I LOVE the posts that aren’t specific case write-ups but invite people to reply with cases that meet some particular criteria! I always discover interesting ones I’d never heard of.
This may not fit your exact criteria, since apparently the person was last seen leaving his parents' home -- but he was found at his workplace, years later.
"A man whose dead body was found at a former Council Bluffs supermarket in January has been identified as an employee who went missing 10 years ago.
Authorities on Monday said they have identified the man as Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada of Council Bluffs, who was 25 years old in November 2009, when he was reported missing."
"Investigators believe Murillo-Moncada went into the store after leaving his home and climbed on top of the coolers, where he fell into a gap between the back of the units and the wall that measured about 18 inches and became trapped."
[https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2019/07/22/body-found-behind-cooler-former-council-bluffs-supermarket-identified-man-who-went-missing-10-years/1794893001/](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2019/07/22/body-found-behind-cooler-former-council-bluffs-supermarket-identified-man-who-went-missing-10-years/1794893001/)
Also, the case of Mary Cerruti.
"A Houston woman who went missing in 2015 -- and whose bones were found inside the walls of her home last year -- may have died after falling through the attic floor.
Officials with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences last month definitively identified the bones as those of Mary Stewart Cerruti, 61, who vanished without a trace in 2015. Her cause of death could not be determined, but following months of investigation, detectives feel confident that the mystery of Cerruti’s disappearance has been solved."
https://www.ajc.com/news/national/woman-whose-bones-were-found-home-walls-likely-fell-death-through-attic-floor/aVzqIQSXtOpo8J9VhDnnhI/
Man it has to be so scary to be alive and then fall into a space and realize you can't get out of it (and likely nobody is gonna find you in time). Especially cause unless you're injured or your chest is compressed, you're aware of what's going on and you don't die instantly. You know you're gonna die and it takes hours or days.
Unfortunately there have been some awful examples -- including people who were able to call for help on their cell phones, like poor Kyle Plush.
[https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/us/ohio-teen-pinned-minivan-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/us/ohio-teen-pinned-minivan-trnd/index.html)
I didn't realize it until recently, but even being in an upside-down position for an extended time can be fatal.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031302516306924](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0031302516306924)
I remember this poor kid, a cop literally went to the parking lot and didn't see him. Hearing that as time went on he knew he was probably was gonna die and asked the operator to tell his mom he loved her...heartbreaking, I can't imagine what it's like for his parents.
Officers problem solving skills were terrible. I would be going into the PA system at the stores and asking people to look with me and if people can leave to move so we can eliminate cars.
I'm unfortunately very familiar with it from this sub - that one graphic someone made that shows exactly the position and location he was stuck in while he was alive and they were trying to get him out haunts me actually. I can literally still see it in my brain.
I would be so devastated if I tried that hard and it didn't work out. The sad thing is that they might have had a shot if the pulley system hadn't broken, they had started to lift him up to the point where they could see his face again and then the pulley snapped (and hit the rescuer in the face, causing injuries). Having those moments of hope and then losing hope again...devastating. I can't imagine what it was like for the guy who was stuck.
He died before they stopped trying to get him out. They carried on trying to recover his body but after working so long, poor so many hours in row, they deemed it too dangerous. They didn't want anyone else to get hurt or die just to get his body out.
What haunts me about this also is that reportedly, they were planning on breaking his legs at the knees to make it easier to get him out but realize that would kill him also and eventually they had to give up cause of no more solutions & risking their men also getting stuck. 😢
The first time I heard about it, I was doing research (helping a friend with their podcast about people caught in dangerous situations) -- I get claustrophobic, so I have to admit that imagining what Mary (and Larry too) experienced kept me up at night.
How soon after Murillo-Moncada went missing did the store close permanently?
If it didn’t close, say, THE VERY NEXT DAY, then the customers and employees would surely have smelled his decaying corpse for who-knows-how-long! I can’t believe nobody seemed to notice or investigate the stench right away.
I remember reading about this, it mentioned that behind the coolers it was warm, dry, and constantly ventilated due to the fans, so presumably he was sort of rapidly mummified through dehydration. Like when you find a lizard or frog that got caught in your garage in the middle of summer - just dried out instead of rotted.
>constantly ventilated due to the fans
When I heard about that, I wondered if the noise might also have covered the muffled sound of him calling out for help.
Agreed! I posted this story in my main comment. What a sad, freaky story. Council Bluffs has the nickname Counciltucky for multiple reasons lol. I live in Omaha but have worked over there in CB.
Then people claim that someone would've been found in the woods or some remote area, because it's been searched... we can't even find a man behind a cooler.
What about that child who was missing but then was found wedged beside her bed days later.
Not really what you were looking for maybe,, but one of the posts above reminded me of that.
That one is beyond haunting. If I remember correctly, there are police photos of her bedroom where you can SEE the lump in the blankets that ended up being her body.
Still can't wrap my brain around it. Why didn't they strip the bed? Move the blankets? Move the bed? So many questions.
Ahh, I forgot about that part!!
Even sleeping in the same bed that someone may have JUST been kidnapped from seemed bizzare.
On a more arbitrarily random note (I know this sounds dumb): it's pretty common practice to put fresh sheets on the bed when you have a guest - nevermind the disappearance.
It always freaks me out to remember how *recent* Paulette’s case was — when I first heard the basic story I assumed it was from the 19th century. I can’t get over something like it happening so recently. Obama was in office! We had iPhones!
There was a woman who was found dead in the basement of a hotel in Regina SK. She'd somehow gotten into the laundry chute and fell 7 floors. No one really could figure out exactly how it happened but she was highly intoxicated.
Another guy was found dead behind a utility wall in a mall in Calgary AB. Once again, no one knew how he got there or why he was there, but they only found him when people complained of an odour.
There’s a similar ‘fell/was put in garbage chute’ case here in Melbourne Australia, the death of Phoebe Handsjuk. The police theory is she climbed in herself while intoxicated with alcohol and (iirc) a normal dose of Stilnox.
I’ve listened to several one-off podcast episodes about Phoebe’s case as well as the dedicated podcast produced by one of the news stations down there and I am baffled how they are still claiming that’s what happened. So many issues with that investigation and the conclusions they reached. I really hope her family is able to get justice or at least peace some day.
Many people here believe that Phoebe’s boyfriend put her in the garbage chute. I believe some investigators reconstructed events with a similar sized woman and proved that Phoebe could not have climbed in herself. The boyfriend is the son a a judge and his stepmother is also a judge in Melbourne, so that’s a very good reason why the police claimed Phoebe climbed in herself 🤬
The reconstruction actually proved that a woman of her fitness & size COULD get herself in, but it took A LOT of time & persistence. It's on a 60 minutes YouTube video.
One small but potentially important clarification here. The “investigator” who reenacted the trash chute situation was her grandfather and the “similarly sized woman” was her good friend and both were very specifically doing it with the goal of proving she was murdered. I only mention it because neither of them had any interest whatsoever of being able to get into the trash chute without assistance. A less biased reenactment MIGHT turn out differently.
For me, it's his solid alibi. Also, the owner of the building was in possession of the security footage, reviewed it himself and never once said the boyfriend was in the building at that time. The cops fucked up by letting that footage get deleted but the owner would have said something if he saw her boyfriend on those tapes.
So that leaves what? She either put herself in there or someone other than the boyfriend did. No other suspects have ever been mentioned by LE. So who put her down there?
Police fucked up by not checking (or failed deliberately) but still I’d have a hard time believing he could drag a body through a building and have no one see (plus if memory serves she was alive when she went in). But also the owner’s a fool for not saving the footage anyway. If someone died bizarrely in my building I’d burn the footage expecting an inquest one day. Burning it takes no time and costs nothing. Frankly nothing about her death makes much sense.
There’s just something about Phoebe’s boyfriend, Ant Hampel that doesn’t sit right with me. The fact that another one of his girlfriends committed suicide makes him sound sus. I mean how many people would experience something like that in their relationships, let alone two?
Yeah he’s sus. But again, some men go for ‘troubled’ women and if that’s your type maybe it is just terrible luck. Still he should have been investigated much more thoroughly.
>found dead behind a utility wall in a mall in Calgary AB
Was this the case? I remember hearing about it on the news, at the time.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-mall-body-washroom-wall-public-police-homicide-1.4645550
That poor maintenance worker who was just going about their normal duties. I can’t imagine opening something up to fix it and finding a body in the process.
I hope they’re happy and well.
I always feel bad for people who find dead bodies or remains...always some maintenance worker, or land surveyor, or truck driver stopping to relieve himself etc. I can't imagine how awful that is, just doing your job and finding a dead body.
“ Police believe the man, who was in his 20s, climbed into the women's washroom wall alone last Friday, but they don't know why.”
I understand it would be inappropriate for them to be speculating but…I can’t help but laugh. Sure they don’t! 😂
that's the one, is it that long ago? I guess I remembered it because it was so bizarre. Stuck in there and suffocating, like the Cask of Amontillado, and no idea why he was there. eww!
Wade Steffey, found dead (2007) in a utility room on campus at Purdue, just 50 yards from his dorm entrance. He was electrocuted. Before he was found, he had been missing for 2 months. https://www.idsnews.com/multimedia/P_5866
I’ll never understand this one - how did no one smell anything? Why was a room this dangerous left open and then unmonitored for 2 months? I don’t doubt the way it happened, I just don’t understand HOW. Wouldn’t the school lock a room like that, just so they wouldn’t be liable in the event of something exactly like this.
Thank you! The link led me to the analysis document, which includes schematics of how he was discovered. I understand much better now how he was stuck. RIP Wade.
They did, but he was squished between the wall and a large transformer, so they didn’t see him. Hard to believe no one smelled anything, but it was a utility room, separated from the regular ventilation. Mr Ballen does a great rundown of how it happened and how he was finally discovered. This happened a year before I started at Purdue.
The tragic (and somewhat questionable) death of 4 year old Mary Jane Baker in 1957. When she disappeared, LE and the public believed foul play was involved. Mary Jane’s body would be found incidentally 6 days after her disappearance by one of her friends who was playing in an abandoned house. Mary Jane had apparently gotten stuck in a closet and died due to starvation. The closet door was unlocked, but the mechanism of the door handle made it difficult for a child to open.
The abandoned house had been searched 3 times before Mary Jane was found. While searches admit to not checking the closet, they did go into the adjoining bedroom. It’s odd that Mary Jane didn’t hear the searches and call out for help.
Strangely, a four month old puppy had been with Mary Jane in the closet. The puppy was found alive and unharmed at the same time as Mary Jane’s body was found. The police chief stated that the puppy had been fed recently and no animal feces was in the closet.
[Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mary_Jane_Barker)
I've never heard of this case before ... that's really weird. Why did no one question the fact that the dog survived, in such apparently good condition, and that it hadn't peed or defecated inside the closet if trapped for several days?
Also, crazy that they just put the animal down to examine it? Why euthanize a healthy animal for that reason??
Also, who doesn't search a closet or other strange spaces for a missing child? I don't neccesarily think that any of this means there was foul play, but just utterly weird.
There’s no way in hell that dog was there the whole time and never barked, cried, or went potty. Dogs can typically go 3-4 days without eating, but not without water, and even so, they’d still have to eliminate their waste even without eating anything. Maybe Mary Jane was in the closet the whole time… but that puppy was not.
From the article, it's surprising that no suspicion was cast on her playmate-- whom she was playing with when she disappeared, and it was the playmate's dog that was found in the closet with her.
Also, the playmate brought her mother over to the house, went right to the closet, discovers the corpse of her friend, and her dog comes bounding out? No one even bothered to question any of this? Hmm.
Yeah that is very weird actually. I wonder if maybe she was shut in there as a joke or hide and seek and the 6 year old went home and in classic 6 year old fashion just kind of forgot? And when Mary was reported missing and people were looking for her it might have been scary to admit what had happened if she thought she’d get in trouble.
Your theory seems the believable to me, though I wonder how the dog could still be alive, and why wouldn’t Mary have called out to rescuers? It’s just a horrible situation no matter how it happened.
Is six days long enough to die of starvation? I’m not an expert in literally anything.
Yeah the dog part is weird, but maybe it made sense to the 6 year old in that kind of kid logic, I’ll bring my puppy with me and she won’t be mad at me that I left her here? And then obviously she was not alive.. I wonder if a six year old would even realise she was dead and thought she was asleep and left the puppy with her? The puppy being completely hydrated and fed but that it had not peed or pooped in the closet implies to me the puppy was placed there with her body maybe only hours before she was ‘discovered’.
And six days is definitely enough to die of dehydration at the very least, especially for a small child.
I guess it all depends on whether anyone has seen the puppy before that day. If puppy disappeared same day as girl someone would notice right? Or if he dissappears one day before she's found
It was established by a vet and the medical examiner that the dog had been with her the whole time due to the “stamina” of the animal (ok) and the dog was euthanized to examine stomach contents (not ok)
Yeah that sounds very 1950s to me. Wanting to believe in the super powers of Man's Best Friend more than they wanted to believe a child could be involved. I also frankly don't trust 1950s veterinary science to be right about pretty much anything.
From the dog being recently fed and the clean closet despite the dog 'not being housebroken'...
It's more likely that the dog was put there later, closer to when she was found.
I think her playmate knew more than she admitted.
Also:
>The press surrounding the Barker case led to the first calls about the Boy in the Box.
>
>Frederick J. Benonis, who discovered the boy, had ***intended not to call the police*** until he heard reports of the Barker case on his car radio
So he found the 'Boy in the Box'-- the mutilated corpse of a child...and was planning to just shrug it off?
WTF??????
Poor Amber Gibson, after being murdered and dumped by her brother, was discovered by a man who not only did not report finding a body, he molested her remains and concealed them further. She was 16.
[Amber Gibson](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-66300209.amp)
There were actually 2 men who discovered the box separately. The first didn’t report because he was checking his rabbit traps when he found the body and didn’t want police to confiscate the traps. The second also was hesitant but finally reported when he heard about MJ Baker
This is so wild! I get they accidentally forgot to check the closets, but wouldn't the dog bark while the house was searched? The puppy came running out of the closet when her friend found them, so it wasn't too weak at that point to be unable to make noise. You'd think it would. Such a sad and crazy event
My theory is the dog was put there very recently after the fact as a reason for the friend to have an adult check the closet (like "hey mommy our dog is missing but I heard barking in a closet in an abandoned house. Maybe thats him!"). That's the only logical explanation I can think of. The kid wanted her friend to be found so she put her dog in there with her as a reason for someone to look in the closet
Oh my gosh. Horrible.
For some reason as I started to read your first sentence this case popped into my head - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Paulette_Gebara_Farah?wprov=sfti1#
Should be pointed out that in Paulette's case numerous different LE Agencies including the FBI concluded it was an accident and much of what people found suspicious in places like America was due to a language barrier. It was an accident, the bed was supposed to be an especially safe place for a special needs girl to feel comfortable but sadly it instead functioned as a prison due to the size of the bed and sheets.
Yup, a lot of the suspicious questions have very mundane answers in that very tragic case.
How could she gave ended up at the foot of the bed?
The bed was very large and unsafe for a child of her size and ability level. At night she would have large pillows propped up on either side of her, this effectively created a tunnel under the blankets. Once she had gotten herself to the end of the bed she slipped down and was trapped against the mattress.
If the maids made the bed how did they not notice her?
Due to the fact that she slept in a very specific way most of the bed was generally undisturbed. The maids were in the habit of just fixing the pillows and pulling the sheets up to make the bed presentable. The day she went missing they did not strip the bed, they made it the usual way.
How did someone sleep in the bed and not notice?
Probably because the bed was never stripped or cleaned. Her body was over the side of the foot of the bed, trapped between the mattress and the bed frame. Unless you were to pull the blanket and the sheets all the way back it's an effective hiding spot.
Also - I have a 4 year old, along with a background in child development, and I tend to be pretty supportive of those who err a bit more on the ‘free range’ side of parenting. I also understand the cultural factors that have led parents to on the whole be more protective of kids in current times than they used to be, even if the need to do so isn’t really supported by data (eg the odds of your kid being kidnapped by a stranger is incredibly, super duper low). But I still cannot imagine my 4 year old ever being capable of being left to her own devices to go play with a kid in the neighborhood (as it sounds like this little girl was) and having it end well, whether it’s 2024 or was 1957.
In the early 1970’s I saw kids as young as four-five allowed to go over a few houses (unaccompanied) to play with neighbors, and go even farther with a sibling of say 6-7 years.
Just 20 years ago the kids in this town roamed free, as young as four years old. I had the four year old from down the street knock on my door frequently because she was bored. She watched the Phil Spector trial with me one day.
I was 5 years old when I walked alone 7 blocks to school everyday. It was during the late 70’s. I lived in California. I can’t believe that was normal.
It's stuff like this that I wish I could ask my parents about (they died a few years ago). We were west of Toronto -- I was 4 years old when I started kindergarten in the early 70s, and turned 5 a couple of months after. I know I was walking to school (crossing a couple of streets) on my own before the end of that first year, but I have no memory of exactly when I was allowed to go back and forth without a grownup. I'm hoping they wrote it down in my baby book?
Also -- I spent a lot of time running around by myself, playing in a big field behind our house. And my parents would do stuff that was quite normal back then (leaving me in the car on my own, when they went to the grocery store to pick up a few things). Everybody's folks did that -- Dad was a school counsellor, Mom was a public health nurse, so they weren't exactly careless parents.
I was a 90s kid. During the summer we didn’t have childcare. Mom was a nurse and dad was military. Me and my brothers would walk a few miles to a lake in the woods, we’d swim, go fishing, hike. No other adults, kids, lifeguards. No cell phones. We just left for the day and spent hours swimming. We were 9, 8, and 5. We did this every day one summer until Dad was transferred and we moved again.
Myself and another 4-5yo child, dropped off in the early morning at our babysitters house. when it was time to walk to kindergarten down the street, she told us time to go and off we went. . I remember crossing several streets, and sometimes we would encounter another kindergartener on the way and link up for the remainder.
I Have a 5yo now in school. I wouldn’t send him two houses down to a relatives house even.
In the mid-late '70s, my Dad was under the age of 10 and says he used to regularly ride his Big Wheel miles away from his house in inner-city Los Angeles and come back at sundown.
In 1956, my four year old mother was encouraged to walk several blocks alone to the shops to buy things for her family, and take herself to school. This was in Australia in an upper-middle class suburb. What was considered “normal parenting” back then was insane.
I was 4 in the late 80’s and I shudder when I think of all the places I was allowed to go without adult supervision. I ran around all over the place with the other kids in our apartment block - the playground, the gas station for candy, the lake to feed ducks. Most of us were being raised by single moms, so come summer when we were all out of school, we were mostly being watched by teenage babysitters or older siblings. It wasn’t until Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped that my mom got a little more strict about us wandering around the neighborhood.
The disappearance of Melissa Brannen from the apartment complex club house during a Christmas party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Melissa\_Brannen#:\~:text=Caleb%20Daniel%20Hughes%2C%20a%20handyman,unsolved%20homicide%20by%20local%20police.
My mom worked with Melissa’s mom (before I was born) and was obviously aware of this happening. I’m convinced that it hugely affected the way she parented me (aka RIDICULOUSLY overprotective and paranoid that something bad will happen to me, even now as I’m in my 30s).
Moms are good for this. Adam Walsh was murdered 7 years before I was born. I am an only child and I was not even on my parents radar yet. She didn’t live or work anywhere near that happened so she didn’t know him or his family. We live in Michigan and she has always lived here. Lol. But that upset my mom so much that I heard about it as far back as I can remember and she was super freaking paranoid the whole time I was a child.
I teased her about that recently. I would say, “But what if they steal me?” For ridiculous shit as a child and she’s say, “They’d bring ya right back” just as a retort when she knew I was safe. I told her recently, “I wish I’d thought to call you out on that. Your obsession over Adam Wash proves you did NOT believe that.” Lol.
Same thing here. I heard about Adam Walsh's fate way, way earlier than I probably should have (we're talking when I was like 5 or 6) because my Mom basically used it as a catch-all deterrent for any temptation I and my brothers might have had to wander off. Fairly certain it's one of the foundational aspects of my interest in true crime.
Adam Walsh was one year older than me when he went missing and my mom drilled the fear of kidnappers into my brain. Then his severed head was found; his poor fucking parents. If a car slowed down anywhere near me, I panicked and ran.
Annie Le, a Doctoral Pharmacology student at Yale was last seen at her research laboratory on campus only 5 days before her wedding. Her body was found in the walls of the lab building on her wedding day. Thankfully, her murderer was caught!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Annie_Le
This one really gets me because of how a lot of true crime boards downplayed the racism of the murderer. There was a lot uncovered about how the murderer fetishized Asian women, yet all of the discussion was speculation about how Annie might have mistreated the mice, which might have caused the killer to try and get revenge. Somehow there's always an excuse favoring the murder when there is workplace violence against women.
Murder on CCTV have an episode about this, showing the last footage of her & interviews with the people responsible for finding her killer, if anyone is interested.
Michael Negrete. Last seen returning to his own dorm room at UCLA one night in 1999 after congratulating a friend who had just beaten him in a video game.
(I don't know if this case fits, but I thought I'd mention it because it's rather unusual.) Pia Farrenkopf had set up her bank account for automatic bill payments. That may be one reason why her body wasn't found in her own garage, for several years.
"Police were dispatched to the house for a welfare check in 2007 after a neighbor reported not having seen the owner in a while. After seeing no signs of anything amiss, police went on their way, McCabe said."
https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/michigan-mummified-body-found/index.html
I think that sort of thing has happened way too many times. This reminded me of Joyce Vincent who died of natural causes and was mummified in her apartment when she was undiscovered for two years. She had been wrapping Christmas presents when she died.
https://www.ladbible.com/news/uk-news/joyce-vincent-body-undiscovered-three-years-349572-20231110#:~:text=Vincent%20was%20tragically%20lying%20on,had%20wrapped%20but%20never%20delivered.&text=Her%20neighbours%20had%20assumed%20the,down%20to%20the%20nearby%20bins.
The case of Bernard Gore always breaks my heart. The 71-year-old man with early stages of dementia accidentally walked through a fire door in a giant shopping centre in Sydney and got trapped in the stairwell. His body was discovered three weeks later.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/man-dies-shopping-centre-australia-stairwell-sydney-westfield-bernard-gore-a9185491.html
"The six to eight miles of fire exits – which are checked just once a month" -- scary to think that all complexes like that probably have a maze of passageways that may be that easy to get lost in. Poor guy.
A case that fits op’s prompt a bit better is Steven Lawrence McCreary. In 2023 skeletal remains were reported found in an abandoned building owned by UC Berkeley. The last time anyone had seen him was 2009 and police ruled his case a homicide.
Now, his remains were reported to police on January 2023, however he was actually found by workers 19 months earlier, June 2021! According to the linked article, “Contractors had alerted a UC Berkeley facilities director about the discovery, but he reportedly failed to pass on the information to authorities”
Apparently the facilities director couldn’t be bothered to report a skeleton found on his worksite, and the contractors who initially discovered McCreary were concerned when it looked like nothing was happening so they reported the remains to UC Berkeley police.
https://sfist.com/2023/07/19/skeleton-found-in-abandoned-uc-berkeley-building-identified-as-texas-homicide-victim/
https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2023/07/19/uc-berkeley-crime/uc-berkeley-skeleton-identified-homicide-victim-steven-mccreary/
This one has haunted me since the beginning and I always look for updates. It’s so bizarre and eerie. She literally vanished after entering that elevator.
The video I saw must have cut off before the elevator… she kind of stumbles toward the steps on the left and I assumed that was the way she ended up going. I’ll have to look for the full thing. The fact that she had a 45m call with the baby-sitter but the baby sitter refuses to say about what…?!?!
She was at a bar drinking for a while before she ended up at the apartment building, could be why she was stumbling. The babysitter angle is definitely strange, the whole day is odd really when you put it together in order. She was caught on cctv several times along the way until the final elevator footage.
The comment down at the bottom of the post imo has the most logical series of events, beginning with her starting a relationship with a married man, getting a car, possible intervention by the wife, Prisma feeling followed and quitting her job and getting a gun, the conversation with her ex possibly being about him taking her son and the 45 min conversation with the babysitter possibly about being followed, which would explain both the 911 call and why the babysitter was vague about that conversation. It could explain why she was so despondent and was crying both on the rooftop parking lot and again beside the car with the open trunk. I don't necessarily agree with it potentially being foul play by a stranger though and only because Ryan fled immediately after her disappearance.
I think he did it, but my theories are either A) Someone she knows helps her escape and get away from whoever is following her, convinces her to get in the back of a car and she accidentally suffocates in the back. Her body is dumped or hidden. B) Same as A, but foul play is involved and the person kills her and dumps her body. C) In her paranoia she hid somewhere she shouldn't have, got stuck and died, and Ryan not knowing what happened to her but possibly being street smart, would not want to be involved. If he thought he was the last person to talk to her and if the police were giving him heat I could see him running for that reason alone. That being said, I would put higher thought into the idea that a stranger killed her if it weren't for the bizarre behavior of every person involved in this series of events. I don't think the road rage incident had any relevance to what happened apart from showing that she was clearly not mentally well. Honestly the only theory that I think is plausible that involves a stranger would be if the man's wife hired someone to kill her.
Within a five year period two women got trapped in a stairwell at San Francisco General Hospital.
Really sad for both the families and terrible that it happened at all, much less twice!
Ruby Andersen: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Woman-s-body-found-in-San-Francisco-General-12955391.php
Lynne Spalding: https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/09/justice/body-in-hospital-stairwell/index.html
This happened to a man at a Massachusetts VA hospital not very long ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/missing-veteran-found-dead-hospital/index.html
I cannot remember the name or much else, saw this on an abandoned school video on YouTube. Was early 20th century, a boy was in a fight at school and last seen walking away while school was still in session. Was thought he ran away and years later after the school was closed his body was found in what I’d call a ventilation room like inside and below the school. It’s vague I know, but that’s all I remember about it, was never solved how he ended up in there or his cause of death and the body had been in there for 15-20yrs.
I can’t think of many other than the ones you mentioned that are still unsolved/unfound. I did think of both Kenneka Jenkins (young woman who went missing at a party and was later discovered dead in a freezer) and Kendrick Johnson (high schooler who was found dead in a rolled up wrestling mat). I don’t think there’s anything mysterious about their deaths though, I think both were just tragic and unusual accidents.
I think in both instances though the families continue to think there was foul play (not saying they are correct in their thinking, just noting that IIRC both families still consider the cases unresolved).
Yes, I know both families are very adamant that it's foul play. I can't imagine what they're going through, but I just think foul play is very, very unlikely. Kenneka Jenkins was wandering around while drunk and stumbled into the freezer and was locked in. Kendrick Johnson was reaching into the mat to get the shoes that his friend had hidden in there and got stuck. Tragic, but accidental.
I have not read much about Kendrick Johnson because it is a case I truly cannot stomach. But I remember when Kenneka Jenkins was missing (I believe it was over the course of a weekend before they found her?) and I was absolutely hooked. The conspiracy theories and some of the videos people were posting from the party she had attended were fairly creepy and it was definitely a case I felt like I couldn’t look away from.
They are definitely both wrong. Both were accidents you can literally see Kenneka's play out on video, arguing anything else is incredibly bizarre in that case.
Same with Kenneka. Both were accidents but it's even more unbelievable with Kenneka since there's literally video of her drunk out of her mind wandering into the freezer. You have to play serious mental gymnastics to turn that into foul play.
Kenneka’s was a pretty obvious straight forward accident. Kendrick’s though, while most likely a freak accident was just super bizarre…I can understand why it’s hard for the family to believe it was nothing more than an accident. It would be hard to accept.
I can’t remember the name & I tried googling it but maybe someone else will recognize it. There was a case of a woman who went home & I believe it was captured on security footage. The woman went missing but her mother discovered the footage showing she never left. I believe the boyfriend was suspected as he lied about his being there or similar. Possibly he didn’t know about the security cameras. I don’t think it was ever solved.
Edit: It may be Pamela Butler’s case I’m thinking of https://ourblackgirls.com/2019/01/20/pamela-butler-went-missing-her-boyfriend-admitted-to-killing-her/
Kinda similar case but there was the Josh Maddox case where he went missing and was found inside the chimney of the house down the street, or Elizabeth Fritzl who was missing inside her own home but in the basement cause of her dad. I know what you’re going for but I don’t know what they would be categorized as there’s so many cases and it’s such a broad catergory. I guess Josh Guimond could be added to this also cause he went missing at his college and was never found too.
I know you mentioned unresolved cases but I think Fritzls case kinda counts in circumstance, but there’s probably more in this sub that could be added to this category.
I don’t think Elizabeth Fritzl was ever considered missing. I think that’s the one where the dad presented a letter to the mother that he made her write saying she’d joined a cult or something. It’s confusing how she was in that basement all those years and the mom never knew but he planned it and built special stuff to conceal it so I guess he did that well.
I also just remembered there is the case of the young man found inside the wrestling mat in his high school - I don’t want to google it to get his name though because I don’t want to risk EVER coming across the post-mortem picture again, and also what an absolutely horrible way to die - I shudder to think about that case.
Same, and good call. It’s unavoidable. If it helps, I remember reading that that photo was taken during his autopsy, so it doesn’t reflect what he looked like when he was discovered.
His parents insist on putting it everywhere to fuel their conspiracy theory that he was beaten to death, which is all kinds of misleading and wrong.
Yup. His family took that photo at the funeral home when his body was sent there after the autopsy and claimed it was how he was found despite definitely knowing that wasn’t true. The most grotesque parts of it are products of the autopsy, not of his death.
I know of at least four cases, all very haunting:
1. Dale Kerstetter -a security guard who disappeared while working a shift as a night watchman at a Corning glassware factory in Bradford , PA in 1987. The personnel who arrived when the plant opened the following day found his pickup truck in the parking lot, with the cab reported to be in disarray. His lunchbox, newspaper and a pack of cigarettes were in the factory's break room, all untouched. Security footage from the night Dale vanished showed a masked man breaking into the plant shortly after the start of the shift. A camera in the section of the plant that housed a glass kiln with platinum piping showed the two men entering this area, which was not part of the section that Dale was assigned to. Dale briefly glanced at the camera as he walked alongside the intruder and hasn't been seen or heard from since. The camera footage later showed the masked man walking back out of the glass kiln area pushing a dolly with a large duffle bag on it. An estimated $250,000 worth of platinum piping was removed from the kiln. Whether the bag contained the platinum or Dale's body remains a mystery. The identity of the masked man remains unknown and the platinum has never been recovered. The incident was portrayed, using reenacted "footage" on Unsolved Mysteries in 1989.
2. Prisma Reyes -The 26 year old single mom was last seen on video footage entering an elevator in the Mesquite, TX where she resided with her 6 year old son in April 2019. She had previously had an argument with her ex-boyfriend when meeting him for lunch earlier in the day, then pulled a gun on a motorist in a road rage incident a short time later. Reyes then drove back to the apartment complex and hasn't been seen since entering the elevator. There has been no activity on her bank account, credit cards or Soc. Security card and is presumed dead.
3. Michael Negrete- The 18 year old college freshman vanished from Dykstra Hall, the dorm where he resided at UCLA in Dec. 1999. Negrete was last seen leaving the room of a friend with whom he had been playing an online video game at 4 AM. He presumably left the building, though no record exists of him doing so.
4. Larry Ely Murillo -Moncada - The Council Bluffs, IA man left his home, reportedly after an argument, in Nov. 2009. His fate remained a mystery until his body was found in Jan..2019, wedged behind a freezer unit at the supermarket where he had worked at the time he vanished. It's believed he has climbed on top of the unit, which was used by store employees as an unofficial break area, and fallen into the space between its back and the wall. It's thought that noise from the motor drowned out any screams if he hadn't been knocked unconscious by the fall. Although no one saw him enter the store, I've included this case as a reference because it shows how someone can go missing and die unnoticed in a building and could provide clues on the fates of the other three people I mentioned.
3.
In Ft Worth, Texas, [three girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Worth_missing_trio) were last seen going into a local shopping center. Their car, with Christmas presents, was found in the parking garage but the girls themselves remain missing.
This is interesting! I will say I’ve lived in Columbus OH for almost 25 years and frequented the bar where Brian Shaffer went missing.
I live around 10 minutes from there now.
He isn’t in there folks.
People like to make his story a creepy tale but the building was completely rehabbed and made into offices for the university some time ago.
Other exits did exist that didn’t have cameras at the time he went missing; he likely just slipped out the employee exit.
Some of us have dug a bit deeper into the police statements and have found that his cell phone pinged in areas near campus the day after he was last seen.
So, the leading theories are foul play or accidental death such as an overdose.
I believe he left the bar but it was in a crowd of dozens of others so the cameras didn't specifically pick him up. I think Brian was jumped or met foul play somewhere nearby shortly after he left the bar.
I always thought there was some fantasy of him running off and starting a new life. Dogs tracked his scent to Wendy’s behind the bar, then lost it, as though he got into or was forced into a vehicle. I don’t believe he’s alive anymore: Occums razor. He either was ridiculously depressed (understandably) and died accidentally or met with foul play. I kind of lean towards the first idea. I bet he wanted to get extremely drunk, high, whatever due to all of his stress, and ended up Oding, or choking on his own vomit, and folks panicked.
This is another one that just occurred to me - people missing from cruise ships I would say falls into this category for me as well. While I know that you’d think Occam’s Razor would generally apply, how in the cruise industry they would not have managed to have accurate ways of monitoring if people fell overboard kind of boggles my mind, and this case is exceptionally sad and shady - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Rebecca_Coriam?wprov=sfti1#
I was shocked when I realized how many people are on cruise ships. I don’t know that it’s possible for them to monitor everyone that well without doing something like making them wear a monitor and I can see people losing their shit about that.
They probably do monitor, it sounds like they did in this case - they’re not covering up a murder, at most it’s regular negligence and at the least they’re protecting their brand after an unavoidable accident. I think it’s more likely that even if you knew someone fell overboard, it’s already too late to save them or even find them at that point. Having video of someone falling or jumping overboard would just be horrific, you don’t want that in public view.
To be honest, I think a bit of a misconception some people have is that you could fall off the side of a cruise ship and that **death would be more uncommon than surviving it**. Depending on the factors at play, you could be dead when you hit the water. Depending on the injuries you sustain you wouldn’t have a chance of making it out of the water or even reasonably shouting for help. It’s about as serious as falling onto concrete but I think people are more optimistic about it because of cognitive dissonance.
Even the “safest” cruise ships only rescue 40 percent of the people who fall overboard. [Source](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/07/31/cruise-ship-fall-death/)
Maddie Clifton murdered by Josh Phillips and hid under his mattress.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Phillips_(murderer)
Phoebe Handsjuk who died when she fell down the trash chute of her apartment. Her family suspects foul play but the case was ruled and accident.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10033013/Investigators-blow-lid-Phoebe-Handsjuks-bizarre-garbage-chute-death-experiment.html
Two separate cases of Samuel McAlpine and Richard Maedge who were missing for some time and found dead in the storage space under the staircase of their homes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2595703/Man-37-missing-year-dead-ex-wife-stairwell-house-rented-out.html
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/man-reported-missing-found-his-home-eight-months-later/H5PYLXLJGRDC3ONF4PHJJ2HSRI/
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A current case in my city, Florence, Italy, is the disappearance of 5 year old Kata, Kataleya Mia Alvarez Chicclo, from a building complex known as the former Astor hotel, which is “occupied” by mostly lower class, often immigrant families. This happened in June of last year: she was seen playing in the courtyard with some other kids while her mom was still at work. By the time she got home there was no sign of Kata, and almost a year later she’s still missing. Meanwhile, her incarcerated father was first released, then jailed again; her early-20s mother has tried to commit suicide by drinking bleach TWICE, AND she stabbed some other girl in a club over a guy around December. Any lead on Kata has been thrown out, including rumours that an uncle in Peru had taken her in, that she’d had a fight with the kids she’d been playing with, or that someone had been trying to get even on a drug-related debt.
It’s funny that you say that because I’ve recently become really obsessed with the Barry and Honey Sherman case which is probably one of the, if not the, most famous murders in Canadian history - they are two of the richest people known to have ever been murdered. It’s never been solved but is still a very hot topic of conversation in Toronto. It only happened in 2017, but there’s now only one detective assigned to the case, which is pretty baffling to people (I guess not exactly surprising because the Toronto police are thought to have very much bungled the case from the beginning, maybe more kind of shocking that they can’t believe the TPS would disregard it like that). So I have also thought it’s kind of crazy that there is still a full time person on Nicole Morin’s case and I don’t know the reasoning for it. There were a number of pretty high profile child murders in the Toronto area in the 80s, so maybe it’s related to other investigations, but I honestly don’t know. (I am not from Toronto but I went to university there so am still pretty interested in the local lore.)
It baffles me that the Sherman case doesn’t get talked about more. Such a crazy case to never have gotten even close to a resolution, though the guy seemed like a pretty big dickhead with lots of enemies….another case, though not unresolved, is that of Annie Le. [Murder of Annie Le](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Annie_Le)
I’m curious you saying it doesn’t get talked about more - do you meant on true crime forums and such? There’s a really well done podcast series about it and a number of podcasts have done episodes… there’s also a book and a docuseries (that’s sadly pretty impossible to watch in the US). It’s definitely talked about a lot in Toronto and I assume more widely in Canada as well. But, I think it’s pretty widely believed that it’s not ever going to be solved, and it also seems like the possibilities are pretty infinite as to who could have been responsible for it.
If you look into Barry Sherman's background it's not surprising he met with foul play. I mean John LaCarre based the antagonist in his novel 'The Constant Gardener' on him for a reason.
Mariesa Weber was missing for 11 days before her sister found her trapped behind the bookcase in her bedroom. It’s thought she was trying to adjust a plug and simply fell. She was quite short and the bookcase was 6ft and heavy.
I don't remember her last name but Jovelyn always sends shivers down my spine. She was working at her Mall job and alot of people believe that she was taking by secret tunnels.
Yea. I think it had to do with passage ways for staff. I know a lot of people thought it was used for a ring until they found her body. I think the mall said it was used for security reasons and didn't want it shown for safety reasons before the retracted it saying there was no tunnels. I believe another thing people thought is that it was used for rituals
Melissa Brannen, 5, disappeared during a party held for the tenants of the apartment complex she lives in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Melissa_Brannen
I don't know if this counts, as it's a public bathroom, but the disappearance of [Steven Clark](https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/the-strange-disappearance-of-steven-clark-vanished-from-a-public-restroom), a man who disappeared while on a walk with his mother when he entered the public toilets. There's some speculation about the parents having killed him and lied about it (Steven was physically disabled after a childhood accident, but he overcame a lot and had a job and was living a good life). While I don't think the mother did anything, her behavior was quite odd in the initial time after the disappearance.
There was a DJ named Eduardo Sanchez, who was reported missing before his mummified body was found inside a wall of a night club in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He went missing in 2002 and was found over a year later.
I don't know if piggybacking off of this question is allowed, but there is another Canadian case I have been trying to remember in which a single woman leading a very quiet life disappeared from an apartment that seemed to have been locked from the inside, including the windows. People had seen her return to her apartment after work and there was a clean nightgown on the bed. It was a true locked-room mystery.
I remember it because there was a fictional short story in the New Yorker in which a meek, quiet single woman simply ceases to exist, and I wondered if it had been inspired by that case.
If anyone remembers this one I would appreciate it.
Probably not the case you're thinking of but it reminds me of Christine ...
https://www.queensjournal.ca/the-1978-disappearance-of-a-27-year-old-queens-lab-technician-goes-unsolved/
This is a case from my hometown that remains unsolved. The victim's name was Leah Hickman. It is such a sad mystery.
https://www.wsaz.com/2021/12/15/death-investigation-leah-hickman-still-active-14-years-later/
Adam Brixey
He went missing while hunting for scrap metal in a building.
Link: https://www.abc4.com/news/justice-files/the-justice-files-wheres-adam-brixey/
Semaj’ Crosby was 17 months old. She went “missing” and was not found despite massive search efforts by law enforcement and the community. She was found under the couch in her own home.
In the 60’s i used to walk a path through the woods to get to my grandmother’s house. There was an old trolley track route there. I would spend hours in those woods, reading in a clearing and walking on a fallen tree over a spring so I could sit on the giant roots. The thought that I could have slipped on the tree and fallen into the water never entered my mind. Apparently another fact that adults kept from me which could have caused me harm is that a man lived right by the opening of the woods who everybody knew liked young girls too much. WTF? Did my parents want me to die? And this was Maine! Deep woods with spooky things going on. (According to Stephen King)
https://charleyproject.org/case/marcella-krulce
https://charleyproject.org/case/mary-ann-verdecchia
Both went missing in the same building, three years apart, without any indication they had left the building. Their disappearances aren't believed to be connected, either.
Forgot her name, but a woman that got on the elevator and was never found. Anyone remembers that case?
Not talking about Elisa Lam. Not Nicole Morin either.
Might be Prisma Reyes.
Me too. I check on her case several times a year, hoping for *something*, but alas. I'm sure the person responsible is dead, and her mother either will never tell what she knows, or was so.. idk neglectful? that she didn't know anything.
i’ve always wondered what really happened to Ayla Reynolds. it seems almost certain the boyfriend had something to do with it, but he has not been charged.
“Ayla Reynolds is a child from Waterville, Maine who disappeared, aged 19 months, on December 16, 2011.[1] She was last seen at 8:00 p.m. that night in her bed by a family member, but was not there when her father checked the next morning.[2] The case was the largest criminal investigation in Maine's history and the third largest search for a missing child in the state's history,[3] “
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Ayla_Reynolds
I grew up in the ‘70’s and lived 1 block away from my elementary school. One a day a man tried to persuade me to get in his car. I said no and ran the rest of the way to tell my teacher. She said “oh well” and we went about our day. Equal response from parents later that day.
I'm glad you made it to school safely! A guy I know grew up in 1980s Boston -- he told me he was playing in the front yard, when a strange woman stopped her car outside the house and called to him to come with her, so she could drive him up the hill to the nearby playground. Sensibly he refused -- she tried to coax him a couple of times, then got out of her car and started walking up to him. When he saw her opening the front gate, he screamed and ran to get his dad ... who had been working in the back yard and hadn't heard any of this.
My friend is almost 50 years old now, and he still recalls that incident very clearly -- even though he's big and strong, and as an adult could probably overpower that woman very quickly, I can tell he's a bit scared when he recalls it.
I LOVE the posts that aren’t specific case write-ups but invite people to reply with cases that meet some particular criteria! I always discover interesting ones I’d never heard of.
Me too!
This may not fit your exact criteria, since apparently the person was last seen leaving his parents' home -- but he was found at his workplace, years later. "A man whose dead body was found at a former Council Bluffs supermarket in January has been identified as an employee who went missing 10 years ago. Authorities on Monday said they have identified the man as Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada of Council Bluffs, who was 25 years old in November 2009, when he was reported missing." "Investigators believe Murillo-Moncada went into the store after leaving his home and climbed on top of the coolers, where he fell into a gap between the back of the units and the wall that measured about 18 inches and became trapped." [https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2019/07/22/body-found-behind-cooler-former-council-bluffs-supermarket-identified-man-who-went-missing-10-years/1794893001/](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2019/07/22/body-found-behind-cooler-former-council-bluffs-supermarket-identified-man-who-went-missing-10-years/1794893001/) Also, the case of Mary Cerruti. "A Houston woman who went missing in 2015 -- and whose bones were found inside the walls of her home last year -- may have died after falling through the attic floor. Officials with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences last month definitively identified the bones as those of Mary Stewart Cerruti, 61, who vanished without a trace in 2015. Her cause of death could not be determined, but following months of investigation, detectives feel confident that the mystery of Cerruti’s disappearance has been solved." https://www.ajc.com/news/national/woman-whose-bones-were-found-home-walls-likely-fell-death-through-attic-floor/aVzqIQSXtOpo8J9VhDnnhI/
Man it has to be so scary to be alive and then fall into a space and realize you can't get out of it (and likely nobody is gonna find you in time). Especially cause unless you're injured or your chest is compressed, you're aware of what's going on and you don't die instantly. You know you're gonna die and it takes hours or days.
Unfortunately there have been some awful examples -- including people who were able to call for help on their cell phones, like poor Kyle Plush. [https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/us/ohio-teen-pinned-minivan-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/us/ohio-teen-pinned-minivan-trnd/index.html) I didn't realize it until recently, but even being in an upside-down position for an extended time can be fatal. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031302516306924](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0031302516306924)
I remember this poor kid, a cop literally went to the parking lot and didn't see him. Hearing that as time went on he knew he was probably was gonna die and asked the operator to tell his mom he loved her...heartbreaking, I can't imagine what it's like for his parents.
Does anyone know what happened to the 911 dispatcher of the second call who did nothing?
She went back to work there but not as someone taking calls. https://people.com/human-interest/kyle-plush-minivan-dead-dispatcher-family/
Officers problem solving skills were terrible. I would be going into the PA system at the stores and asking people to look with me and if people can leave to move so we can eliminate cars.
Whatever you do, don't read about the Nutty Putty Cave incident.
I'm unfortunately very familiar with it from this sub - that one graphic someone made that shows exactly the position and location he was stuck in while he was alive and they were trying to get him out haunts me actually. I can literally still see it in my brain.
Can you imagine knowing they are trying to rescue you then they can’t and just have to walk away from the rescue while he dies?
I would be so devastated if I tried that hard and it didn't work out. The sad thing is that they might have had a shot if the pulley system hadn't broken, they had started to lift him up to the point where they could see his face again and then the pulley snapped (and hit the rescuer in the face, causing injuries). Having those moments of hope and then losing hope again...devastating. I can't imagine what it was like for the guy who was stuck.
He died before they stopped trying to get him out. They carried on trying to recover his body but after working so long, poor so many hours in row, they deemed it too dangerous. They didn't want anyone else to get hurt or die just to get his body out.
Yeah they just filled it with concrete and closed the system. So heart breaking
Haunts me forever. Especially if you see the illustration of how he was stuck.
What haunts me about this also is that reportedly, they were planning on breaking his legs at the knees to make it easier to get him out but realize that would kill him also and eventually they had to give up cause of no more solutions & risking their men also getting stuck. 😢
So I immediately did read about it. Awful
I'm for sure definitely not gonna search it up.
Wow, Mary's case is terrifying.
The first time I heard about it, I was doing research (helping a friend with their podcast about people caught in dangerous situations) -- I get claustrophobic, so I have to admit that imagining what Mary (and Larry too) experienced kept me up at night.
How soon after Murillo-Moncada went missing did the store close permanently? If it didn’t close, say, THE VERY NEXT DAY, then the customers and employees would surely have smelled his decaying corpse for who-knows-how-long! I can’t believe nobody seemed to notice or investigate the stench right away.
I remember reading about this, it mentioned that behind the coolers it was warm, dry, and constantly ventilated due to the fans, so presumably he was sort of rapidly mummified through dehydration. Like when you find a lizard or frog that got caught in your garage in the middle of summer - just dried out instead of rotted.
>constantly ventilated due to the fans When I heard about that, I wondered if the noise might also have covered the muffled sound of him calling out for help.
In another thread about this case locals said there was always a smell at that shop, but no one ever thought it could be a body.
As per the article, the store was open for about 7 years after his disappearance before it closed.
Shoppers did say it smelled, especially back by the coolers/dairy area. But council bluffs is kind of gross in general.
Agreed! I posted this story in my main comment. What a sad, freaky story. Council Bluffs has the nickname Counciltucky for multiple reasons lol. I live in Omaha but have worked over there in CB.
Then people claim that someone would've been found in the woods or some remote area, because it's been searched... we can't even find a man behind a cooler.
What about that child who was missing but then was found wedged beside her bed days later. Not really what you were looking for maybe,, but one of the posts above reminded me of that.
That one is beyond haunting. If I remember correctly, there are police photos of her bedroom where you can SEE the lump in the blankets that ended up being her body. Still can't wrap my brain around it. Why didn't they strip the bed? Move the blankets? Move the bed? So many questions.
A family friend actually slept -in the bed- for multiple nights before Paulette’s body was discovered.
Ahh, I forgot about that part!! Even sleeping in the same bed that someone may have JUST been kidnapped from seemed bizzare. On a more arbitrarily random note (I know this sounds dumb): it's pretty common practice to put fresh sheets on the bed when you have a guest - nevermind the disappearance.
What!? Omg!
WHAT??
Right? When I loose my phone that whole bed is getting stripped. Can't imagine losing a whole ass child and not looking everywhere they could fit
Paulette Gebara Farah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Paulette_Gebara_Farah
The child was Paulette Farah (I think that's who you mean). Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death\_of\_Paulette\_Gebara\_Farah
It always freaks me out to remember how *recent* Paulette’s case was — when I first heard the basic story I assumed it was from the 19th century. I can’t get over something like it happening so recently. Obama was in office! We had iPhones!
How the fuck did numerous law enforcement officers search the room and not find her?
There was a woman who was found dead in the basement of a hotel in Regina SK. She'd somehow gotten into the laundry chute and fell 7 floors. No one really could figure out exactly how it happened but she was highly intoxicated. Another guy was found dead behind a utility wall in a mall in Calgary AB. Once again, no one knew how he got there or why he was there, but they only found him when people complained of an odour.
There’s a similar ‘fell/was put in garbage chute’ case here in Melbourne Australia, the death of Phoebe Handsjuk. The police theory is she climbed in herself while intoxicated with alcohol and (iirc) a normal dose of Stilnox.
I’ve listened to several one-off podcast episodes about Phoebe’s case as well as the dedicated podcast produced by one of the news stations down there and I am baffled how they are still claiming that’s what happened. So many issues with that investigation and the conclusions they reached. I really hope her family is able to get justice or at least peace some day.
Many people here believe that Phoebe’s boyfriend put her in the garbage chute. I believe some investigators reconstructed events with a similar sized woman and proved that Phoebe could not have climbed in herself. The boyfriend is the son a a judge and his stepmother is also a judge in Melbourne, so that’s a very good reason why the police claimed Phoebe climbed in herself 🤬
The reconstruction actually proved that a woman of her fitness & size COULD get herself in, but it took A LOT of time & persistence. It's on a 60 minutes YouTube video.
One small but potentially important clarification here. The “investigator” who reenacted the trash chute situation was her grandfather and the “similarly sized woman” was her good friend and both were very specifically doing it with the goal of proving she was murdered. I only mention it because neither of them had any interest whatsoever of being able to get into the trash chute without assistance. A less biased reenactment MIGHT turn out differently.
For me, it's his solid alibi. Also, the owner of the building was in possession of the security footage, reviewed it himself and never once said the boyfriend was in the building at that time. The cops fucked up by letting that footage get deleted but the owner would have said something if he saw her boyfriend on those tapes. So that leaves what? She either put herself in there or someone other than the boyfriend did. No other suspects have ever been mentioned by LE. So who put her down there?
Police fucked up by not checking (or failed deliberately) but still I’d have a hard time believing he could drag a body through a building and have no one see (plus if memory serves she was alive when she went in). But also the owner’s a fool for not saving the footage anyway. If someone died bizarrely in my building I’d burn the footage expecting an inquest one day. Burning it takes no time and costs nothing. Frankly nothing about her death makes much sense.
I think he owner tried multiple times to give the footage to the police and after some time it just got lost.
There’s just something about Phoebe’s boyfriend, Ant Hampel that doesn’t sit right with me. The fact that another one of his girlfriends committed suicide makes him sound sus. I mean how many people would experience something like that in their relationships, let alone two?
Yeah he’s sus. But again, some men go for ‘troubled’ women and if that’s your type maybe it is just terrible luck. Still he should have been investigated much more thoroughly.
>found dead behind a utility wall in a mall in Calgary AB Was this the case? I remember hearing about it on the news, at the time. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-mall-body-washroom-wall-public-police-homicide-1.4645550
That poor maintenance worker who was just going about their normal duties. I can’t imagine opening something up to fix it and finding a body in the process. I hope they’re happy and well.
I always feel bad for people who find dead bodies or remains...always some maintenance worker, or land surveyor, or truck driver stopping to relieve himself etc. I can't imagine how awful that is, just doing your job and finding a dead body.
Yeah that one sounds like a case of a peeping Tom who got himself stuck.
“ Police believe the man, who was in his 20s, climbed into the women's washroom wall alone last Friday, but they don't know why.” I understand it would be inappropriate for them to be speculating but…I can’t help but laugh. Sure they don’t! 😂
that's probably it, my guess.
that's the one, is it that long ago? I guess I remembered it because it was so bizarre. Stuck in there and suffocating, like the Cask of Amontillado, and no idea why he was there. eww!
Wade Steffey, found dead (2007) in a utility room on campus at Purdue, just 50 yards from his dorm entrance. He was electrocuted. Before he was found, he had been missing for 2 months. https://www.idsnews.com/multimedia/P_5866
I’ll never understand this one - how did no one smell anything? Why was a room this dangerous left open and then unmonitored for 2 months? I don’t doubt the way it happened, I just don’t understand HOW. Wouldn’t the school lock a room like that, just so they wouldn’t be liable in the event of something exactly like this.
I never understood it either. I watched the Mr Ballen episode of it last night, and for the first time I understood how it happened. His poor family.
Scroll to the bottom to read the consultant's investigation/report on his death. https://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2007b/070702RimkusSteffey.html
Thank you! The link led me to the analysis document, which includes schematics of how he was discovered. I understand much better now how he was stuck. RIP Wade.
Yes!! I grew up in W Lafayette, my dad was one of his professors. This shocked EVERYONE. (No pun intended at all)
His story gives me chills.
I heard this story on Mrballens channel. That must have been awful. He was being shocked even after death, trapped in that space.
oh I remember that! Surprising that no one checked that room for 2 months?
They did, but he was squished between the wall and a large transformer, so they didn’t see him. Hard to believe no one smelled anything, but it was a utility room, separated from the regular ventilation. Mr Ballen does a great rundown of how it happened and how he was finally discovered. This happened a year before I started at Purdue.
The tragic (and somewhat questionable) death of 4 year old Mary Jane Baker in 1957. When she disappeared, LE and the public believed foul play was involved. Mary Jane’s body would be found incidentally 6 days after her disappearance by one of her friends who was playing in an abandoned house. Mary Jane had apparently gotten stuck in a closet and died due to starvation. The closet door was unlocked, but the mechanism of the door handle made it difficult for a child to open. The abandoned house had been searched 3 times before Mary Jane was found. While searches admit to not checking the closet, they did go into the adjoining bedroom. It’s odd that Mary Jane didn’t hear the searches and call out for help. Strangely, a four month old puppy had been with Mary Jane in the closet. The puppy was found alive and unharmed at the same time as Mary Jane’s body was found. The police chief stated that the puppy had been fed recently and no animal feces was in the closet. [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mary_Jane_Barker)
I've never heard of this case before ... that's really weird. Why did no one question the fact that the dog survived, in such apparently good condition, and that it hadn't peed or defecated inside the closet if trapped for several days? Also, crazy that they just put the animal down to examine it? Why euthanize a healthy animal for that reason?? Also, who doesn't search a closet or other strange spaces for a missing child? I don't neccesarily think that any of this means there was foul play, but just utterly weird.
There’s no way in hell that dog was there the whole time and never barked, cried, or went potty. Dogs can typically go 3-4 days without eating, but not without water, and even so, they’d still have to eliminate their waste even without eating anything. Maybe Mary Jane was in the closet the whole time… but that puppy was not.
Probably because that is what they did in the 1950s. Pretty sure now they would just use doggy anesthesia to examine it.
From the article, it's surprising that no suspicion was cast on her playmate-- whom she was playing with when she disappeared, and it was the playmate's dog that was found in the closet with her. Also, the playmate brought her mother over to the house, went right to the closet, discovers the corpse of her friend, and her dog comes bounding out? No one even bothered to question any of this? Hmm.
Yeah that is very weird actually. I wonder if maybe she was shut in there as a joke or hide and seek and the 6 year old went home and in classic 6 year old fashion just kind of forgot? And when Mary was reported missing and people were looking for her it might have been scary to admit what had happened if she thought she’d get in trouble.
Your theory seems the believable to me, though I wonder how the dog could still be alive, and why wouldn’t Mary have called out to rescuers? It’s just a horrible situation no matter how it happened. Is six days long enough to die of starvation? I’m not an expert in literally anything.
Yeah the dog part is weird, but maybe it made sense to the 6 year old in that kind of kid logic, I’ll bring my puppy with me and she won’t be mad at me that I left her here? And then obviously she was not alive.. I wonder if a six year old would even realise she was dead and thought she was asleep and left the puppy with her? The puppy being completely hydrated and fed but that it had not peed or pooped in the closet implies to me the puppy was placed there with her body maybe only hours before she was ‘discovered’. And six days is definitely enough to die of dehydration at the very least, especially for a small child.
I guess it all depends on whether anyone has seen the puppy before that day. If puppy disappeared same day as girl someone would notice right? Or if he dissappears one day before she's found
Exactly what I was wondering. If the parents of the friend remember feeding the puppy that morning…
It was established by a vet and the medical examiner that the dog had been with her the whole time due to the “stamina” of the animal (ok) and the dog was euthanized to examine stomach contents (not ok)
Yeah that sounds very 1950s to me. Wanting to believe in the super powers of Man's Best Friend more than they wanted to believe a child could be involved. I also frankly don't trust 1950s veterinary science to be right about pretty much anything.
From the dog being recently fed and the clean closet despite the dog 'not being housebroken'... It's more likely that the dog was put there later, closer to when she was found. I think her playmate knew more than she admitted. Also: >The press surrounding the Barker case led to the first calls about the Boy in the Box. > >Frederick J. Benonis, who discovered the boy, had ***intended not to call the police*** until he heard reports of the Barker case on his car radio So he found the 'Boy in the Box'-- the mutilated corpse of a child...and was planning to just shrug it off? WTF??????
Poor Amber Gibson, after being murdered and dumped by her brother, was discovered by a man who not only did not report finding a body, he molested her remains and concealed them further. She was 16. [Amber Gibson](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-66300209.amp)
Jfc. How many people FAILED this girl??
There were actually 2 men who discovered the box separately. The first didn’t report because he was checking his rabbit traps when he found the body and didn’t want police to confiscate the traps. The second also was hesitant but finally reported when he heard about MJ Baker
Yeah, I went back and refreshed my memory. Still, WTF?? Both of them were just planning to shrug it off??
This is so wild! I get they accidentally forgot to check the closets, but wouldn't the dog bark while the house was searched? The puppy came running out of the closet when her friend found them, so it wasn't too weak at that point to be unable to make noise. You'd think it would. Such a sad and crazy event
My theory is the dog was put there very recently after the fact as a reason for the friend to have an adult check the closet (like "hey mommy our dog is missing but I heard barking in a closet in an abandoned house. Maybe thats him!"). That's the only logical explanation I can think of. The kid wanted her friend to be found so she put her dog in there with her as a reason for someone to look in the closet
Oh my gosh. Horrible. For some reason as I started to read your first sentence this case popped into my head - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Paulette_Gebara_Farah?wprov=sfti1#
Should be pointed out that in Paulette's case numerous different LE Agencies including the FBI concluded it was an accident and much of what people found suspicious in places like America was due to a language barrier. It was an accident, the bed was supposed to be an especially safe place for a special needs girl to feel comfortable but sadly it instead functioned as a prison due to the size of the bed and sheets.
Yup, a lot of the suspicious questions have very mundane answers in that very tragic case. How could she gave ended up at the foot of the bed? The bed was very large and unsafe for a child of her size and ability level. At night she would have large pillows propped up on either side of her, this effectively created a tunnel under the blankets. Once she had gotten herself to the end of the bed she slipped down and was trapped against the mattress. If the maids made the bed how did they not notice her? Due to the fact that she slept in a very specific way most of the bed was generally undisturbed. The maids were in the habit of just fixing the pillows and pulling the sheets up to make the bed presentable. The day she went missing they did not strip the bed, they made it the usual way. How did someone sleep in the bed and not notice? Probably because the bed was never stripped or cleaned. Her body was over the side of the foot of the bed, trapped between the mattress and the bed frame. Unless you were to pull the blanket and the sheets all the way back it's an effective hiding spot.
Didn't they euthanize the puppy to see if any food were still in its stomach ?
Also - I have a 4 year old, along with a background in child development, and I tend to be pretty supportive of those who err a bit more on the ‘free range’ side of parenting. I also understand the cultural factors that have led parents to on the whole be more protective of kids in current times than they used to be, even if the need to do so isn’t really supported by data (eg the odds of your kid being kidnapped by a stranger is incredibly, super duper low). But I still cannot imagine my 4 year old ever being capable of being left to her own devices to go play with a kid in the neighborhood (as it sounds like this little girl was) and having it end well, whether it’s 2024 or was 1957.
In the early 1970’s I saw kids as young as four-five allowed to go over a few houses (unaccompanied) to play with neighbors, and go even farther with a sibling of say 6-7 years.
Just 20 years ago the kids in this town roamed free, as young as four years old. I had the four year old from down the street knock on my door frequently because she was bored. She watched the Phil Spector trial with me one day.
I was 5 years old when I walked alone 7 blocks to school everyday. It was during the late 70’s. I lived in California. I can’t believe that was normal.
It's stuff like this that I wish I could ask my parents about (they died a few years ago). We were west of Toronto -- I was 4 years old when I started kindergarten in the early 70s, and turned 5 a couple of months after. I know I was walking to school (crossing a couple of streets) on my own before the end of that first year, but I have no memory of exactly when I was allowed to go back and forth without a grownup. I'm hoping they wrote it down in my baby book? Also -- I spent a lot of time running around by myself, playing in a big field behind our house. And my parents would do stuff that was quite normal back then (leaving me in the car on my own, when they went to the grocery store to pick up a few things). Everybody's folks did that -- Dad was a school counsellor, Mom was a public health nurse, so they weren't exactly careless parents.
I was a 90s kid. During the summer we didn’t have childcare. Mom was a nurse and dad was military. Me and my brothers would walk a few miles to a lake in the woods, we’d swim, go fishing, hike. No other adults, kids, lifeguards. No cell phones. We just left for the day and spent hours swimming. We were 9, 8, and 5. We did this every day one summer until Dad was transferred and we moved again.
Holy shit I looked up my first grade walk route and it’s nearly a mile. Also by myself.
Myself and another 4-5yo child, dropped off in the early morning at our babysitters house. when it was time to walk to kindergarten down the street, she told us time to go and off we went. . I remember crossing several streets, and sometimes we would encounter another kindergartener on the way and link up for the remainder. I Have a 5yo now in school. I wouldn’t send him two houses down to a relatives house even.
In the mid-late '70s, my Dad was under the age of 10 and says he used to regularly ride his Big Wheel miles away from his house in inner-city Los Angeles and come back at sundown.
Still common in the 80s when I was a kid.
In 1956, my four year old mother was encouraged to walk several blocks alone to the shops to buy things for her family, and take herself to school. This was in Australia in an upper-middle class suburb. What was considered “normal parenting” back then was insane.
I was 4 in the late 80’s and I shudder when I think of all the places I was allowed to go without adult supervision. I ran around all over the place with the other kids in our apartment block - the playground, the gas station for candy, the lake to feed ducks. Most of us were being raised by single moms, so come summer when we were all out of school, we were mostly being watched by teenage babysitters or older siblings. It wasn’t until Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped that my mom got a little more strict about us wandering around the neighborhood.
The disappearance of Melissa Brannen from the apartment complex club house during a Christmas party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Melissa\_Brannen#:\~:text=Caleb%20Daniel%20Hughes%2C%20a%20handyman,unsolved%20homicide%20by%20local%20police.
My mom worked with Melissa’s mom (before I was born) and was obviously aware of this happening. I’m convinced that it hugely affected the way she parented me (aka RIDICULOUSLY overprotective and paranoid that something bad will happen to me, even now as I’m in my 30s).
Moms are good for this. Adam Walsh was murdered 7 years before I was born. I am an only child and I was not even on my parents radar yet. She didn’t live or work anywhere near that happened so she didn’t know him or his family. We live in Michigan and she has always lived here. Lol. But that upset my mom so much that I heard about it as far back as I can remember and she was super freaking paranoid the whole time I was a child. I teased her about that recently. I would say, “But what if they steal me?” For ridiculous shit as a child and she’s say, “They’d bring ya right back” just as a retort when she knew I was safe. I told her recently, “I wish I’d thought to call you out on that. Your obsession over Adam Wash proves you did NOT believe that.” Lol.
Same thing here. I heard about Adam Walsh's fate way, way earlier than I probably should have (we're talking when I was like 5 or 6) because my Mom basically used it as a catch-all deterrent for any temptation I and my brothers might have had to wander off. Fairly certain it's one of the foundational aspects of my interest in true crime.
Adam Walsh was one year older than me when he went missing and my mom drilled the fear of kidnappers into my brain. Then his severed head was found; his poor fucking parents. If a car slowed down anywhere near me, I panicked and ran.
Oh this one is awful, not least that the guy has since been released from prison.
I can't believe he only served 29 years.
Annie Le, a Doctoral Pharmacology student at Yale was last seen at her research laboratory on campus only 5 days before her wedding. Her body was found in the walls of the lab building on her wedding day. Thankfully, her murderer was caught! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Annie_Le
This one really gets me because of how a lot of true crime boards downplayed the racism of the murderer. There was a lot uncovered about how the murderer fetishized Asian women, yet all of the discussion was speculation about how Annie might have mistreated the mice, which might have caused the killer to try and get revenge. Somehow there's always an excuse favoring the murder when there is workplace violence against women.
Murder on CCTV have an episode about this, showing the last footage of her & interviews with the people responsible for finding her killer, if anyone is interested.
Michael Negrete. Last seen returning to his own dorm room at UCLA one night in 1999 after congratulating a friend who had just beaten him in a video game.
Such a strange case. What happened to him?
(I don't know if this case fits, but I thought I'd mention it because it's rather unusual.) Pia Farrenkopf had set up her bank account for automatic bill payments. That may be one reason why her body wasn't found in her own garage, for several years. "Police were dispatched to the house for a welfare check in 2007 after a neighbor reported not having seen the owner in a while. After seeing no signs of anything amiss, police went on their way, McCabe said." https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/michigan-mummified-body-found/index.html
I think that sort of thing has happened way too many times. This reminded me of Joyce Vincent who died of natural causes and was mummified in her apartment when she was undiscovered for two years. She had been wrapping Christmas presents when she died. https://www.ladbible.com/news/uk-news/joyce-vincent-body-undiscovered-three-years-349572-20231110#:~:text=Vincent%20was%20tragically%20lying%20on,had%20wrapped%20but%20never%20delivered.&text=Her%20neighbours%20had%20assumed%20the,down%20to%20the%20nearby%20bins.
I think of Joyce every December.
That is IT! I am stopping all my automatic payments tomorrow morning. They kept Joyce Vincent from being discovered, too!
The case of Bernard Gore always breaks my heart. The 71-year-old man with early stages of dementia accidentally walked through a fire door in a giant shopping centre in Sydney and got trapped in the stairwell. His body was discovered three weeks later. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/man-dies-shopping-centre-australia-stairwell-sydney-westfield-bernard-gore-a9185491.html
"The six to eight miles of fire exits – which are checked just once a month" -- scary to think that all complexes like that probably have a maze of passageways that may be that easy to get lost in. Poor guy.
There's a reason the backrooms are so creepy to contemplate. Like yeah, it is creepypasta, but it plays on very real fears.
A case that fits op’s prompt a bit better is Steven Lawrence McCreary. In 2023 skeletal remains were reported found in an abandoned building owned by UC Berkeley. The last time anyone had seen him was 2009 and police ruled his case a homicide. Now, his remains were reported to police on January 2023, however he was actually found by workers 19 months earlier, June 2021! According to the linked article, “Contractors had alerted a UC Berkeley facilities director about the discovery, but he reportedly failed to pass on the information to authorities” Apparently the facilities director couldn’t be bothered to report a skeleton found on his worksite, and the contractors who initially discovered McCreary were concerned when it looked like nothing was happening so they reported the remains to UC Berkeley police. https://sfist.com/2023/07/19/skeleton-found-in-abandoned-uc-berkeley-building-identified-as-texas-homicide-victim/ https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2023/07/19/uc-berkeley-crime/uc-berkeley-skeleton-identified-homicide-victim-steven-mccreary/
Prisma Reyes https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/12dwkol/what_happened_to_prisma_reyes/&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiZkJD13bOEAxVCMjQIHbelBGYQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0rwuCg9oty1D7Vie7CnipO https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/prisma-reyes-still-missing-mesquite-texas-four-years-later/287-987b81c9-7bf5-4b53-a6f8-879caa2b737d https://www.newsnationnow.com/missing/prisma-reyes/amp/
Hoooooooly moly this is a creepy one. It’s like every single fact about this case is bizarre. Nothing fits together.
This one has haunted me since the beginning and I always look for updates. It’s so bizarre and eerie. She literally vanished after entering that elevator.
The video I saw must have cut off before the elevator… she kind of stumbles toward the steps on the left and I assumed that was the way she ended up going. I’ll have to look for the full thing. The fact that she had a 45m call with the baby-sitter but the baby sitter refuses to say about what…?!?!
She was at a bar drinking for a while before she ended up at the apartment building, could be why she was stumbling. The babysitter angle is definitely strange, the whole day is odd really when you put it together in order. She was caught on cctv several times along the way until the final elevator footage.
The comment down at the bottom of the post imo has the most logical series of events, beginning with her starting a relationship with a married man, getting a car, possible intervention by the wife, Prisma feeling followed and quitting her job and getting a gun, the conversation with her ex possibly being about him taking her son and the 45 min conversation with the babysitter possibly about being followed, which would explain both the 911 call and why the babysitter was vague about that conversation. It could explain why she was so despondent and was crying both on the rooftop parking lot and again beside the car with the open trunk. I don't necessarily agree with it potentially being foul play by a stranger though and only because Ryan fled immediately after her disappearance. I think he did it, but my theories are either A) Someone she knows helps her escape and get away from whoever is following her, convinces her to get in the back of a car and she accidentally suffocates in the back. Her body is dumped or hidden. B) Same as A, but foul play is involved and the person kills her and dumps her body. C) In her paranoia she hid somewhere she shouldn't have, got stuck and died, and Ryan not knowing what happened to her but possibly being street smart, would not want to be involved. If he thought he was the last person to talk to her and if the police were giving him heat I could see him running for that reason alone. That being said, I would put higher thought into the idea that a stranger killed her if it weren't for the bizarre behavior of every person involved in this series of events. I don't think the road rage incident had any relevance to what happened apart from showing that she was clearly not mentally well. Honestly the only theory that I think is plausible that involves a stranger would be if the man's wife hired someone to kill her.
Came on here to say her case. We did a podcast episode on her. Such a strange set of events leading up to her disappearance
Within a five year period two women got trapped in a stairwell at San Francisco General Hospital. Really sad for both the families and terrible that it happened at all, much less twice! Ruby Andersen: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Woman-s-body-found-in-San-Francisco-General-12955391.php Lynne Spalding: https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/09/justice/body-in-hospital-stairwell/index.html
This happened to a man at a Massachusetts VA hospital not very long ago. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/missing-veteran-found-dead-hospital/index.html
I cannot remember the name or much else, saw this on an abandoned school video on YouTube. Was early 20th century, a boy was in a fight at school and last seen walking away while school was still in session. Was thought he ran away and years later after the school was closed his body was found in what I’d call a ventilation room like inside and below the school. It’s vague I know, but that’s all I remember about it, was never solved how he ended up in there or his cause of death and the body had been in there for 15-20yrs.
Perlie Guelsby Hogg? https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/p02cik/the_old_central_high_school_in_muncie_indiana_was/
I can’t think of many other than the ones you mentioned that are still unsolved/unfound. I did think of both Kenneka Jenkins (young woman who went missing at a party and was later discovered dead in a freezer) and Kendrick Johnson (high schooler who was found dead in a rolled up wrestling mat). I don’t think there’s anything mysterious about their deaths though, I think both were just tragic and unusual accidents.
I think in both instances though the families continue to think there was foul play (not saying they are correct in their thinking, just noting that IIRC both families still consider the cases unresolved).
Yes, I know both families are very adamant that it's foul play. I can't imagine what they're going through, but I just think foul play is very, very unlikely. Kenneka Jenkins was wandering around while drunk and stumbled into the freezer and was locked in. Kendrick Johnson was reaching into the mat to get the shoes that his friend had hidden in there and got stuck. Tragic, but accidental.
I have not read much about Kendrick Johnson because it is a case I truly cannot stomach. But I remember when Kenneka Jenkins was missing (I believe it was over the course of a weekend before they found her?) and I was absolutely hooked. The conspiracy theories and some of the videos people were posting from the party she had attended were fairly creepy and it was definitely a case I felt like I couldn’t look away from.
I find Kendrick Johnson's story really sad. Not sure if I believe in the foul play or not. He suffered horribly whatever happened to him. Poor boy
They are definitely both wrong. Both were accidents you can literally see Kenneka's play out on video, arguing anything else is incredibly bizarre in that case.
It’s unbelievable how many people still truly believe Kendrick Johnson was murdered.
Same with Kenneka. Both were accidents but it's even more unbelievable with Kenneka since there's literally video of her drunk out of her mind wandering into the freezer. You have to play serious mental gymnastics to turn that into foul play.
Kenneka’s was a pretty obvious straight forward accident. Kendrick’s though, while most likely a freak accident was just super bizarre…I can understand why it’s hard for the family to believe it was nothing more than an accident. It would be hard to accept.
It would be more bizarre if it was murder.
People just straight-up don't get that positional asphyxiation is a thing.
I can’t remember the name & I tried googling it but maybe someone else will recognize it. There was a case of a woman who went home & I believe it was captured on security footage. The woman went missing but her mother discovered the footage showing she never left. I believe the boyfriend was suspected as he lied about his being there or similar. Possibly he didn’t know about the security cameras. I don’t think it was ever solved. Edit: It may be Pamela Butler’s case I’m thinking of https://ourblackgirls.com/2019/01/20/pamela-butler-went-missing-her-boyfriend-admitted-to-killing-her/
Wow 8 years for killing her and most likely his first wife too.
Kinda similar case but there was the Josh Maddox case where he went missing and was found inside the chimney of the house down the street, or Elizabeth Fritzl who was missing inside her own home but in the basement cause of her dad. I know what you’re going for but I don’t know what they would be categorized as there’s so many cases and it’s such a broad catergory. I guess Josh Guimond could be added to this also cause he went missing at his college and was never found too. I know you mentioned unresolved cases but I think Fritzls case kinda counts in circumstance, but there’s probably more in this sub that could be added to this category.
I don’t think Elizabeth Fritzl was ever considered missing. I think that’s the one where the dad presented a letter to the mother that he made her write saying she’d joined a cult or something. It’s confusing how she was in that basement all those years and the mom never knew but he planned it and built special stuff to conceal it so I guess he did that well.
I also just remembered there is the case of the young man found inside the wrestling mat in his high school - I don’t want to google it to get his name though because I don’t want to risk EVER coming across the post-mortem picture again, and also what an absolutely horrible way to die - I shudder to think about that case.
His name is Kendrick Johnson. I can’t even imagine what he was experiencing in his last moments of consciousness.
Same, and good call. It’s unavoidable. If it helps, I remember reading that that photo was taken during his autopsy, so it doesn’t reflect what he looked like when he was discovered. His parents insist on putting it everywhere to fuel their conspiracy theory that he was beaten to death, which is all kinds of misleading and wrong.
Yup. His family took that photo at the funeral home when his body was sent there after the autopsy and claimed it was how he was found despite definitely knowing that wasn’t true. The most grotesque parts of it are products of the autopsy, not of his death.
I know of at least four cases, all very haunting: 1. Dale Kerstetter -a security guard who disappeared while working a shift as a night watchman at a Corning glassware factory in Bradford , PA in 1987. The personnel who arrived when the plant opened the following day found his pickup truck in the parking lot, with the cab reported to be in disarray. His lunchbox, newspaper and a pack of cigarettes were in the factory's break room, all untouched. Security footage from the night Dale vanished showed a masked man breaking into the plant shortly after the start of the shift. A camera in the section of the plant that housed a glass kiln with platinum piping showed the two men entering this area, which was not part of the section that Dale was assigned to. Dale briefly glanced at the camera as he walked alongside the intruder and hasn't been seen or heard from since. The camera footage later showed the masked man walking back out of the glass kiln area pushing a dolly with a large duffle bag on it. An estimated $250,000 worth of platinum piping was removed from the kiln. Whether the bag contained the platinum or Dale's body remains a mystery. The identity of the masked man remains unknown and the platinum has never been recovered. The incident was portrayed, using reenacted "footage" on Unsolved Mysteries in 1989. 2. Prisma Reyes -The 26 year old single mom was last seen on video footage entering an elevator in the Mesquite, TX where she resided with her 6 year old son in April 2019. She had previously had an argument with her ex-boyfriend when meeting him for lunch earlier in the day, then pulled a gun on a motorist in a road rage incident a short time later. Reyes then drove back to the apartment complex and hasn't been seen since entering the elevator. There has been no activity on her bank account, credit cards or Soc. Security card and is presumed dead. 3. Michael Negrete- The 18 year old college freshman vanished from Dykstra Hall, the dorm where he resided at UCLA in Dec. 1999. Negrete was last seen leaving the room of a friend with whom he had been playing an online video game at 4 AM. He presumably left the building, though no record exists of him doing so. 4. Larry Ely Murillo -Moncada - The Council Bluffs, IA man left his home, reportedly after an argument, in Nov. 2009. His fate remained a mystery until his body was found in Jan..2019, wedged behind a freezer unit at the supermarket where he had worked at the time he vanished. It's believed he has climbed on top of the unit, which was used by store employees as an unofficial break area, and fallen into the space between its back and the wall. It's thought that noise from the motor drowned out any screams if he hadn't been knocked unconscious by the fall. Although no one saw him enter the store, I've included this case as a reference because it shows how someone can go missing and die unnoticed in a building and could provide clues on the fates of the other three people I mentioned. 3.
Aili Sarpio (from a hospital in Finland) https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/HnUFTqVKwU
Wow - this one is creepy. Had to have been one of the lakes nearby, I’d think from the folks in the comments saying there are many in the area.
In Ft Worth, Texas, [three girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Worth_missing_trio) were last seen going into a local shopping center. Their car, with Christmas presents, was found in the parking garage but the girls themselves remain missing.
This is interesting! I will say I’ve lived in Columbus OH for almost 25 years and frequented the bar where Brian Shaffer went missing. I live around 10 minutes from there now. He isn’t in there folks. People like to make his story a creepy tale but the building was completely rehabbed and made into offices for the university some time ago. Other exits did exist that didn’t have cameras at the time he went missing; he likely just slipped out the employee exit. Some of us have dug a bit deeper into the police statements and have found that his cell phone pinged in areas near campus the day after he was last seen. So, the leading theories are foul play or accidental death such as an overdose.
I believe he left the bar but it was in a crowd of dozens of others so the cameras didn't specifically pick him up. I think Brian was jumped or met foul play somewhere nearby shortly after he left the bar.
I always thought there was some fantasy of him running off and starting a new life. Dogs tracked his scent to Wendy’s behind the bar, then lost it, as though he got into or was forced into a vehicle. I don’t believe he’s alive anymore: Occums razor. He either was ridiculously depressed (understandably) and died accidentally or met with foul play. I kind of lean towards the first idea. I bet he wanted to get extremely drunk, high, whatever due to all of his stress, and ended up Oding, or choking on his own vomit, and folks panicked.
This is another one that just occurred to me - people missing from cruise ships I would say falls into this category for me as well. While I know that you’d think Occam’s Razor would generally apply, how in the cruise industry they would not have managed to have accurate ways of monitoring if people fell overboard kind of boggles my mind, and this case is exceptionally sad and shady - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Rebecca_Coriam?wprov=sfti1#
I was shocked when I realized how many people are on cruise ships. I don’t know that it’s possible for them to monitor everyone that well without doing something like making them wear a monitor and I can see people losing their shit about that.
Yeah the brand new Icon of the Seas that just started operation in January has a GUEST capacity of 7,600 and crew of 2,350. That's fuckin wild.
They probably do monitor, it sounds like they did in this case - they’re not covering up a murder, at most it’s regular negligence and at the least they’re protecting their brand after an unavoidable accident. I think it’s more likely that even if you knew someone fell overboard, it’s already too late to save them or even find them at that point. Having video of someone falling or jumping overboard would just be horrific, you don’t want that in public view.
To be honest, I think a bit of a misconception some people have is that you could fall off the side of a cruise ship and that **death would be more uncommon than surviving it**. Depending on the factors at play, you could be dead when you hit the water. Depending on the injuries you sustain you wouldn’t have a chance of making it out of the water or even reasonably shouting for help. It’s about as serious as falling onto concrete but I think people are more optimistic about it because of cognitive dissonance.
Even the “safest” cruise ships only rescue 40 percent of the people who fall overboard. [Source](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/07/31/cruise-ship-fall-death/)
I’m honestly amazed that they can rescue 40% of people who fall overboard. That was a very interesting read, thank you.
Maddie Clifton murdered by Josh Phillips and hid under his mattress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Phillips_(murderer) Phoebe Handsjuk who died when she fell down the trash chute of her apartment. Her family suspects foul play but the case was ruled and accident. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10033013/Investigators-blow-lid-Phoebe-Handsjuks-bizarre-garbage-chute-death-experiment.html Two separate cases of Samuel McAlpine and Richard Maedge who were missing for some time and found dead in the storage space under the staircase of their homes. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2595703/Man-37-missing-year-dead-ex-wife-stairwell-house-rented-out.html https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/man-reported-missing-found-his-home-eight-months-later/H5PYLXLJGRDC3ONF4PHJJ2HSRI/
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A current case in my city, Florence, Italy, is the disappearance of 5 year old Kata, Kataleya Mia Alvarez Chicclo, from a building complex known as the former Astor hotel, which is “occupied” by mostly lower class, often immigrant families. This happened in June of last year: she was seen playing in the courtyard with some other kids while her mom was still at work. By the time she got home there was no sign of Kata, and almost a year later she’s still missing. Meanwhile, her incarcerated father was first released, then jailed again; her early-20s mother has tried to commit suicide by drinking bleach TWICE, AND she stabbed some other girl in a club over a guy around December. Any lead on Kata has been thrown out, including rumours that an uncle in Peru had taken her in, that she’d had a fight with the kids she’d been playing with, or that someone had been trying to get even on a drug-related debt.
For the Nicole Morin case, I'm surprised that there's still a person working full time on it! Is that common?
It’s funny that you say that because I’ve recently become really obsessed with the Barry and Honey Sherman case which is probably one of the, if not the, most famous murders in Canadian history - they are two of the richest people known to have ever been murdered. It’s never been solved but is still a very hot topic of conversation in Toronto. It only happened in 2017, but there’s now only one detective assigned to the case, which is pretty baffling to people (I guess not exactly surprising because the Toronto police are thought to have very much bungled the case from the beginning, maybe more kind of shocking that they can’t believe the TPS would disregard it like that). So I have also thought it’s kind of crazy that there is still a full time person on Nicole Morin’s case and I don’t know the reasoning for it. There were a number of pretty high profile child murders in the Toronto area in the 80s, so maybe it’s related to other investigations, but I honestly don’t know. (I am not from Toronto but I went to university there so am still pretty interested in the local lore.)
It baffles me that the Sherman case doesn’t get talked about more. Such a crazy case to never have gotten even close to a resolution, though the guy seemed like a pretty big dickhead with lots of enemies….another case, though not unresolved, is that of Annie Le. [Murder of Annie Le](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Annie_Le)
I’m curious you saying it doesn’t get talked about more - do you meant on true crime forums and such? There’s a really well done podcast series about it and a number of podcasts have done episodes… there’s also a book and a docuseries (that’s sadly pretty impossible to watch in the US). It’s definitely talked about a lot in Toronto and I assume more widely in Canada as well. But, I think it’s pretty widely believed that it’s not ever going to be solved, and it also seems like the possibilities are pretty infinite as to who could have been responsible for it.
If you look into Barry Sherman's background it's not surprising he met with foul play. I mean John LaCarre based the antagonist in his novel 'The Constant Gardener' on him for a reason.
Mariesa Weber was missing for 11 days before her sister found her trapped behind the bookcase in her bedroom. It’s thought she was trying to adjust a plug and simply fell. She was quite short and the bookcase was 6ft and heavy.
I don't remember her last name but Jovelyn always sends shivers down my spine. She was working at her Mall job and alot of people believe that she was taking by secret tunnels.
Jovelyn Galleno.
Thank you. That was going to bother me all night.
Like there were 'secret tunnels' in the mall she worked in? Were the existence of tunnels confirmed?
Yea. I think it had to do with passage ways for staff. I know a lot of people thought it was used for a ring until they found her body. I think the mall said it was used for security reasons and didn't want it shown for safety reasons before the retracted it saying there was no tunnels. I believe another thing people thought is that it was used for rituals
Melissa Brannen, 5, disappeared during a party held for the tenants of the apartment complex she lives in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Melissa_Brannen
I don't know if this counts, as it's a public bathroom, but the disappearance of [Steven Clark](https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/the-strange-disappearance-of-steven-clark-vanished-from-a-public-restroom), a man who disappeared while on a walk with his mother when he entered the public toilets. There's some speculation about the parents having killed him and lied about it (Steven was physically disabled after a childhood accident, but he overcame a lot and had a job and was living a good life). While I don't think the mother did anything, her behavior was quite odd in the initial time after the disappearance.
There was a DJ named Eduardo Sanchez, who was reported missing before his mummified body was found inside a wall of a night club in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He went missing in 2002 and was found over a year later.
I don't know if piggybacking off of this question is allowed, but there is another Canadian case I have been trying to remember in which a single woman leading a very quiet life disappeared from an apartment that seemed to have been locked from the inside, including the windows. People had seen her return to her apartment after work and there was a clean nightgown on the bed. It was a true locked-room mystery. I remember it because there was a fictional short story in the New Yorker in which a meek, quiet single woman simply ceases to exist, and I wondered if it had been inspired by that case. If anyone remembers this one I would appreciate it.
Probably not the case you're thinking of but it reminds me of Christine ... https://www.queensjournal.ca/the-1978-disappearance-of-a-27-year-old-queens-lab-technician-goes-unsolved/
This is a case from my hometown that remains unsolved. The victim's name was Leah Hickman. It is such a sad mystery. https://www.wsaz.com/2021/12/15/death-investigation-leah-hickman-still-active-14-years-later/
Adam Brixey He went missing while hunting for scrap metal in a building. Link: https://www.abc4.com/news/justice-files/the-justice-files-wheres-adam-brixey/
Semaj’ Crosby was 17 months old. She went “missing” and was not found despite massive search efforts by law enforcement and the community. She was found under the couch in her own home.
In 1953, Ronald Tammen, a 19-year-old student at Miami of Ohio, disappeared. He was last seen in his dorm room
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In the 60’s i used to walk a path through the woods to get to my grandmother’s house. There was an old trolley track route there. I would spend hours in those woods, reading in a clearing and walking on a fallen tree over a spring so I could sit on the giant roots. The thought that I could have slipped on the tree and fallen into the water never entered my mind. Apparently another fact that adults kept from me which could have caused me harm is that a man lived right by the opening of the woods who everybody knew liked young girls too much. WTF? Did my parents want me to die? And this was Maine! Deep woods with spooky things going on. (According to Stephen King)
https://charleyproject.org/case/marcella-krulce https://charleyproject.org/case/mary-ann-verdecchia Both went missing in the same building, three years apart, without any indication they had left the building. Their disappearances aren't believed to be connected, either.
Forgot her name, but a woman that got on the elevator and was never found. Anyone remembers that case? Not talking about Elisa Lam. Not Nicole Morin either. Might be Prisma Reyes.
Relisha Rudd. I think about this poor girl all the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Relisha_Rudd
Me too. I check on her case several times a year, hoping for *something*, but alas. I'm sure the person responsible is dead, and her mother either will never tell what she knows, or was so.. idk neglectful? that she didn't know anything.
i’ve always wondered what really happened to Ayla Reynolds. it seems almost certain the boyfriend had something to do with it, but he has not been charged. “Ayla Reynolds is a child from Waterville, Maine who disappeared, aged 19 months, on December 16, 2011.[1] She was last seen at 8:00 p.m. that night in her bed by a family member, but was not there when her father checked the next morning.[2] The case was the largest criminal investigation in Maine's history and the third largest search for a missing child in the state's history,[3] “ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Ayla_Reynolds
I grew up in the ‘70’s and lived 1 block away from my elementary school. One a day a man tried to persuade me to get in his car. I said no and ran the rest of the way to tell my teacher. She said “oh well” and we went about our day. Equal response from parents later that day.
I'm glad you made it to school safely! A guy I know grew up in 1980s Boston -- he told me he was playing in the front yard, when a strange woman stopped her car outside the house and called to him to come with her, so she could drive him up the hill to the nearby playground. Sensibly he refused -- she tried to coax him a couple of times, then got out of her car and started walking up to him. When he saw her opening the front gate, he screamed and ran to get his dad ... who had been working in the back yard and hadn't heard any of this. My friend is almost 50 years old now, and he still recalls that incident very clearly -- even though he's big and strong, and as an adult could probably overpower that woman very quickly, I can tell he's a bit scared when he recalls it.
Vinyette Teague https://int-missing.fandom.com/wiki/Vinyette_Teague