DISCLAIMER: This article talks about real-life missing persons cases and murders. Content may be disturbing to some.
1. Murder in Room 1046
The year is 1935. A man checks into a hotel under the name ‘Roland T. Owen.’ After the hotel staff had many strange run-ins with this man, the bellboy finds him in his hotel room, stabbed and tied up; the room, covered in blood. However, the man was still alive and rushed to the hospital. He told police he had “slipped and fallen against the bathtub.” Later that night, he would die at the hospital. Among further investigation, the police found out that there was no man by the name of Roland T. Owen, and that the man’s real name was Artemus Ogletree. How he died, however, still remains a mystery.
This story gets best summed up by this Buzzfeed Unsolved video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDeFSOUHdH4
2. Disappearance of Brian Shaffer
After classes ended for spring break in 2006, Brian Shaffer, a medical student at Ohio State University, went out to a restaurant/bar with some friends. After separating from his friends, Brian wasn’t seen or heard from again. Security footage from the bar shows him entering the building, but never leaving.
Security footage from the night he disappeared (skip ahead to 13:35): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7O6S4w2qaE&t=823s
3. D.B. Cooper
Also known as the ‘hijacker of Boeing 727,” D.B. Cooper is one of the most interesting unsolved cases to date. In 1971, a man identifying himself as ‘Dan Cooper’ boarded a flight to Seattle with his one-way ticket. After threatening a flight attendant by saying he had a bomb, Cooper requested $200,000, four parachutes, and a fuel truck to be standing by for when they arrived in Seattle. The attendant relayed the message to the pilot who contacted air-traffic control. The Seattle police and FBI prepared Cooper’s demands before they landed. They gathered 10,000 unmarked 20 dollar bills with specific serial numbers to give to him so that they could later track the money. The aircraft landed, released the other passengers aboard. The delivery of his demands were made and he requested to be flown to Mexico City. While in the air, Cooper parachuted out of the plane, never to be seen again. No trace of him, or any of the equipment he had when leaving the plane was ever found, the ransom money included. For years, the FBI searched for the serial numbers of the ransom money to no avail until 1980 when a man vacationing with his family found three packets of the ransom cash in the riverbank of Columbia River in Oregon. As for any further information, this case is still unsolved.
Watch this story unfold here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHSehKtDyoI
4. The Yogurt Shop Murders
In 1991, four teenage girls in Austin, Texas were killed in a yogurt shop. After a fire broke out in the store, police reported to the scene, finding the bodies of the four teenagers. The bodies of the girls were found stacked on top of each other, bound and gagged. They had been shot in the head, leading police to believe they were killed before the fire was set. There were many false confessions to this case, and police even arrested four suspects. However, DNA from these suspects did not match the DNA found at the scene, leading to their release.
Read More Here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/austin-texas-yogurt-shop-murders-innocence-lost/
5. Death of Elisa Lam
Lam decided to go on a “West Coast Tour” as se described in her Tumblr blog, where she would visit different cities in Southern California. During her trip, she stayed at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Lam had called her parents everyday while on the trip, and the day she was supposed to check out of the Cecil, her parents did not hear from her and reported her missing. Almost a month later, Lam’s body was found in the water tank on top of the Cecil Hotel after guests complained about problems with the water. How she got in the tank remains a mystery, but her death was officially ruled an accident. In security footage from the hotel dating back to the day of her disappearance, Lam was seen entering and exiting the elevator, talking and gesturing to something in the hallway. Many find the footage odd and have gone as far as to blame it on the paranormal.
Watch the footage here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TjVBpyTeZM
6. The Westfield Watcher House
Just days after a family purchases their dream home in New Jersey, they receive a threatening letter by someone known as “The Watcher.” The person writing the letters has sent four sinister letters to the current owners containing threats and eerie questions about the occupants activities in the house. He refers to the family’s children as “young blood” and considers themself as the rightful owner of the house. Check out this timeline of the house’s history: http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2015/06/25_years_of_the_westfield_watcher.html
7. The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
Probably one of the most infamous cases, the death of JonBenét shook the country. She was well known for being in child beauty pageants and was only six years old when she died. Eight hours after she went missing, JonBenét’s father found her body in the basement of their house. She had been strangled and had a broken skull. There have been many theories as to who killed her, including a theory pointing at her older brother, who would have been a kid at the time. Keeping quiet about her death his whole life, he finally decided to sit down with Dr. Phil to talk about his sister’s death.
Watch part of the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWblt-Ru7pk
8. The Boy in the Box
A young boy around the age of three to seven years old was found dead in a box in Philadelphia in 1957. Known as “America’s Unkown Child,” no one knows what happened to the boy, or who he was.
To learn about the theories, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnxfuvRHKDk
9. The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
In 1937, Earhart set off to fly around the globe. However, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, never to be heard from again.
Explore the Theories: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/us/amelia-earhart-mystery-theories/index.html
10. Dyatlov Pass
Nine experienced hikers hiked the Ural Mountains in Russia in February of 1959. Thr group, led by Igor Dyatlov were mostly in their 20’s at the time, the oldest hiker being 38 years old. They set up camp on the mountain and something during the night caused havoc. The hikers tore out of their tents and ran from their campsite. The hikers were poorly dressed for the frigid winter temperature and heavy snowfall as they fled from their camp. Investigators found the hikers days later, and determined that six of them died from hypothermia and that three others died from some sort of physical trauma including a fractured skull, brain damage with no clear injury to the skull, and the missing tongue and eyes of another person. What led these experienced hikers to flee, and ultimately, to their death, is still unknown.
11. Missing Sodder Children
On Christmas Eve in 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder house in West Virginia. Inside the house at the time was Mr. and Mrs. Sodder and nine of their 10 children. Mr. and Mrs. Sodder and four of their children managed to escape the fire. However, the bodies of the other children were never found amongst the debris. The Sodder’s believed that the missing children survived the fire, even though they were never seen or heard from again.
To Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0AKoCMydkc
12. Nicholas Barclay
In 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing after playing basketball with friends. The police originally thought Nicholas had runaway, considering that he was quite the troubled kid and had left home before. However, he was never gone for more than a day. Three years later, police received a call about a kid living in a youth shelter in Spain that matched Barclay’s description. His sister flew out to Spain, identified him as her brother, and brought him back home. There was one problem: the boy wasn’t Nicholas Barclay. The FBI got a court order to run his fingerprints and DNA to reveal that the “boy” was actually a 23-year-old man with a criminal history where he used many aliases. He was eventually sentenced to six years in prison for the distress he caused the Barclay’s, and the whereabouts of the real Nicholas Barclay have still yet to be determined. The craziest part? There’s a lot of information that points at Nicholas’ brother knowing more than he let on.
Read more: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-mystery-of-nicholas-barclay
13. Johnny Gosch
In 1982, Johnny left on a Sunday morning for his paper route. After his parents received complaints of undelivered papers. They began to search for him, and found his wagon full of newspapers a couple of blocks from home. His parents immediately called the police. Johnny would never return home. There was little evidence and no suspects. In 2006, his mother claimed to have received photos of Johnny and other boys tied up and in captivity. Some of the children in the photos were identified from a case in Florida, while one boy was never identified. This was the boy Gosch’s mother claimed was Johnny.
14. The Lizzie Borden Murders
http://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-lizzie-borden
Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted for the murders of her father and stepmother in 1892. Both victims were violently killed with an axe, and although evidence heavily pointed to Lizzie being the killer, she was found not guilty, as there were too many holes in the possibility of her being the murderer. Over 100 years later, no one is sure who really committed these gruesome murders.