Have you ever been arrested for something and thought... "well this is just silly?"
Yes we need laws and rules, but let's be honest a lot of "crimes" need to be re-examined.
Or maybe I just want to be naughty.
All kidding aside, too many people are sitting in jails for crimes that make no sense.
It's not right.
One Redditor wanted to hear about what illegal activities we'd love to indulge in. They asked:
"If you had to legalize a crime, what would it be?"
Shoplifting and weed. Let's start there.
Fishy
"Being able to walk with a salmon suspiciously."
YorkshireCat
"The Salmon Act of 1986 made it illegal in England, Wales, and Scotland to 'handle salmon in suspicious circumstances.'”
water_fountain_
Exercise
"I’d legalize putting bikes in pools in California."
Wolfiye11
"Honestly, water biking is a great exercise and should totally be legal everywhere."
TheTrueGoldenboy
"Ding ding ding! you win!"
alemini_
Hey Spud
"Selling Unlicensed potatoes."
williamfvirgil
"As a potato myself, I agree."
CaliforniaPotato
B4TTLESNAKE
Speak Loud!
"The UK government has effectively banned protests so I'm gonna go for that."
YumYumFunTown
"here’s an article that explains it a bit. basically over here the police will now have more power to control protests. they can impose more measures, make sure people are ‘not being loud’ etc."
scseven
"Yeah super glad America doesn't have that. Right to protest is in our DNA. No matter how annoying, it’s necessary."
MRmandato
by death
"Executing politicians for treason for any crimes or abuses of power while in office. Iirc treason and sabotage are both punishable by death according to the constitution."
moldyhotdogs
Salmon? Really? Can I carry tuna or a nice cut of mahi?
Cheers all Day
"The ability to purchase alcohol at any hour of day, on any day of the week. How many of you have gone out late at night to buy beer only to be turned away because the alcohol section is closed, or not being able to buy any at all on Sunday? (in some places)."
isabellemwilliams
It's Food
"Feeding homeless people."
Breadflat17
"I am guessing it is to discourage some psychos from feeding them sh*t (both metaphorical and literal). Reddit taught me about a cop, who gave a homeless guy a literal crap sandwich."
Sandybat
"It keeps people from poisoning them."
derpygamer2142
Incredible
"Magic mushrooms."
ReallyDontWant2Argue
"I was enrolled in a clinical trial using psilocybin as a treatment for depression. After decades of treatment resistant depression, I'm depression-free. Even if it's temporary, I'm so grateful and I can't wait until everyone has access to this incredible drug."
Torontopup6
"I am hoping that weed legalization can open the doors for mushrooms."
MusicianMadness
Bringing the End
"I know it's controversial, but I would say Euthanasia (for very bad illnesses and elderly, if they're miserable and don't want to go on anymore). Afaik it is legal in some countries, such as Switzerland. Just wanted to add I'm not American and therefore can't relate to all the comments telling me about situations in US states, but don't get me wrong, it's interesting nonetheless. :) "
wurzlsep
Sex
"Sex work. I'm not interested in it, but it appears to be an arbitrary law that would be a waste of time to enforce."
"Adults can have sex for money in front of the camera for all to see, but once the camera is removed, it becomes illegal? It doesn't make much sense. The only reason it's illegal, I believe, is that the government hasn't found a method to tax it."
corneliatdyer
Sex work is real work. Let these people be.
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One of the first things you learn as a storyteller is that good stories have a resolution.
Bad guys get caught.
Mysteries get solved.
People are found.
But not every story is a "good" one.
Conflict isn't always resolved.
Some questions never get answers.
Reddit user numbnesstolife asked:
"What are some mysteries that should have been SOLVED by now?"
Sometimes, even piles of evidence and loads of data aren't enough to give us answers. Often, it just means more questions.
Trigger warning; a lot of the mysteries people wanted to talk about were disappearances and murders. True crime stories can be upsetting.
Who Was He?
"Who is DB Cooper?"
- llcucf80
"Best conspiracy theory I've heard is that he made the parachute landing successfully but lost the money on the way down. Since he had nothing to show for the crime, he made his way back home and went back to his normal life."
- agreeingstorm9
"I’ve always had a tinfoil hat theory he did it for the thrills and never planned on keeping the money."
"Like he just dumped the bag when he was parachuting down. Or maybe he knew the bills were numbered so he couldn’t spend them."
- retroverted_uterus
"My favorite theory is that DB Cooper wasn't one person, but a member of the flight crew and they were all in on it."
- hectoByte
The Setagaya Family
"The Setagaya family murders."
"A family of four were murdered in their Tokyo home in late December 2000, after which the killer stayed in the house for several hours leaving behind a ton of evidence; clothes, bag, murder weapon, DNA from blood and stool (he used the toilet and didn't flush.)"
"Sand was found in the bag that the killer left behind, which was analyzed and determined to have come from Edwards AFB."
"Despite all this and literally millions of man-hours spent by Japanese police and investigators, they're still no closer to solving the crime."
- jnhummel
"There’s a lot of the things that could narrow down the suspect pool: his DNA suggests he is Eurasian, with Italian on the mother’s side and Korean on the father’s."
"He left behind a T-shirt that was one of a few hundred sold in some area of LA. The soil on his boots could only have come from an area of Southern CA near or on one of the military facilities, probably at 29 Palms. Yet we still haven’t gotten anywhere."
"It’s frustrating."
- SniffleBot
"Considering that they found sand in the shoe tracks that was from an Air Force Base in the US, and evidence pointing to the killer wearing designer limited edition clothing from South Korea, as well as the strong US military presence in parts of Japan, I wonder if the killer was some US military high-up’s kid and it’s been heavily covered up…"
- hotpotatoyo
"The killer used the toilet and didn’t flush…? Now that’s just disrespectful. And I’m not even joking."
"This dude was legit challenging the investigators."
- Lanky_Accountant_453
"My guess is it was a US military dependent or member."
"Evidence links to Korea and California. Can't find him in Japan because he isn't."
- ikonoqlast
Max Headroom
"The Max Headroom signal hijacking occurred on the night of November 22, 1987, when the television broadcasts of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, United States, were hijacked in an act of broadcast piracy by a video of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume."
"Really wish this was solved."
- Curiousthrowzone
"I saw that real time. SOB interrupted Dr. Who."
- EgberetSouse
"It seems to me that, by now, someone (possibly the girl) should have leaked it out. I think the statute of limitations expired a long time ago."
"It's all so odd."
"At the very least, three people had to be involved - the cameraman, the girl who swats his butt, and the guy. And not one person has told anyone?"
- jeremyxt
Anybody Out There?
"If we're alone in the universe."
"There's an entire argument for it called the Fermi Paradox. Essentially the argument is: with the extremely vast number of stars in the universe, and the number of habitable planets that must orbit them, it seems incredibly unlikely that someone wouldn't have found us already, or at the very least, we would have stumbled upon evidence of them."
"All it would take is 1 civilization in our galaxy to create self-replicating probes (that mine materials to replicate themselves) to fill the galaxy in relatively short time."
- LifeIsOnTheWire
"Another theory suggests that one possible conclusion of the fermi paradox is that no civilization survives long enough to invent long distance space travel, they all go extinct first."
- Ch1ef_Walrus
"I always subscribed to the theory that there IS alien life out there, but they’ve observed us as a species and decided we aren’t worth contacting due to how we treat each other and how we’d essentially try to attack or destroy them if they did make contact."
- Spudzley
"One thing I've been wondering about the past couple years is how likely it is for advanced civilizations to last long enough without killing themselves off to progress to the stage of long-distance space travel and finding other civilizations."
"Considering we could well be wiping ourselves out via climate change in the next couple centuries...it's possible we won't ever make it to a stage where we could discover life on other planets. Is the same true for other advanced civilizations in the universe?"
"That would explain their absence."
- Ilyeana
"My favorite 'theory' on that is it would (require) nuclear power to travel outside of the immediate vicinity of the home planet, but civilizations that reach nuclear capability wipe themselves out with nuclear war before they can explore farther into space."
- YayAdamYay
The Tylenol Murders
"The Tylenol murders is a good one! That story with no suspect(s) after all these years is nuts."
"Hard to believe Tylenol, as a brand, was able to come back after that."
- m_nels
"Probably the best theory is that one of the seven victims was the intended target."
"The perp was at least smart enough to realize that a single death would point straight to who did it, so they contaminated multiple containers to spread out the investigation."
- Dynasuarez-Wrecks
"I read that the FBI believes Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was the real killer but since he is in Supermax and there have been no other poisonings they haven’t investigated further."
- Sam-I-Am56
"James Lewis. He served 13 years in prison for extortion in relation to the murders. Technically it’s 'unsolved' much like the Nicole Brown Simpson murder was 'unsolved.' "
- the-samizdat
"That dude flew out with his wife to NYC on 5th September and returned after the murders."
"Nobody could place him in Chicago at the time of the poisonings, which had to be carried out quickly else the potassium cyanide would eat through the pills."
"I agree he was suspicious, but they’ve never had the correct/enough evidence to convict him of the poisonings."
- FenderForever62
Missing In Panama
"The two girls that went missing in the jungle in Panama."
"There are only a few photos from the girls phones, attempts to call for help, and then apparently one of the phones were turned on later and the wrong PIN was entered a few times (not confirmed if it was just random)."
"Some clothes were found later during a search, mainly scattered bones with some skin on them and one of the girls bones were bleached."
"The photos and the bones suggest maybe someone killed them. For some reason there was 90 photos taken, but none of them except for 3 are even remotely clear to see anything, it's chilling as hell..."
"I hope it gets solved one day, those families deserve more closure other than what they have now."
- superfnliminal
"Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon."
"I'd definitely like to see this one solved too although I do think this is a case which could just as easily be as a result of something other than foul play."
"It's very easy to get disoriented and hopelessly lost in the wilderness, especially in an environment you're not familiar with."
"The random photographs, it's been speculated, were them using the flash as a light to find their way, which seems plausible."
"And there is plenty of scavenging wildlife in that area which would explain the girls' remains being disturbed. Bones get sun-bleached all the time."
- jnhummel
What's Lurking
"The mysteries of the deep ocean. We know about the likes of the Deep Sea Angularfish and Colossal Squid, but it's probably just a fraction of what else is lurking down there."
- Quit_social_media
"As out Tech capacity has improved, scientists are 'discovering' weird and wonderful things all the time. I read somewhere they discovered 10 new creatures just in 2021."
- oceanbreze
"I think about this a lot. I have a 75 gallon aquarium. And even in that small contained space, I can rarely see all the fish in there."
- guppy89
Stolen Sisters
"Why are there so many Native American women going missing and why did the US government only start keeping track of this in the last month?"
"I have a theory that some, if not most, are being sold into sex trafficking. I live close to the Keshena reservation here in Northeastern Wisconsin. The reservation is maybe a 30 minute drive from Shawano, Wi."
"Shawano is considered a sex trafficking hub, as well as Green Bay which is only an hour from the Keshena reservation."
"The Keshena reservation is very isolated."
"What I mean by this is you could very easily kill someone and dump a body in the woods out there and no one would find it. No, I do not know this by experience."
"A young lady by the name of Katelyn Kelley went missing on June 18th 2020, her remains weren’t found until March 25th 2021. They were found in the woods near the reservation."
"The story of her death is a mess."
"She was loved by so many people, yet none of the people with her that night would open their mouths about who she was with. The Menominee board offered a $5,000 dollar reward for any information leading to the remains of Katelyn Kelley and still no one talked."
"This is weird because the Menominee reservation in Keshena is easily one of the poorest reservations in the US. That money would have gotten people to talk."
"I believe the murder was committed by someone outside the community. Sex traffickers."
"Many of her friends said that she was a fighter, she wouldn’t go down without putting up a fight. Secondly, she had a son who was an infant, giving her even more reason to fight."
"Personally, I believe that she was abducted and proved to be more of an issue then what it was worth so they just killed her and dumped her body in the woods on the reservation."
"To this day no arrests have been made and no new information has been presented."
"There are FED Dodge Chargers and SUVs everywhere on the reservation and in Shawano. How is this still happening?"
"Either the FEDs suck at their jobs on accident, or the US government is proving what we’ve known all along - that the US government doesn’t give two sh*ts about the indigenous population."
- Catman873
Lars
"Lars Mittank"
"He was a dude from Germany who went on vacation to Bulgaria with his friends in 2014. He 'apparently' got involved in a bar fight while drunk."
"I say 'apparently' because this happened when he was separated from his group of friends. All they knew was that he returned later with some injuries. None of his friends witnessed what actually happened."
"Because of this 'fight' he ended up with an injured jaw and a ruptured ear drum. The doctor on site told him that he had to wait a few days before he could safely fly."
"His friends offered to stay with him and take a flight back home later than planned, but Lars said it was ok and they should return to Germany without him. He would take a flight back home some days later."
"There are reports of him acting somewhat strange over the next few days. At one point he made a whispering phone call to his mother where he said that 'four men were coming to kill' him and advised her that she should cancel his credit cards."
"On the day he was supposed to fly back home, the airport CCTV recorded him going into the airport office to consult a doctor. It later shows him SPRINTING OUT OF THERE and running out of the airport altogether."
"We don't know why. He just ran, hopped the fence, and fled into a field of sunflowers (all captured on CCTV). He was never seen again."
"The most popular theory is that he had a reaction to the medicine he was given. In rare instances it can cause hallucinations and paranoia."
- enumaelisz
The Frog Boys
"Who killed the frog boys in South Korea?"
"5 boys between 9 and 13 go missing in 1991 while playing together looking for salamander eggs. The parents, community, and government searched for the boys."
"The parents blamed one another for years until the boys were found in 2002 buried in the mountainside behind the town - in an area that had been searched in the initial investigation and that the kids knew well."
"Due to police incompetence officers with no forensic experience were digging up the bodies and destroyed evidence."
"The local military took the families of the boys to the mountainside in the middle of the night 'to spiritually guide them' to the bodies."
"To be honest, I think the military personnel shot the boys by accident and covered it up. There was a military range in the mountainside."
"Years later they 'felt bad' so they tried to guide the parents to the bodies found on the mountainside."
- tabbeycatty
Happy Producers
"What’s on oak island?"
- Tremmorz
"Some very happy producers and tv execs"
- the_clash_is_back
"Ancient First Nations artifacts that the film crew and these diggers are completely unequipped to uncover. Why at all would you keep the guy who screwed up the last expedition onboard?"
- FilmGamerOne
"The real mystery is how this is a tv show with multiple seasons. Who watches this?!!"
- Actual_Hat9525
Whether these mysteries are on a scale as big as the universe or as small as one person, they still keep us up at night.
People like to tie up loose ends.
We expect it.
We demand stories with conclusions and resolutions—but it's clear that doesn't always happen.
What mysteries keep your brain in overdrive?
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An unsolved crime is the most terrifying loose end there is. For as long as the perpetrator remains unidentified, we're left knowing that there is someone out there roaming among us, hiding in plain sight as they carry that bleak past.
The most terrifying cases are, of course, murders and disappearances of people.
A recent Reddit thread asked users to share the most gruesome and unnerving cases that still lack a suspect. The thread reads like a real life list of horror vignettes.
It may lead you to walk around a little paranoid for the rest of the day. After all, you never know if the killer is living right around the corner or you bumped into them along your commute.
Cantthink90 asked, "What cold case or unsolved crime still gives you chills?"
The Story Continues to Unfold
"Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès."
"He killed entire family and vanished. He has been looked for over a decade and even today french media brings new info about his troubled past, money and marriage problems - that gives you chills."
-- MSchmidt8080
Not Always Murder
"The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist:"
"On the night of March 18, 1990, museum guards allowed two men dressed as police officers to enter Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They were fake cops and immediately tied up the guards and set about stealing 13 art works worth a half-billion dollars."
"Despite the $10 million reward, the case remains unsolved."
-- Back2Bach
Poof
"The disappearance of Brian Shaffer"
"He went out drinking with friends, entered a bar and never came out again. Nobody knows what happened to him and there were no other exits inside. He just disappeared without a trace."
-- honeybeeMA
Right Before Our Eyes
"Missy Bevers."
"The footage of her attacker wandering around the church in riot gear, waiting (?) for her to arrive. Horrifying. The fact that they are on crystal clear video yet still has not been identified. Just wtf all around."
Fantastical Horror
"In 1932, a woman living alone in Stockholm was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment. The discovery of a blood-covered gravy ladle led police to believe that they had found the murder weapon, but this was not the case."
"The murderer had used it to drink her blood, and had successfully drained the corpse of nearly all liquid before fleeing the scene."
Tending Towards Conspiracy
"The disappearance of Louis Le Prince. Most people refer to Thomas Edison as the father of motion pictures simply because he patented the idea. Louis Le Price invented a motion picture camera before Edison could but one day he boarded a train and that's when he was last seen."
"His wife couldn't submit the patent for the camera as she needed to wait a year ( maybe four i think?) to submit a mission person's patent. That's the same time as Edison invented his own motion picture camera/ device whatever they referred to it as back in the early 1900's."
"If i recall correctly the famous Patent wars ensued and Thomas Edison was regarded sole inventor of motion pictures."
-- ZLATEN_DAB
A Local Loss
"Elizabeth Barraza & her husband lived in the neighborhood behind me. On January 25, 2019 someone drove up to the house as she was setting up for a garage sale. The person got out of their truck & walked up and shot her several times and then drove away."
"We have surveillance video from a neighbor & it shows the whole thing. But there still hasn't been a suspect named, the Harris County police are at a loss. It was so early in the morning that the light was still low so it's hard to tell if the person is even a male or female."
"Elizabeth was a wonderful person, she was heavily involved in a volunteer group that would visit hospitals dressed as characters from Star Wars. Her marriage was great, there's just no reason for someone to want to kill her."
"So over a year later there's been nothing, all we know right now is that a random person just drove up and shot Elizabeth in her driveway."
WHAT.
"The USS Cyclops disappearance, a US navy ship vanished without a trace with over 300 men on board in the Bermuda Triangle in 1918. What's even creepier is that two of her sister ships also vanished on that same route in the 1940s."
"Her other sister ship was renamed the USS Langley and converted into America's first aircraft carrier. The loss of the Cyclops is the largest non combat loss of life in navy history."
-- yumbatsoup
A Bold Appearance
"The Lake Bodom murders."
"Four teenagers, 2 young couples, were brutally attacked while camping. The sole survivor underwent hypnosis to try to identify the murderer."
"Many criticised this method and dismissed it as nonsense noting the sketch didn't really look like a real person, except for the fact that a man who looked just like it was photographed at a memorial service for the murders. He was never identified."
-- holdnofear
A Fallen Polygot
"The Isdal woman."
"She was a foreign woman found burned to death at a remote area in Norway in 1970. She visited Norway twice in 1970... once in March 1970, and then in November 1970. The Isdal woman stayed at various hotels around Norway under several false names, and supposedly possessed false passports."
"Hotel staff reported that she kept to herself and spoke to them in German and broken English. She was also witnessed conversing in French with a man at a hotel lobby."
"The Isdal woman stood out in Norway because she looked foreign and dressed very stylishly. She was also a lone woman staying in hotels, which was unusual in 1970."
"After her death, it was rumored that she was a spy from Israel or Russia. Nobody knows who she is and why she came to Norway."
Triple Disappearance
"The Beaumont Children - they were three Australian siblings (aged 9, 7 and 4) and they just disappeared on Jan. 26th 1966 (Australia Day) from Adelaide, South Australia."
"There were several witnesses who saw the children hanging out near Glenelg beach with a tall and blonde thin-faced man who was tanned and had a thin-athletic build in his mid 30s it's been 54 years and it's still a cold case that boggles my mind."
Chilly, to be Sure
"The Anchorage flagpole jumper, some buck naked duded climbs to the top of a flag pole in the front of a McDonald's and then jumps down face first and kills himself."
"To this day his identity is unknown."
-- tacopig117
Dreadfully Comfortable
"A family of four was murdered in their home in Tokyo in 2000. The killer stabbed the parents and older daughter and strangled the youngest and then remained in their house for hours after. He used the computer, ate food, used the toilet (and if I recall correctly, didn't flush)."
"Lots of DNA was recovered, along with other clues, but they never had a match. There's still a reward."
The End of the Game
"The death of Erin Valenti"
"She was a CEO at a tech company that was studying brain machine interface technology, or simply mind control, at the time. While on her way to a business conference in another state, she called her mother and her boyfriend."
"Her last words to the both of them were, 'Its all a game, it's a thought experiment, we're in the matrix.' Police found her in her car a day or two later dead in the backseat.
"No sign of a struggle, just a healthy 33 year old who died of suspected 'natural causes.' There's a great video on YouTube by blameitonjorge who explains it better than I ever could."
Devastating Consequences From Such Minor Actions
"The Tylenol poisonings. No one caught and I don't think it would be that hard to do again. Who poisons a random number of bottles and just never does it again?"
"First thing I thought of and no one has said it yet."
-- saturnspritr
The Line Between Truth and Justice
"My sister's. She was poisoned with a large amount of morphine so her boyfriend could get insurance money. He had already previously beaten her several times and we had warned her that he would likely kill her."
"Even the detective in Clarksville said he did it but proving something takes money and clout, 2 things my family has always been short on."
Ending on a Lighter Note
"The Max Headroom incident."
"Doctor Who was being aired on a TV station in Chicago when it was interrupted by a person wearing a full head Max Headroom mask who mocked the Coke catchphrases and then got spanked by a flyswatter."
-- WDJam
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