While these dramas make for excellent and entertaining stories, they’re often a far cry from reality. What happens when a killer leaves behind all his clothes at a crime scene, full of DNA, and experts still can’t identify the perpetrator? Or when crooked law enforcement agents don’t have anyone there to expose their evidence-meddling tactics? Or when a serial killer strikes a city, and no one finds out about it for years?
Unlike the popular mystery-solving dramas in the entertainment industry, these true crime stories are a collection of eerie mysteries that remain unsolved – despite the evidence and clues the murderers left behind.
When A Search Party Went Out To Find Their Missing Coworker, They Found A House Of Horror Instead
In 2014, an Okada (motorcycle taxi) operator named Kazeem from Ibadan, Nigeria, sent distressed text messages to his friends and coworkers that he was being held captive in a remote forest. He begged for help, alerting loved ones that he had been lured to the site by two customers who asked him for a ride. Once he arrived, he was kidnapped.
When a search party assembled near the forest to find Kazeem, they found an abandoned building filled with rotting bodies, skeletons, and detached bones. A group of heavily malnourished people were shackled in leg irons in the building, and more were outside in the surrounding bush. The scene, which spanned more than 15 kilometers, was strewn with human remains and rotting parts. Kazeem wasn’t among those whom law enforcement rescued.
Upon further investigation, authorities and local citizens found that the site, littered with abandoned buildings, had previously been used for construction work. Once it was abandoned, criminals adopted the space to run a business selling body parts for black magic rituals. Victims were raped, tortured, and slaughtered at the site, leaving passports, shoes, clothes, travel bags, and driver’s licenses behind.
Although unaware of the full spectrum of atrocities happening close to their homes, residents near the forest knew the area was dangerous, especially at night. Multiple concerned citizens had placed calls to the police, but authorities never acted on the tips. Many people believed that victims still remained in the “house of horror” and rioted in an attempt to compel officers to continue searching for survivors.
Asha Degree, Age 9, Packed Her Backpack, Walked Out Of Her House On A Rainy Night, And Vanished
Photo: Daniel Case / Wikipedia / Fair Use
On a rainy night in Shelby, NC, a nearby car accident caused a power outage. Harold Degree peeked in the bedroom shared by his two children, Asha and O’Bryant, around 2 am. They were both asleep, so he went back to the bedroom he shared with his wife, Iquilla.
When Iquilla went to wake the children for school the next morning, Asha was missing. O’Bryant, 10, told his parents he heard his 9-year-old sister’s bed squeak in the middle of the night, but he assumed she was just shifting in her sleep. It was Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2000.
After police arrived on the scene, they found no signs of forced entry. A canine unit surveyed the surrounding area with no luck, but leads were trickling in. Two witnesses called the Shelby police station asserting that they had seen Asha walking near Highway 18 around 4 am. When one of the witnesses approached the girl, she ran into the woods and was never seen again.
Investigators found Asha’s hairbow in a shed the next day, subsequently spending seven days and 9,000 hours searching for any clues the missing girl may have left behind in the 2-by-3-mile area. They received numerous tips, but none led them any closer to learning of Asha’s whereabouts. North Carolina’s state investigation department partnered with the FBI to hunt for the girl, and Montel Williams and Oprah Winfrey even shared her story on national TV. But it took another year and a half before another clue was found.
On Aug. 3, 2001, construction workers at a site 30 miles from Asha’s home found her missing backpack. Inside was a New Kids On The Block shirt and a school library book, McElligot’s Pool by Dr. Seuss. Unfortunately, the discovery did nothing to further progress in the case. A few prison inmates claimed they knew who murdered the girl and where she was buried, and tips continued to come in slowly. Unfortunately, they all led to dead ends. As of June 17, 2021, Asha was still missing, and no one knows why she left her home in the middle of a rainstorm, or what became of her after.
Timmothy Pitzen Disappeared After His Mother Took Him Out Of School To Go On Vacation, Then Committed Suicide
On May 11, 2011, Timmothy Pitzen’s mother surprised her son by taking him out of school for a three-day vacation around their home in Aurora, IL. The duo visited Brookfield Zoo in a Chicago suburb, the Key Lime Cove Resort in Gurnee, and the Kalahari Resort across the state line in Wisconsin. It was the last time they were seen together alive.
Law enforcement found Amy Fry-Pitzen’s body in a motel room on May 14. Reports say she took her own life, leaving behind a note indicating her son was safe. However, the 6-year-old boy was never found. When the police found Fry-Pitzen’s vehicle in a parking lot, there was an unsettling amount of blood in the backseat. DNA testing proved it was Timmothy’s, but family members told investigators the boy had suffered from a severe nosebleed the previous year. Additionally, the knife Fry-Pitzen used to take her life had only her own blood on the blade.
Based on her cellphone records and video footage, the last time the pair saw one another was approximately 5 miles northwest of Sterling, IL, where Fry-Pitzen made her last phone call. Her phone and Timmothy’s backpack and toys remained missing for years. In 2019, a teenager came forward, claiming to be the missing child. However, DNA testing proved otherwise; he was actually 23-year-old Brian Rini, a person with mental health issues. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Whether Timmothy met a tragic fate or is hidden somewhere, alive and well, is unknown.
DNA Evidence Only Further Confused The Case Of ‘The Yogurt Shop Murders
Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison finished their shift at I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! on December 6, 1991. Jennifer’s sister, Sarah, and their friend Amy Ayers met up with the girls at the Austin, TX, shop so they could all head home together. Instead, the four teens were tied up and shot in the heads before the perpetrators set the building on fire to destroy any evidence. Investigators believe that at least two men were responsible for the murders, but they couldn’t be identified or caught.
Multiple customers remember seeing two strange men in the shop who seemed out of place, ordering drinks instead of frozen yogurt. Police were desperate to gain a lead on the case, even hypnotizing suspects and witnesses in hopes of obtaining new information. The case remained unsolved for eight years.
In 1999, investigators decided to revisit an old lead and discovered a new angle. Teenager Maurice Pierce had initially been arrested for carrying a gun into a mall near the frozen yogurt shop the day after the murders. However, he was let go because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove he played a part in committing the crime. His friends Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, and Forrest Welborn had also been questioned but were eventually let go. When law enforcement called the suspects back in for questioning eight years later, Springsteen and Scott confessed to the murders and implicated their two friends as accomplices.
However, the two later recanted their statements. Pierce and Welborn were set free due to lack of evidence. Scott and Springsteen were initially convicted for the murders, but the ruling was overturned based on a courtroom technicality. Still, law enforcement and the public believed the four young men were responsible for shooting the four young women.
As DNA technology advanced, prosecutors in 2009 ordered that the girls’ vaginal swabs taken the night of the murders be retested, confident that they would finally shut the case. Instead, scientists returned a partial DNA sample that didn’t match any of the four suspects. Scott and Springsteen were released from prison, and the case remains unsolved.
A Family Was Murdered In Their Home While Three Children In The Adjoining Room Slept Through The Massacre
After divorcing her husband, Sue Sharp and her five children moved from Connecticut to Keddie, CA, to make a new start. Sue, her 15-year-old son John, 14-year-old daughter Sheila, 12-year-old daughter Tina, and 10- and 5-year-old sons Rick and Greg got along well with the neighbors, quickly making friends in their new hometown. However, their sense of belonging came to a violent and tragic halt in the early morning of April 12, 1981. Sheila returned home from the neighbor’s house that morning and was met with a horrific scene.
Her mother, her brother John, and his friend Dana Wingate had been brutally murdered while she was away. Meanwhile, Rick and Greg and a visiting friend were asleep in the adjoining bedroom. The children had apparently slept through the deadly attack, and 12-year-old Tina was missing. After opening the front door and witnessing the grotesque scene, Sheila immediately ran back to her neighbors to call the police.
The three victims, bound by medical and electrical tape, had been bludgeoned, stabbed, and strangled. First responders reported blood all over the crime scene: on the walls, the bottoms of the victims’ feet, the ceilings, the floors, the bedding in Tina’s room, the furniture, and the back steps. The scene was so grotesque that investigators didn’t even realize Tina was missing until hours later.
Authorities never caught the murderers, and it took three years to find Tina’s body. The FBI and local police made numerous mistakes throughout the investigation, leading the community to speculate that the investigators were somehow involved in or covering up for the murderers. Although investigators never pinpointed a motive, they speculated Sue was having an affair with her neighbor. As soon as the local sheriff realized his friends were the main suspects in the case, he advised them to leave town. The neighbor’s wife even went to the police with a letter that her husband wrote, confessing to the crimes.
Despite the incriminating evidence, no one followed up on the lead. When investigators reopened the case in 2013, they found evidence that the neighbors and the authorities who questioned them might have been involved in a drug-smuggling ring. They also found a weathered hammer and knife that might have been used as murder weapons. However, no one has ever been charged for the massacre.
An Assassin Murdered An Entire Family, Then Spent Hours In The House Eating Ice Cream And Relaxing
While the rest of the world prepared to ring in 2001, the Miyazawa family lay dead in their Setagaya, Tokyo, home. On December 30, 2000, Mikio, his wife Yasuko, and their 8-year-old daughter Niina, were stabbed to death, while their 6-year-old son Rei was strangled. When detectives arrived at the scene the following day, they found fingerprint evidence suggesting the killer spent several hours in the home after he murdered the Miyazawa family, eating ice cream, drinking tea, taking a nap on the living room couch, and playing on the family computer.
The unknown suspect left a surprising amount of evidence behind, including his clothes and the murder weapon. Investigators initially believed they would identify and catch the murderer quickly. Now, more than 20 years later, detectives still have no answers.
However, law enforcement’s inability to determine a suspect isn’t due to a lack of effort or necessary skills. Around 280,000 officers have worked on the case, scrubbing the killer’s clothing, accessories, and weapons for DNA and clues. Even the killer’s bowel movements, which he left unflushed in the family’s toilet, were tested so authorities could learn about the suspect’s last meal before the attack.
After tracing where the killer purchased his clothes and knife, scientists analyzed bird droppings found on the murderer’s sweater. Detectives also analyzed the killer’s DNA to learn his ethnicity and ancestral origins. Still, every clue so far has led to a dead end.
The Beaumont Children Went Missing In 1966 And Became Australia’s Longest-Running Missing Persons Case
It was a sweltering summer day in Adelaide, Australia, when three children – Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont – boarded a train heading to Glenelg Beach, five miles away. Although they were unescorted, they knew the transportation routes well. It was Australia Day on January 26, 1966, and the area was packed with beachgoers arriving in droves to enjoy the holiday and escape the heat. Nancy Beaumont expected her children to return on the noon or 2 pm buses. However, she and her husband Jim began to worry when the children weren’t home by the time their father returned from work at 3 pm. Jim drove to the beach in a vain attempt to find his children. The young Beaumonts, ages 9, 7, and 4, were never seen or heard from again.
After returning from the beach and scouring the neighborhood, Jim and Nancy reported their children missing and offered a $250 reward for any information witnesses might provide. Many beachgoers recalled seeing a sunkissed man in his 30s shuffling kids away from the waters, but they also noted that the children seemed acquainted with the swimmer. Nancy recalled that her children had recently begun joking about “Jane’s boyfriend” at the beach. At the time, she thought nothing of it. Now the seemingly light-hearted banter took an ominous tone.
Investigators produced a sketch of the man and showed it to hundreds of witnesses, but nothing ever came from the leads. The officials became so desperate for answers that they flew a clairvoyant in from the Netherlands, hoping to find answers. After the clairvoyant revealed that his mind’s eye had seen the children at a nearby warehouse near their school, a local group raised more than $40,000 to have it demolished and searched. Authorities found animal bones but no human remains.
In 1986, three suitcases emerged filled with newspaper clippings concerning the children, with ominous text scribbled in the margins. Upon further investigation, authorities learned the suitcases belonged to an amateur sleuth, now deceased, who had spent years trying to solve the mystery. Random witnesses continued to provide tips over the years, believing they might have spotted the kidnapper. However, the sunkissed swimmer was never positively identified. The case remains open to this day, making it the longest-running missing persons investigation in the nation.
Two Different Paperboys Were Abducted In A Seemingly Quiet Iowa Town
Young John David Gosch left his West Des Moines home early in the morning on Sept. 5, 1982, to deliver newspapers throughout the neighborhood. He picked up the papers, placed them in his wagon, and then vanished. Multiple witnesses testified they saw Gosch retrieving the papers for delivery. When neighbors began calling his parents, expressing concern that they hadn’t received their papers, John and Noreen Gosch went out looking for their son. They found his paper-filled wagon two blocks from their home, but their son was nowhere in sight.
One witness claimed he saw the 12-year-old talking to a man in a blue car close to the paper drop. Another mentioned Gosch told him the man had asked for directions and was following him along his route. The following year, a woman in Tulsa, OK, claimed she had spotted Gosch being chased by two men who dragged him away. She eerily recalled that the boy had yelled: “Please, lady, help me! My name is John David Gosch.”
When another local paperboy, Eugene Martin, was abducted the following year, the Anderson Erikson Dairy company began printing photos of the kidnapped children on their milk cartons. By 1985, the milk carton project became a nationwide movement. Children in schools across the US stared at the faces of Martin, Gosch, and other missing children who were mysteriously kidnapped and never seen again.
In 1997, Noreen reported a 2:30 am visit from her son, now a grown man. From their conversation, she deduced he’d been part of pedophile ring, escaped, and then changed his identity because he was scared to come home.
The Bodies Of 11 Women In The Desert Pointed Investigators To The West Mesa Bone Collector
In February 2009, Christine Ross was walking her dog, Ruca, around a dried-out wash in Albuquerque, NM, when the dog found what appeared to be a human bone. Considering the worst but hoping for the best, Ross snapped a photo and sent it to her sister, a registered nurse. After Ross’s sister confirmed that it was, in fact, a human femur, Ross called the Albuquerque Police Department. The gruesome discovery prompted a search of the area, where authorities uncovered the remains of 11 women between the ages of 15 and 32.
The 2009 case, known as the West Mesa murders, was the most horrifying discovery that Albuquerque had witnessed. It took forensic experts almost a year to identify the remains – all Hispanic young women who had gone missing between 2001 and 2005. All but one of the victims had ties to sex work or sex trafficking, unfortunately making them easy targets for a potential serial killer. Estranged from families and relatively unnoticed by the general public, some women hadn’t even been reported missing when medical examiners identified their remains.
FBI agents were never able to find the killer, dubbed the “West Mesa Bone Collector.” Many believe he escaped long before Ruca unearthed the first found corpse. Authorities did piece together a timeline to find each young woman’s last whereabouts, but their time and cause of death remain a mystery.
Although the profiles of two different men emerged as probable suspects, the killer didn’t leave enough evidence at the scene to tie either of them to the murders. Fortunately, however, both men are off the Albuquerque streets. Joseph Blea is serving a life sentence for sexual assault cases, but knew many of the women found in the wash-out and possessed jewelry that might have belonged to the victims. Lorenzo Montoya was killed when an enraged boyfriend found that Montoya had strangled and murdered his girlfriend, who worked as a dancer.
An 18-Year-Old Went Missing, Leaving Behind His Car With A Puppy And Lipstick Drawing On The Back Window
On January 2, 2000, 18-year-old Walmart employee Zebb Quinn met with coworker Robert Jason Owens to possibly buy a car in a nearby town outside of Asheville, NC. Quinn followed Owens, who had told him about the vehicle, in his Mazda Protege. Before arriving at their destination, the two stopped at a convenience store to buy sodas. It was the last time Quinn was seen alive. Although Owens was eventually charged with Quinn’s murder in 2017, the teen’s body has never been found.
What happened to Quinn remains a mystery, but his car was found four days later. Instead of providing solid clues that could aid investigators in their search efforts, the Mazda produced evidence that left law enforcement with more questions than answers. Someone had parked Quinn’s car in a Little Pigs Barbecue parking lot, leaving the headlights on and a lipstick drawing of a mouth with an exclamation point on the back window. Inside, officers found a live Labrador retriever puppy, drink bottles, a jacket that didn’t belong to Quinn, and a keycard from an unknown hotel. Witnesses recalled seeing a mysterious woman driving the car around town.
From there, the story gets even more bizarre. A composite sketch of the mysterious female driver held an uncanny resemblance to Misty Taylor, a young woman Quinn befriended a few weeks prior. When police questioned Owens, he mentioned Quinn had received a message on his pager from his aunt and needed to rush home. Quinn’s aunt, Ina Ustich, revealed she had been dining at the home of her friend Tamra Taylor – Misty’s mother – and wasn’t in the position to make the call. However, Ustich’s house was broken into that night. Although nothing was stolen, she reported to police that things were out of place. Misty and her abusive boyfriend, Wesley Smith, were also eating dinner with Ustich the night Quinn disappeared. Authorities suspected Owens was responsible for the disappearance, but didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him.
Then, on March 17, 2015, Owens was arrested for killing Food Network Star contestant Cristie Schoen Codd, her unborn child, and her husband Joseph. He was convicted of three murder counts and two counts of dismembering human remains. During this investigation, officials learned of a “fish pond project” that Owens had worked on up until the day of Quinn’s disappearance. When investigators broke through the cement poured over the abandoned project, they found fabric, unidentifiable hard fragments, and multiple bags of an unidentified powdery substance that resembled pulverized lime or powdered mortar.
The ‘Axeman Of New Orleans’ Said He Would Spare The Lives Of Those Playing Jazz
From May 1918 to October 1919, a serial killer nicknamed the “Axeman of New Orleans” caused chaos throughout the Big Easy – taunting police and sending threatening messages to local newspapers as he brutally murdered and severely injured local Italian grocers and their families. Each time the killer struck, he used a chisel to cut a panel out of the victims’ doors before slitting their throats and bashing their heads in with axes found in their homes.
While horrific, most of the injuries victims sustained were not immediately lethal; most were found covered in blood but still breathing. Days to months later, they would eventually succumb to their gruesome gashes. Those who did recover suffered memory loss and could never remember details of their attacks.
When the mysterious murderer pivoted from his traditional target to a pregnant woman whose husband was at work, the entire city became paranoid. As the woman – scalped and toothless but still carrying her child – recovered in the hospital, men in New Orleans stayed up all night guarding their families in case of attack.
In a bizarre plot twist, the entire city went from being paralyzed with fear to dancing frantically to jazz music in their homes on May 19, 1919. However, families weren’t celebrating that authorities had caught the killer. Instead, they were dancing from a place of pure terror that the killer might choose them as his next victims. The previous day, the Axeman sent a letter to the local newspaper expressing his love for jazz music. He warned that he would be in New Orleans at 12:15 am. If he came across a home that wasn’t “jazzing it out,” the inhabitants would surely be his next target. It’s probable that not every home “jazzed it out” on that night, but enough dancing and singing was going on around the city to keep the murderer appeased.
New Orleans went without related incidents throughout the spring and most of the summer. In August, the attacks began again, but the details were slightly different. In one instance, the killer entered through a window instead of the back door; in another, witnesses reported seeing two men fleeing the crime scene. Whether copycats or the original Axeman executed these attacks, they abruptly stopped that October.
Some people speculate the Mafia planned the heinous crimes. Others believed it was a spree of hate crimes against Italian-Americans, and some even speculated that the Axeman of New Orleans was an actual demon. No matter the killer’s origin story, the world may never know. He was never caught – disappearing from the New Orleans scene just as quickly as he appeared.
24 People Perished In A Train Derailment Caused By Unknown Saboteurs
The City of San Francisco luxury train was running 30 minutes behind schedule the night of August 12, 1939. To make up for lost time, engineer Ed Hecox pushed the state-of-the-art streamliner to 90 miles per hour while traveling through the Nevada desert. Hecox knew the area well – he had been transporting travelers from Chicago to Oakland and back since he was a stagecoach driver in the 1880s.
The train was at top speed as it approached bridge #4 over the Humboldt River Gorge. Just before the train crossed the overpass, Hecox noticed a tumbleweed on the tracks. The conductor immediately slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. As the momentum from the engines propelled the derailed front cars forward over the bridge, five other cars decoupled and plunged into the riverbed below.
Twenty-four people perished from the impact, and severely injured passengers had to crawl over dismembered body parts in the dark night to seek help. One of the passengers was a doctor, who helped triage and stabilize as many victims as possible. Hecox ran for help, but the next town was miles away. When he finally reached Harney, he alerted authorities and gathered volunteers. The injured lit portions of the train on fire to provide visibility as they awaited Hecox’s return. All 170 passengers suffered injuries, and the first rescue train didn’t arrive until the following day.
Upon investigation, authorities found that someone had tampered with a 30-foot section of tracks near the bridge. Its spikes had been pulled out, and the track was bent inward. Additionally, the tumbleweed had been tied to the damaged railing to camouflage the saboteurs’ work.
Investigators never caught the perpetrators, and the motive behind the sabotage remains a mystery. Officials estimated the job would’ve taken more than 90 pounds of tools and several hours to complete – an impossible feat for one person. But instead of focusing on suspects with ties to the railroad or its passengers, investigators focused on transient men in the area made homeless from the Great Depression. After numerous interviews, they found that none of the local homeless men could’ve been responsible for the incident. Volunteers and looters looking for souvenirs the night of the crash had destroyed any clues that may have led to catching any plausible suspects. When the US entered WWII a few years later, officials abandoned the investigation.
