Dive into the world of unsolved mysteries that have finally been cracked! From creepy urban legends to historical enigmas, we'll explore the most fascinating cases that stumped investigators for years before being dramatically resolved.
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00:00A 50-year-old mystery was recently solved when a group of intellectuals decoded a message from the Zodiac Killer.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most unsettling mysteries that were eventually solved.
00:14But in 1937, a new written account is found, and it's a bombshell.
00:22Number 50. Lindy Chamberlain Creighton.
00:25It's possible you've heard the phrase, a dingo ate my baby.
00:28I have lost my fiancé, poor baby.
00:35Maybe the dingo ate your baby.
00:40It's often used for humor, but unfortunately, the story is tragically genuine.
00:45In 1980, Lindy Chamberlain Creighton famously claimed that a dingo carried away her 9-week-old
00:51daughter, Azaria, while they were camping at Ayres Rock in Australia. No one believed her.
00:56Her story was widely mocked, resulting in the aforementioned jokes,
01:00and she was even convicted of murdering her daughter.
01:02What truly happened to young Azaria remained a mystery for six years, but in February 1986,
01:08the child's jacket was found buried near a dingo lair just outside Ayres Rock.
01:13Owing to the new evidence, Chamberlain Creighton was released from prison, and her life sentence was remitted.
01:19I think that the jury, like the rest of us, knew that she was guilty.
01:24Quite wrong, but that was the fact. We couldn't shake off that feeling.
01:32The statue of the Virgin Mary that appears to be crying tears inside a
01:36reading shop. Nine News reporter Janelle Walton was inside the shop. Janelle, what did you see?
01:41You've probably seen it on the news or in a movie. A religious statue is weeping,
01:45and usually, some kind of red liquid just to make it that much creepier.
01:49This phenomenon is often associated with miracles, as you know, a statue should not be crying.
01:55However, there are many non-religious reasons why a statue might be crying.
01:59In some cases, the water is nothing but condensation, and if the statue is made of
02:04porous materials, moisture can seep through and resemble tears. There also might be psychological
02:10perceptions at play, or just good old-fashioned tampering for the sake of fame and attention.
02:15Even the Catholic Church ignores weeping statues for the most part,
02:18and have called out a number of examples as hoaxes.
02:32But family members told ABC News overnight they are in a state of shock,
02:36and had no idea anyone was living in the home with him. Neighbors say Castro,
02:41a father of three, was a loner who occasionally parked his bus on the street,
02:46but usually kept to himself.
02:48Between 2002 and 2004, three young women disappeared from the streets of Cleveland.
02:53They were Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus. Their whereabouts remained
02:58unknown for approximately 10 years. It was one of the most tantalizing true crime cases
03:03in the city's history, with many people theorizing about their disappearance.
03:07Answers were finally provided on May 6th, 2013, when a man named Charles Ramsey heard
03:13cries for help coming from 2207 Seymour Avenue. He helped free Amanda Berry, and together,
03:19they called 911. When police arrived, they also found and rescued both Knight and DeJesus.
03:25The house belonged to a man named Ariel Castro, who had kidnapped the women and kept them
03:30imprisoned for a decade, subjecting them to horrific abuse.
03:43Sometimes from the most unlikely elements comes a tantalizing mystery,
03:48and confirmation that the truth is stranger than fiction. The mystery might start, say,
03:53with this broken-down footlocker. Who can guess what the old trunk might contain?
03:59Back in 1987, a man named John David Morris offered a shed to Newell Sessions,
04:04telling him that he could have it in exchange for moving it off his property.
04:08So Sessions took the shed to his home in Thermopolis, Wyoming,
04:11and there it sat for a number of years. In 1992, Sessions decided to open a trunk that
04:17had been sitting in the shed, and inside, he found a human skeleton.
04:22Authorities found that the mystery person had been murdered. It wasn't until 2017 that the
04:27bones were positively identified as belonging to Joseph Mulvaney,
04:31a World War II veteran who disappeared in 1963. Mulvaney was Morris' stepfather.
04:42On September 15, 2010, police found 55-year-old Greg Flanagan dead in his Beaumont hotel room.
05:11There was no sign of forced entry, and Flanagan's large stack of cash was undisturbed,
05:16which ruled out foul play. Yet when Flanagan was taken to the medical examiner,
05:20they found severe internal damage caused by blunt force trauma.
05:24So how did Flanagan die and who attacked him? The answer is almost ludicrous.
05:30Investigators found a tiny hole in the wall of Flanagan's room, and from there, the story
05:35unraveled. A man named Lance Mueller was staying in the adjacent room and was handling his small
05:39handgun when it accidentally discharged, sending the bullet through the wall and into Flanagan's
05:44chest. It was a terrible accident, and Mueller was given 10 years in prison for manslaughter.
05:50When they saw the body being taken out of the room,
05:54there was ever any doubt at that point, did I hurt somebody? To still not have the moral capacity
06:03to come forward, that's scary to me that people walk around like that.
06:11In your gut, what do you think happened?
06:15I have absolutely no clue.
06:17Back in February of 2010, the McStay family was officially declared missing.
06:22They were not in contact with any family members, and when Joseph McStay's brother climbed into
06:27their Fallbrook house, he found it empty. There was no sign of foul play, and the family's dogs
06:32were still alive in the backyard. Three long years elapsed with no further word until November 11,
06:382013, when a motorcyclist found the buried remains of the McStay family in the Mojave Desert.
06:44It was just one mystery after another. That is, until the arrest of one Charles Merritt.
06:49Merritt was a business associate of Joseph McStay, and investigators found that he murdered
06:54Joseph and his family in order to steal money from his business account. Now he sees a very
07:00different Chase Merritt. To me, it looked like a broken man. He knew he was done.
07:0644. The Flannan Isles Lighthouse
07:20Everyone loves a creepy lighthouse story, and the Flannan Isles disappearance has to be one of the
07:25best. In December of 1900, a passing ship noticed that the light on Flannan Isles was out and went
07:31to investigate. None of the lighthouse keepers was present, and their living quarters were orderly.
07:37Everything was in place, and there was even an uneaten meal on the table. There was also a
07:42considerable amount of destruction on the west landing, including a broken box of equipment and
07:46bent iron railings. It's certainly a creepy sight, but with a rather mundane explanation. It's now
07:53widely believed that the men ran out to secure their equipment in a storm and were washed away
07:57by a destructive rogue wave.
08:0743. The Bermuda Triangle
08:18Everyone knows of the mythical Bermuda Triangle. Found between Bermuda,
08:21Puerto Rico and the Florida coast, the triangle is said to be a hotspot of paranormal activity,
08:27prone to swallowing ships and planes and leaving their fates unknown.
08:30It's one of the most enduring mysteries of American pop culture. Only, there isn't really
08:35a mystery, and this has been known since at least the mid-70s. That's when Larry Kush published
08:40The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved, and posited that the triangle does not have a higher incident
08:46rate than any other part of the ocean. Furthermore, many of the original stories were either highly
08:51exaggerated or just outright made up. It's just a fun story and nothing more.
08:5742. Lady of the Dunes
09:08We are standing here today to announce that after nearly a half-century of investigative efforts,
09:15we have identified the oldest unidentified homicide victim in Massachusetts,
09:21known as the Lady of the Dunes.
09:23On July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl stumbled upon a decomposing body in the sand dunes of
09:29Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The body showed severe damage, indicating that
09:35the woman had been brutally murdered. Despite an extensive investigation, the police were
09:40unable to identify the woman, and she became known as the Lady of the Dunes.
09:44And that's how she stayed for nearly 50 years, until 2022, when an FBI field office in Boston
09:51announced a positive development. DNA had been taken from the woman's remains, and they matched
09:56one Ruth Marie Terry. Police now believe that Terry was murdered by her husband Guy Muldaven,
10:01who died in 2002 and escaped justice for Terry's death.
10:05I can't wait to get down to her grave in Provincetown myself and just, I don't know
10:10what'll happen. I'll probably cry, and I'll just probably say, Ruth, we know who you are. It
10:16happened. 41. BTK
10:20And it shows here that was last saved by Dennis. So somehow a Dennis,
10:25who was affiliated with the church or the library, was somehow involved with this document.
10:30Some serial killers are brought down thanks to clever police work,
10:34and some are brought down through sheer hubris. BTK terrorized the greater Wichita area between
10:391974 and 1991, murdering at least 10 individuals and taunting the police with threatening letters.
10:46Despite their best efforts, police were unable to identify BTK,
10:50and the case remained a mystery for decades. But in 2004, BTK once again started corresponding
10:57with the media and police, taunting them with decades-old murder cases.
11:01He ultimately sent a floppy disk to the Wichita station KSAS-TV,
11:05and police used metadata from the disk to trace its sender.
11:08And with this, Dennis Rader was caught and identified as BTK.
11:13He was arrested in 2005, 31 years after murdering his first victim.
11:18On the table before them, the computer disk traced back to Rader.
11:22Anyway, you can get out the DNA, right?
11:25You can't get out your DNA unless you've had a total blood transfer and lost it everywhere.
11:30It's there.
11:31He knew the DNA was... he had studied enough that he knew that that was gonna be it.
11:38Number 40. The Surgeon's Photograph.
11:49It's one of the most famous photographs in cryptozoology.
11:52A massive dinosaur-like head emerging from Scotland's Loch Ness.
11:56The photo has entranced the public ever since its publication in 1934,
12:00with many believing it to be verifiable proof of the elusive Loch Ness monster.
12:05But even for those who didn't believe in the mythical monster,
12:07a lingering question still remained.
12:10What exactly was this?
12:12It wasn't until the 1990s that we got firm answers.
12:15In 1991, a man named Christian Sperling admitted that the photo was a hoax,
12:20having built the monster using a toy submarine and wood putty.
12:24He then conspired with a number of others in order to fool the Daily Mail
12:27into publishing a bogus story, which it famously did.
12:31So using plastic, wood, and a toy submarine,
12:34they create this model of a creature with a long neck and a small head.
12:38Number 39. The Solway Firth Spaceman.
12:49Chances are that you've seen this photo on your many adventures around the internet.
12:53A little girl looks into the camera,
12:55while behind her head emerges a creepy figure that looks like an astronaut.
12:59The photographer, Jim Templeton, claims that no one but him,
13:03his daughter, and his wife were in the immediate vicinity.
13:06Did you pick up on that clue?
13:07Yep, this supposed spaceman is just Templeton's wife.
13:11It's likely that Templeton didn't see her through the viewfinder,
13:14as that make of camera obscured about 30% of the image.
13:17Her pale blue dress was then overexposed, appearing as white in the photograph.
13:22Add her dark bobbed hair,
13:24and you have a figure that looks suspiciously like an astronaut.
13:29Number 38. Charlie No-Face.
13:41A legend spread around the Pittsburgh area throughout the 1970s and 80s,
13:45with people telling of a man without a face who wandered the streets at night.
13:49This man was Charlie No-Face.
13:51For many, this was nothing but a mystery,
13:54a creepy urban legend meant to scare those braving the nighttime dark.
13:58Unfortunately, and to the surprise of many locals, the story was real.
14:02Charlie No-Face was actually a man named Raymond Robinson,
14:06who was tragically disfigured in a childhood accident.
14:09Unwilling to be seen in public,
14:10he would spend his days at home before going for walks at night.
14:14Some would see him on his walks and spread the story,
14:16resulting in an urban legend rooted in truth.
14:20Number 37. The Dog Bridge.
14:28Many people have heard of the famous Dog Bridge in Scotland,
14:35off of which dozens of pups have supposedly jumped to their deaths.
14:39The stories claim that dogs will act normally until they get on the bridge,
14:43whereupon they fly into a frenzy and launch themselves
14:46off the structure to the rocky gorge below.
14:48Many people believe that the bridge is cursed,
14:51and that some kind of supernatural phenomenon is behind it.
14:54Alas, there is a real explanation.
14:57A number of professional investigations have found
14:59that the dogs are drawn to the scent of mammals,
15:01either in the gorge below or nesting in the side of the structure.
15:05They get excited, hop up to investigate,
15:07and topple off the tapered wall of the bridge.
15:10They've no concept of what's on the other side.
15:12They can't see the drop.
15:15So basically, they're going from level ground to a 60-foot drop.
15:21And it's only when they get to the other side
15:23that they realize what's happened to them.
15:25Number 36. The Lake Nyos Disaster.
15:28Lake Nyos looks as stunning as ever.
15:31It's hard to imagine that this breathtaking landscape
15:34could cause so many deaths.
15:36Yet it did, 30 years ago.
15:38Something very weird happened at Cameroon's Lake Nyos on August 21st, 1986.
15:44It suddenly erupted,
15:45sending an enormous cloud shooting into the air at 60 miles per hour.
15:49The water in the lake turned red while the cloud fell to the ground,
15:53suffocating nearby villages and killing 1,746 people.
15:58The event seems almost biblical.
16:00What actually happened was the very rare Limnic eruption,
16:04which is when a huge amount of carbon dioxide
16:06explodes from the bottom of a deep lake.
16:08The deep iron-rich water rose to the surface and was oxidized,
16:12turning it red,
16:12and the cloud of expelled carbon dioxide fell to the ground
16:15as CO2 is heavier than oxygen.
16:18Unfortunately, it suffocated many who lay in its path.
16:21It was at night. I was asleep with my children.
16:24I heard an explosion but didn't make much of it.
16:27When I woke up the next morning,
16:28I discovered some of my children were dead.
16:31Those who were still alive would cough out some powdery substance.
16:34I was also affected.
16:3635. The Windsor Hum
16:49There are a weird number of hums heard throughout the world,
16:52each described as a persistent and irritating whine.
16:55One of the most notable examples was found in Windsor, Ontario.
16:59The sound was described by many as a low, droning vibration,
17:02and it was loud enough that one evening in 2012,
17:05over 20,000 people reported it to the local police.
17:09Alas, the mystery was finally solved in 2020,
17:12and thousands of annoyed residents could finally rest easy.
17:15Literally, the sound was sourced to nearby Zug Island,
17:18a heavily industrialized area just off Detroit,
17:21and specifically the blast furnaces operated by U.S. Steel.
17:25When these furnaces were deactivated in April of that year,
17:28the sound ceased and peace was restored.
17:31To hear the folks at United States Steel tell it,
17:33this is not permanent.
17:35No mothballs, no shuttering of a plant,
17:38they're calling it an indefinite idling as they try and make their operation more efficient.
17:4234. Crockerland
17:57The 19th and 20th centuries were filled with brilliant adventures into the Earth's poles,
18:02but you probably haven't heard of the Crockerland Expedition.
18:05American explorer and Navy officer Robert E. Peary described an enormous,
18:09mountainous land that he could see from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.
18:13He named it Crockerland after his financial backer George Crocker,
18:17and an expedition set out to find and map it.
18:19Yet they found no such island, despite its supposedly immense size.
18:24It simply didn't exist.
18:26What a tantalizing mystery.
18:28No, seriously, it didn't exist.
18:30As we later learned through his personal diary,
18:32Peary made the whole thing up, probably to secure more funding from an excited Crocker.
18:4533. J.C. Dugard
18:47And they have lived with the questions, the rumors that have swirled ever since.
18:56On June 10th, 1991, 11-year-old J.C. Dugard was kidnapped in Myers, California,
19:01while walking to school.
19:03Numerous people witnessed the abduction, but the trail quickly went cold,
19:07and what ultimately happened to the abducted girl
19:09remained a painful question for many in the community.
19:12But an answer was finally provided in August 2009,
19:15when a man named Philip Garrido brought his daughters
19:18to the University of California, Berkeley.
19:20The odd behavior of the girls attracted attention,
19:23and Garrido was ordered to take them to a parole officer.
19:26He brought with him the girl's mother, who called herself Alyssa.
19:30Investigators were quickly able to deduce that Alyssa was actually a grown J.C. Dugard,
19:35who, through continuous acts of abuse, had given birth to the two girls.
19:4532. The Salish Sea Discoveries
19:50It is becoming all too common in B.C.
19:53Another foot has washed up on shore, this time in Richmond,
19:57and it looks like a woman's left foot in a New Balance running shoe.
20:01The western coast of North America is the site
20:03of one of the most gruesome mysteries in modern history.
20:06Beginning in the summer of 2007, a number of human feet,
20:10often still inside their shoes, have washed ashore in British Columbia, Tacoma, and Seattle.
20:15A number of macabre theories have been put forth,
20:17including the possibility of a serial killer.
20:20But the reality is far more mundane.
20:23People die at sea, often in tragic boating accidents,
20:26and their bodies decompose in the water.
20:28As this happens, the extremities, like hands and feet, break away from the body.
20:33And because the feet are trapped inside the shoes,
20:36they are mostly saved from decomposition and buoyed,
20:39allowing them to float to shore in the currents.
20:41Shoes and feet washing up.
20:43There's been a dozen of them or so, and you hear about them over the years,
20:46and it's just kind of a unique local phenomenon.
20:49Number 31, Roswell.
20:52After his report becomes publicized, it inspires other people to report
20:58that they have also seen bizarre phenomena in the skies,
21:02and we are in the midst of flying saucer fever.
21:05Behold, a historic event that gave rise to a phenomenon.
21:09The UFO craze started in the summer of 1947,
21:12when something crashed in the New Mexico desert.
21:15The military's response raised a few eyebrows,
21:17especially when they changed their explanation
21:19from a flying disc to a weather balloon.
21:22It wasn't until 1980 that the UFO conspiracy truly took hold
21:26thanks to the seminal book, The Roswell Incident.
21:28But the mystery was answered in 1994,
21:31when the U.S. Air Force published a report
21:33claiming that the debris was from a top-secret military balloon
21:36designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests.
21:39The report admits they didn't want this information released,
21:42so they made up the cover story about the weather balloon.
21:45Of course, some people still aren't convinced.
21:47And when you put all that stuff together and spin it,
21:50you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences
21:53in Roswell during that era.
21:55Number 30, The Long Island Serial Killer.
21:58It was one of the most absorbing mysteries of the early 21st century.
22:01Who killed all those women in New York?
22:04The Long Island Serial Killer murdered at least 11 victims
22:07since the early 1990s and disposed of most of their bodies
22:10throughout the Gilgo Beach area.
22:12Four of them now officially listed as victims of this serial killer
22:17that's been dubbed the Long Island Ripper.
22:20The killings remained a mystery until the summer of 2023,
22:23when a 59-year-old architect named Rex Andrew Heuermann
22:27was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
22:30This is the man police have taken into custody.
22:33DNA has officially linked Heuermann to many of the victims.
22:36As of June 2024, he's been charged with six of the murders
22:40and is currently pleading not guilty.
22:42His court-appointed attorney entering a not guilty plea on his behalf.
22:47Number 29, The Burial Place of Richard III.
22:50Mysterious deaths will always be intriguing and a little creepy,
22:54especially when they involve someone as famous as Richard III.
22:57The King of England was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485,
23:01making him the final English king to die in battle.
23:05Conducted with conspicuous bravery,
23:08Richard became the last king of England to die on the battlefield.
23:13And then we just sort of forgot where he was.
23:15Oops.
23:16Richard's body was buried in the Greyfriars Church in Leicester,
23:19but the tomb was lost and erased from history
23:21when the church was demolished in 1536.
23:24Time passed on, a king was lost,
23:26and the old church grounds were turned into a parking lot.
23:29But it was in this parking lot that Richard was finally found in 2012,
23:34476 years after his tomb was turned to rubble.
23:38Number 28, The Case of Margie Jelovec.
23:41While working at her mother's Indiana tavern,
23:43Margie Jelovec met a biker named Randy Yeager,
23:46who rode with a gang called the Outlaws.
23:48What's your name? I haven't seen you here before.
23:50My name's Margie.
23:51Margie, how do you do?
23:53My name's Randy.
23:54The gang was reportedly incredibly violent
23:56and under numerous investigations for the likes of racketeering,
23:59robberies, and even various bombings and murders.
24:02Jelovec devoted herself to and defended Yeager,
24:05becoming paranoid that the police were after them.
24:07In September of 1997, she up and vanished.
24:11Wherever she is gone, she has not traveled there in her car.
24:16Her family is as perplexed as they are worried.
24:19Her asthma inhaler was left behind,
24:21suggesting that she had been taken against her will.
24:24But that was not the case.
24:25It wasn't until October of 2014
24:28that Jelovec and Yeager were found living together in Mexico.
24:31Unfortunately, Jelovec was killed while driving away from the police.
24:35Yeager was caught and given a 15-year prison sentence.
24:38Yeager has been on the run since 1997.
24:42Number 27.
24:43The Disappearance of Stardust
24:45Airplanes simply up and disappearing will always be a disturbing subject.
24:49A famous case occurred on August 2, 1947,
24:52when a plane named Stardust vanished while flying from Argentina to Chile.
24:56Then, the plane sent one final mysterious Morse code message.
25:01Stendek.
25:01The plane never arrived at the airport,
25:04and a search-and-rescue operation ended in failure
25:06when they couldn't locate the aircraft.
25:08It was simply gone.
25:10After that, nothing more was heard from the plane.
25:13And it would remain missing for over five decades.
25:16After years of conspiracy theories,
25:19the wreck of Stardust was found by two mountaineers
25:21in Mount Tupungato in the late 90s.
25:23Further study seemed to show that the pilots likely became mistaken about their location,
25:27having encountered a jet stream
25:29and accidentally flew into the cloud-obscured mountain.
25:32The crash then started an avalanche,
25:34which buried the plane and prevented rescuers from finding it.
25:38After the devastating crash,
25:40Stardust was buried within seconds.
25:42Number 26.
25:44Young Monica Bonilla
25:45The marriage of Guillermo and Rosemary Bonilla
25:47began to collapse after the murder of John Lennon in 1980.
25:51Not long after,
25:52Guillermo Bonilla began dressing and acting like Lennon,
25:54telling Rosemary that he was the reincarnated musician.
25:57On September 22nd, 1982,
26:00Rosemary finished work and came home to find nothing in it anymore,
26:03including furniture,
26:04belongings,
26:05Guillermo,
26:06and their young daughter Monica.
26:07Years later,
26:08an episode of Unsolved Mysteries told of the disappearance of one Nyleen Marshall.
26:12For over seven years,
26:13Nyleen's family has been trapped by the agony of not knowing what happened to her.
26:18A school official in Vancouver contacted the producers,
26:21claiming that a student named Mary Ann Kelly may be the missing Marshall.
26:24The FBI investigated Kelly and discovered that she was not Nyleen Marshall,
26:28but the also-missing Monica Bonilla instead.
26:31She was safely returned to her mother,
26:33who called the bizarre coincidence God's will.
26:36Number 25.
26:37The Mary Celeste
26:39It's probably the most famous ghost ship in North American history.
26:42On December 4th, 1872,
26:44the Mary Celeste was found floating and abandoned off Western Europe.
26:48The boat was in fair condition,
26:50while both its cargo and the crew's belongings were mostly accounted for.
26:53Ten persons,
26:54the captain,
26:55his family,
26:56and crew,
26:57had vanished without trace.
26:59While we're still not 100% sure what happened,
27:02many commentators believe that something very, very worrying had to have occurred.
27:06The men found working charts,
27:08but not the ship's papers,
27:10nor her navigational instruments or maps.
27:13The explosive theory is one of the most popularly accepted ones,
27:16carrying over 1,700 barrels of alcohol.
27:19It's likely that the barrels started seeping,
27:21causing either an intense smell of gas
27:23or a small pressure wave explosion that would have left behind no scorching or soot.
27:28Either way,
27:29it's likely that the captain ordered the crew into the yawl
27:32and, in a panic,
27:33failed to secure it to the boat.
27:35The ship then drifted away,
27:36leaving the men to die on the open ocean.
27:40Now with the help of an international team of experts,
27:43the true story of the Mary Celeste can finally be told.
27:46Number 24.
27:48The Freeman Arson
27:49At 5.30 a.m. on the morning of December 30th, 1999,
27:53police were notified of a fire at the house of Danny and Kathy Freeman.
27:57It's a cold, dark morning
27:59when the Volunteer Fire Department is called to extinguish a devastating trailer fire.
28:04Inside, they found the corpses of Kathy and Danny,
28:06both of whom had been shot.
28:08Missing was the Freemans' teenage daughter, Ashley,
28:10and Ashley's friend, Laura Bible,
28:12who was sleeping over that night.
28:14The crime wasn't solved for nearly 20 years.
28:17The girls literally fell off the face of the earth.
28:20There is no clothes, no phone calls, nothing.
28:25In April of 2018,
28:2766-year-old Ronnie Busick was arrested and charged with four counts of murder,
28:31including those of Bible and Ashley Freeman.
28:33It's believed that Busick and two others,
28:36Warren Welch and David Pennington, both dead,
28:38killed the Freemans, torched their house, and kidnapped the teens.
28:42Busick pled guilty and served just 38 months of his 10-year sentence
28:46thanks to, quote,
28:47good behavior.
28:48He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and Friday morning was released.
28:53A Zodiac Cipher is Finally Cracked
28:56The story of the Zodiac Killer continues to intrigue
28:59owing to his elusive nature and the bizarre ciphers he produced.
29:02The Zodiac made four of these cryptograms,
29:04and before 2020, only one had been solved.
29:08The first was quickly cracked back in 1969,
29:11but for the next several decades,
29:13the remaining three continued to stump even the most professional codebreakers.
29:17That is, until December 2020,
29:19when another cipher was solved by private citizens.
29:22Dubbed Z340, the puzzle was originally sent on November 8th, 1969,
29:27and references the Zodiac's welcoming of death.
29:30It reads in part,
29:32I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me.
29:35He claims that his new life will be an easy one in paradise,
29:39and that he is not afraid of the gas chamber
29:41because it will send him to paradise all the sooner.
29:44There are still two remaining ciphers from Zodiac that have yet to be decoded.
29:49The Lost Roanoke Colony
29:51One of America's biggest mysteries is also one of its simplest.
29:54A number of colonists settled in what's now North Carolina in 1585.
29:59This was known as the Roanoke Colony.
30:01Explorer John White left the colony in 1587,
30:04meaning to get more supplies in England.
30:07White soon sailed back to England for much needed supplies,
30:10but when he returned, he found the settlement eerily abandoned.
30:14When he finally returned in 1590, having been delayed by war,
30:18the colony was gone,
30:19the only clue being the word Croatoan carved into the palisade.
30:23White deduced, likely correctly,
30:25that the colonists left for nearby Croatoan Island.
30:28While we don't know for sure,
30:30there is tons of circumstantial evidence showing that it's most likely
30:33the colonists moved out and assimilated with the local tribes,
30:36having lost hope of White's return.
30:38They eventually make it to safety after a 500-mile journey to Georgia.
30:46Indeed, the present-day Hatteras tribe considers themselves
30:49descendants of the lost Europeans.
30:51Perhaps the colonists survived,
30:53and together with the Croatoan tribe,
30:55went on to thrive in their adoptive land.
30:59Dyatlov Pass
31:00Avalanches seem to account for many mysteries.
31:03The 1959 Dyatlov Pass one has long been a famous one,
31:07with nine hikers fleeing the safety of their tent in the dead of night
31:10and dying under puzzling conditions.
31:12Their deaths were initially attributed to a, quote,
31:15compelling natural force,
31:17and questions abounded for many decades.
31:20And in the end, investigators are left with no explanation as to what happened.
31:25But advancements in technology led to a sound answer in 2020, avalanche.
31:29It's likely the hikers heard the rumblings of an imminent avalanche
31:33and fled the tent in a panic.
31:34Further study suggests some got hit by a slab avalanche,
31:38hence their devastating physical injuries,
31:40and the rest got lost in the dark and passed on through hypothermia.
31:44This answer has been supported by numerous independent bodies,
31:47all of whom agree that it's the most likely scenario.
31:50Being in this location really brought home to me
31:53just how terrifying it was for them.
31:56The Fate of the Franklin Expedition
31:58I will not lose another man.
32:00Francis may lose all our men.
32:03For centuries, explorers sought out a northwest passage
32:07between the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic Ocean,
32:09but their expeditions often ended in disaster.
32:12It's the ice, Georgie.
32:15It's only the ice.
32:16One of the most famous was British Royal Navy officer John Franklin's in 1845.
32:21His expedition's ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, never returned.
32:26Search parties recovered only artifacts and human remains.
32:29With the passing of time, however,
32:31we've pieced together the full story.
32:33The ships got trapped in pack ice,
32:35and the crew died from starvation, hypothermia, and disease.
32:39The sunken Erebus and Terror were finally found in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
32:46Pierre April
32:48Some lumps of things come back that are not especially pleasant.
32:56Imagine waking up in a ditch with only $17 in your pocket
32:59and no idea who you are or where you came from.
33:03That's what happened to amnesiac Pierre April in May 1992.
33:07April was found wandering the streets of San Diego and taken to a shelter.
33:11Pieces of his life started coming back to him, including faces and talents,
33:15but nothing came of his attempts to connect to his past life.
33:18In September, his case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
33:22I was so sure this city would bring everything back, and it did not.
33:25This episode was seen by an old colleague of April's named Carol.
33:29She phoned the show's tip line and told them all they needed to know.
33:32April was happily reunited with his family, and his memory has since recovered.
33:37It is strange to be told who you are and what you did.
33:42I'm someone again.
33:44Number 18. Umbrella Man
33:53The assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 prompted countless conspiracy theories.
33:59Some of the more interesting ones were about a figure spotted in photos and films of the event,
34:03who had been brandishing an umbrella despite the sunny weather.
34:06In all of Dallas, there appears to be exactly one person standing under an open black umbrella.
34:16Could he have been complicit in the assassination?
34:19He remained a mystery for 15 years until 1978, when Louis Stephen Witt came forth.
34:25Witt identified himself as the Umbrella Man,
34:28and said that the umbrella was meant as a symbolic protest against Kennedy.
34:32An umbrella had been the trademark accessory of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,
34:36infamous for initially appeasing the Nazi party.
34:39It was a reference to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.
34:43And with that, one of the world's most tantalizing mysteries fizzled out with a disappointing answer.
34:49Oh, I see.
34:50Then everything is wrapped up in a neat little package.
34:53Really, I mean that.
34:54Number 17, the Paulding Light of Michigan.
34:58Speaking of horribly disappointing answers, let's discuss the Paulding Light.
35:02We came out here because somebody had heard about it.
35:07We've been sitting around in a night and some local people that we knew had heard about this.
35:12Paulding is a small community in western Michigan that houses a famous piece of folklore.
35:16One popular legend says that the light is produced by the wayward spirit of a train conductor
35:22killed when his locomotive derailed.
35:24Just outside of town, onlookers can spot a bright light flashing on and off at the end of a valley.
35:30The people of Paulding have many supernatural explanations for this light, including ghosts.
35:35One particularly creepy story claims that it's a grandparent looking
35:39for their lost grandchild with a flickering lantern.
35:41But the truth is far more boring.
35:44Turns out it's actually just headlights from a nearby highway.
35:48So yeah, bummer.
35:49Had people standing here having the pictures of the vehicles on the screen of the computer
35:54and it's like, well, that's it and they still won't believe it.
35:58Number 16, the Somerton Man.
36:00One of Australia's enduring mysteries may have been finally solved in the summer of 2022.
36:06On December 1st, 1948, a body was found in Adelaide Somerton Park.
36:11He was wearing American clothes embroidered with the name Keene.
36:15Inside his pocket was a scrap of paper reading Tamam Shud, Persian for is finished.
36:20The book that this paper was torn from was eventually located
36:24and investigators found cryptic text written on the cover.
36:26We looked for people with no date of death on that tree and there was one that stood out.
36:34In July 2022, DNA helped identify the man as Carl Webb.
36:39It's also now believed that the cryptic text found in the book were the names of horses,
36:43as Webb often gambled on horse racing.
36:46And finally, the clothes were likely passed down from his nephew,
36:50who once lived in the United States.
36:52Number 15, the Bloop.
36:54Many people have a fear of the deep ocean and it's because of things like this.
37:00The Bloop was a very loud underwater noise captured in 1997
37:04by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
37:08It was so loud that it was detected by sensors over 3,000 miles away.
37:13It doesn't sound like much at normal speed,
37:15but it takes on its signature Bloop noise when sped up.
37:26Believers in Cthulhu immediately went to giant underwater monster,
37:30but once again, the truth is more mundane.
37:33It wasn't a massive creature,
37:36but an ice quake as a result of glacial movements.
37:39Man, science can't let us have any fun.
37:41Number 14, Anastasia's fate.
37:49On July 17th, 1918, far-left revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks,
37:53murdered the Russian imperial Romanov family.
37:56In the aftermath, rumors circulated that Grand Duchess Anastasia,
38:00who was 17, had somehow escaped and survived.
38:03Her body could not be located,
38:05and several people came forward claiming to be the lost Anastasia.
38:09However, these stories turned out to be outright lies
38:12or the result of mental health issues,
38:14as was the case with famous imposter Anna Anderson.
38:17The long-standing rumor was officially put to rest
38:20when the remains of the royal family were identified with DNA.
38:23Grand Duchess Anastasia was among them,
38:26proving that she died with the rest of the Romanovs.
38:29Number 13, Lady Be Good.
38:32The World War II bomber Lady Be Good
38:34was used to conduct a raid on Naples on April 4th, 1943.
38:38However, it disappeared on its way back to Libya,
38:41and both the plane and its crew were considered lost.
38:44No one knew what happened, and the plane was not recovered.
38:48That is, until 1958,
38:50when the crashed aircraft was spotted in the Libyan desert.
38:53This raised even more questions,
38:55as the plane was remarkably preserved and showed no signs of the crew.
39:02I don't understand!
39:05Where's the crew? Hey!
39:07All the questions were subsequently answered after an investigation.
39:10The pilots had gotten lost in a sandstorm
39:13and ejected from the craft when it ran out of fuel.
39:16The plane crashed, and the men died while walking through the desert.
39:20Number 12, Sailing Stones.
39:22It's one of the most bizarre sights that can be seen in nature.
39:26A lone rock stands in the middle of the desert.
39:29A massive trail snakes behind it,
39:31as if it's been pushed across the ground.
39:33However, no footsteps and no signs of animal activity can be found.
39:38These stones are especially notable in the racetrack playa
39:41of California's Death Valley.
39:43You know, all these funny parallel trails
39:45that are clearly there's some sort of common force involved.
39:49So just what the heck is going on with these rocks?
39:52The phenomenon has tantalized researchers for decades,
39:55but the mystery has only recently been cracked.
39:58The valley floor produces a very thin layer of ice,
40:01and the rocks slide across these sheets when the ice starts to melt.
40:05The movement leaves indentations in the ground,
40:08resulting in their signature trails.
40:10Number 11, The Death of Junlin.
40:12His mother still worried about him living in a big foreign city.
40:16So he'd walk the streets with his cell phone and stream images back to her.
40:21His message to her in their daily conversations was always the same.
40:25Don't worry, he told her, I'm safe.
40:28One of the most notorious videos in the history of the internet
40:31was uploaded on May 25th, 2012.
40:34Titled One Lunatic, One Ice Pick,
40:36it depicts an Asian male getting killed and dismembered by an unidentified figure.
40:41So you could see that clearly the murder happened on the bed.
40:48Various body parts were then sent to schools and federal offices across Canada,
40:52and these remains were linked to the man who was killed in the video.
40:55The case made international headlines and remained a mystery for several days.
41:00But investigators quickly traced the grisly homicide to a man named Luca Magnotta,
41:05who had already fled the country.
41:07An international manhunt ensued,
41:09and Magnotta was finally captured in Berlin on June 4th,
41:13about a week and a half after uploading the infamous video.
41:23The law will eventually face Canada's justice system.
41:25He's expected to go before a judge tomorrow.
41:30Was there once an advanced civilization on Mars?
41:34Some of the features on the planet's surface definitely make you wonder.
41:39This is one of the most popular space images of all time.
41:42Taken by the Viking orbiters back in the mid-70s,
41:45the picture depicts the Cydonia region of Mars.
41:48People immediately noticed that one of the features
41:50bore a striking resemblance to a human face,
41:53or maybe one of those old-school hockey masks.
42:08Speculation immediately flew to aliens
42:10or some kind of human habitation on the supposedly barren planet.
42:13But nah, the answer is much more boring.
42:16Turns out this was just an optical illusion.
42:18The result of lighting, angle and a low-resolution picture.
42:22More recent and much better photos have been taken of the same location,
42:26and they reveal nothing but a boring hill with face-like characteristics.
42:34The Giza Pyramids are arguably the most famous landmarks in the world.
42:38They continue to stand tall literally after thousands of years.
42:42Their construction has baffled people for millennia,
42:45leading some to suggest that aliens must have been involved.
42:48After all, humans couldn't possibly drag and lift those stones into place, right?
42:53Well, yes they could.
42:54Researchers believe that workers loaded the blocks onto sledges
42:57and wet the sand to make them easier to drag.
43:00They raised the blocks using ramps and levering techniques.
43:03This took tens of thousands of people decades to complete.
43:07But hey, no one said building a wonder of the world was easy.
43:13In the early morning of June 30th, 1908,
43:17a remote area of Russia was hit with a massive and mysterious blast.
43:21In one hour, the explosion and the great fire that followed
43:24destroy a region of forest the size of Greater London.
43:28People who observed that thought the end of the world had come,
43:32Judgment Day, divine intervention.
43:34This blast completely leveled over 800 square miles of forest
43:38and flattened 80 million trees.
43:41No source could be found for the explosion,
43:43so no one knew what exactly happened.
43:46It's an event and it's a mystery that would take 105 years of research
43:50before we could finally write the words, the end.
43:54Thousands of scientific papers have been written about the incident
43:57and the area has been studied for decades,
43:59with many trying to crack the bizarre case.
44:02It is now generally agreed that a 200-foot meteor
44:06traveling 60,000 miles per hour exploded in midair over the area,
44:10resulting in what's called a meteor airburst.
44:13This airburst then leveled everything below the meteor's detonation site.
44:17If it was a meteorite and the Earth had turned a bit further,
44:21it would have destroyed St. Petersburg.
44:23An hour later, it would have destroyed Helsinki.
44:26One hour later, Stockholm, and after that, Oslo.
44:32Patricia Stallings brought her sick baby Ryan to the hospital.
44:35The doctors found what they thought was ethylene glycol in the baby's blood,
44:39leading them to conclude that he had been poisoned.
44:42He recovered, but Patricia was suspected of the poisoning,
44:45and Ryan was sent to live elsewhere.
44:47And I was just, I was devastated, I was blown away.
44:52I just could not believe that they could even think,
44:54I mean, Ryan was my world.
44:56Following a future visit, Ryan fell sick again and died.
45:00Patricia was again blamed for poisoning Ryan and charged with homicide.
45:04His mother, Patty, was now charged with first-degree murder
45:06and held without bail.
45:08She was not allowed to attend Ryan's funeral.
45:11She later gave birth to another son, and he exhibited the same symptoms.
45:15It was later found that both children suffered from a disorder
45:18called methylmalonic acidemia.
45:21An acidic byproduct of the disorder can be mistaken for ethylene glycol.
45:25It would be very simple to confuse the diagnosis of MMA
45:29with multiple poisonings because the symptoms are very similar.
45:33Patricia was released from prison
45:35and successfully sued the lab that tested Ryan's blood.
45:39Number 6. Stonehenge
45:41The awe-inspiring stone circle is an enduring mystery,
45:48despite centuries of intense scrutiny.
45:51One of humanity's greatest marvels,
45:53Stonehenge has been standing for thousands of years.
45:56The widely accepted theory is that the Stonehenge landscape
46:00was a large cemetery, a place to bury and worship the dead.
46:05But where exactly did the giant stones come from?
46:08They're all pretty much symmetrical.
46:1013 feet high, 7 feet across, and each weighing 25 tons.
46:15Experts have been trying to crack the case for hundreds of years.
46:18Some will have you believe that it was aliens, but no.
46:21It was really just the nearby woods.
46:24In 2019, researchers were able to do tests
46:27on a small area of extracted stone
46:29and sourced it to the nearby Westwoods in Wiltshire.
46:32The location has finally been pinned down,
46:35but one tantalizing question remains.
46:38How did they drag these 25-ton boulders 15 miles to the south?
46:53Number 5. The Centennial Olympic Park Criminal
47:03On July 27, 1996, Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park
47:08was bombed during the Summer Olympic Games.
47:11The blast injured hundreds, but thanks to the heroic efforts
47:14of security guard Richard Jewell,
47:16direct deaths were limited to two people.
47:28Jewell himself was initially pegged as the culprit,
47:31but he was eventually cleared
47:33and the case remained a mystery for several years.
47:35The FBI was eventually led to a man named Eric Rudolph,
47:38who had committed various other bombings across the American South.
47:42Rudolph was finally arrested in 2003 and pleaded guilty to all charges.
47:47He was given four life sentences
47:49and is currently held in a Supermax prison in Colorado.
48:02Number 4. The Disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi
48:18The case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
48:20was all over the news in the fall of 2018.
48:23On October 2nd of that year,
48:25Khashoggi went missing while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
48:29At the time, Khashoggi was living in exile
48:32as he was penning scathing articles that criticized the Saudi Arabian rulers.
48:42While his fate remained a mystery for weeks,
48:45most people had a good idea what happened.
48:47Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate.
48:50It was eventually revealed that Khashoggi did indeed die inside the building.
48:53And on October 25th, Saudi Arabia's attorney general
48:57admitted that it was a premeditated homicide.
49:00The CIA later concluded that Khashoggi was assassinated
49:03on the orders of Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
49:14Number 3. The Golden State Killer
49:17One of the most notorious criminals in American history,
49:20the Golden State Killer has gone by many names.
49:23He terrorized California throughout the 70s and 80s,
49:26sexually assaulting at least 51 women,
49:29burglarizing over 100 homes,
49:31and murdering 13 people.
49:33He was given different names in different areas,
49:35including the Visalia Ransacker and the Night Stalker.
49:39Only with time did it become apparent that these crime sprees were the work of one person.
49:44The name Golden State Killer was coined in 2013 by crime writer Michelle McNamara.
49:49The case helped inspire the creation of California's DNA database.
49:53And it was DNA evidence that eventually nabbed Joseph James DeAngelo in 2018,
49:58who by then was 72 years old.
50:01He was sentenced to life in prison.
50:10Number 2. The Collapse of the Maya Civilization
50:14The largest and most sophisticated pre-Columbian civilization of the Americas,
50:18the Maya flourished for thousands of years.
50:23The civilization entered its so-called classic period in the year 250,
50:37and this lasted until 900.
50:39It was around then that the entire political system collapsed,
50:43and the Maya abandoned their most important cities to move north.
50:46With this, the Maya civilization entered what is called its post-classic period.
50:51So what the heck happened?
50:52It's a mystery that has plagued historians for years.
50:56The answer was finally found in the 21st century.
50:59It turns out the Maya were so overpopulated that they damaged the environment
51:04and created a devastating drought.
51:15With their agriculture thoroughly destroyed,
51:18the Maya were forced to abandon their most populous cities.
51:22Empty jungles of the Yucatan serve as a reminder that even great civilizations can fail.
51:45Number 1. The Vampire Clan
51:48One of the creepiest episodes of Unsolved Mysteries involves Rod Ferrell
51:52and his so-called Vampire Clan.
52:04In November of 1996,
52:06Jennifer Wendorf found her parents beaten to death inside their Florida home.
52:10The case went unsolved for weeks,
52:12although police immediately suspected Ferrell in the killing,
52:15as he was close to the Wendorf's other daughter, Heather.
52:18Ferrell was the leader of a Kentucky cult centered around vampirism
52:22and allegedly had prospective members drink his blood in order to join.
52:36The grandmother of a member helped police apprehend the cult,
52:39and both Ferrell and a man named Scott Anderson were found responsible for the Wendorf's deaths
52:44and given life sentences.
52:49Howard Scott Anderson,
52:50Dana Cooper,
52:51and Charity Kesey,
52:53all who were sent to prison.
52:54A grand jury believed Heather was unaware of the murder plot and she was not tried.
52:59Do you know of any other cool mysteries that were solved?
53:02Let us know in the comments below.
53:07Did you enjoy this video?
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