You can’t go far without seeing the next big docuseries. From the harrowing Catching Killers to the disturbing The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, the worst of humanity has been displayed for all to see.
And if there’s any list with the top worst offenders and unsolved crimes on it, it’s the FBI’s Most Wanted. There you can find unsolved missing person cases to highly dangerous individuals.
Here we zoom in on some of the most prolific cases from the past century that still rock the boat:
The Zodiac Killings
“I like killing people because it is so much fun […] It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all.”
Few unsolved cases are as chilling as the notorious Zodiac killings, especially as we still have no idea who he is.
Rewind to December 20 1968, when it all began. A couple were shot to death as they sat in a car on lover’s lane. Over the next ten months, the killer went on a spree. He shot a couple in a public park, a cab driver in the head and trussed up and stabbed another man and woman near a peaceful lake.
But it wasn’t just about murder for the Zodiac. His favourite passion was toying with police, reporters and the public through encrypted letters sent to the San Francisco newspapers. From mailing a bloodied shirt to prove his claims to notoriously signing off each of his letters with his personal symbol (a cross within a circle).
To this day, the Zodiac’s story still terrorises people. Not only as a serial killer who got away with it but as a narcissist who managed to spread fear and chaos by manipulating the press and beyond.
Unsolved Murder and mayhem in the Osage Hills
Nothing sounds more like an Escape Room title than this unsolved crime case.
In May 1921, the badly decomposed body of Anna Brown was found in a remote ravine in northern Oklahoma. She had sustained a single bullet in the back of her head. Brown had no known enemies.
Two months later, the unsettling series of events continued. Brown’s mother, Lizzie Q, died of suspicious circumstances. Two years later, Brown’s cousin Henry Roan was shot down in cold blood. Shortly after that, Brown’s sister and brother-in-law were killed during a bomb attack on their home.
The strangeness of the story doesn’t stop there. In the days, months and years that followed, at least two dozen other locals inexplicably turned up dead. The case was unsolved for over twenty years and continued to spread fear and uncertainty throughout the decades.
After all that time, only one man stood out as the potential killer: William Hale, the so-called “King of the Osage Hills.”
Double murder: Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman
While you might have made your mind up about who killed O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife and her lover on June 12, 1994, the law has made other conclusions.
“The Juice” has mountains of circumstantial evidence putting him in the spotlight. What would be incriminating forensics in most cases to the slowest chase in Los Angeles history all raised red flags in the O.J. trial. Not forgetting the infamous glove that didn’t fit.
But Simpson’s dream team of lawyers ultimately cleared his name with the jury and left the court of public opinion in disbelief!
However, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses for Simpson. While he was acquitted during this case, he was later found liable for both Brown and Goldman’s deaths in a related civil suit. But, the criminal matter of their murders still remains unsolved.
Unsolved Case of the Disembodied Feet
Yes, this case sounds like a B-plot from the Sherlock Holmes series and carries serious yuck factor!
Since August 2007, five human feet still clad in trainers have washed ashore near Vancouver, British Columbia. The authorities have no idea why they ended up there, but more bizarrely, where the rest of the bodies are either.
After a series of DNA tests, one of the severed feet was matched to a man who had been missing for several months.
But it is the uncertainty of the case that still leaves investigators stumped. Some believe foul play is at hand or that ocean currents and decomposition could be responsible for naturally separating the feet from their corresponding bodies. There is also the theory that the remains could belong to four unrecovered victims of a 2005 plane crash near Quadra Island.
Solving this one may take a lifetime. Especially with the most recent foot washing up 50 miles away from the original site in Washington . With murder tipped as the most common working theory, as you simply don’t just find random feet lying around. The real question is: Is there a more sinister plot at play here?
The Black Dahlia
January 15, 1947, a mother and her child go for a seemingly peaceful walk through a Los Angeles neighbourhood. But their discovery shook a nation. Just a few feet away from the path they were walking on lay a body of a young naked female, sliced clean in half at the waist.
There wasn’t a single drop of blood at the scene, despite the extensive mutilation and cuts to her body.
Within 56 minutes of the FBI being called in by the L.A. Police Department, the body was identified as 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short. Due to her penchant for sheer black clothes and the recent Blue Dahlia movie, Short was dubbed the “Black Dahlia” by the press.
The hunt for the Black Dahlia’s killer was one of the biggest manhunts of the day. The FBI conducted numerous interviews across the nation for anyone that may fit the profile.
However, all they really had to go on was the grounded suspicion that the murderer had skill in dissection. After an anonymous letter turned up, believed to be from the killer, the Bureau thought they had hit the jackpot. But the fingerprints yielded no result from their extensive print database.
So who killed the Black Dahlia? Why?
The murderer has never been found. And after all these years, the likelihood grows lesser by the day.
Mystery is at the heart of all these unsolved crimes. Who, why, and how are all questions that have mostly yielded no results to this day. Do you think you could solve the case?