The truth rarely stays buried. For this list, we’ll be looking at the most puzzling criminal cases that had investigators stumped for extended periods of time and were only solved due to a lucky break or unexpected clue.
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00:00 The man had told her to follow the shadow, and they haven't been seen since.
00:04 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10
00:09 unsolvable crimes that were actually solved.
00:12 After months of trailing him, it was DNA collected
00:15 from a pizza slice he tossed in a Manhattan trash can.
00:18 Number 10. The Disappearance of Paulette Jaster.
00:23 On May 12, 1979, Paulette Jaster left her parents' home in Davidson, Michigan,
00:28 and disappeared without contact. For more than 30 years,
00:32 her family remained clueless on her whereabouts.
00:35 Meanwhile, over a thousand miles away in Houston, Texas,
00:38 officials sought to identify a hit-and-run victim from March 1980
00:42 without any DNA or dental X-rays on file.
00:45 This Jane Doe remained nameless until January 2014,
00:49 when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick cracked the case.
00:53 Autopsy pictures of the unidentified victim showed three distinctive freckles on her cheek.
00:57 After receiving an online tip, Derrick contacted Jaster's family
01:01 and was able to match the freckles with her childhood pictures,
01:04 confirming Jane Doe's identity as the long-lost Jaster.
01:08 Number 9. Texas Crime Solved by America's Most Wanted.
01:12 A crime in Rollingwood, Texas would have probably gone unsolved if not for an eerie coincidence.
01:17 In May 1992, a cook at the Green Parrot Café in Salt Lake City, Utah,
01:22 was killed in a robbery gone wrong. After the suspect jumped bail,
01:26 the case was featured on a 1993 episode of America's Most Wanted.
01:30 Many of the employees and patrons of the Green Parrot gathered at the café to watch the segment.
01:34 Coincidentally, the subsequent segment featured a case in Rollingwood, Texas,
01:39 whose runaway suspect turned out to be Kenneth Lovesey,
01:42 the replacement cook hired after the former chef was killed.
01:45 Lovesey was still in the kitchen flipping burgers when the police were called in to arrest him.
01:50 Number 8. The Case of David Guy.
01:53 In July 2012, the remains of David Guy, a Hampshire, England resident, were discovered on a beach.
01:59 Guy had been murdered, wrapped in a curtain and dumped there, presumably by his killer.
02:04 Despite an initial lack of evidence, a breakthrough emerged when police discovered
02:08 eight cat hairs on the curtain. This proved to be their smoking gun,
02:11 as David Hilder, one of Guy's neighbors who owned a cat, became a prime suspect.
02:16 Tinker's profile, the suspect's cat, shared its profile with around about 2% of the UK population.
02:23 Mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed a match between hairs from Hilder's cat
02:27 and those obtained at the crime scene.
02:29 Hilder was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment,
02:33 marking the first instance cat DNA was used in a British criminal trial.
02:38 Number 7. The Son of Sam.
02:40 Dubbed "The Son of Sam," David Berkowitz killed six people
02:43 and wounded seven others in 1970s New York. His seemingly random spree baffled investigators
02:50 until a parking violation led to his arrest after months of eluding police.
02:54 In July 1977, Berkowitz drove to Brooklyn for what would be his final murder,
02:59 but was issued a ticket after parking illegally.
03:01 "David Berkowitz, 24 years old, a postal worker, walked out of his yonkers apartment last night,
03:06 turned the ignition key in his car, and found himself surrounded by police."
03:10 Cecilia Davis, a local resident who was walking her dog that night,
03:14 witnessed the ticket being issued and later encountered Berkowitz
03:17 with what looked like a gun in his hand.
03:19 Moments later, she heard the gunshots that claimed his final victim.
03:23 Davis reported the encounter to the police,
03:26 who traced the ticket to Berkowitz's car and arrested him just outside his house.
03:30 Number 6. Finnish Car Theft.
03:33 Mosquitoes are often viewed as vectors of the deadly disease malaria,
03:37 but when a car was stolen in Lappua, Finland in 2008,
03:40 it was a mosquito that helped police identify the suspect.
03:44 The stolen car was found abandoned near a railway station,
03:47 roughly 15 miles from where it was taken.
03:49 Inside the vehicle, police discovered a mosquito that appeared to have recently sucked blood.
03:54 They carefully collected the insect and sent it to a laboratory for analysis.
03:58 The test results revealed a match between the blood in the mosquito
04:02 and that of a man in the police register.
04:04 Although the suspect denied the allegations,
04:06 claiming to have only hitchhiked in the car, he was arrested by police.
04:10 Number 5. Steve Carter Solves His Own Disappearance.
04:14 What would you do if you found your picture on a missing person site?
04:18 For Steve Carter, that wasn't just a hypothetical.
04:20 In 2010, Carter, who was adopted as a child, embarked on a search for his roots.
04:26 This led him to a missing children's website,
04:28 where astonishingly, he found an age progression image of himself.
04:32 Carter contacted the police and took a DNA test,
04:35 which confirmed that he was Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes, who had been missing since 1977.
04:41 Barnes was taken by his birth mother and ultimately ended up in an orphanage in Hawaii.
04:46 "This is Steve Carter at 34 years old.
04:49 Their birthdays, one day apart.
04:51 Their birthplaces, identical."
04:53 The case probably would have remained unsolved if not for Carter's own curiosity,
04:57 which reunited him with his birth family after more than three decades.
05:01 "He introduced himself over the phone and I was absolutely, positively,
05:05 thunderstruck and amazed and we just sort of, in an hour conversation,
05:12 tried to catch up on 32 years."
05:14 Number 4. The Cold Case of Susan Schwartz.
05:17 For over 30 years, the 1979 shooting death of Susan Schwartz
05:21 at her Washington home puzzled detectives.
05:24 A major breakthrough came in 2011 when an inmate saw Schwartz's face
05:28 on a cold case card and called police with a tip.
05:30 The inmate recalled a man named Gregory Johnson confessing to the murder.
05:34 This tip led police to a witness who admitted to being present at the scene
05:38 when Johnson took Schwartz's life.
05:40 "The inmate's tip led police to the 57-year-old suspect."
05:44 She had been threatened to prevent her from coming forward with her testimony, apparently.
05:48 Schwartz was a friend to Johnson's wife and had helped her leave him
05:52 after repeated cases of domestic violence.
05:54 Johnson was arrested based on the witness's testimony
05:57 and dealt a 24-year prison sentence.
06:00 Number 3. The Kidnapping of Monica Judith Bonilla.
06:03 In 1983, Nyleen Marshall was abducted during a family picnic
06:07 at the Helena National Forest in Montana.
06:09 Her disappearance garnered significant attention
06:12 and was featured on the NBC series Unsolved Mysteries seven years later.
06:16 "Some of the children playing near Nyleen told her they remembered
06:20 seeing a strange man dressed in a jogging suit."
06:23 After the episode aired, authorities received a call from a viewer
06:26 who believed he had seen Marshall.
06:28 When the tip was investigated, police discovered that the girl was not Marshall.
06:32 Instead, she was Monica Judith Bonilla,
06:35 who had been kidnapped in 1982 by her non-custodial father.
06:39 "These phone calls were coming from the Madison, Wisconsin area,
06:42 as were letters that he was sending.
06:45 The FBI, to my understanding, had actually located the phone booth."
06:51 Bonilla's mother had spent about $20,000 searching for her, to no avail.
06:55 She was reunited with her daughter after eight long years.
06:59 Sadly, the mystery behind Nyleen Marshall's disappearance remains unsolved.
07:03 Number 2. The Disappearance of Don Sanchez
07:07 Sometimes criminal cases get so out of this world
07:10 that investigators have to call on NASA to help solve them.
07:13 Don Sanchez disappeared on August 30, 1991,
07:16 after leaving a motel in the car of her boyfriend, Bernardo Bass.
07:20 Despite a witness alleging that Bass had killed Sanchez in his car,
07:23 a lack of evidence led to the case being dismissed.
07:26 Nearly two decades later, police got information that Bass' car
07:30 was possibly buried in an abandoned lot.
07:32 Due to cost constraints, they turned to NASA for help.
07:35 Using an underground magnetic rover,
07:38 they were able to unearth vehicular parts that matched Bass' car
07:41 and found evidence that Sanchez's body had been there.
07:44 Bass ultimately pleaded no contest to manslaughter
07:47 and received a six-year prison sentence.
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08:03 Number 1. The Golden State Killer
08:08 Between 1974 and 1986, hundreds of lives were affected
08:13 by the actions of the Golden State Killer.
08:21 The then-unidentified individual was responsible for 13 murders,
08:25 as well as dozens of assaults and burglaries.
08:28 After 1986, however, the killer's reign of terror came to an end,
08:32 and the case grew cold.
08:34 It would take the persistent efforts of investigators
08:40 and crime writer Michelle McNamara to identify the culprit.
08:43 By 2018, DNA technology had advanced enough for police
08:47 to trace evidence from the crime scenes
08:49 to former police officer Joseph James D'Angelo.
08:52 D'Angelo had stopped killing and transitioned to normal life
08:55 as a truck mechanic before he was arrested in April 2018.
08:59 He was sent behind bars for the rest of his natural life.
09:02 "Really sorry. Everyone of her."
09:07 [Music]