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."
-- 14thCenturyHood
Fantastical Horror
"The Atlas Vampire"
"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."
-- rainbowsforbrunch
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."
-- -IneedCoffee-
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."
-- ralphwiggum345
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."
-- theredheadedfox89
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."
-- descartesasaur
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."
-- LeavesOfCabbage
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."
-- excusemeforliving
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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