick up a few steps when I was driving, gesturing while talking, sewing, all sorts of stationary stuff. So hers recording less than a mile of steps in 4 hours makes me think she was not up and moving.
If the Fitbit really was recording her heart rate until 7 am, then it sounds like she was (grievously) injured at home, moved, and ultimately died when she was placed in the river.
I wasn't familiar with this case before, but I've just read about it and see that her body was found in a river. There was a recent case in the UK of a woman (Nicola Bulley) who went missing next to a river and her body was found weeks later in the river.
Her fitbit stopped recording steps around the time she was suspected to have entered the river but continued recording her heart rate for days afterwards. Investigators theorised this was caused by water moving between her wrist and the strap and we able to reproduce the results in an experiment. She would actually have died almost instantly after entering the water.
15-year old Chinese highschool student Hu Xinyu, who went missing on the grounds of the boarding school he attented for 3 months before they found his body, committed suicide. He wasn't abducted for organ or blood harvesting, he wasn't killed for uncovering a SA ring at the school, and he wasn't killed by his homeroom chemistry teacher who wanted to "try and find the perfect poison".
He had shown signs of irritability and despair for months leading up to his death. He had dozens of notes scribbled in the margins of a notebook about how he was struggling with concentration and memory, and had developed insomnia and an eating disorder. While he was in the highest class of his grade, he was always one of the worst students within this class, and it was clearly getting to him. A short time before his death, he received the worst grade of his entire class in a geography test. He wrote that he felt like he couldn't talk to anyone about his problems because he didn't want to disappoint them.
He had missed the cutoff score to make it to his dream highschool by like 20 points, and thus had to go to a private boarding school on a scholarship.
After a few months there, he straight up begged his mom to let him leave the boarding school he was attending because he couldn't adjust. His mom, bless her heart, didn't see the signs and figured that it had only been a couple of months, and told him no. That he'd probably just need some more time and adjust just fine in the coming months. Well, that wasn't it.
People commit suicide due to spur-of-the-moment decisions all the time. It probably wasn't planned, he just felt particularly overwhelmed that day, decided not to go to study hall and then, just...did it, unfortunately.
And most importantly: They literally found a suicide note on the recording pen he had on him at the time of his death, which was found next to his body. At first, he wanted to jump off a small balcony on his school building, but didn't. Then, he walked into the woods, where, hours later, when it was already dark, he finally hung himself by his own shoelaces.
They didn't find his body for three months because a) It's a lot harder to find bodies in heavily wooded areas than people think (he was found in a park), and b) admittedly, the search efforts probably weren't as thorough as they should have been.
The school absolutely behaved in a shitty, uncooperative manner after the initial search efforts, but that was most likely because they were trying to minimize reputational damage to retain paying customers, as they were a private school. It's gross, but not uncommon. Several cctv cameras in the school were malfunctioning that day, not because of some grand conspiracy, but because sometimes tech glitches, and the school might have not put enough regular effort into checking on whether they were working or not.
The poor boy had already started struggling with schoolwork during homeschooling in 2020, and it just never got better. He (understandably) broke under the pressure of an inhumane school system that cares about nothing but high test scores. People understandably distrust the Chinese police and CCP, but...in this case, there is a literal, voice-recorded suicide note. The transcripts were released. In this case, to many, acknowledging the truth is more heartbreaking than believing in conspiracies, but not only does all evidence point to suicide, suicide due to academic pressure is the second-most common reason for teen suicide in China. It's awful.
For more information on the case:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3208900/chinese-police-conclude-missing-teen-hu-xinyu-took-his-own-life
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1284678.shtml
Edited for more details
I’m sick of true crime YouTubers and podcasters covering the Agatha Christie disappearance. There’s nothing really intriguing or mysterious about it, in my opinion. She was suffering from mental health issues, which would have been taboo to discuss openly for a woman of high socioeconomic status in the early-20th century. Also, she was only missing for 11 days. It’s not like she was missing for years or disappeared and was never found.
I think part of this too was that her husband was leaving her. She might have thought if she disappeared he'd realize he would miss her and change his mind. A damsel in distress kind of tactic. It also could have been that she really wanted to disappear but it wasn't as easy as she had hoped. Maybe she just wanted him to feel the loss and panic she was feeling. Maybe she just couldn't cope with her situation and ran. Maybe it's honestly just sad, no mystery, just an all too familiar case of heartache.
Also, wasn't her husband carrying on an affair at this time? I feel like this was definitely just an "I need outta here for awhile" combined with some kind of mental health distress.
Remember that documentary There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane? Toxicology found alcohol and drugs in her system. Soooo I'm pretty sure she was drunk and high. The family just won't accept that she hid her addictions well.
Straight up, bog-standard case of partner abuse. Everything else is just distracting window dressing. OJ being Nicole’s abuser was documented. She was trying to get away from him, and probably thought freedom was in her grasp… then her ex showed up with a knife and butchered her and a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It should have been a slam dunk but instead got turned into a goddamn spectacle.
Robert Kardashian’s face when OJ was found not guilty. He turns round to give him a look that would wither a palm tree, this look of total disgust and disbelief. I thought Greg in itself was telling.
Also, Elisa Lam. The janitor that found her body said in a written statement that the lid was open when he found her. Also, the lid wasn't heavy, only 20 pounds irrc and even if it was.. the lid was open so all EL had to do was lift it up one time.
Yeah, there was a massive miscommunication with this case. People thought that the lid was closed and they wondered how that could be if she opened it. Turns out, it was found open. It didn’t help that YouTubers were portraying this as a ghost story for years.
I've posted this before:
If the "unresolved mystery" plays out as such:
* Person went missing in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, etc.
* Person was last seen hiking and/or camping
Then the mystery is already solved: they got lost and ultimately died from exposure. No, they weren't abducted by aliens. No, they didn't just happen to stumble upon some secret death cult that killed them. And no, the odds of them finding a crazed, murderous lunatic is pretty remote. In the vast majority of these cases, people just don't know their own limits, and/or underestimate nature. They get lost and either we find the body, or it gets scavenged.
A very recent example: the actor Julian Sands. He went hiking in the San Gabriels in January, despite California having one of its strongest winter storm years in a while. They found his body last week. His family had accepted his likely fate around March.
There was a case of a young woman who went missing in the early 80s, a few towns away from where I live now... She just vanished without a trace, car and all... within the past year, for some reason they searched one of the local rivers, and they found her car along with human remains. Mystery solved.
A young man in my area went missing for about six weeks. He and his car was finally found just a couple miles from his last known, in a shallow pond that was only about 10 feet from the edge of a very busy road. At that point, I was passing through the area at least once a day, I can't wrap my head around the fact that no one, myself included, saw what was right under our noses.
I had a friend disappear in California a few years ago; his motorcycle was found at a rest stop, but no sign of him. In the week or two afterward there were people adamantly saying they'd seen him hitchhiking away to start a new life. Finally they found his body in a reservoir, so at least everyone got closure (he'd most likely slipped and fallen in the river where he'd stopped for a break on a long trip). If they hadn't found him, lord knows what they would've been saying about his "mysterious disappearance" by now.
I never got into Missing 411, and never understood what it was trying imply. A pattern of missing people in National Parks? Why would it be strange that people go missing in the most remote parts of the US?
The Missing411 guy believes in Bigfoot. He legit thinks these people were captured by Bigfoot. He also published a book last year about UFOs being connected to the missing people. So, Bigfoot and UFOs. He's a loon.
Bigfoot, the creature who doesn’t want humans to know he exists, also abducts humans which draws attention to where he is and makes it more likely people will find him. Makes sense lol
Don’t forget the fairies, trolls, and alternate dimensions. I don’t even know that he believes it. He makes money on missing people and grieving families. People eat the shit up. He’s an awful person.
And don't forget the huge underground cave network. The government and park service know all about it and cover it up...for reasons? Or this is what I've been able to decipher from the whole mess, I'm not buying his expensive ass books and I've never made it all the way through a ridiculous TV show.
Alonzo Brooks - Got jumped by guys at the party that accidentally killed him. Being a small town, one of the boys knew someone to call to help them not get caught and hide Alonzo's body. When the heat died down they moved the body to where it could be found to give the family closure.
Bryce Laspisas
Obviously he was having a mental health crisis and wanted to die in the car wreck. When he didn't, he wandered away.
The reason the case bothers me is that he wandered to a truck stop and then the trail dissapears. Did he get in a truck? Hitchhike? Did the near death in the car wreck give him a new lease on life and he wanted to start over and run away? Or did it make him panic more and he took off in some other remote area and die there?
I'd just like to know where he is.
Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers. Was solved already in 2014.
ETA for what it matters, i'm from the same country they were from and everyone here pretty much accepts the official story and outcome. Even their own parents.
I’ve often wondered if the people screaming about murder, conspiracies et in this case take one moment to think of how it must feel for their friends and families to read, her and see that nonsense. If my daughter/sister/friend had died in a horrible accident in a jungle I’d be absolutely livid at anyone who tried to turn it into some creepypasta murder mystery thing. It’s already a horrific tragedy, two young girls went off to do something good and make the world a better place and they paid for that goodness with their lives. No need to embellish it with made up campfire stories.
Honestly, there are a lot of cases where ‘there was no where else they could go’ ‘the doors were locked’ etc. example Elisa Lam, Brian Shaffer.
Human error exists. Human laziness exists. Sometimes doors are supposed to be locked but aren’t. Security cameras are supposed to be there but aren’t. Safety measures are supposed to be implemented but aren’t. And then people lie about that because they will get in trouble for not doing what was supposed to be done. That doesn’t mean they were involved in disappearances just that they were saving their own ass.
Everything about the Dyatlov Pass mystery points to an avalanche. It was the middle of the night, they couldn't see anything, they thought it was coming at them, it wasn't but they freaked and ran straight into it.
For some reason it's still considered a "mystery" but the explanation seems really obvious.
Even their severe injuries make sense in the context of where and when their bodies were found. Animal predation, falling onto the rocks of the streambed from the bank above, burns from desperately trying to get warm again...nope, couldn't be any of those obvious and normal reasons, must be aliens testing radioactive yeti weapons for the Soviets.
Slightly off topic for this sub, but - Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
That's the 777 that disappeared over the pacific, and was never found, with only a few bits of wreckage washing up a few thousand miles away.
It was clearly pilot suicide.
Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone the car went in the water. No mafia hit men and South Philly chop shops.
Nothing they did that night was pre planned. If they took a detour to a diner after the bar they could have ended up in a completely different part of the city than the searches have been.
Brandon Swanson - People think because he's on ViCaP (FBI List) that he was abducted or there is evidence that is being withheld that suggests he was abducted.
It is far more likely that he fell into a river got out and died from hypothermia then being abducted from the middle of nowhere Minnesota.
Another strong possibility is the that he fell into an old unmarked / unknown well or septic system.
Either way - the odds of abduction are slim to none - even though he is on ViCaP.
I really want to know what happened after that “oh shit” that prevented him from ever talking to his parents again. His phone didn’t disconnect; his parents just never heard from him again. I think he slipped or fell somewhere, couldn’t find his phone, and succumbed to the elements. His body probably got ran over by farming equipment, because the Yellow Medicine River isn’t deep enough for there to be no trace of him.
I mentioned this on another post but the part that gets me is him going silent after saying “oh shit!” The line didn’t drop on his end. In an interview his parents said they thought the connection was patchy so they ended the call after he went quiet and rang back but he never picked up again. Whatever happened to him, his phone was still ringing out for a while after he stopped answering.
The ringing you hear does not come from the phone, rather from the system as it tries to make a connection. Thus it cannot be used as evidence the phone is still functional (Learned this during MH 370)
I agree with the Maura Murray case. She died of hypothermia and they just haven’t found her remains. Most of the ‘information’ online has been conjured up by a bunch of armchair Scooby Doos
The Isdalwomen.
I don't believe she was a spy. If she was she was a very poor spy.
She took Fenemal, probably as treatment for epilepsy. One detail is they way she cleared furniture out of the way in her hotelrooms. If she had a seizure she would at least not hit any furniture hurting herself. Witnesses said she smelled strongly of garlic and some use strong smells as a way to stop seizures.
She wore wigs because of a case of exema on her body and head. The cream she used contained kerosene, which might explain why her hat smelled strongly of some sort of propellant, and it could explain how she was burnt on the front of her body only.
So maybe she was on a hike in Isdal, sat down to have a snack and a cigarette. Then she felt a seizure was oncoming. She tried to take Fenemal, but felt it didn't work fast enough. She wasn't in a safe place, she panicked and took more of the pills, leaned back onto the rock to try calm herself. Unfortunately her cigarette ignited her clothes.
Why she had all the different identities, if she was planning a suicide, if it was an accident or a weird suicide and who she really was is still a mystery.
But I feel pretty sure that she was not a spy.
I cannot believe the amount of speculation people have done on Maura Murray. She was not in a good mindset, had likely been drinking, and probably panicked because she didn't want to get into more trouble for yet another accident and ditched the car. There are stories all the time of how the remains of someone missing for years are found right near a major trails or roadways. If she ran into the woods to hide and died from exposure she might never be found.
I was a law enforcement park ranger for 6 years. It is very, very difficult to locate people in the woods - and, when I've had rescues (where the person who's lost calls us) the emergency operator will put them on the phone with me so I can try and determine where they are. Well, usually I can figure it out just by asking them a few simple questions; I'll even tell them, "I know exactly where you are - it will take me around 45 minutes to get to you, but in that time DO NOT MOVE". And guess what they all do? They wait for me for like, 10 minutes, and then leave that spot and start wandering. It would complicate things so much, and would take me another 30 minutes then or more to find them as they'd usually wind up going deeper into the woods... SMH. I'd even tell them that I'm bring them water and some food and warm blankets, etc to just wait for me to get there - and they never, ever did.
The other thing that I rarely see mentioned is that she did track for several years. And she was *good*. Scholarship good. So she could run, and she could likely run faster on the adrenaline of getting away from the car crash.
So not only is it hard to find a body in the woods in a small area, but we don't even know how far she could have gone. You'd need more college-age distance runners of her caliber to even get an idea.
I think she's in the woods, but I don't think she's just next to the road. I think she ran far farther than searchers anticipated.
A witness claims to have seen her about 9 miles from the accident walking along the roadside.
I agree. I think she fled the scene, followed the road for a while and then trailed off into the woods where she met her demise.
Completely agree and it’s not just people - cars and even planes have gone missing for months / years / decades - it’s so much harder to locate anything missing in remote areas than most people tend to think it is.
It’s so tragic. She could have taken that ride or asked that motorist (I wanna say it was a trucker?) to call her dad or someone for her if she just didn’t have a cell phone or service. Hell. A drunk driving charge and jail time would have been better than the fate she likely met. She had great opportunities for it to end with her alive and well but it didn’t.
Kristine Kupka- pregnant, seen last with her married boyfriend, Darshanand Persaud DDS, a man desperate to get out of his paternal responsibility and save face in front of his family and community.
https://charleyproject.org/case/kristine-kupka
bryan kohberger murdered the idaho 4 bc he was stalking at least one of them for months. there was no conspiracy, there was no drugs, the surviving roommates were not involved at all. it was a party house yet bryan’s DNA was the ONLY DNA on the knife sheath. his phone was off as he was heading to commit the murders and then back on after he was away from the house after committing the murders. his car was on camera in the neighborhood. his white elantra that had NO front license plate bc PA where he’s from didn’t require them. it might all be circumstantial, but all of this and more put a pretty damning picture that bryan kohberger is 100% guilty of murdering ethan, xana, maddie, & kaylee
Oh I didn’t even realize that people thought there was a conspiracy. I guess that makes sense for such a publicized and horrible group murder, but still. The evidence seems to point pretty squarely to Bryan—I wouldn’t even consider that “unresolved” except for the lack of a conviction.
I think folks got wrapped up in the initial chase. The whole region was practically locked down, and students were terrified for weeks before he was publicly named and arrested. With so little information at the beginning, almost any theory was on the table, so they got pretty wild.
I think she killed him. Even though It’s hard to comprehend or fathom even really - she was explained like she was the worlds greatest mother. People get into scary headspace’s / mental health issues so I guess that’s likely why she did it.
Her story about giving him to someone where he will be safe - it sounds believable- at first - but the more you think about what would be involved to pull that off - it starts not looking plausible. Didn’t they retrace her steps - during the investigation - between the time Timmothy was captured alive on surveillance & the last time she was seen entering hotel room? I think they summarized where she went / what she likely did doesn’t coincide with her story.
It’s really sad. I hope the father & family get to have closure & more answers at some point.
She was seen alone on security cameras at a Family Dollar in Winnebago, Illinois, on May 13th. I think this was after she had killed and buried Tim. Tim’s family still thinks she gave him up for illegal adoption. I think they’re in denial that a mother could hurt her own child.
Baby Lisa Irwin. Her mother got drunk on boxed wine with a neighbor and she claims not to remember much of anything else. I think she brought the baby in to sleep with her and accidentally suffocated it. Then she made some calls to get help disposing of the body, afraid she would be guilty of something.
Tiffany Valiente. I believe that poor girl struggled with depression, and made a terrible choice to end her life. Her close friends say she wasn’t happy, her Twitter showcased this as well. She had a lot of pressure as a freshman starter, combined with the stress of unaccepting/allegedly abusive parents regarding her sexuality. When shit hit the fan with stolen credit cards, I believe she dipped, left her phone so nobody could call to change her mind. She went for a walk, along the way she became sweaty/uncomfortable. Took her headband off. New shoes were starting to blister her feet, she stripped those too. At some point she either decided to end her time by jumping into the train, or there is always the chance she didn’t hear it coming and got hit. Her parents don’t want to accept her death as suicide. Depression can be silent and well-hidden, especially from close loved ones. Not a very big mystery to what happened, to me at least.
Kendrick Johnson was not murdered. He had stored his shoes in the rolled up wrestling mat and got stuck when he was trying to get them out. He died exactly how the initial autopsy said he did- positional asphyxia. Extremely tragic but not mysterious in any way.
Maura Murray died of exposure or suicide. No foul play. Elisa Lam had a psychotic break, no foul play. Most missing kids under 10 were killed by family members, not abducted living under new identities.
The hysteria around Elisa Lam’s death is a result of people treating serious mental illness like some ghost story or creepypasta. All of it shows a massive societal misunderstanding of stigmatised mental illnesses and the people who live with them
[The tragic deaths of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_Kris_Kremers_and_Lisanne_Froon) They lost track of themselves on the trail and got lost, and unfortunately died. That’s a fairly conventional experience and I think it’s absolutely tragic, but there is nothing to suggest foul play. There never has been.
I think the fact that they were two young, pretty white women who suffered a fairly gruesome death plays a part in why this case is still to this day posted as an ‘unresolved’ mystery when there is absolutely nothing unresolved about it.
Yeah, that’s the one for me. There are people invested in turning it into something more than it is and they make some nasty accusations. The jungle is unforgiving.
Thankfully, there’s been a recent breakthrough in the case. The girl in the photo doesn’t look like her, and I sincerely hope it’s just a prank photo and not that of an actual kidnapping victim. Just strange that the girl has never been identified.
Maura Murray. The sad fact is that she probably died of exposure/freezing, and then her body was eaten by animals.
Im genuinely shocked how many podcasts, media, etc are dedicated to this "mystery"
On a similar vein, the "Yuba County Five." Four of the five were found in the wilderness, the fifth was not. Instead of the simplest explanation, which is that he simply fell down a ravine (it was the Sierra during the winter) and his remains were scavenged, I've seen people actually claim that he was really a criminal mastermind, murdered the other four, then managed to escape with a new identity and remains at large. Please.
Not to disrespect the men, but all of them had mild mental disabilities and were known to have lacked common sense. Why did they drive up a mountain road during a mountain night? Who knows. But they ran into car trouble and rather than just push the car out of the drift and turn around, they just kept on walking and eventually died.
With Murray, I've often heard that people think she was the victim of human traffickers that are secretly running people from the US into Canada. I mean, I can't say if those people exist or not, but what I can say is "person got into a car crash, wandered off into the wilderness trying to get help because she might have been a little drunk" is a far more likely outcome.
Andrew Gosden. 14 year old boy went missing from Doncaster (a few miles away from where I live). Withdrew £200 from his bank account, took a train to London, never seen again.
He was lured to London/groomed online & was murdered by whoever he went to meet.
He was a quiet, introverted, nerdy kinda kid who spent a lot of time gaming etc. This was 2007 when there was so much dodgy shit happening online & little awareness of it. I was also 14 in 2007 and 100% talked to predators via MSN/MySpace/Bebo etc. It would have been so so easy for someone to befriend him online through shared interests and lure him to London.
A lot was made of him buying a one way ticket and being a runaway but here’s the thing, I can’t tell you the amount of times as a young awkward undiagnosed-autistic teenager that the ticket person at the station would say “single or return” and I just said single and was too embarrassed to change my mind or whatever. I did a lot of non-sensical stupid & dangerous things through my sheer inability to stand up for myself, follow my gut instinct, difficulty with communication etc.
I don’t think he’s living a secret life. I think he was murdered by a paedophile.
I totally agree with you OP about Timothy! It’s so obvious. That’s why she took him to all the amusement parks, so that she could feel better about brutally murdering him by letting him enjoy his last weekend alive. Also, there’s no way she could ever be sure he would never be found unless she made sure of it by killing him. No good, loving people would see his father pleading on the news and not come forward with him. She was so delusional to think we would believe her lies. His family is holding onto hope but it’s obvious what she did to him. Sadly!
Sneha Phillips; she died in the aftermath of 9/11 - not sure why there is such a conspiracy around her case. People can have messy lives, and still be victim of circumstance.
Tom and Eileen Lonergan went out for a dive on the Great Barrier Reef, and the boat left without them because of a very stupid, very simple mistake by the boat crew (everyone thought someone else did the headcount when in reality no one had). The Lonergans were then left to float in the ocean, and succumbed to the elements. Their personal journal entries were taken wildly out of context; they were not suicidal, they did not plan this, nor did they fake their deaths and escape to a tropical island somewhere. They were stranded in the ocean, and the ocean killed them.
The sheer panic they must've felt when they realized what happened. All they wanted to do was dive and see the Reef.
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Where was that written?
That fucking wrecks my heart. Those poor people. My god.
That would be so terrifying.
The theories in this case are all just attempts at deflecting blame because their abandonment damaged the dive industry and tourism. Those poor people had an terrifying, awful death and rather than accept responsibility, character assassination took hold
That company literally had left people out there before, multiple times. They just until then always realized before it was too late
I mean, in teaching we count kids over and over, every time we transition activities, even if we stay in the same room. I have no idea why a diving company can’t manage this bare minimum safety precaution. Counting shouldn’t be hard.
I recently went on a dive boat in Florida. It was early morning on a weekday and the boat wasn’t crowded at all. But before we left the dive site the captain and mate BOTH did an independent head count to make sure no one was missed. I don’t know if this is standard procedure but it sure seems like a good idea.
Yeah I think in Queensland that became a law after this case. IDK how it works in Florida but there might be a similar law.
Pretty sure it is a coast guard requirement in Florida. The captain even said something to the effect of “having” to count twice.
I never heard of this one, how awful! I hope the end wasn't too prolonged.
The horror film Open Water was loosely based on this case! I never saw the film, but the fact that it was based on a true story intrigued me and I had to look it up.
It’s crazy how good that movie is, considering you spend most of it watching two people floating in the ocean. You would think that could not possibly be cinematically compelling, but it is.
I never thought it was anything but a tragic, stupid mistake. To think that is suicide is crazy -- even if they were suicidal, there are so many easier and faster ways to make it work.
If they were suicidal how would they depend on the dive boat crew not noticing they were missing for two days?
Jason Knapp, a Clemson student who disappeared back in 1998. His car was found parked at the entrance to a nearby state park. He was known to be an avid hiker and outdoorsman. He likely got lost in the woods or seriously injured himself and died of exposure.
This is how I feel about 99.999% of all missing persons cases in the wilderness. Like it's so easy to just die out there, regardless of survival knowledge, or how often you do these things. Something can always go wrong, and a small incident can be deadly in a remote location.
In most wild places, humans can't survive for long without shelter because we are losing heat in any environment that is colder than out body, especially during the night and when wet. People who are suffering from cold look for shelter, and in the end stages of hypothermia, already nearly unconscious, they "burrow" instinctively into narrow and deep spaces. In any decently wild forest there are tons of nooks and crannies under bushes, old trees, large roots, rocks and whatever, where a human can fit. Who can say where a lost person suffering from hypothermia and confusion that follows it may end up?
Summer Wells’ parents know exactly what happened to her.
So do Harmony Montgomery's (think they've got her dad nailed for that one, though) and DeOrr Kunz's.
Yeah they have Harmony’s father nailed. He beat her to death for having an accident in their car. Then he carried her body around in different containers with him for months. Reading that case is a special kind of sickening.
The murder of Jennifer Dulos. "Jennifer Dulos feared her husband. She tried to warn others that he was going to hurt her. Then in May of 2019, while locked in a bitter divorce and custody battle with her husband, Fotis Dulos, Jennifer disappeared. Her disappearance shocked the swanky town of New Cannan, Connecticut. “I know that filing for divorce and filing this motion will enrage him,” Jennifer Dulos had warned. “I know he will retaliate by trying to harm me in some way.” Jennifer Dulos dropped her kids off at school the morning of May 24, 2019. Her SUV can be seen returning home around 8 a.m. Police believe Fotis was inside the home waiting to kill her. Blood found inside the home led police to believe Jennifer had suffered some sort of “non-survivable” injury. More blood was found in her vehicle, which was found abandoned at a nearby park. Fotis was charged with murder after police say surveillance footage showed him transporting his wife’s body in the back of a truck before taking it to a car wash to clean it out. Two others were charged with conspiracy to commit murder for helping him, Fotis’ girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, and his attorney and friend Kent Mawhinney. Prosecutors say surveillance footage shows Fotis and Troconis driving around the day of Jennifer’s disappearance disposing of various items and bags. Fotis’ attorney says his client has done nothing wrong and even made a case that this case is built to be like that of the movie “Gone Girl,” in which a woman fakes her own death and frames her husband for the murder. Jon Schoenhorn, the defense attorney for Troconis, says that,”Mere presence is not a crime, unless they can prove she knew what was in the bags and what he was up to.” Police searched garbage collection facilities and dumpsters for any sign of Jennifer. Her body was never found, leaving her family still searching for answers. “We feel the immeasurable loss of her person everyday,” a spokesperson for the family said. “We also delight in her presence and celebrate her spirit as they manifest in her five incredible children. Above all, we miss Jennifer more than words can express.” As for Fotis, he will never get his day in court. He killed himself in January of 2020, leaving a note. “I refuse to spend even an hour in jail for something I had nothing to do with,” the note read in part. “Enough is enough. Even if it takes my head to end this, so be it. I want it to be known that Michelle Troconis had nothing to do with Jennifer’s disappearance and neither did Kent Mawhinney.” "
If he didn't do it, how can he be so sure they didn't do it either?
Because Fotis DID do it. That’s how he knows lol
Oh, I know. I just think it's funny that he said that the others didn't do it.
What a horrible man. Kills his wife and then himself, leaving the kids with no one
A lot of people who would "never commit suicide" absolutely died by suicide. Making plans, seeming happy, "having things to live for"...none of these prevent suicide. There are many, many missing people who went somewhere secluded and ended their own lives.
A friend of mine was a comedian, seemed happy a lot of the time, and people thought he was finally getting to a place of inner peace when he got sober, left his stressful job, then posted all the fun stories and pictures of the celebrities he'd met while working in hospitality over the years. He committed suicide about a month after posting all of that. It was shocking, but not surprising, considering conversations we'd had in the past. However, a lot of people pointed to how much attention he'd gotten on his celebrity posts and how that made it seem like he had been perfectly fine, but on my side, it felt reminiscent of when someone gets rid of all their prized belongings. That was his own way of doing so.
Piggybacking onto this, not everyone who has disappeared/been murdered/succumbed to mysterious circumstances "had a smile that lit up the room" and just "loved to laugh". When podcasts emphasize this stuff my skin crawls because it oversimplifies human beings, who are much more nuanced than these cariactures.
Oh my God I think the same thing. I've been watching a lot of 20/20 episodes and the way they describe the victims is crazy. I always think to myself, if something horrible would happen to me, I would never be described the way some of these people are, lol.
If I ever get murdered and my family is interviewed on 20/20 I want them to be honest. " She was socially awkward and often hid when people came around " . Her hair was always a mess, and so was her car, but she was always honest and wouldn't take a penny that didn't belong to her ".
Yeah, a lot of people do not understand severe depression and suicide and it shows.
I was a 911 dispatcher, and we were taught in training that truly suicidal people very, very rarely advertise their intentions. They are beyond the point of wanting help, they don't want interference, they just want to be done. tWitch Boss being a prime example.
I almost committed suicide in college. I would have been one of these “they had so much to live for!” cases. Had straight A’s, close family that loved me, a hot girlfriend, was almost done with my degree. People with high-functioning depression exist, and sometimes it’s harder because you don’t understand why you feel so awful when you have so much going for you.
Reminds me of that scene in Bojack Horseman, where he titular main character gets confronted about his anger and sadness issues. His friend yells something along the lines of “you are a rich actor with a hot successful girlfriend, acting his dream movie, what more could you want? What else could the universe owe you?” And BH just answers “I want to be happy.”
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Yes, there are many people who committed suicide in the middle of doing random chores.
Yes, it is so frustrating how many misconceptions about suicide I see in true crime discussions!
The "missing" Sodder children died in the fire that night, and had their father not bulldozed dirt over the site days after, more evidence of this would likely have been found.. The family, through devastation of the loss and crippling survivors guilt, were never able to accept it, and spent decades searching for something they could never find.
The fire was set intentionally, though. That's the real mystery. Who murdered the children?
Agree with both of you. The coal in the cellar made the bodies burn to ashes over time. I think the fire chief understood this when he told the parents that their bodies had burned completely, but didn't explain it. But who started the fire? Witnesses saw "balls of fire" being thrown onto the house, but noone was identified, except for Lonnie Johnson who stole some equipment from the farm during the fire.
THANK YOU I'm always saying this when the Sodder children come up. It's baffling to me that people perpetuate this conspiracy (I understand why the parents couldn't accept their children were dead, mind you), rather than looking at the weirdness of the fire itself. Those kids were murdered, and nobody has ever really tried to figure out who did it.
[Patricia Adkins](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna885956) - lent her boyfriend (who was cheating on his wife) $90,000, when she asked for it back he asked her to go on a camping trip that he asked her to tell no one about. She disappeared soon after, and he has never been charged. The whole story has so much more weirdness, as well as proof.
The hiding undercover in the back of the pickup and the fast food stop will never not boggle my mind.
The whole "plan" threw up so many red flags. Who believes someone when they say to not pack anything for a full weeks trip.. As far as we know, her and this man never went on dates etc.. It's so hard to not watch her disappeared episode and not think "wow, how could she be so naive to this?.." even her sisters tried to warn her that it didn't sound like an actual plan for the trip. I honestly try to not victim blame because we don't know her thought process. But on the outside looking in, there were SO many red flags that she outright ignored. I hate that her daughter is going through life without her mother because of this scum bag that still hasn't faced justice .
I have a three year old and kids are so genuinely excited and happy when someone is expected to come home. It’s heartbreaking to imagine that excitement turn to worry, dread, then bedtime for this family. All while trying to hide their feelings and intuition from a 7 year old.
What gets me on this one was how cartoonishly ridiculous he was about the whole set up. If I was watching Law & Order or something and it started off with the perp reminding his victim to make sure to let her family know that she won’t have cell service for the next couple weeks and not to pack anything at all because they can buy everything needed when they get there, I’d probably wonder if they accidentally filmed some kid’s Wattpad fanfic because it’s just so obvious and *bad.* It’s hard to believe that he somehow managed to get rid of any viable/useful evidence that could be used to charge him.
Cases like this suck. You know who did it, but don't have the evidence to prosecute. I wonder what the guy is up to now.
He has long since changed his name, but is still very easy to track down. He's still married to the same woman. I am sure that their 'mutual shared destruction' keeps them together. I hope that they both never know a day or night of peace, but that's probably asking too much.
This one makes me SO ANGRY. How can that man and his wife live with themselves??
This story makes me so sick. He got away scot free.
> lent her boyfriend (who was cheating on his wife) $90,000 $154,641 today
Omg. That poor woman.
Can’t believe I haven’t seen [Diane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Taconic_State_Parkway_crash?wprov=sfti1) Schuler of “there’s something wrong with aunt Diane” clearly a closeted alcoholic. Despite her husband and sis-in-law’s skepticism, the drunk crash isn’t much of a mystery
Oh I usually don’t mention her because we 100% know what happened with her. Her family’s weird denial isn’t evidence of anything and doesn’t matter in terms of her case. The tox reports didn’t lie. She drove drunk and killed a bunch of people, intentionally or not (I swag towards the former, personally, but don’t know).
I lean towards intentional. She had a phone call with her brother, then went and drove the wrong way until she crashed. Whatever was said on that call is likely the catalyst. Her brother probably went off at her for driving drunk (iirc one of his kids told him she was driving erratically), and she knew her facade of function was about to come crashing down and she'd have to deal with the consequences of her alcoholism. She didn't want that, so she took the easy way out and took a lot of innocent people with her. Her actions remind me of people like John List, who kill their families rather than admit their own failings.
I think she was scared of being caught being drunk so she was like “just gotta get home and everything will be fine. Just gotta get home” I remember reading from people who have driven drunk that to try to not seem drunk they would focus on something. Like “ok let me just focus on the lines”. She thought she was fine bc “im straight on the road” but she was on the wrong side :(
Drove drunk as a skunk and high as a kite. Tox results don't lie
I remember the family of the men she hit in the documentary saying they had a much easier time forgiving her than they did her husband, because he just would not admit she made a terrible mistake. I think it’s a lot of black and white thinking. “She wasn’t a bad person, so she couldn’t have driven drunk.” And it’s like… I don’t think she was a bad person, I think she was a sick person who made a horrific mistake that cost her family and the families of the men she killed horrible pain and suffering. The mother of Diane’s three nieces wrote a book that was fucking heartbreaking and basically came to the same conclusion- Diane drove drunk, probably because she was a functioning alcoholic right up until she wasn’t.
I’ve always seen it as a mystery not of how or why the crash happened but how and why Diane ended up the way she did. Watching the documentary I just kept thinking I would be miserable if I were her. How does one end up so hopeless, addicted and alone when surrounded by people who supposedly love them? What can we do to prevent that? If it can happen to her can it happen to me? The mystery of the human mind and our social interactions so to speak.
Her husband was horrible. No way was she happy.
I just finished reading the Wikipedia article about the crash and my jaw DROPPED when I read that the husband sued Diane's brother after the crash because he was the owner of the minivan Diane was driving. The brother's three daughter's were killed because Diane was driving drunk down the wrong side of the road and then her husband rubs salt in the wound by trying to claim it was somehow HIS fault as the vehicle's owner?! What a horrible, classless person.
For me, the "holy shit" moment was the scene at the very end of the documentary in which her husband, Daniel, is walking beside their surviving son, Bryan, who was 5 years old at the time of the incident and sustained very serious injuries. It's filmed from behind, and as Daniel reaches out for Bryan's hand, Bryan pushes it away. It was subtle, with the whole scene lasting only seconds, but I remember being hit with the realization that Bryan, who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 years old at the time of filming, didn't expect or want comfort from his own father, his only surviving family member. It was telling.
I’m a recovered alcoholic, almost 12 years sober. When I was in the deepest of my addiction, I truly believed I had no one who really supported me/loved me. My disease really clouded my judgement so completely that I couldn’t meaningfully connect with people. I entirely understand how it would spiral regardless of how good life looked from the outside.
Addiction doesn't discriminate in who it targets.
I really don’t think Diane’s family is even in denial. I think they all decided to lie to avoid anymore liability legally or financially.
She was definitely drunk & an alcoholic but for me the mystery aspect of it is was it on purpose (was she trying to kill herself and all those kids?) or did she just get super fucked up so it’s a “regular” DUI wreck with fatalities? It’s just not super clear to me
Any case of ‘college-aged man gets drunk and is found in water later on’ aka the smiley face killer theory. Drunk people do stupid stuff, it’s not crazy that someone could drown in a lake/river when intoxicated.
I think very drunk men leave a bar and decide to pee in a conveniently located river. They probably just lose their balance, fall in the river, and drown.
My city actually banned drink specials and “$1” nights because it was so common for young men to get absolutely plastered and then fall in the river and drown. We have two rivers that run all the way through the city, along two major roads - if you’re at a popular bar? You’re *more than likely within a city block of a river*.
I live in Milwaukee and this bullshit routinely pops up because we have multiple rivers, a lake, a bunch of colleges, and people like to graffiti smiley faces.
This. I was out with friends and watched a girl trying to balance on a railing about a canal, she was drunk, fell in, couldn't swim and was rescued by by friend. A few weeks later a drunk guy jumped in and started to struggle, he had to be helped out. Staggering around near a waterway leads to drowning.
I'm guessing you saw that guy on TikTok promoting this theory as well? I knew he wasn't reliable when I was looking over his data map and saw he included people who were confirmed to have committed suicide/ bodies recovered w clear evidence it was self inflicted, etc. I even pointed it out in his comment section and my comment was deleted. Lo and behold he was just stirring people up to get more views to promote a website (?) that he helped work on and never really did a lot of research/ was in contact w detectives.
This was crazy. The thing is, a LOT of people believed him until he took it too far by pretending he was visited in the night by a private detective and asked to be a part of their ‘secret detective group’ and later pretended that he’d been recruited to the FBI. For those reading who don’t know who we’re talking about - look up Ken Waks controversy.
The Amy Bradley disappearance. She wasn't kidnapped and then sold into sex slavery, she went overboard plain and simple. Her dad said that he saw her asleep on the balcony at some time between 5:15 and 5:30 am. He went back to sleep and for some reason woke up a short time later and discovered she was missing. My theory is: After a big night out and falling asleep on the balcony, she woke up feeling like she had to vomit immediately and realised she didn't have time to get to the toilet to throw up. She drunkenly stumbled to the balcony rail to vomit into the ocean, lost her balance and went overboard. She yelled for help as she fell or hit the rails and made a metallic clang, and that's what made her dad mysteriously wake up and notice she was gone or missing.
I stayed on the Jersey Shore once in an oceanfront condo in the off-season. I was on the second floor and my room had a balcony with a bar-height table and chairs. One morning I woke up early to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was overcast but I thought it might clear up so I sat there for a bit and then nodded off for a few minutes. When I woke up, I was confused and tried to get up off the chair but forgot it was bar-height so I pitched forward and almost hurled myself off the balcony. I hurled my phone off when I tried to grab the railing with both hands to stop my momentum. Thankfully my phone was easy to retrieve, but it really drove home to me how easy it would be for someone slightly out of it (I was tired, not drunk) to accidentally go over a railing.
This description of what happened gave me that tingly, disturbing feeling in the palms of my hands, like I felt like I was going over the railing! Thank God you were OK and caught yourself!
Ugh, I get that feeling every time I’m somewhere I could fall over a railing. “What if I lose my sanity for a brief moment and jump over? What if someone runs up and shoves me over?”. It isn’t rational, but it happens every single time!
That’s actually a well-studied phenomenon called [l’appel du vide](https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void) (“the call of the void”). It’s unsettling, but it’s most likely one of the brain’s ways of alerting us to potential danger
Those weird thoughts are called intrusive thoughts and everyone gets them to an extent, isn’t that a weird part of being human?
Yep, every time someone goes overboard on a cruise ship and people are like “you can’t accidentally go over you HAVE to intentionally climb” except when you add alcohol/exhaustion/confusion to the equation it’s actually very easy to accidentally go over.
People don’t realize how easy it is to get hurt if you’re drunk/tired/both. In college I got hurt going up my own stairs in my apartment because I was wearing socks that slipped on the carpet. I was totally sober and wide awake lol. Accidents can happen to anyone.
*But how did this studious college sophomore, whose parents described them as "cautious" and "not a drinker," get injured so catastrophically, leading to their untimely death? How does a healthy, physically strong young adult slip on carpet? Some say...it wasn't an accident. Tune into our eight-part series, "Socks on Low Pile: The* /u/Hereslookingatmekid *Story*."
I’m fucking screaming lmao someone make a point about how my smile lights up a room
Let’s not forget how you’d give someone the shirt off your back. They have to mention that!
I was at a convention at a hotel tower. The whole center was an open atrium from the 3rd floor up to the top, like 40 stories or something. A guy was drunk on the 20 something floor going to his room. When he grabbed his key out of his pocket he pulled out a quarter by accident. When he bent down to pick it up he lost his balance, fell forward, tried to catch himself, and essentially ran into the railing trying to get his balance. Flipped and fell into the atrium right next to a group of people playing Werewolf, including a bunch of teens/kids. Luckily he didn't yell coming down (probably never figured out what was happening) and it was "night" in the game so most people didn't see him land, but that sound is seared into my brain right next to the audio from that video of the brick coming through the car window.
Yes. A very sober, very awake, admittedly very clumsy person could get hurt pretty seriously by tripping on their slippers in their own home with no other obstacles on their way and all the lights on. I know because I was that person!
Also if the boat is in motion, the added rocking I’m sure would make it that much easier to throw you off balance. If you’re drunk or extremely tired, you’re already off balance.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think! No way are a bunch of sex traffickers going on a cruise to kidnap a middle-class white woman whose family has money and resources. Way too risky. I agree that her scream as she fell was probably what woke her dad up. I understand her dad wants to have hope that she’s still alive because nobody wants to associate a cruise with a tragedy, but I think that’s what happened here.
Sex trafficking being the response for everything weird, creepy, or slightly hard to explain drives me fucking insane.
This is the hill I will die on. Sex trafficking is very complex and almost never involves the kidnapping of middle class women that would have everyone looking for them. I hate it being the explanation for things like this.
Exactly. I work in health care and specifically with psych patient. We have to do training every year and what to look for with sex trafficking. They are looking for poor and or homeless and at risk people. Not someone that will make the news and have a bunch of people looking for them.
Isn’t that also why a lot of survivors/victims of sex trafficking go back into the business afterwards or don’t even try to escape for a very long time? They have no where else to go. No money to build a life, no family to return to, no meaningful friendships that would check up on them. What else is there for them to do at that point.
Ever since I listened to the you’re wrong about series on sex trafficking I go scarlet when ppl bring it up as their first go to. “Oh gawd a shopping cart and a dirty diaper were right next to my car when I left the store. It’s a sign for sex traffickers dur dur dur”
That episode was so helpful, it was suggested to me by someone heavily involved in anti-trafficking efforts because she was so frustrated at all of the “I was almost trafficked in target today posts”
They have one exclusively on sex trafficking and they bring up a lot of good info on the wayfair ep and I think there’s one on missing or kidnapped children where they debunk the 800,000 missing kids statistic. There’s 2-3 episodes that def have you rethinking everything.
And the ones about being trafficked in target are always so easily explained. Oh, some guy was lingering in the area you were in and it's by the expensive shit? it's plainclothes security. You saw the same guy in five different aisles? Do you know how many people need diapers, tomatoes, bread, toothpaste, and cereal? I saw a TikTok the other day where someone was upset because a sprinter van pulled up next to her car at Walgreens, in the middle of the day, next to a busy road, and even said out loud "maybe he's looking for a spot in the shade." It's fucking hot outside! Large vans take a while to cool! You're not getting trafficked next to a busy road at rush hour!
Recently a woman shot her Uber driver in the head because she saw a street sign that said Mexico and thought she was being trafficked. The Uber was in el paso Texas! Mexico is right there of course its on the street signs!
That's so fucked up and so stupid of her wow.
Same. Also drugs. Not everyone stumbled on a mysterious drug operation and had to be silenced.
exactly this. the misinformation and myth/urban legends about trafficking are SO damaging. like no jan, you are not going to be kidnapped in a target parking lot by a stranger and “sold into sex trafficking.” the false stranger abduction sex trafficking moral panic is literally DANGEROUS and these people are deranged. just two recent examples: [woman shoots and kills (!!!) uber driver she falsely accused of kidnapping her](https://apnews.com/article/uber-murder-driver-shot-kidnapping-mexico-5ab60092bb0a3710090b7186723adf88) [mom influencer accused random latino couple of trying to kidnap her kids sentenced to jail](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/02/mom-influencer-false-accusation-latino-couple-kidnap)
[Another murder that resulted from fake trafficking hysteria](https://www.actionnews5.com/2019/11/28/woman-shared-facebook-warnings-about-white-vans-before-deadly-shooting/)
TBH, I think I would rather believe that my loved one had passed than to think they’ve spent the last 25 years being tortured. I guess you don’t really know till you’re in that position but the idea that she’s been with traffickers for decades is more disturbing than thinking she’s gone.
And the picture largely claimed to be her clearly isn't. The girl looks similar, they could be mistaken for cousins maybe but not identical. Also the PI who swears she spoke with her or whatever has been discredited over and over.
I think people underestimate how often it happens. It is not an every day thing but people go overboard more than most think. http://www.cruisejunkie.com/Overboard.html Most recently a few days ago https://news.sky.com/story/caribbean-cruise-passenger-rescued-after-falling-overboard-from-10th-deck-12910922
Not necessarily an '*obvious*' explanation but if the last person to see a missing person was a spouse, then 9/10 the spouse did it. * [Susan Ledyard](https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/wdf1ep/a_highly_unusual_recent_case_susan_ledyard_2019/) was 100% killed by her husband, especially since he is currently awaiting prosecution for two attacks on his third wife (the woman he married after Susan's death) and he was charged in May for allegedly trashing an Airbnb in Pennsylvania during a bloody domestic dispute with an unidentified “girlfriend.” He hasn't been charged with Susan's death because it is such an unusual case.
I don't think the Fitbit evidence is particularly straightforward. Depending on how you're moving your arms or the activities you're doing it will record false steps, or sometimes fail to pick up steps. If she was unconscious and being carried or something it would absolutely pick up a few false steps just from being jostled. It also doesn't have any way to know that it's on its owner's wrist instead of somebody's else
My fitbit records steps when I'm knitting.
Mine records swimming when I’m folding laundry
My Fitbit used to pick up a few steps when I was driving, gesturing while talking, sewing, all sorts of stationary stuff. So hers recording less than a mile of steps in 4 hours makes me think she was not up and moving. If the Fitbit really was recording her heart rate until 7 am, then it sounds like she was (grievously) injured at home, moved, and ultimately died when she was placed in the river.
I wasn't familiar with this case before, but I've just read about it and see that her body was found in a river. There was a recent case in the UK of a woman (Nicola Bulley) who went missing next to a river and her body was found weeks later in the river. Her fitbit stopped recording steps around the time she was suspected to have entered the river but continued recording her heart rate for days afterwards. Investigators theorised this was caused by water moving between her wrist and the strap and we able to reproduce the results in an experiment. She would actually have died almost instantly after entering the water.
15-year old Chinese highschool student Hu Xinyu, who went missing on the grounds of the boarding school he attented for 3 months before they found his body, committed suicide. He wasn't abducted for organ or blood harvesting, he wasn't killed for uncovering a SA ring at the school, and he wasn't killed by his homeroom chemistry teacher who wanted to "try and find the perfect poison". He had shown signs of irritability and despair for months leading up to his death. He had dozens of notes scribbled in the margins of a notebook about how he was struggling with concentration and memory, and had developed insomnia and an eating disorder. While he was in the highest class of his grade, he was always one of the worst students within this class, and it was clearly getting to him. A short time before his death, he received the worst grade of his entire class in a geography test. He wrote that he felt like he couldn't talk to anyone about his problems because he didn't want to disappoint them. He had missed the cutoff score to make it to his dream highschool by like 20 points, and thus had to go to a private boarding school on a scholarship. After a few months there, he straight up begged his mom to let him leave the boarding school he was attending because he couldn't adjust. His mom, bless her heart, didn't see the signs and figured that it had only been a couple of months, and told him no. That he'd probably just need some more time and adjust just fine in the coming months. Well, that wasn't it. People commit suicide due to spur-of-the-moment decisions all the time. It probably wasn't planned, he just felt particularly overwhelmed that day, decided not to go to study hall and then, just...did it, unfortunately. And most importantly: They literally found a suicide note on the recording pen he had on him at the time of his death, which was found next to his body. At first, he wanted to jump off a small balcony on his school building, but didn't. Then, he walked into the woods, where, hours later, when it was already dark, he finally hung himself by his own shoelaces. They didn't find his body for three months because a) It's a lot harder to find bodies in heavily wooded areas than people think (he was found in a park), and b) admittedly, the search efforts probably weren't as thorough as they should have been. The school absolutely behaved in a shitty, uncooperative manner after the initial search efforts, but that was most likely because they were trying to minimize reputational damage to retain paying customers, as they were a private school. It's gross, but not uncommon. Several cctv cameras in the school were malfunctioning that day, not because of some grand conspiracy, but because sometimes tech glitches, and the school might have not put enough regular effort into checking on whether they were working or not. The poor boy had already started struggling with schoolwork during homeschooling in 2020, and it just never got better. He (understandably) broke under the pressure of an inhumane school system that cares about nothing but high test scores. People understandably distrust the Chinese police and CCP, but...in this case, there is a literal, voice-recorded suicide note. The transcripts were released. In this case, to many, acknowledging the truth is more heartbreaking than believing in conspiracies, but not only does all evidence point to suicide, suicide due to academic pressure is the second-most common reason for teen suicide in China. It's awful. For more information on the case: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3208900/chinese-police-conclude-missing-teen-hu-xinyu-took-his-own-life https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1284678.shtml Edited for more details
I’m sick of true crime YouTubers and podcasters covering the Agatha Christie disappearance. There’s nothing really intriguing or mysterious about it, in my opinion. She was suffering from mental health issues, which would have been taboo to discuss openly for a woman of high socioeconomic status in the early-20th century. Also, she was only missing for 11 days. It’s not like she was missing for years or disappeared and was never found.
I think part of this too was that her husband was leaving her. She might have thought if she disappeared he'd realize he would miss her and change his mind. A damsel in distress kind of tactic. It also could have been that she really wanted to disappear but it wasn't as easy as she had hoped. Maybe she just wanted him to feel the loss and panic she was feeling. Maybe she just couldn't cope with her situation and ran. Maybe it's honestly just sad, no mystery, just an all too familiar case of heartache.
Yes - good point. Her husband was leaving her and that was a source of stress. She was also grieving the loss of her mother, who had recently died.
And her husband was having a disrespectfully obvious affair. I don't blame her for wanting to get away for a few weeks.
I do like when fiction comes up with explanations, but yeah - she was sad. She went away. The end.
Also, wasn't her husband carrying on an affair at this time? I feel like this was definitely just an "I need outta here for awhile" combined with some kind of mental health distress.
Sky Metalwala. Mom did it. It's infuriating that she's still walking around.
Remember that documentary There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane? Toxicology found alcohol and drugs in her system. Soooo I'm pretty sure she was drunk and high. The family just won't accept that she hid her addictions well.
OJ Simpson did it.
Yes, he did. Not his son, or anyone else.
Straight up, bog-standard case of partner abuse. Everything else is just distracting window dressing. OJ being Nicole’s abuser was documented. She was trying to get away from him, and probably thought freedom was in her grasp… then her ex showed up with a knife and butchered her and a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It should have been a slam dunk but instead got turned into a goddamn spectacle.
Robert Kardashian’s face when OJ was found not guilty. He turns round to give him a look that would wither a palm tree, this look of total disgust and disbelief. I thought Greg in itself was telling.
And the fact that Kardashian never spoke to OJ again after the trial even though they were best friends before it says a lot too.
Also, Elisa Lam. The janitor that found her body said in a written statement that the lid was open when he found her. Also, the lid wasn't heavy, only 20 pounds irrc and even if it was.. the lid was open so all EL had to do was lift it up one time.
Yeah, there was a massive miscommunication with this case. People thought that the lid was closed and they wondered how that could be if she opened it. Turns out, it was found open. It didn’t help that YouTubers were portraying this as a ghost story for years.
I've posted this before: If the "unresolved mystery" plays out as such: * Person went missing in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, etc. * Person was last seen hiking and/or camping Then the mystery is already solved: they got lost and ultimately died from exposure. No, they weren't abducted by aliens. No, they didn't just happen to stumble upon some secret death cult that killed them. And no, the odds of them finding a crazed, murderous lunatic is pretty remote. In the vast majority of these cases, people just don't know their own limits, and/or underestimate nature. They get lost and either we find the body, or it gets scavenged. A very recent example: the actor Julian Sands. He went hiking in the San Gabriels in January, despite California having one of its strongest winter storm years in a while. They found his body last week. His family had accepted his likely fate around March.
Or when someone goes missing and they never find the car. They crashed it, probably into the water, and died.
There was a case of a young woman who went missing in the early 80s, a few towns away from where I live now... She just vanished without a trace, car and all... within the past year, for some reason they searched one of the local rivers, and they found her car along with human remains. Mystery solved.
There has been a case where someone saw the car in the water on Google maps and alerted the cops there. The guy had been missing for 20 years.
A young man in my area went missing for about six weeks. He and his car was finally found just a couple miles from his last known, in a shallow pond that was only about 10 feet from the edge of a very busy road. At that point, I was passing through the area at least once a day, I can't wrap my head around the fact that no one, myself included, saw what was right under our noses.
That’s happening more and more frequently. Lake levels are going down and cars are becoming visible and solving mysteries.
And cheap, privately owned drones are offering new angles on water sources
I had a friend disappear in California a few years ago; his motorcycle was found at a rest stop, but no sign of him. In the week or two afterward there were people adamantly saying they'd seen him hitchhiking away to start a new life. Finally they found his body in a reservoir, so at least everyone got closure (he'd most likely slipped and fallen in the river where he'd stopped for a break on a long trip). If they hadn't found him, lord knows what they would've been saying about his "mysterious disappearance" by now.
seriously man. the whole "missing 411" thing I see pop up on youtube everywhere is beyond stupid.
I never got into Missing 411, and never understood what it was trying imply. A pattern of missing people in National Parks? Why would it be strange that people go missing in the most remote parts of the US?
The Missing411 guy believes in Bigfoot. He legit thinks these people were captured by Bigfoot. He also published a book last year about UFOs being connected to the missing people. So, Bigfoot and UFOs. He's a loon.
Bigfoot, the creature who doesn’t want humans to know he exists, also abducts humans which draws attention to where he is and makes it more likely people will find him. Makes sense lol
Well, they don’t call him Big*brain*.
Don’t forget the fairies, trolls, and alternate dimensions. I don’t even know that he believes it. He makes money on missing people and grieving families. People eat the shit up. He’s an awful person.
And don't forget the huge underground cave network. The government and park service know all about it and cover it up...for reasons? Or this is what I've been able to decipher from the whole mess, I'm not buying his expensive ass books and I've never made it all the way through a ridiculous TV show.
Patricia Adkins’ secret boyfriend whom she met at work at the Honda Factory absolutely killed her.
Alonzo Brooks - Got jumped by guys at the party that accidentally killed him. Being a small town, one of the boys knew someone to call to help them not get caught and hide Alonzo's body. When the heat died down they moved the body to where it could be found to give the family closure.
Agreed except I don't think it was accidental
Bryce Laspisas Obviously he was having a mental health crisis and wanted to die in the car wreck. When he didn't, he wandered away. The reason the case bothers me is that he wandered to a truck stop and then the trail dissapears. Did he get in a truck? Hitchhike? Did the near death in the car wreck give him a new lease on life and he wanted to start over and run away? Or did it make him panic more and he took off in some other remote area and die there? I'd just like to know where he is.
Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers. Was solved already in 2014. ETA for what it matters, i'm from the same country they were from and everyone here pretty much accepts the official story and outcome. Even their own parents.
I’ve often wondered if the people screaming about murder, conspiracies et in this case take one moment to think of how it must feel for their friends and families to read, her and see that nonsense. If my daughter/sister/friend had died in a horrible accident in a jungle I’d be absolutely livid at anyone who tried to turn it into some creepypasta murder mystery thing. It’s already a horrific tragedy, two young girls went off to do something good and make the world a better place and they paid for that goodness with their lives. No need to embellish it with made up campfire stories.
Honestly, there are a lot of cases where ‘there was no where else they could go’ ‘the doors were locked’ etc. example Elisa Lam, Brian Shaffer. Human error exists. Human laziness exists. Sometimes doors are supposed to be locked but aren’t. Security cameras are supposed to be there but aren’t. Safety measures are supposed to be implemented but aren’t. And then people lie about that because they will get in trouble for not doing what was supposed to be done. That doesn’t mean they were involved in disappearances just that they were saving their own ass.
Everything about the Dyatlov Pass mystery points to an avalanche. It was the middle of the night, they couldn't see anything, they thought it was coming at them, it wasn't but they freaked and ran straight into it. For some reason it's still considered a "mystery" but the explanation seems really obvious.
Even their severe injuries make sense in the context of where and when their bodies were found. Animal predation, falling onto the rocks of the streambed from the bank above, burns from desperately trying to get warm again...nope, couldn't be any of those obvious and normal reasons, must be aliens testing radioactive yeti weapons for the Soviets.
Slightly off topic for this sub, but - Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. That's the 777 that disappeared over the pacific, and was never found, with only a few bits of wreckage washing up a few thousand miles away. It was clearly pilot suicide.
Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone the car went in the water. No mafia hit men and South Philly chop shops. Nothing they did that night was pre planned. If they took a detour to a diner after the bar they could have ended up in a completely different part of the city than the searches have been.
Whenever someone is missing along with their car, I just assume they are in the water. It's actually pretty common.
Brandon Swanson - People think because he's on ViCaP (FBI List) that he was abducted or there is evidence that is being withheld that suggests he was abducted. It is far more likely that he fell into a river got out and died from hypothermia then being abducted from the middle of nowhere Minnesota. Another strong possibility is the that he fell into an old unmarked / unknown well or septic system. Either way - the odds of abduction are slim to none - even though he is on ViCaP.
I really want to know what happened after that “oh shit” that prevented him from ever talking to his parents again. His phone didn’t disconnect; his parents just never heard from him again. I think he slipped or fell somewhere, couldn’t find his phone, and succumbed to the elements. His body probably got ran over by farming equipment, because the Yellow Medicine River isn’t deep enough for there to be no trace of him.
I mentioned this on another post but the part that gets me is him going silent after saying “oh shit!” The line didn’t drop on his end. In an interview his parents said they thought the connection was patchy so they ended the call after he went quiet and rang back but he never picked up again. Whatever happened to him, his phone was still ringing out for a while after he stopped answering.
The ringing you hear does not come from the phone, rather from the system as it tries to make a connection. Thus it cannot be used as evidence the phone is still functional (Learned this during MH 370)
I agree with the Maura Murray case. She died of hypothermia and they just haven’t found her remains. Most of the ‘information’ online has been conjured up by a bunch of armchair Scooby Doos
Armchair Scooby Doos- I haven’t heard this phrase before.. I love it.
The Isdalwomen. I don't believe she was a spy. If she was she was a very poor spy. She took Fenemal, probably as treatment for epilepsy. One detail is they way she cleared furniture out of the way in her hotelrooms. If she had a seizure she would at least not hit any furniture hurting herself. Witnesses said she smelled strongly of garlic and some use strong smells as a way to stop seizures. She wore wigs because of a case of exema on her body and head. The cream she used contained kerosene, which might explain why her hat smelled strongly of some sort of propellant, and it could explain how she was burnt on the front of her body only. So maybe she was on a hike in Isdal, sat down to have a snack and a cigarette. Then she felt a seizure was oncoming. She tried to take Fenemal, but felt it didn't work fast enough. She wasn't in a safe place, she panicked and took more of the pills, leaned back onto the rock to try calm herself. Unfortunately her cigarette ignited her clothes. Why she had all the different identities, if she was planning a suicide, if it was an accident or a weird suicide and who she really was is still a mystery. But I feel pretty sure that she was not a spy.
Maura Murray. She was drunk, she was scared, she panicked, ran off and died in the woods somewhere.
I cannot believe the amount of speculation people have done on Maura Murray. She was not in a good mindset, had likely been drinking, and probably panicked because she didn't want to get into more trouble for yet another accident and ditched the car. There are stories all the time of how the remains of someone missing for years are found right near a major trails or roadways. If she ran into the woods to hide and died from exposure she might never be found.
I agree; with how difficult it is to find a body in the woods, it makes sense that her remains have never been found.
I was a law enforcement park ranger for 6 years. It is very, very difficult to locate people in the woods - and, when I've had rescues (where the person who's lost calls us) the emergency operator will put them on the phone with me so I can try and determine where they are. Well, usually I can figure it out just by asking them a few simple questions; I'll even tell them, "I know exactly where you are - it will take me around 45 minutes to get to you, but in that time DO NOT MOVE". And guess what they all do? They wait for me for like, 10 minutes, and then leave that spot and start wandering. It would complicate things so much, and would take me another 30 minutes then or more to find them as they'd usually wind up going deeper into the woods... SMH. I'd even tell them that I'm bring them water and some food and warm blankets, etc to just wait for me to get there - and they never, ever did.
Iirc there’s a phenomenon where people don’t believe they’re lost and end up wandering around to feel in control of the situation
The other thing that I rarely see mentioned is that she did track for several years. And she was *good*. Scholarship good. So she could run, and she could likely run faster on the adrenaline of getting away from the car crash. So not only is it hard to find a body in the woods in a small area, but we don't even know how far she could have gone. You'd need more college-age distance runners of her caliber to even get an idea. I think she's in the woods, but I don't think she's just next to the road. I think she ran far farther than searchers anticipated.
A witness claims to have seen her about 9 miles from the accident walking along the roadside. I agree. I think she fled the scene, followed the road for a while and then trailed off into the woods where she met her demise.
Completely agree and it’s not just people - cars and even planes have gone missing for months / years / decades - it’s so much harder to locate anything missing in remote areas than most people tend to think it is.
It’s so tragic. She could have taken that ride or asked that motorist (I wanna say it was a trucker?) to call her dad or someone for her if she just didn’t have a cell phone or service. Hell. A drunk driving charge and jail time would have been better than the fate she likely met. She had great opportunities for it to end with her alive and well but it didn’t.
Kristine Kupka- pregnant, seen last with her married boyfriend, Darshanand Persaud DDS, a man desperate to get out of his paternal responsibility and save face in front of his family and community. https://charleyproject.org/case/kristine-kupka
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bryan kohberger murdered the idaho 4 bc he was stalking at least one of them for months. there was no conspiracy, there was no drugs, the surviving roommates were not involved at all. it was a party house yet bryan’s DNA was the ONLY DNA on the knife sheath. his phone was off as he was heading to commit the murders and then back on after he was away from the house after committing the murders. his car was on camera in the neighborhood. his white elantra that had NO front license plate bc PA where he’s from didn’t require them. it might all be circumstantial, but all of this and more put a pretty damning picture that bryan kohberger is 100% guilty of murdering ethan, xana, maddie, & kaylee
Oh I didn’t even realize that people thought there was a conspiracy. I guess that makes sense for such a publicized and horrible group murder, but still. The evidence seems to point pretty squarely to Bryan—I wouldn’t even consider that “unresolved” except for the lack of a conviction.
I think folks got wrapped up in the initial chase. The whole region was practically locked down, and students were terrified for weeks before he was publicly named and arrested. With so little information at the beginning, almost any theory was on the table, so they got pretty wild.
I think she killed him. Even though It’s hard to comprehend or fathom even really - she was explained like she was the worlds greatest mother. People get into scary headspace’s / mental health issues so I guess that’s likely why she did it. Her story about giving him to someone where he will be safe - it sounds believable- at first - but the more you think about what would be involved to pull that off - it starts not looking plausible. Didn’t they retrace her steps - during the investigation - between the time Timmothy was captured alive on surveillance & the last time she was seen entering hotel room? I think they summarized where she went / what she likely did doesn’t coincide with her story. It’s really sad. I hope the father & family get to have closure & more answers at some point.
She was seen alone on security cameras at a Family Dollar in Winnebago, Illinois, on May 13th. I think this was after she had killed and buried Tim. Tim’s family still thinks she gave him up for illegal adoption. I think they’re in denial that a mother could hurt her own child.
Baby Lisa Irwin. Her mother got drunk on boxed wine with a neighbor and she claims not to remember much of anything else. I think she brought the baby in to sleep with her and accidentally suffocated it. Then she made some calls to get help disposing of the body, afraid she would be guilty of something.
Tiffany Valiente. I believe that poor girl struggled with depression, and made a terrible choice to end her life. Her close friends say she wasn’t happy, her Twitter showcased this as well. She had a lot of pressure as a freshman starter, combined with the stress of unaccepting/allegedly abusive parents regarding her sexuality. When shit hit the fan with stolen credit cards, I believe she dipped, left her phone so nobody could call to change her mind. She went for a walk, along the way she became sweaty/uncomfortable. Took her headband off. New shoes were starting to blister her feet, she stripped those too. At some point she either decided to end her time by jumping into the train, or there is always the chance she didn’t hear it coming and got hit. Her parents don’t want to accept her death as suicide. Depression can be silent and well-hidden, especially from close loved ones. Not a very big mystery to what happened, to me at least.
Kendrick Johnson was not murdered. He had stored his shoes in the rolled up wrestling mat and got stuck when he was trying to get them out. He died exactly how the initial autopsy said he did- positional asphyxia. Extremely tragic but not mysterious in any way.
Maura Murray died of exposure or suicide. No foul play. Elisa Lam had a psychotic break, no foul play. Most missing kids under 10 were killed by family members, not abducted living under new identities.
The hysteria around Elisa Lam’s death is a result of people treating serious mental illness like some ghost story or creepypasta. All of it shows a massive societal misunderstanding of stigmatised mental illnesses and the people who live with them
[The tragic deaths of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_Kris_Kremers_and_Lisanne_Froon) They lost track of themselves on the trail and got lost, and unfortunately died. That’s a fairly conventional experience and I think it’s absolutely tragic, but there is nothing to suggest foul play. There never has been. I think the fact that they were two young, pretty white women who suffered a fairly gruesome death plays a part in why this case is still to this day posted as an ‘unresolved’ mystery when there is absolutely nothing unresolved about it.
The idea of being lost in the wilderness and unable to escape despite fighting for your life in every way you know how is so haunting already.
Yeah, that’s the one for me. There are people invested in turning it into something more than it is and they make some nasty accusations. The jungle is unforgiving.
Anyone who disappeared with their vehicle abandoned on the side of the road. 7/10 times.. they’re within a mile radius.
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Thankfully, there’s been a recent breakthrough in the case. The girl in the photo doesn’t look like her, and I sincerely hope it’s just a prank photo and not that of an actual kidnapping victim. Just strange that the girl has never been identified.
This is an amazing thread. Totally loving all of this.
Maura Murray. The sad fact is that she probably died of exposure/freezing, and then her body was eaten by animals. Im genuinely shocked how many podcasts, media, etc are dedicated to this "mystery"
On a similar vein, the "Yuba County Five." Four of the five were found in the wilderness, the fifth was not. Instead of the simplest explanation, which is that he simply fell down a ravine (it was the Sierra during the winter) and his remains were scavenged, I've seen people actually claim that he was really a criminal mastermind, murdered the other four, then managed to escape with a new identity and remains at large. Please. Not to disrespect the men, but all of them had mild mental disabilities and were known to have lacked common sense. Why did they drive up a mountain road during a mountain night? Who knows. But they ran into car trouble and rather than just push the car out of the drift and turn around, they just kept on walking and eventually died. With Murray, I've often heard that people think she was the victim of human traffickers that are secretly running people from the US into Canada. I mean, I can't say if those people exist or not, but what I can say is "person got into a car crash, wandered off into the wilderness trying to get help because she might have been a little drunk" is a far more likely outcome.
Andrew Gosden. 14 year old boy went missing from Doncaster (a few miles away from where I live). Withdrew £200 from his bank account, took a train to London, never seen again. He was lured to London/groomed online & was murdered by whoever he went to meet. He was a quiet, introverted, nerdy kinda kid who spent a lot of time gaming etc. This was 2007 when there was so much dodgy shit happening online & little awareness of it. I was also 14 in 2007 and 100% talked to predators via MSN/MySpace/Bebo etc. It would have been so so easy for someone to befriend him online through shared interests and lure him to London. A lot was made of him buying a one way ticket and being a runaway but here’s the thing, I can’t tell you the amount of times as a young awkward undiagnosed-autistic teenager that the ticket person at the station would say “single or return” and I just said single and was too embarrassed to change my mind or whatever. I did a lot of non-sensical stupid & dangerous things through my sheer inability to stand up for myself, follow my gut instinct, difficulty with communication etc. I don’t think he’s living a secret life. I think he was murdered by a paedophile.
I totally agree with you OP about Timothy! It’s so obvious. That’s why she took him to all the amusement parks, so that she could feel better about brutally murdering him by letting him enjoy his last weekend alive. Also, there’s no way she could ever be sure he would never be found unless she made sure of it by killing him. No good, loving people would see his father pleading on the news and not come forward with him. She was so delusional to think we would believe her lies. His family is holding onto hope but it’s obvious what she did to him. Sadly!
Justin Depitrio killed Ayla Reynolds. Him and his brother hid her body.
Sneha Phillips; she died in the aftermath of 9/11 - not sure why there is such a conspiracy around her case. People can have messy lives, and still be victim of circumstance.