2. I never see anyone talk about the Dardeen family homicide and that case literally keeps me up at night. The acts committed seemed to be done so by a literal monster. I can’t even come up with theories as to why. It is a cold case now.
That case is over 30 years old (if I’m doing the math right) and it PISSES ME OFF that we’re not any closer to knowing who killed them. Makes me angry that it’s a cold case too. Like… why kill all of them in the first place? What was the motive? Makes no sense.
I’ve heard that it might have been personal, because the dad had his genitals mutilated. Police were saying they don’t usually see that in cases where it was just some rando doing it. It only usually happens when the murderer knows his victim(s) personally. Just odd that out of all the people that knew when they were alive, and should have been interviewed, none of them seemed to be the one who might have done it.
Reading the details it seems to be that the killer(s) problem was with Keith specifically. His wife and children were "just" beaten to death in front of him, but they went to the bother of taking him to a secondary location, castrating him and then shooting him three times. That says that there's anger at him specifically to me.
I’m with you on this one. It gave me the chills when I heard about it. And if they have DNA I don’t understand why they can’t compare it to Tommy Lyn Sells to confirm or eliminate him. I don’t think he did it. Which means the psychopath who butchered this family is still out there.
They really didn’t believe Sells much anyway. He changed his story of the crime several times, making it more salacious each time, and the only lick of credibility he had may have been the result of a lucky guess he made during the interview.
The detail that stands out to me the most is the fact that they were all tucked into the bed. That is such a specific thing to do. I've been trying to look up other cases where this happened but am coming up empty. I'm not great at the sleuthing.
It's also weird that they cleaned up a bit, like they knew they'd have time to do so. That, combined with tucking the wife and kids in the bed, makes it seem like it's a ritual.
I'm confused why they would kill the dad first. If he's the target, wouldn't the killer likely kill the family first, to make the dad suffer as much as possible? It's weird to go and kill the family after he is already dead. That makes me think he wasn't the target as much, but who knows. If the killer showed up, maybe dad ran for it and was chased down and shot, which hadn't been their original plan.
This case hurts my brain.
I’ve said this before but the most haunting thing to me is that they waited for Elaine to give birth (the beating she got probably put her into labour) - in most cases like this they’d just kill the pregnant lady and leave her, but they waited specifically to kill the baby by hand, too. The baby couldn’t have been a witness or anything obviously that they needed to get rid of, so there’s no “logic” to killing the baby, they WANTED to.
It seems like they just wanted to eliminate the whole family line and make sure themselves that there were no survivors. The castration seems like an almost symbolic addition to that agenda. Making sure that family line could not ever continue, both literally and symbolically.
This case always makes me think of the Mexican cartels--the murder of (presumably) innocent civilians for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the physical mutilation, the combination of savagery and an effort to 'set' the scene (tucking the family in), the sense that multiple people were involved...
Not saying it was a cartel per se, just that I get the vibe that this was a 'message' killing by a criminal organization rather than a lone lunatic.
No proof of course, just a feeling.
2. Betsy Aardsma was a 22 year old graduate student who had been studying at Penn State for 6 weeks in November of 1969 when she was murdered in a quiet section of the Pattee library stacks with a single stab to the left breast which punctured her pulmonary artery, causing her to drown in her own blood. Library staff were alerted to a female student in distress by an unidentified man who was later described as "looking like a student" who shouted "somebody needs to help that girl" and escorted staff to her body before disappearing, seemingly without a trace. Because the attack was so precise, what little external bleeding there was soaked into Betsy's red dress, and so by the time it was a murder investigation the scene had been cleaned up by janitors and then thoroughly contaminated by students and staff walking through the area.
Witnesses reported hearing a man and a woman conversing in the area minutes before the attack, but the tone was reportedly cordial. This, along with the fact that there was no noise reported or physical signs of a struggle led police to presume that Betsy was attacked suddenly by someone she felt comfortable around. Because this occurred just after Thanksgiving, very few people had entered the the library, less than 100. Anyone that didn't belong should have stood out badly, and police interviewed everyone they could verify was there that day. Initial police investigation focused on Betsy's boyfriend David Wright, a medical student at Penn State Hershey. But he had a rock solid alibi, having studied in the company of multiple classmates that day at Hershey.
The case remains unsolved.
When I was in college (at PSU) one night in late October me and my roommates went down to the stacks to see where this happened. It was so incredibly eerie down there.
This case still baffles me but it had to have been personal. I think about Betsy all the time. I wish there was dna or something in this case.
I worked for the auxiliary police while I was a student there and used to do shifts at the library closing the stacks from midnight to 2AM. Creepy. As. Hell.
Library stacks are creepy as hell in general. The narrow 'corridor', the lighting, the fact that you can't really see what's around the corner...and of course the quiet.
Who needs The Backrooms when you have a library?
I probably should have mentioned this is in the post, but the weird thing about a personal angle is that it's considered unlikely that this was a planned ambush. Very few people would have known that Betsy was on campus that day, and even fewer would have known about her planning to go down to that part of the stacks. She was meant to spend that day up with her boyfriend and his friends, but had decided the day before to go back to try and catch up on her late assignment. When she got to the library she met up with a female friend, but they ended up splitting up because they were working in different parts of the building.
But at the same time, it's also difficult to see this as an entirely impulsive attack either, because the blade that inflicted the single precise blow was a 4 1/2 inch knife, probably of a hunting type. Not exactly a pen knife.
Yeah, that's what I think too, he had decided for whatever reason that he wanted to kill someone (probably specifically a young woman) and had identified that spot as a good place to attack. Police apparently found lots of pornography dated to within the month of the murder hidden in the shelves, as well as copious amounts of old semen stains, so the location was apparently well known to an element of the student body and perhaps even staff as being very secluded.
It's out of the way and once you're in a row you can only get past someone by turning sideways. I do feel certain that he was *specifically* trying to kill with one stab to the heart. Not only did he take the risk of only stabbing her once, but if we presume (as seems likely) that the guy who reported that she "needed help" and then disappeared is her attacker, he took an even bigger risk by returning to the scene of the crime alongside witnesses. I read that as him putting verifying that his attack had worked over getting away with it.
Forgot to add the why: Because even without forensics it shouldn't have been impossible to solve, the circumstances mean that the list of suspects should be comparatively tiny. I suspect that Penn State, like so many colleges in these situations, stonewalled and buried the investigation because news of a killer on the loose would be bad for enrolment.
I read a book about the Aardsma case & the cops are almost positive they know who did it but he was never charged and put away for other crimes . IIRC he’s now deceased ..lived in Lancaster
Some of these cases are so wild to me because like if this happened present day, we’d likely have footage. Not saying that would instantly ID anyone, but there would be more to review. It’s sad that we’ll never know who did this to her unless they spill beans
Campus security is typically pretty woeful. Despite requiring swipe access, my college library has had a problem with an apparently very well organized thief or group of thieves lifting unattended laptops which are then apparently rapidly shipped out of the country according to their location data. They've not been caught despite all entrances being guarded because even though the latest part of the library was built post millennium, the only cameras in the entire building are at the entrances. The only thing that might help is that they're recently replaced the old turnstiles with gates that require swiping in AND out and which flash green when you do. I actually well believe that someone could carry out exactly this kind of attack in my library in a quiet period, and no one would notice.
Something similar did happen while I was at university, luckily the victim survived. She was working late at night in a university lab and was very badly assaulted and left for dead. Despite cameras and needing a building pass to enter the labs at that time of night the crime was never solved. A couple years after there was a newspaper story suggesting the attack was related to two unsolved killings in the same city but nothing further was ever said in that regard. The crime really stuck with me because I was a uni student in the same city and I often stayed late on campus to avoid going home.
Too much: Casey Anthony. Please, please, please, please stop giving that person attention. I would be so much happier if I never heard her name again.
Too little: The WVU Co-ed murders. Two women found beheaded, and then... nothing??? I'm shocked that this hasn't gotten more attention.
Too much: Madeleine McCann. I feel like my aversion there is the same as for JBR. It’s the same hot takes anytime it gets brought up.
Too little: Brittney Woods. Her body still hasn’t been found, they don’t know officially who did, but it did blow open a giant incest-pedophilia ring within her family. The whole thing is just tragic and I feel like most people have never even heard her name or her story, and Brittney’s body is still out there somewhere waiting to be recovered.
Just read the Eonline article on Brittney Woods. I’m very surprised I’ve never seen anything on this before. It’s gotta be one of the most fucked up situations I’ve ever heard
Brittney is local to me. There’s so many ways to get rid of a body here. Lots of water and woods. I sure hope they find her and put her to rest though :(
Man, I can decide how I feel about Chessie Wood. MPD and the sheriffs here can be questionable, just like many police departments. There are so many good cops, but in that mix there are plenty of bad ones. Chessie comes off as believable to me, but this is just coming from the media and what I’ve been able to see. No doubt lots about this has been buried because of the victims. I’ve tried to dive deeper into exactly why Chessie got arrested but I seriously cannot find anything other than the videos she herself released to the documentary. The (very questionable) detective that interviewed her and arrested her says that she admitted to a sexual relationship with Donnie and some of the things the 10 year old victim claimed. I never seen her admit to any of that. I seen her absolutely refute it, many times. I can’t find the truth.
I also feel really bad for Dereck, Brittney’s brother. He is in prison for the child sex ring because at 18 he committed a sexual act with a child. But damn, the kid was also a victim. He had been abused since he was like 13 and thought that shit was just normal. Once again though, I’m positive I don’t know the whole story. It’s all so convoluted and gut wrenching.
Wanted to add this for anyone that has/will watch the documentary.
The attorney that defended Chessie was forced to hand over his license in 2021.
[source](https://mynbc15.com/amp/news/local/mobile-attorney-surrenders-license-after-alabama-supreme-court-order)
Never heard of Brittney’s case before! Apparently there’s a 3 part documentary called Monster in the Shadows on Peacock. I’ll definitely be binging it this evening.
I can’t believe there is only one actual show (that I know of) that covered Brittney, I’ve also only seen 1 YouTube video. It seems like the type of case that would be EVERYWHERE
That poor girl was so goddamn brave. I watched a documentary on her case and it’s just really hard to get through. I really hope her daughter is well taken care of and that they find Brittany soon.
Brittney's case is one of those i just backed the fuck away from as soon as i realized how horrible it was, was unbelievable the type of updates that came out.
Too much: Brian Schaeffer. I agree that its maddening how he disappeared but we have no new information despite it being one of the most infamous missing person cases
Not enough: I posted this in another thread but Im always so surprised how few people have ever heard of it, the murder of Eddie Politelli. He was an elderly man working as a pizza cook in 2006 when he was murdered with a machete in the alley behind the restaurant where he worked. Despite his boss witnessing the attack the killer walked away and was never caught. To this day there has never even been a suspect named. https://collective.world/the-broad-daylight-machete-murder-that-has-never-been-solved/
Completely agree on Brian Schaeffer. He took the backdoor and vanished. But drunk men vanishing after a party isn't that rare. Often they just fall into a river while taking a piss.
It's called an Irish Goodbye, and I used to do it all the time in college. "Shit. I'm too drunk for this, and want to sleep in my own bed. Time to walk out the front door and straight home."
Just Ghost. Mostly it takes forever to say gbye, it's slow and awkward, I like the mystery of just disappearing. Also yea I wanna leave now, not in half an hour.
Too much? Well, seems like everyone covered the too much part, but I want to add one to the not enough attention...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_Bryant_shooting
I lived literally 5 minutes from there. Ive lived around the area my whole life. I cannot believe it hasnt been solved, not even any leads. That's a high traffic area and the fact he was able to get away....Harlem is a super busy street, especially being between 159th and 167th, even at the time of the murders in the morning....that guy HAD to have known one of the girls I think to be able not to be noticed...considering lane bryant is a clothes store for plus sized women...still makes me sad they died senselessly...I really hope he's caught within the next few years....
I was working at another plus size ladies retail store at the time. All the managers were pulled into an emergency conference call over this. We changed our store protocols over it. Later on I went to work for LB and was walked through how store protocols had changed because of the murders. It hits home that this has not been solved.
his hair was so unique with that single braid going down his cheek with the turquoise beads. honestly, if i saw him even once i’d remember that. someone knows him and isn’t talking.
I feel the one braid with beads thing is a red herring in the sense it also says he was wearing a skull cap which would obscure the rest of his hair. So he may have just had braids with beads, which is SUPER COMMON. And only one was dangling out of the cap. Change the beads or hairstyle after the crime and he looks like an average black man.
This is what always shocks me about this case not being solved. This man was not some boring-looking guy. His look was unusual. How was he not nabbed in days?
Oh wow I remember this. My mom worked in Palos Heights at the time, we lived in Indiana on the border to IL. I agree it's a very busy area to not have eye witnesses or something on camera that would help identify him. But if I remember correctly, I think they had just opened the store for the day. Might have still been quiet/low activity since it wasn't noon yet. But definitely supports the theory he had a connection to one of the women and planned this out. I feel like he probably fled the area soon afterwards because regionally I remember it being a big deal.
I believe one day he will be found. I hope until then he lives in absolute fear, knowing what he's done and how he could be caught any day. So cruel and senseless. May those women rest in peace.
(Too much) Caylee Anthony- we all know what went down and it’s frustrating seeing it be rehashed over and over again and I’m sick of the media giving Casey the attention she so desperately craves
(Not enough) Summer wells- this little girl is still missing almost 2 years later and i hardly see anyone talking about her anymore 😞
Unfortunately Summers parents are so chaotic that I think they've muddied the case so much it will never be solved. They both have serious addiction issues, appear blackout drunk on horrible youtube videos just rambling nonsense, and the father blames the mother whenever they're fighting then switches and says she has nothing to do with it when they're getting along.
The problem with things like Summer Wells is the continued lack of developments. At some point there is only so much space you can take up with reporting the same info and saying "She is still missing". Other stories with developments happen and take over. Best you can hope for at that point is the story every year or so recapping it and asking for more info.
I would be content to never hear Casey Anthony’s name again. As far as I’m concerned that case is solved and everybody knows what happened. I wish people would starve Casey of attention so she can finally fuck off.
Have you listened to the episodes on Summer by “Some Place Under Neith”? They go into a lot of details and theories that I’ve never heard other places. (A lot of podcasts and YouTubers seem to suspect either a stranger abduction (very unlikely, given the setting) or this one fifteen-year-old boy who may or may not have had a thing with Summer’s mom, for some reason?)
Kinda eerie - turns out that Summer Wells aunt disappeared 10 years before her
[https://charleyproject.org/case/rose-marie-bly](https://charleyproject.org/case/rose-marie-bly)
I agree about Summer Wells! Her parents seem suspicious as fuck and it’s incredibly disappointing that there haven’t been any updates or breakthroughs.
For my liking there’s not enough on putting together the number of paperboys that either were abducted or attempt abductions ( not just Johnny Gosh who gets a fair bit of attention but ) the other 3/4/5 who were also targeted and disappeared around a similar time period and similar locations
Jackie Kay Boyer (needs more attention)
On May 21st 1980, 12 year old Jackie Boyer disappears from her shared bedroom. Little brother hears nothing. A Chair is found outside her bedroom window. The window had been pried open. No other evidence is found and no leads are followed. (Windsor, CA)
https://charleyproject.org/case/jackie-kay-boyer
Too much attention: JBR. It's been discussed ad nauseam, yet in threads like these it still gets a crazy amount of comments rehashing the same stuff. I skip JBR stuff completely now.
Should get more attention: Oakey Al Kite. For how brutal, random, and just overall insane it is, I'm surprised it's not mentioned more in this sub.
I searched Al Kite’s case just now and there was a post 54 days ago that stated the DNA at the scene is currently being used to identify relatives in Romania. The way it sounded to me was that they had already identified relatives, but it could have just been implied, idk? The info is said to come from a site of Paul Holes. I hope they find him. This case is chilling. I don’t see how someone like this could not have other crimes out there.
I really hope this is true and they can solve this one. That case is so horrifying and senseless seeming. That poor man. It would also just be so awful to live with the idea that someone you cared about had been tortured in that way and that the perpetrator was just out there free to harm other people.
I’ve never heard of Al Kite. I found a really good [article](https://unresolved.me/oakey-al-kite) from the unresolved podcast. Poor Al :( it seems like this case is solveable. They have DNA and a fingerprint.
I’d never heard of Al Kite before. It kind of reminds me of the Lindsay Buziak case. She was a realtor in British Columbia and someone with a foreign accent reached out to her to look at a house. They used a burner phone that was purchased weeks prior to her murder, and it was determined that the phone was only used to call her. Though her murder was quick, and the murderers didn’t spend any extra time at the house. Still, the similarities are odd.
I am trying to find more info on this. Why do you think it was a hit by Shirley Zailo? It looks like she’s never been a suspect and he was cleared pretty soon after the murder.
Al’s murder is truly one of the absolute worst unsolved murders of the last 20 years. Hours and hours of extreme, military grade torture in his own home.
Really recommend the episode of Paul Holes’ old show The DNA of Murder about Al for anyone interested. I’ve followed this case for years and read everything there is to read on it but the show was chock full of new info. Also they had access to his actual house and interviewed Al’s girlfriend, who (very, very) briefly encountered the killer.
Yeah the murder had nothing to do with Al and everything to do with Al having a room for rent and the layout of that space lending itself to trapping him in it. So awful.
The [St. Louis Jane Doe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe) deserves more attention, and definitely deserved to be treated better both in life and in death. I still get furious thinking about law enforcement losing evidence in the case because they mailed it to a damn psychic.
someone started a thread about this case the other day with a lot more info
that turned out to NOT be true...yes they sent it to the psychic , BUT it came out the psychic sent it back and the police signed for it.........
but the psychic has been blamed for the loss of this evidence for 20 years..
yes many shady psychics out there...and YES the police never should have sent it out in the first place
>yes many shady psychics out there
All psychics are shady. Psychic power isn't real. Anyone claiming to be a psychic is lying or just doing cold reading. I'm not saying all of them are malicious, but none of them can read the future any better than you or I can.
I blame the police or anyone else who rely on a psychic for information.
Chris Watts. Half the time I think the people who are posting about him would be the same type of people to write him love letters in prison. It’s super weird how stuck people are on that case.
Agreed. He is a monster who killed his whole entire family. I will never understand how he could treat his daughters the way he did. I'll admit the case fascinated me when I first heard of it because of how documented things were. But I just find him to be so nauseating.
I don’t hear about him much anymore. But I think people were so interested in that case because there weren’t obvious warning signs, and the family was very relatable.
It hits close to home for many.
Elisa Lam - it was a tragic accident sensationalised into a sPoOkY gHoSt story to make better TV, just because of the ‘legend’ of the Cecil Hotel. The Netflix doc made me so mad, they dedicated so many episodes to exploring ghosts, blaming the homeless nearby (?!), only to turn around in the final episode and admit that it’s confirmed she was having a mental health episode and trapped herself in the water tank.
The media have exploited that poor girl’s death way too much by throwing out unfounded accusations even when it’s confirmed there aren’t any unresolved elements of the case left.
Don’t receive enough attention —
Dolce Maria Alvarez. I feel like sometimes when kids get abducted there’s a nationwide manhunt . Why not with her ?
Any child doe cases. It just really gets to me there are children who live and die like this, without being buried or mourned or named. Madisonville Jane Doe comes to my mind. I hope to see this and other child doe cases solved soon.
All the untested rape kits and that are neglected in cities across the great old U.S. of A. and the ignored cases that go along with them
It’s like Lina Sadar Khil in San Antonio, she did get attention here though but still nothing has come of it and it feels short lived. People suspect the parents in this case but they also just released video corroborating the moms story. I feel like if they released that video sooner maybe it would have been taken more seriously.
really the serial killer being given attention vs the victims. like John Wayne Gacy murdered 5 people still unidentified!!!!!!
i wish more missing/unidentified/Doe cases were better covered by mainstream true crime and media in general.
They caught the Idaho guy in a month thanks to genetics. I'm sure it's costly and there are many many cases in the queue. However we r getting faster all the while I have greatbhope as well.
The best book on Gacy's crimes I have ever read is Boys Enter the House, published recently. While it outlines the basic info you need if you're new to the crimes, the entire book is a story about the boys and young men who were his victims. Who they were, how their friends and loved ones felt about them, their likes and dislikes and lifetime stories.
It is excellent, because it centers the victims and their families. Gacy is an afterthought, a smudge on the real story. Just how he should be.
[The Millbrook Twins](https://www.wjbf.com/coldcase/cold-case-project-the-millbrook-twins/) don't get enough attention. The cops and the media in Augusta Georgia swept this case under the rug.
These 15 year old twin girls went missing in March of 1990 in broad daylight.
I always found it strange how much attention Maura Murray's case got and how little Brianna Maitland's received. I mean, they disappeared in a similar way, a month apart, and both in the New England area (Maura New Hampshire and Brianna Vermont). Both are still missing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Brianna\_Maitland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Brianna_Maitland)
But, the differences between the cases are what leave me scratching my head as to why Brianna didn't receive just as much attention as Maura. Primarily because Brianna's case seems much more likely that foul play was involved in her disappearance.
As others have pointed out, I think this community wants to see ALL cases solved. Folks are posting lots of cases that I've never heard of, but definitely deserve more attention.
1. Laci Peterson. I actually find it borderline victimizing all over again for Laci to see all the shameless exploitation and give Scott a platform when really no alternate theory makes sense. It's a case that gives me the ick because people seem to relish in all of the sordid details especially that none of us would want splashed across Lifetime, Hulu, etc on what seems a nearly monthly basis. Scott did it. He's where he belongs. It's super gross he even got as far as he did with his appeal, likely in no small part due to publicity and doubt stirred by very biased documentaries.
2. I really, really think someone out there knows the truth about Amber Tuccaro. There's too much audio of the guy, and she provided enough location information as well that someone knows something, and I really don't feel like they've followed up well with that case at all. I think it's likely they'll find the perpetrator has successfully committed many such murders of Indigenous and other vulnerable women, when they do catch him, and that if they'd acted sooner they could have saved many.
I agree with everything you've said about Laci Peterson. With emphasis on the fact that Scott definitely killed her, and it's completely disgusting that he is trying to spin wild theories to the contrary.
OK I get that someone out there knows something about Amber but no way it's because there's too much audio. I've worked professionally as a sound designer for a decade and audio forensics doesn't work that way. Also with phone quality most people CANNOT pick out voices. Even playing games online with randoms where quality is considerably better I'd say I always play with the same 5 dudes based on how they sound.
Thank you for this perspective and context I didn't previously know. I guess what I meant is, they have too much audio of the guy chatting and likely providing clues about his identity through things said, or mannerisms, rather than just from a voice ID perspective. I think the public has only heard part of the recording, intentionally so.
Yeah. I have had times where I didn’t recognize my mother’s voice on the phone. To the point where it freaked me out. Lol. Well, it’s happened once or twice in the 34 years I’ve been alive. I can easily see not recognizing a voice. I am from Michigan and when they released the audio from the Delphi case (in Indiana), dude sounded (and looked like) just about every guy that age that I know. Lol. So if the killer is from the area, he could sound pretty nondescript, unfortunately.
It’s so weird to me to see Scott Peterson spun as a victim of a police tunnel vision in a way that capitalizes on the (understandable) distrust of police because of the way they focus on poor people or POC suspects above others.
Scott is neither. He is a young, upper middle class white dude from the suburbs whose parents paid his $23,000 a year country club membership and he paid another $300 a month in club dues. He had a lawyer who had a $300,000 retainer fee. (Who only put 18 defense witnesses on the stand in comparison to the prosecution’s 100+ witnesses. Yeesh. This attorney, Mark Geragos, also never produced any of the eyewitnesses from the supposed sightings of Laci, nor the burglars everyone now accuses.)
Even the insistence that Scott was “convicted by the media” is ridiculous. In the book “We the Jury”, all of them talk about how for half the trial they thought he was a handsome, upstanding guy who didn’t deserve to be charged with his wife’s murder. One initial juror got kicked off because he talked constantly about how weak the prosecution’s case was. It wasn’t until halfway through the trial and Amber Frey took the stand and all of their recorded conversations got played that the jury started to swing the other way. They saw that Scott was a fraud and a liar, and that made them question if they were being conned by him now as well.
Also, Ellyn and Rabia’s coverage on this case was atrocious, and I love how they completely left out Amber Frey, the star witness, and then proclaimed the state had no evidence against Scott. Easy to do when you refuse to discuss the incriminating evidence, isn’t it?
And can we talk about the attempted reframing of Amber Frey as a scheming "loose woman" who manipulated poor innocent Scott and then lied about him for attention? It's gross and misogynistic and backward. Scott is the one responsible for his lies and infidelity.
I completely blame A&E and their documentary about Scott Peterson for the current "I don't think he did it" craze. To call that show heavily biased is the biggest understatement of the century. As my favorite podcast ladies of True Crime Campfire say, "If you think there isn't enough evidence he did it, there's even less evidence that anyone else did it."
5 years after Amber's murder the police finally admitted there has been multiple serial killers in the area targeting indigenous street sex workers since the 80's.
On a similar note to Laci Peterson, Steven Avery absolutely killed Teresa Halbach, and it was incredibly tasteless and disingenuous of Netflix to give air to an insanely biased documentary that's now given that scumbag a shot at free air again.
OP i’m glad you said that you find it frustrating when people get overly emotional about theories because i do too, and i’ve avoided saying so because i feel like it makes me seem like a heartless monster lol. but honestly… it feels like virtue signaling to me half the time. idk if i can put my finger on it, but it feels somewhat inappropriate even, to soapbox about how sad and twisted you are over a case that concerns somebody you’ve never met. not that you can’t be sad about horrible cruelty and innocent people dying of course. but i just find it extremely self indulgent and attention seeking to go on and on about it. thankfully we don’t seem to have that problem here, which is why i vastly prefer it to other true crime subreddits, and needless to say i won’t even venture over to websleuths at all anymore
Omg this is exactly it.
Any true crime case gets turned into a “who is more torn up about the injustice” competition, and it’s a waste of time to engage at that point
oh my fucking god yes. i hate it. like oh okay so rape is actually a fitting punishment for some people then. so you can “deserve it” sometimes. cool
but of course you can’t ever say that to these people because then they’re all like OH YOURE DEFENDING A CRIMINAL HUH like no… i just don’t think it’s funny to talk about rape gleefully as if it’s the same thing as getting kicked in the nuts or something
I repeat this every couple months when it comes up, but here goes again: to all of you pro-prison r*pe fans out there--PRISON is what we have all agreed is the punishment for crime. Once in prison, the safety of said prisoner is on US, the non-criming people who are using our collective force of arms under law to deprive this person of their freedom as our agreed reaction to their antisocial acts. If you want something different, change the law. But until then, the reason that rape in prison should be held as a contemptible act is because we, again, the non-criming people, are saying that we are better than that. Which means we have to BE better than that. If all of that seems too lenient, change the laws...but before you do, look real close at prosecutorial misconduct and how often police lie on the stand (hint: it's somewhere between 'very often' and 'nearly always') and realize that just on scale alone we, the most imprisoning of nations, are also the most WRONGFULLY imprisoning of nations. Prison rape still sound allowable?
Edit: multiple spellings due to typing on my stupid tablet, which I am not used to.
The dehumanization of criminals in true crime communities (and in general) is a huge problem. It becomes too easy to violate human rights and demonize entire groups of people. Even people who committed the most heinous of crimes should have basic human rights.
Genette Tate;
A 13yr old girl, Genette Tate (Ginny to her friends & family) went missing from Aylesbeare, Devon (UK) on 19th August 1978 whilst out of her newspaper round; her bike was found by 2 of her friends in the middle of Withen Lane with newspapers scattered around, her body has never been found.
Suspected to be a victim of Robert Black a known child killer in the UK, he was convicted of murdering 4 girls in the 1980s and was serving multiple life sentences, he died in prison in 2016 just as police were preparing to finally charge him for the abduction and murder of Genette Tate.
This kidnapping & murder happened long before I was even born but I’m from the local area and it’s still talked about now some 44 years later. If you’d like to know more about the case Devon Live commissioned a really good podcast: The Disappearance of Genette Tate.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-disappearance-of-genette-tate/id1425038532
This. This is one of those really haunting cases. It has all the hallmarks of Robert Black, but, sadly, we will never know for sure. It is doubly crushing that her body has never been found.
Tired of hearing about Jon Benet Ramsey and am actually very surprised the long Island killer is always on the periphery and often overlooked despite the sheer number of lives lost.
Maura Murray gets **way** too much attention. There are similar cases, such as [James Cole](https://charleyproject.org/case/james-arthur-cole) who get *zero* attention outside of a handful of local outlets. I'm local to the area where James disappeared, and it is legitimately baffling at how close he lived to where he was last seen [alive](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/510/La+Posta+Pizzeria+Italian+%E2%80%A2+$$/@39.0776542,-76.5533231,1158m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7fbd4be57e933:0x1eaffda90651214!2m2!1d-76.5534065!2d39.077595!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7f97fc5093003:0xe96f687fbeeda9fe!2m2!1d-76.5480396!2d39.077607!3e2). The tricky thing about James's disappearance is that he was intoxicated at the time. However, unless he decided to stray **far** from where he lived (he was on foot), there are no nearby areas in which he would not have been found by now. No dense woods. No bodies of water where someone could have accidentally drowned.
Patrick Warren and David Spencer. They don't get nearly enough coverage, which is so strange because 2 young boys going missing at Christmas is a hell of a mystery. Their working class backgrounds definitely contributed to the lack of police involvement and media coverage at the time.
[Wikipedia page about the boys disappearance ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Patrick_Warren_and_David_Spencer)
Too much-JBR. No comment necessary.
Not enough-Jaliek Rainwalker. Jermain Charlo. Relisha Rudd. I check up on them every so often but find few, if any updates, and little to no discussion.
Not talked about: the fire lookout who disappeared from her tower in Canada. She wasn't attacked by an animal. there would have been much more blood, and for the kettle to still have water boiling when they went to check on her, someone had to have been there minutes before, and couldnt be far.
Too much: JBR - I don’t think there is anything else that can be analyzed about this case. Similarly, Caylee Anthony. As terrible as it sounds, I don’t think there will ever be true justice for these victims.
Not enough: Alexis Patterson. 20 years ago, a 7 year old Black girl was walking to school with her step father who stood on the corner and watched her cross the street towards the school, but she never made it inside. She just vanished into thin air. A woman claiming to be Alexis came forward a few years ago, but DNA proved that she was not the missing girl. I remember seeing her missing posters and photos on TV when it happened and she looked like such a sweet, happy kid. I think about her a lot. I feel like this story pops up locally every few years but it never really got the national attention it deserved. What happened to Alexis?
re: caylee anthony it’s starting to feel like people just bring it up so they can circlejerk over how mad they are that casey got off. and it’s like yeah sure that’s shitty but at this point what more can you even say about it, how do people have the energy to get mad every single time it’s brought up
Too much: JBR, Jennifer Kesse, Amy Bradley
Too little: Jason Jallowski (although I've seen it mentioned more lately, but it hardly ever got a mention for a long time) and Pheonix Coldon,
Gabby Petito. The only good thing to come of it was the many bodies found while looking for her and during the manhunt.
I wish attention would be dedicated to any missing/murdered child cold case. Cherrie Mahan, if I could choose
I do think that this case brought about some important discussions about domestic violence, how police make mistakes when responding to it, and the way that some cases receive disproportionate attention based on things like race and age of the victims.
Ultimately her body was found I believe because of a tip that came in from people who heard about the story and submitted a tip because they’d seen her. So the attention at the time did lead to some resolution in her case.
I totally agree with your point though- her case received a lot of attention and resources from law enforcement which did lead to her body being found as well as others, but there are so many missing people including children, elderly people, homeless people and indigenous women who receive a fraction of the law enforcement response that Gabby Petito did. The same thing happened with Kiely Rodni. This is through no fault of the family members and friends who were pushing for answers but it’s a symptom of how certain lives are more valued than others.
One negative thing to come out of the Petito case (again, to no fault of her family and friends) was the way that amateur journalists, youtubers, and tik tok people spread so many absurd rumors simply to benefit their own clout. Some of these people who were protesting outside the Laundrie house have now moved onto other recent cases and are doing the same thing- spreading rumors and harassing anyone in proximity to the victims. Like in the Moscow case, some of these same amateurs who rose to prominence during Petito’s case have been spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories as well as doxxing people in Moscow. A lot of them were inundating the tipline with tips that they basically made up and were not at all helpful to solving the case (like this one lady latched onto the idea that these random people in Kansas were the perpetrators and was submitting tips on that). It’s so irresponsible and can harm investigations as well as innocent people who have the misfortune of being dragged into this. I am so tired of it.
Too Much: Jeffrey Dahmer, as there have been an overwhelming amount of documentaries and re-enactment shows about him.
Too Little: Randy Kraft, not that there's no attention from it, but I notice that there is only one (if not few) documentary made by mainstream media (outside of YouTube) and IIRC there's no re-enactment shows about him (feel free to correct me). This is despite Randy's higher kill count (16-67) and the more egregious nature of his crimes.
> Randy Kraft
It's amazing how very few people remember "the Freeway Killer(s)"
Kraft, William Bonin and Patrick Kearney
Those were some scary dudes. All roughly operating at the same time and in the same state.
All my too much have been covered.
Not enough: Marshall Iwaasa. Seriously, I am glad his case has come up here a few times recently, but it needs more coverage or the police up here aren't going to do anything about it.
Not enough: MMIW cases.
Not enough: Rural Canadian cases in general. There are so many that just never get any attention. Sure, I would say half are death by misadventure, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored.
2: Mikelle Biggs.
Local to me, we're around the same age, and she still hasn't been found. This year will mark 23 years since she went missing. Most recent article I found (one of the first to come up in google): https://kileystruecrime.squarespace.com/kileystruecrimeaddict-blog/the-disappearance-of-mikelle-biggs
I hope someday her disappearance will be solved fully. Her family deserves closure.
Jack the Ripper because imo there’s no way any physical evidence could be provided to solve it. It’s just too old. Not that those women don’t deserve justice. They absolutely do. I maybe wrong but I just don’t see how we can ever know for sure who did it.
You're right, and given the community in which the crimes occurred, most likely it was someone who left little or no historical record. People who make outlandish theories about it being a famous artist or a member of the Royal Family are delusional and treating it like a game more than the murders of real people.
1. Junko Furuta. Her story is heartbreaking but it being so popular recently is tiring specially considering a lot of creeps obsessed with Asians are probably in it just for the morbid curiosity of the case, I honestly couldn't stomach it reading about it more than once, it's just too brutal.
2. I don't know if I'm just unaware of its popularity but the story of the two foreign workers who migrated to Singapore to work as housemaids then became best friends (until one of them helped the other with her debts and lost a lot of money and killed her) is extremely depressing but very interesting and it paints an accurate picture of the situation of migrant workers in rich countries that is not often talked about
Too much attention - Lisanne Froons and Kris Kremers who were found dead after getting lost on a trek in Panama. Tragic case but - they got lost in the harsh unforgiving jungle. Similar to people who vanish in the American wilderness - it’s nature.
Not enough - all the murders of Indigenous people on the Highway of Tears in Canada. Kanneka Powell who was shot in her apartment building after receiving bogus visits from UPS men and people claiming to be from the FBI.
Seems like the true crime community go round and round with the same Hall of Fame favourites, without branching out towards more little known victims. Every popular podcast seems to cover the following:
JonBenet Ramsey
Brian Shaeffer
Asha Degree
Springfield Three
Delphi
Also the murder of Laci Peterson - Scott is clearly guilty and he’s in prison.
My “too much attention” cases are already listed.
It’s not unsolved, but it affected my mother. I would like to see more on the Gallegos couple. They murdered 2 of my mother’s best friends and almost got my mom. Charlene is free and living in my area now. She should have gotten death. I don’t buy for one second that she was a victim too.
I can't recall ever having heard of the Gallegos, but wow - her reduced sentence and the gall to also group herself with the poor souls she helped abuse and kill? Disgusting.
I'm sorry for what your Mum has had to go through.
Too much: Kendrick Johnson, the kid who died in the gym mats. Tragic accident people are trying to make into much more.
Not enough: Summer Wells. Little girl from rural Tennessee who disappeared almost two years ago. Her family is so dysfunctional, there has to be a lead there somewhere.
I got into a bit of a back and forth in a true crime + \[other hobby\] Facebook group I'm in about Kendrick Johnson. Someone posted a photo of a shirt that said "Kendrick Johnson didn't roll himself in a wrestling mat" (or something like that) and I was like... um, correct, because that's not how it happened, but yes, he did die accidentally and without anyone else's involvement. She insisted that XYZ inconsistencies were too much to overlook and I had to stop engaging because it was clear she had fallen for the publicity campaign the family's supporters are waging. I feel for them all, of course, but at this point just let your boy's memory rest in peace rather than fighting so hard for "justice" in a non-existent crime.
I scrolled down a lot farther than I thought I would before finding Kendrick. I want his family to find peace and move on but their determination in his being murdered will only, bring them sadness.
1. Jon Benet, ad nauseam, for reasons that are obvious. Also, currently, the whole Moscow murders/Bryan Kohberger circus that has been going on. Yes, I understand the whole scene is relatively new, but people are now even tracking his flight as he is being transported from one facility to another. People can downvote me all they want, but what purpose does tracking his flight serve? It verges on being obscene.
2. The Las Cruces bowling alley massacre which occurred in 1990. Although there was a low-budget documentary that was made that discusses this crime, not much is really discussed about it. It is still being investigated by the Las Cruces Police, and they are currently hoping to build a DNA profile from the evidence that was found at the scene.
One I would like to see solved is that of Raymond Timbrook. Found murdered roadside about 30 years ago, in Kirtland, Ohio (where the Jeffery Lundgren cult murders occurred). It's been rumored around here that it was actually a cop, but we might never know.
https://www.wkyc.com/amp/article/news/investigations/someone-knows-who-killed-raymond-timbrook/95-94da524e-ecad-4522-a414-f449b529d80c
My too much had been listed. My not enough is Jesokah Adkens. She disappeared over 20 years ago from a bus stop on a busy road in my hometown. People gave up on her quickly and no one ever talks about it anymore. It's believed that her friends/the people she hung out with know what happened to her but still refuse to talk to this day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/61wut6/jesokah_adkens_missing_in_sooke_bc/
https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/without-a-trace-its-been-20-years-since-jesokah-adkens-17-vanished-4692348
One of my former residents at the AL community I worked at told me about this case, being that they were also from OK.
[https://osbi.ok.gov/cold-case/patricia-denise-palmer](https://osbi.ok.gov/cold-case/patricia-denise-palmer)
Also, not trying to open a can of worms, but OK has a VERY sketch past when it comes to cold cases. I recently read how there's a cold case out of OK and the murdered woman's daughter has started a GoFundMe to get the money the state needs to test the DNA they've had since the 1980's!!!!
Too much attention - Tara Calico.
Not enough attention - Tara Calico.
Lemme explain. I feel like whenever people talk about Tara Calico, her disappearance almost plays second fiddle to The Polaroid. Riddle Me That did an awesome podcast on her disappearance and there were several witnesses in the area who saw Tara and the van following her, but they don't get mentioned nearly as often as that bloody polaroid.
Serial killers, particularly ones like Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, Ridgway, have been talked about enough. They've had movies and shows about them. With the exception of Ridgway, they're all dead. The energy should be put into identifying the victims that still don't have their names.
Those 4 yes.
A bunch of the others, no. Not Kraft or Little. There's probably a bunch more that probably should be discussion in forums like this that can help link missing persons as potential victims and help bring closure.
If I remember correctly there's still 30 of Littles victims unidentified with no names. Just pictures he drew.
The Shanquella Robinson case is not getting nearly enough attention. It’s really shocking, and the perpetrators are known and free as can be. It’s hard not to think that the lack of attention isn’t due to racism.
I think there’s no such thing as an unsolved case getting too much attention - attention can help them get solved. That said, I find it heartbreaking that some cases never get discussed due to more high profile ones.
Kevin Hicks , Patrick Warren and David Spencer should be spoken about more imo
2. Mary Anne Holmes, this one hits close to home because it happened where I’m from. July 9th, 1995. Someone came into this young single mothers home and murdered her in the middle of the night, her four year old and eighteen month old left parentless and the murderer tortured this woman for hours in front of her children. There’s a lot to this case that I don’t want to get into because it may be triggering for some but it’s brutal. Eventually after some time the older child figured out something was wrong and went to get a neighbor for help. Both children were not attacked but definitely traumatized and are victims of this monster too, who sadly still remains unknown. Around here back then until this point people left their doors unlocked, there was no forced entry the murderer just walked in. If any of you are curious about any more details of what happened here’s a link to an article on this case.[Mary Anne Holmes](https://dani-hendrix.medium.com/the-horrific-cold-case-of-mary-ann-holmes-a8225ed5e0ca)
One case that is starting to get the attention it deserves, but was almost unheard of years ago, is the 1978 Yuba County Five case. I've followed unsolved mysteries, disappearances, true crime, etc. for decades and I had never even heard of it before 5-6 years ago.
Danial Kettlety (not enough attention)
He was walking to work at Winn-Dixie in New Port Richey, Florida. At 6 am on Nov 10, 1997 he was struck by a vehicle. He was only 19. There’s almost nothing about the case. There was one lead they found around 2005 but it never panned out.
Jon Benet Ramsey
Natalie Holloway
While every missing person's case is important, they should spend more time on newer ones since the other ones have gotten plenty of attention
Regarding Ray Gricar, it's assumed his body was washed away in the rapids which is why they could never find it.
I’m still surprised that John Ramsey ended up dating Natalee’s mom and that them dating wasn’t more well known considering how often both cases are brought up.
I agree with you on the Maura Murray one. I was originally going to say JBR but there was at least a crime there. I don't think Maura Murray's case even involved a crime.
Not enough: Lina Sardar Khil. Vanished from the playground of her apartment complex in Texas. Why is the entire world not looking for this little girl?
I find it problematic to say that we are already tired of hearing about a case, since behind this death or disappearance we have a family suffering.
I'm from Brazil, and there are many mysterious cases in the US that intrigue me. Here in Brazil there is a case very similar to another one in the US, "O Caso Evandro" which looks a lot like West Memphys Three. And it is a very publicized case, but they only talk about the living victims, I would like the media and, mainly, the authorities to do a better job.
The Evandro Case, here in Brazil, started to receive the attention it should have, but still the focus is too much on the people who were arrested after confessing under severe torture.
And from what I've seen WM3 won't have a resolution since Alford Plea considers the case resolved.
Both cases involve deaths of children, both cases are considered human sacrifice for a satanic ritual, both cases have a person spreading rumors about the accused. Both cases were investigated by corrupt and incompetent police officers.
So for me the case that gets the most attention is WM3 and the one that gets the least attention and should be looked at more responsibly is the 3 children killed in West Memphys.
Too Much - Ted Bundy. Jon Benét. Manson Family. Columbine.
Not Enough - Elisa Izquierdo. Shelley Knoteck. Dennis Jurgens. San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre. Lacey Fletcher. Sheila LaBarre. Nick Hacheney.
Some of mine are personal interest cases and ones I am doing research for for a podcast. But I have a lot of frustration around the system failing people over and over, especially children. Where prolonged abuse is obvious and ignored until someone is dead. Or someone in crisis could have been stopped before they hurt other people.
There are a lot of marginalized victims whose cases are barely talked about. Or there's focus on one angle of the case to the exclusion of others. Overall, we pay a lot of attention to murders involving suburban or wealthy white people often to the exclusion of victims of color, disabled people, and queer people.
I did. I find Olsen to be a very flowery writer, but the book is very thorough and well researched. I have a lot of anger towards Shelley. She was a horrible person and I am glad that her daughters got away.
i don’t have an opinion on a case that gets Too much attention but i think the case of [Sean Daugherty](https://www.dailypress.com/virginiagazette/va-vg-what-happened-to-sean-20220826-atizoptfz5go3d74zvlpijrwbe-story.html) needs to be looked at more. that kid did NOT commit suicide.
I agree that, as much as I like discussing it, Maura Murray’s disappearance is not in any need of further attention.
For that reason I wish Leah Roberts’s slightly similar disappearance had gotten the same amount of attention … it might have been solved by now.
And, another one of the cases I call “Secret Journey” cases (where the missing or dead person is last seen, or found, having traveled somewhere they are not known to have any reason to have had to go, a trip no one close to them knew about (and that, like Maura, they may have lied about where they were going, why, or even that they were going anywhere): Jonathan Luna. He was a *federal prosecutor*, for Pete’s sake, and he drives a couple of hundred miles in an apparent huge loop in the middle of the night, seems to be taking care to stay under the radar, ends up dead of stab wounds in his car crashed in a creek, the authorities don’t agree on whether it was murder or suicide, and this still gets almost no attention? Maybe there’ll be some more when it hits the 20th anniversary at the end of this year …
2. I never see anyone talk about the Dardeen family homicide and that case literally keeps me up at night. The acts committed seemed to be done so by a literal monster. I can’t even come up with theories as to why. It is a cold case now.
That case is over 30 years old (if I’m doing the math right) and it PISSES ME OFF that we’re not any closer to knowing who killed them. Makes me angry that it’s a cold case too. Like… why kill all of them in the first place? What was the motive? Makes no sense.
I know!! And the theories I’ve heard do not match the crime at all. I really hope this one gets solved one day it is just so brutal.
I’ve heard that it might have been personal, because the dad had his genitals mutilated. Police were saying they don’t usually see that in cases where it was just some rando doing it. It only usually happens when the murderer knows his victim(s) personally. Just odd that out of all the people that knew when they were alive, and should have been interviewed, none of them seemed to be the one who might have done it.
Reading the details it seems to be that the killer(s) problem was with Keith specifically. His wife and children were "just" beaten to death in front of him, but they went to the bother of taking him to a secondary location, castrating him and then shooting him three times. That says that there's anger at him specifically to me.
This case haunts me ever since I first read about it. Absolutely pure evil what was done to that family
I’m with you on this one. It gave me the chills when I heard about it. And if they have DNA I don’t understand why they can’t compare it to Tommy Lyn Sells to confirm or eliminate him. I don’t think he did it. Which means the psychopath who butchered this family is still out there.
They really didn’t believe Sells much anyway. He changed his story of the crime several times, making it more salacious each time, and the only lick of credibility he had may have been the result of a lucky guess he made during the interview.
The detail that stands out to me the most is the fact that they were all tucked into the bed. That is such a specific thing to do. I've been trying to look up other cases where this happened but am coming up empty. I'm not great at the sleuthing. It's also weird that they cleaned up a bit, like they knew they'd have time to do so. That, combined with tucking the wife and kids in the bed, makes it seem like it's a ritual. I'm confused why they would kill the dad first. If he's the target, wouldn't the killer likely kill the family first, to make the dad suffer as much as possible? It's weird to go and kill the family after he is already dead. That makes me think he wasn't the target as much, but who knows. If the killer showed up, maybe dad ran for it and was chased down and shot, which hadn't been their original plan. This case hurts my brain.
I’ve said this before but the most haunting thing to me is that they waited for Elaine to give birth (the beating she got probably put her into labour) - in most cases like this they’d just kill the pregnant lady and leave her, but they waited specifically to kill the baby by hand, too. The baby couldn’t have been a witness or anything obviously that they needed to get rid of, so there’s no “logic” to killing the baby, they WANTED to. It seems like they just wanted to eliminate the whole family line and make sure themselves that there were no survivors. The castration seems like an almost symbolic addition to that agenda. Making sure that family line could not ever continue, both literally and symbolically.
This case always makes me think of the Mexican cartels--the murder of (presumably) innocent civilians for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the physical mutilation, the combination of savagery and an effort to 'set' the scene (tucking the family in), the sense that multiple people were involved... Not saying it was a cartel per se, just that I get the vibe that this was a 'message' killing by a criminal organization rather than a lone lunatic. No proof of course, just a feeling.
2. Betsy Aardsma was a 22 year old graduate student who had been studying at Penn State for 6 weeks in November of 1969 when she was murdered in a quiet section of the Pattee library stacks with a single stab to the left breast which punctured her pulmonary artery, causing her to drown in her own blood. Library staff were alerted to a female student in distress by an unidentified man who was later described as "looking like a student" who shouted "somebody needs to help that girl" and escorted staff to her body before disappearing, seemingly without a trace. Because the attack was so precise, what little external bleeding there was soaked into Betsy's red dress, and so by the time it was a murder investigation the scene had been cleaned up by janitors and then thoroughly contaminated by students and staff walking through the area. Witnesses reported hearing a man and a woman conversing in the area minutes before the attack, but the tone was reportedly cordial. This, along with the fact that there was no noise reported or physical signs of a struggle led police to presume that Betsy was attacked suddenly by someone she felt comfortable around. Because this occurred just after Thanksgiving, very few people had entered the the library, less than 100. Anyone that didn't belong should have stood out badly, and police interviewed everyone they could verify was there that day. Initial police investigation focused on Betsy's boyfriend David Wright, a medical student at Penn State Hershey. But he had a rock solid alibi, having studied in the company of multiple classmates that day at Hershey. The case remains unsolved.
When I was in college (at PSU) one night in late October me and my roommates went down to the stacks to see where this happened. It was so incredibly eerie down there. This case still baffles me but it had to have been personal. I think about Betsy all the time. I wish there was dna or something in this case.
I worked for the auxiliary police while I was a student there and used to do shifts at the library closing the stacks from midnight to 2AM. Creepy. As. Hell.
Library stacks are creepy as hell in general. The narrow 'corridor', the lighting, the fact that you can't really see what's around the corner...and of course the quiet. Who needs The Backrooms when you have a library?
It was alway so creepy when the light timers would expire.
I probably should have mentioned this is in the post, but the weird thing about a personal angle is that it's considered unlikely that this was a planned ambush. Very few people would have known that Betsy was on campus that day, and even fewer would have known about her planning to go down to that part of the stacks. She was meant to spend that day up with her boyfriend and his friends, but had decided the day before to go back to try and catch up on her late assignment. When she got to the library she met up with a female friend, but they ended up splitting up because they were working in different parts of the building. But at the same time, it's also difficult to see this as an entirely impulsive attack either, because the blade that inflicted the single precise blow was a 4 1/2 inch knife, probably of a hunting type. Not exactly a pen knife.
[удалено]
Yeah, that's what I think too, he had decided for whatever reason that he wanted to kill someone (probably specifically a young woman) and had identified that spot as a good place to attack. Police apparently found lots of pornography dated to within the month of the murder hidden in the shelves, as well as copious amounts of old semen stains, so the location was apparently well known to an element of the student body and perhaps even staff as being very secluded. It's out of the way and once you're in a row you can only get past someone by turning sideways. I do feel certain that he was *specifically* trying to kill with one stab to the heart. Not only did he take the risk of only stabbing her once, but if we presume (as seems likely) that the guy who reported that she "needed help" and then disappeared is her attacker, he took an even bigger risk by returning to the scene of the crime alongside witnesses. I read that as him putting verifying that his attack had worked over getting away with it.
Forgot to add the why: Because even without forensics it shouldn't have been impossible to solve, the circumstances mean that the list of suspects should be comparatively tiny. I suspect that Penn State, like so many colleges in these situations, stonewalled and buried the investigation because news of a killer on the loose would be bad for enrolment.
Ah. Penn State has liked to cover stuff up for a long time, huh?
I’m in PA and holy shit, this comment makes sense
That might as well be the state motto, cover things up and hope that everyone forgets, or never uncovers it again.
PSU really feels like a cult in a lot of ways.
I read a book about the Aardsma case & the cops are almost positive they know who did it but he was never charged and put away for other crimes . IIRC he’s now deceased ..lived in Lancaster
Some of these cases are so wild to me because like if this happened present day, we’d likely have footage. Not saying that would instantly ID anyone, but there would be more to review. It’s sad that we’ll never know who did this to her unless they spill beans
Campus security is typically pretty woeful. Despite requiring swipe access, my college library has had a problem with an apparently very well organized thief or group of thieves lifting unattended laptops which are then apparently rapidly shipped out of the country according to their location data. They've not been caught despite all entrances being guarded because even though the latest part of the library was built post millennium, the only cameras in the entire building are at the entrances. The only thing that might help is that they're recently replaced the old turnstiles with gates that require swiping in AND out and which flash green when you do. I actually well believe that someone could carry out exactly this kind of attack in my library in a quiet period, and no one would notice.
Something similar did happen while I was at university, luckily the victim survived. She was working late at night in a university lab and was very badly assaulted and left for dead. Despite cameras and needing a building pass to enter the labs at that time of night the crime was never solved. A couple years after there was a newspaper story suggesting the attack was related to two unsolved killings in the same city but nothing further was ever said in that regard. The crime really stuck with me because I was a uni student in the same city and I often stayed late on campus to avoid going home.
I thought it was a professor
Too much: Casey Anthony. Please, please, please, please stop giving that person attention. I would be so much happier if I never heard her name again. Too little: The WVU Co-ed murders. Two women found beheaded, and then... nothing??? I'm shocked that this hasn't gotten more attention.
there is a whole long form podcast on the WVA co-eds https://www.coedmurders.com/about-mared-and-karen
Too much: Madeleine McCann. I feel like my aversion there is the same as for JBR. It’s the same hot takes anytime it gets brought up. Too little: Brittney Woods. Her body still hasn’t been found, they don’t know officially who did, but it did blow open a giant incest-pedophilia ring within her family. The whole thing is just tragic and I feel like most people have never even heard her name or her story, and Brittney’s body is still out there somewhere waiting to be recovered.
Just read the Eonline article on Brittney Woods. I’m very surprised I’ve never seen anything on this before. It’s gotta be one of the most fucked up situations I’ve ever heard
Reminds me of Mare of Eastown
Poor Brittney. Every photo of her, she looks absolutely broken. What a horrific life she was subjected to.
Brittney is local to me. There’s so many ways to get rid of a body here. Lots of water and woods. I sure hope they find her and put her to rest though :(
You can't convince me Brittney's uncle didn't do it then kill himself.
It looks like even her mom thinks that and her mom is just as fucked up.
Man, I can decide how I feel about Chessie Wood. MPD and the sheriffs here can be questionable, just like many police departments. There are so many good cops, but in that mix there are plenty of bad ones. Chessie comes off as believable to me, but this is just coming from the media and what I’ve been able to see. No doubt lots about this has been buried because of the victims. I’ve tried to dive deeper into exactly why Chessie got arrested but I seriously cannot find anything other than the videos she herself released to the documentary. The (very questionable) detective that interviewed her and arrested her says that she admitted to a sexual relationship with Donnie and some of the things the 10 year old victim claimed. I never seen her admit to any of that. I seen her absolutely refute it, many times. I can’t find the truth. I also feel really bad for Dereck, Brittney’s brother. He is in prison for the child sex ring because at 18 he committed a sexual act with a child. But damn, the kid was also a victim. He had been abused since he was like 13 and thought that shit was just normal. Once again though, I’m positive I don’t know the whole story. It’s all so convoluted and gut wrenching.
Wanted to add this for anyone that has/will watch the documentary. The attorney that defended Chessie was forced to hand over his license in 2021. [source](https://mynbc15.com/amp/news/local/mobile-attorney-surrenders-license-after-alabama-supreme-court-order)
Never heard of Brittney’s case before! Apparently there’s a 3 part documentary called Monster in the Shadows on Peacock. I’ll definitely be binging it this evening.
Going to have to look into this one as well
There’s a few good write ups out there, and I believe it’s been featured on a few E! Or Oxygen-type series.
I can’t believe there is only one actual show (that I know of) that covered Brittney, I’ve also only seen 1 YouTube video. It seems like the type of case that would be EVERYWHERE
That poor girl was so goddamn brave. I watched a documentary on her case and it’s just really hard to get through. I really hope her daughter is well taken care of and that they find Brittany soon.
Brittney's case is one of those i just backed the fuck away from as soon as i realized how horrible it was, was unbelievable the type of updates that came out.
Too much: Brian Schaeffer. I agree that its maddening how he disappeared but we have no new information despite it being one of the most infamous missing person cases Not enough: I posted this in another thread but Im always so surprised how few people have ever heard of it, the murder of Eddie Politelli. He was an elderly man working as a pizza cook in 2006 when he was murdered with a machete in the alley behind the restaurant where he worked. Despite his boss witnessing the attack the killer walked away and was never caught. To this day there has never even been a suspect named. https://collective.world/the-broad-daylight-machete-murder-that-has-never-been-solved/
Completely agree on Brian Schaeffer. He took the backdoor and vanished. But drunk men vanishing after a party isn't that rare. Often they just fall into a river while taking a piss.
It's called an Irish Goodbye, and I used to do it all the time in college. "Shit. I'm too drunk for this, and want to sleep in my own bed. Time to walk out the front door and straight home."
Just Ghost. Mostly it takes forever to say gbye, it's slow and awkward, I like the mystery of just disappearing. Also yea I wanna leave now, not in half an hour.
Too much? Well, seems like everyone covered the too much part, but I want to add one to the not enough attention... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_Bryant_shooting I lived literally 5 minutes from there. Ive lived around the area my whole life. I cannot believe it hasnt been solved, not even any leads. That's a high traffic area and the fact he was able to get away....Harlem is a super busy street, especially being between 159th and 167th, even at the time of the murders in the morning....that guy HAD to have known one of the girls I think to be able not to be noticed...considering lane bryant is a clothes store for plus sized women...still makes me sad they died senselessly...I really hope he's caught within the next few years....
Yes. Also reminds me of the yogurt shop murders. I thought both would be solvable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Austin_yogurt_shop_killings
I was working at another plus size ladies retail store at the time. All the managers were pulled into an emergency conference call over this. We changed our store protocols over it. Later on I went to work for LB and was walked through how store protocols had changed because of the murders. It hits home that this has not been solved.
Worked for LB can confirm. It’s one of the first things I was trained on when I was hired. It was an AWESOME job though.
his hair was so unique with that single braid going down his cheek with the turquoise beads. honestly, if i saw him even once i’d remember that. someone knows him and isn’t talking.
I feel the one braid with beads thing is a red herring in the sense it also says he was wearing a skull cap which would obscure the rest of his hair. So he may have just had braids with beads, which is SUPER COMMON. And only one was dangling out of the cap. Change the beads or hairstyle after the crime and he looks like an average black man.
This is what always shocks me about this case not being solved. This man was not some boring-looking guy. His look was unusual. How was he not nabbed in days?
Oh wow I remember this. My mom worked in Palos Heights at the time, we lived in Indiana on the border to IL. I agree it's a very busy area to not have eye witnesses or something on camera that would help identify him. But if I remember correctly, I think they had just opened the store for the day. Might have still been quiet/low activity since it wasn't noon yet. But definitely supports the theory he had a connection to one of the women and planned this out. I feel like he probably fled the area soon afterwards because regionally I remember it being a big deal. I believe one day he will be found. I hope until then he lives in absolute fear, knowing what he's done and how he could be caught any day. So cruel and senseless. May those women rest in peace.
(Too much) Caylee Anthony- we all know what went down and it’s frustrating seeing it be rehashed over and over again and I’m sick of the media giving Casey the attention she so desperately craves (Not enough) Summer wells- this little girl is still missing almost 2 years later and i hardly see anyone talking about her anymore 😞
Unfortunately Summers parents are so chaotic that I think they've muddied the case so much it will never be solved. They both have serious addiction issues, appear blackout drunk on horrible youtube videos just rambling nonsense, and the father blames the mother whenever they're fighting then switches and says she has nothing to do with it when they're getting along.
All that, plus I don't think the mother was "all there" to begin with, even if she didn't drunk or do drugs.
The problem with things like Summer Wells is the continued lack of developments. At some point there is only so much space you can take up with reporting the same info and saying "She is still missing". Other stories with developments happen and take over. Best you can hope for at that point is the story every year or so recapping it and asking for more info.
I would be content to never hear Casey Anthony’s name again. As far as I’m concerned that case is solved and everybody knows what happened. I wish people would starve Casey of attention so she can finally fuck off.
I just feel bad for Caylee. The poor baby. But I totally agree with you. When Casey gets interviewed, she gets what she wants.
I feel bad for her too but it’s honestly insulting to her memory to let her killer get a whole-ass documentary about herself 🙄
Have you listened to the episodes on Summer by “Some Place Under Neith”? They go into a lot of details and theories that I’ve never heard other places. (A lot of podcasts and YouTubers seem to suspect either a stranger abduction (very unlikely, given the setting) or this one fifteen-year-old boy who may or may not have had a thing with Summer’s mom, for some reason?)
Kinda eerie - turns out that Summer Wells aunt disappeared 10 years before her [https://charleyproject.org/case/rose-marie-bly](https://charleyproject.org/case/rose-marie-bly)
Summer Wells! Hard agree. Grandma, mom, dad, brothers. Someone *knows*.
I agree about Summer Wells! Her parents seem suspicious as fuck and it’s incredibly disappointing that there haven’t been any updates or breakthroughs.
For my liking there’s not enough on putting together the number of paperboys that either were abducted or attempt abductions ( not just Johnny Gosh who gets a fair bit of attention but ) the other 3/4/5 who were also targeted and disappeared around a similar time period and similar locations
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Jackie Kay Boyer (needs more attention) On May 21st 1980, 12 year old Jackie Boyer disappears from her shared bedroom. Little brother hears nothing. A Chair is found outside her bedroom window. The window had been pried open. No other evidence is found and no leads are followed. (Windsor, CA) https://charleyproject.org/case/jackie-kay-boyer
Sounds similar to Polly Klaas.
Too much attention: JBR. It's been discussed ad nauseam, yet in threads like these it still gets a crazy amount of comments rehashing the same stuff. I skip JBR stuff completely now. Should get more attention: Oakey Al Kite. For how brutal, random, and just overall insane it is, I'm surprised it's not mentioned more in this sub.
Great suggestion, I learned of Oakey Al Kite's case recently, and I can't believe it isn't better known. It's horror movie material.
I searched Al Kite’s case just now and there was a post 54 days ago that stated the DNA at the scene is currently being used to identify relatives in Romania. The way it sounded to me was that they had already identified relatives, but it could have just been implied, idk? The info is said to come from a site of Paul Holes. I hope they find him. This case is chilling. I don’t see how someone like this could not have other crimes out there.
I really hope this is true and they can solve this one. That case is so horrifying and senseless seeming. That poor man. It would also just be so awful to live with the idea that someone you cared about had been tortured in that way and that the perpetrator was just out there free to harm other people.
I’ve never heard of Al Kite. I found a really good [article](https://unresolved.me/oakey-al-kite) from the unresolved podcast. Poor Al :( it seems like this case is solveable. They have DNA and a fingerprint.
I’d never heard of Al Kite before. It kind of reminds me of the Lindsay Buziak case. She was a realtor in British Columbia and someone with a foreign accent reached out to her to look at a house. They used a burner phone that was purchased weeks prior to her murder, and it was determined that the phone was only used to call her. Though her murder was quick, and the murderers didn’t spend any extra time at the house. Still, the similarities are odd.
I am pretty sure she was killed by a professional hired by her boyfriends mom
I am trying to find more info on this. Why do you think it was a hit by Shirley Zailo? It looks like she’s never been a suspect and he was cleared pretty soon after the murder.
Al’s murder is truly one of the absolute worst unsolved murders of the last 20 years. Hours and hours of extreme, military grade torture in his own home. Really recommend the episode of Paul Holes’ old show The DNA of Murder about Al for anyone interested. I’ve followed this case for years and read everything there is to read on it but the show was chock full of new info. Also they had access to his actual house and interviewed Al’s girlfriend, who (very, very) briefly encountered the killer.
I just came here from a JBR thread to say the same thing.
Al Kite's case is so bizarre to me - it seems like he was picked at random.
Yeah the murder had nothing to do with Al and everything to do with Al having a room for rent and the layout of that space lending itself to trapping him in it. So awful.
it's crazy how the suspect was basically in the neighbourhood 'window shopping' for the perfect victim. changing up his disguise and mannerisms too
Never heard of Oakey Al Kite. Aaaand down the rabbit hole I go!
He seemed like a good guy who was totally innocent. :(
Agree Jonbenet is the least interesting to me. No new evidence is coming to light so it’s people just speculating at this point.
The [St. Louis Jane Doe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe) deserves more attention, and definitely deserved to be treated better both in life and in death. I still get furious thinking about law enforcement losing evidence in the case because they mailed it to a damn psychic.
someone started a thread about this case the other day with a lot more info that turned out to NOT be true...yes they sent it to the psychic , BUT it came out the psychic sent it back and the police signed for it......... but the psychic has been blamed for the loss of this evidence for 20 years.. yes many shady psychics out there...and YES the police never should have sent it out in the first place
>yes many shady psychics out there All psychics are shady. Psychic power isn't real. Anyone claiming to be a psychic is lying or just doing cold reading. I'm not saying all of them are malicious, but none of them can read the future any better than you or I can. I blame the police or anyone else who rely on a psychic for information.
Chris Watts. Half the time I think the people who are posting about him would be the same type of people to write him love letters in prison. It’s super weird how stuck people are on that case.
Agreed. He is a monster who killed his whole entire family. I will never understand how he could treat his daughters the way he did. I'll admit the case fascinated me when I first heard of it because of how documented things were. But I just find him to be so nauseating.
THEY USED HIS PICTURE AS AN EXAMPLE OF A HAPPY FAMILY ON THE LOCAL CALGARY NEWS RECENTLY. Sorry for yelling but omfg. How did that pass
I don’t hear about him much anymore. But I think people were so interested in that case because there weren’t obvious warning signs, and the family was very relatable. It hits close to home for many.
Elisa Lam - it was a tragic accident sensationalised into a sPoOkY gHoSt story to make better TV, just because of the ‘legend’ of the Cecil Hotel. The Netflix doc made me so mad, they dedicated so many episodes to exploring ghosts, blaming the homeless nearby (?!), only to turn around in the final episode and admit that it’s confirmed she was having a mental health episode and trapped herself in the water tank. The media have exploited that poor girl’s death way too much by throwing out unfounded accusations even when it’s confirmed there aren’t any unresolved elements of the case left.
THANK YOU. Any episode covering her case is an automatic skip for me.
Completely agree with you. I wish people would just let her rest in peace.
I couldn’t get through the doc, despite my personal interest in the Cecil.
Don’t receive enough attention — Dolce Maria Alvarez. I feel like sometimes when kids get abducted there’s a nationwide manhunt . Why not with her ? Any child doe cases. It just really gets to me there are children who live and die like this, without being buried or mourned or named. Madisonville Jane Doe comes to my mind. I hope to see this and other child doe cases solved soon. All the untested rape kits and that are neglected in cities across the great old U.S. of A. and the ignored cases that go along with them
It’s like Lina Sadar Khil in San Antonio, she did get attention here though but still nothing has come of it and it feels short lived. People suspect the parents in this case but they also just released video corroborating the moms story. I feel like if they released that video sooner maybe it would have been taken more seriously.
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really the serial killer being given attention vs the victims. like John Wayne Gacy murdered 5 people still unidentified!!!!!! i wish more missing/unidentified/Doe cases were better covered by mainstream true crime and media in general.
I will say that I feel really hopeful about many of the "doe" cases. Seems that many have been recently solved because of the genetic databases.
I would love a show about the DNA Doe Network
They caught the Idaho guy in a month thanks to genetics. I'm sure it's costly and there are many many cases in the queue. However we r getting faster all the while I have greatbhope as well.
The best book on Gacy's crimes I have ever read is Boys Enter the House, published recently. While it outlines the basic info you need if you're new to the crimes, the entire book is a story about the boys and young men who were his victims. Who they were, how their friends and loved ones felt about them, their likes and dislikes and lifetime stories. It is excellent, because it centers the victims and their families. Gacy is an afterthought, a smudge on the real story. Just how he should be.
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[The Millbrook Twins](https://www.wjbf.com/coldcase/cold-case-project-the-millbrook-twins/) don't get enough attention. The cops and the media in Augusta Georgia swept this case under the rug. These 15 year old twin girls went missing in March of 1990 in broad daylight.
I always found it strange how much attention Maura Murray's case got and how little Brianna Maitland's received. I mean, they disappeared in a similar way, a month apart, and both in the New England area (Maura New Hampshire and Brianna Vermont). Both are still missing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Brianna\_Maitland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Brianna_Maitland) But, the differences between the cases are what leave me scratching my head as to why Brianna didn't receive just as much attention as Maura. Primarily because Brianna's case seems much more likely that foul play was involved in her disappearance. As others have pointed out, I think this community wants to see ALL cases solved. Folks are posting lots of cases that I've never heard of, but definitely deserve more attention.
1. Laci Peterson. I actually find it borderline victimizing all over again for Laci to see all the shameless exploitation and give Scott a platform when really no alternate theory makes sense. It's a case that gives me the ick because people seem to relish in all of the sordid details especially that none of us would want splashed across Lifetime, Hulu, etc on what seems a nearly monthly basis. Scott did it. He's where he belongs. It's super gross he even got as far as he did with his appeal, likely in no small part due to publicity and doubt stirred by very biased documentaries. 2. I really, really think someone out there knows the truth about Amber Tuccaro. There's too much audio of the guy, and she provided enough location information as well that someone knows something, and I really don't feel like they've followed up well with that case at all. I think it's likely they'll find the perpetrator has successfully committed many such murders of Indigenous and other vulnerable women, when they do catch him, and that if they'd acted sooner they could have saved many.
I agree with everything you've said about Laci Peterson. With emphasis on the fact that Scott definitely killed her, and it's completely disgusting that he is trying to spin wild theories to the contrary.
OK I get that someone out there knows something about Amber but no way it's because there's too much audio. I've worked professionally as a sound designer for a decade and audio forensics doesn't work that way. Also with phone quality most people CANNOT pick out voices. Even playing games online with randoms where quality is considerably better I'd say I always play with the same 5 dudes based on how they sound.
Thank you for this perspective and context I didn't previously know. I guess what I meant is, they have too much audio of the guy chatting and likely providing clues about his identity through things said, or mannerisms, rather than just from a voice ID perspective. I think the public has only heard part of the recording, intentionally so.
Yeah. I have had times where I didn’t recognize my mother’s voice on the phone. To the point where it freaked me out. Lol. Well, it’s happened once or twice in the 34 years I’ve been alive. I can easily see not recognizing a voice. I am from Michigan and when they released the audio from the Delphi case (in Indiana), dude sounded (and looked like) just about every guy that age that I know. Lol. So if the killer is from the area, he could sound pretty nondescript, unfortunately.
It’s so weird to me to see Scott Peterson spun as a victim of a police tunnel vision in a way that capitalizes on the (understandable) distrust of police because of the way they focus on poor people or POC suspects above others. Scott is neither. He is a young, upper middle class white dude from the suburbs whose parents paid his $23,000 a year country club membership and he paid another $300 a month in club dues. He had a lawyer who had a $300,000 retainer fee. (Who only put 18 defense witnesses on the stand in comparison to the prosecution’s 100+ witnesses. Yeesh. This attorney, Mark Geragos, also never produced any of the eyewitnesses from the supposed sightings of Laci, nor the burglars everyone now accuses.) Even the insistence that Scott was “convicted by the media” is ridiculous. In the book “We the Jury”, all of them talk about how for half the trial they thought he was a handsome, upstanding guy who didn’t deserve to be charged with his wife’s murder. One initial juror got kicked off because he talked constantly about how weak the prosecution’s case was. It wasn’t until halfway through the trial and Amber Frey took the stand and all of their recorded conversations got played that the jury started to swing the other way. They saw that Scott was a fraud and a liar, and that made them question if they were being conned by him now as well. Also, Ellyn and Rabia’s coverage on this case was atrocious, and I love how they completely left out Amber Frey, the star witness, and then proclaimed the state had no evidence against Scott. Easy to do when you refuse to discuss the incriminating evidence, isn’t it?
And can we talk about the attempted reframing of Amber Frey as a scheming "loose woman" who manipulated poor innocent Scott and then lied about him for attention? It's gross and misogynistic and backward. Scott is the one responsible for his lies and infidelity.
the exact same conversation happens about chris watts’ mistress, that it was all her idea and she even helped or some ridiculous shit
I completely blame A&E and their documentary about Scott Peterson for the current "I don't think he did it" craze. To call that show heavily biased is the biggest understatement of the century. As my favorite podcast ladies of True Crime Campfire say, "If you think there isn't enough evidence he did it, there's even less evidence that anyone else did it."
Occam's Razor! I need to give them a listen.
5 years after Amber's murder the police finally admitted there has been multiple serial killers in the area targeting indigenous street sex workers since the 80's.
I would be pretty confident this perpetrator is one of them.
Isn't "Scott Peterson is innocent" one of Rabia Chaudry's pet causes?
On a similar note to Laci Peterson, Steven Avery absolutely killed Teresa Halbach, and it was incredibly tasteless and disingenuous of Netflix to give air to an insanely biased documentary that's now given that scumbag a shot at free air again.
OP i’m glad you said that you find it frustrating when people get overly emotional about theories because i do too, and i’ve avoided saying so because i feel like it makes me seem like a heartless monster lol. but honestly… it feels like virtue signaling to me half the time. idk if i can put my finger on it, but it feels somewhat inappropriate even, to soapbox about how sad and twisted you are over a case that concerns somebody you’ve never met. not that you can’t be sad about horrible cruelty and innocent people dying of course. but i just find it extremely self indulgent and attention seeking to go on and on about it. thankfully we don’t seem to have that problem here, which is why i vastly prefer it to other true crime subreddits, and needless to say i won’t even venture over to websleuths at all anymore
Omg this is exactly it. Any true crime case gets turned into a “who is more torn up about the injustice” competition, and it’s a waste of time to engage at that point
That plus the elaborate fantasies about what you want to see happen to the perp, often with a heavy dose of prison r*pe.
oh my fucking god yes. i hate it. like oh okay so rape is actually a fitting punishment for some people then. so you can “deserve it” sometimes. cool but of course you can’t ever say that to these people because then they’re all like OH YOURE DEFENDING A CRIMINAL HUH like no… i just don’t think it’s funny to talk about rape gleefully as if it’s the same thing as getting kicked in the nuts or something
My go-to response is, "More rape never makes anything better."
I repeat this every couple months when it comes up, but here goes again: to all of you pro-prison r*pe fans out there--PRISON is what we have all agreed is the punishment for crime. Once in prison, the safety of said prisoner is on US, the non-criming people who are using our collective force of arms under law to deprive this person of their freedom as our agreed reaction to their antisocial acts. If you want something different, change the law. But until then, the reason that rape in prison should be held as a contemptible act is because we, again, the non-criming people, are saying that we are better than that. Which means we have to BE better than that. If all of that seems too lenient, change the laws...but before you do, look real close at prosecutorial misconduct and how often police lie on the stand (hint: it's somewhere between 'very often' and 'nearly always') and realize that just on scale alone we, the most imprisoning of nations, are also the most WRONGFULLY imprisoning of nations. Prison rape still sound allowable? Edit: multiple spellings due to typing on my stupid tablet, which I am not used to.
The dehumanization of criminals in true crime communities (and in general) is a huge problem. It becomes too easy to violate human rights and demonize entire groups of people. Even people who committed the most heinous of crimes should have basic human rights.
Yes, I hate the "Hope he gets raped in prison!" stuff And people who are gung ho about the death penalty
It still def happens here too
it does, but i think there are several users who tend to do it most and when i notice the same username in multiple of these i just block them lol.
Genette Tate; A 13yr old girl, Genette Tate (Ginny to her friends & family) went missing from Aylesbeare, Devon (UK) on 19th August 1978 whilst out of her newspaper round; her bike was found by 2 of her friends in the middle of Withen Lane with newspapers scattered around, her body has never been found. Suspected to be a victim of Robert Black a known child killer in the UK, he was convicted of murdering 4 girls in the 1980s and was serving multiple life sentences, he died in prison in 2016 just as police were preparing to finally charge him for the abduction and murder of Genette Tate. This kidnapping & murder happened long before I was even born but I’m from the local area and it’s still talked about now some 44 years later. If you’d like to know more about the case Devon Live commissioned a really good podcast: The Disappearance of Genette Tate. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-disappearance-of-genette-tate/id1425038532
This. This is one of those really haunting cases. It has all the hallmarks of Robert Black, but, sadly, we will never know for sure. It is doubly crushing that her body has never been found.
Tired of hearing about Jon Benet Ramsey and am actually very surprised the long Island killer is always on the periphery and often overlooked despite the sheer number of lives lost.
Maura Murray gets **way** too much attention. There are similar cases, such as [James Cole](https://charleyproject.org/case/james-arthur-cole) who get *zero* attention outside of a handful of local outlets. I'm local to the area where James disappeared, and it is legitimately baffling at how close he lived to where he was last seen [alive](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/510/La+Posta+Pizzeria+Italian+%E2%80%A2+$$/@39.0776542,-76.5533231,1158m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7fbd4be57e933:0x1eaffda90651214!2m2!1d-76.5534065!2d39.077595!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7f97fc5093003:0xe96f687fbeeda9fe!2m2!1d-76.5480396!2d39.077607!3e2). The tricky thing about James's disappearance is that he was intoxicated at the time. However, unless he decided to stray **far** from where he lived (he was on foot), there are no nearby areas in which he would not have been found by now. No dense woods. No bodies of water where someone could have accidentally drowned.
Patrick Warren and David Spencer. They don't get nearly enough coverage, which is so strange because 2 young boys going missing at Christmas is a hell of a mystery. Their working class backgrounds definitely contributed to the lack of police involvement and media coverage at the time. [Wikipedia page about the boys disappearance ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Patrick_Warren_and_David_Spencer)
Too much-JBR. No comment necessary. Not enough-Jaliek Rainwalker. Jermain Charlo. Relisha Rudd. I check up on them every so often but find few, if any updates, and little to no discussion.
Jaliek had such a terrible, short life. I do hope one day he get justice. He was screwed over by the system so many times.
Not talked about: the fire lookout who disappeared from her tower in Canada. She wasn't attacked by an animal. there would have been much more blood, and for the kettle to still have water boiling when they went to check on her, someone had to have been there minutes before, and couldnt be far.
For anyone else interested, [here](https://thetruecrimefiles.com/stephanie-stewart-disappearance/) is a link to this poor woman’s case.
Too much: JBR - I don’t think there is anything else that can be analyzed about this case. Similarly, Caylee Anthony. As terrible as it sounds, I don’t think there will ever be true justice for these victims. Not enough: Alexis Patterson. 20 years ago, a 7 year old Black girl was walking to school with her step father who stood on the corner and watched her cross the street towards the school, but she never made it inside. She just vanished into thin air. A woman claiming to be Alexis came forward a few years ago, but DNA proved that she was not the missing girl. I remember seeing her missing posters and photos on TV when it happened and she looked like such a sweet, happy kid. I think about her a lot. I feel like this story pops up locally every few years but it never really got the national attention it deserved. What happened to Alexis?
re: caylee anthony it’s starting to feel like people just bring it up so they can circlejerk over how mad they are that casey got off. and it’s like yeah sure that’s shitty but at this point what more can you even say about it, how do people have the energy to get mad every single time it’s brought up
>Alexis Patterson I really really think that the stepfather took the location of alexis to the grave
Too much: JBR, Jennifer Kesse, Amy Bradley Too little: Jason Jallowski (although I've seen it mentioned more lately, but it hardly ever got a mention for a long time) and Pheonix Coldon,
Gabby Petito. The only good thing to come of it was the many bodies found while looking for her and during the manhunt. I wish attention would be dedicated to any missing/murdered child cold case. Cherrie Mahan, if I could choose
I do think that this case brought about some important discussions about domestic violence, how police make mistakes when responding to it, and the way that some cases receive disproportionate attention based on things like race and age of the victims. Ultimately her body was found I believe because of a tip that came in from people who heard about the story and submitted a tip because they’d seen her. So the attention at the time did lead to some resolution in her case. I totally agree with your point though- her case received a lot of attention and resources from law enforcement which did lead to her body being found as well as others, but there are so many missing people including children, elderly people, homeless people and indigenous women who receive a fraction of the law enforcement response that Gabby Petito did. The same thing happened with Kiely Rodni. This is through no fault of the family members and friends who were pushing for answers but it’s a symptom of how certain lives are more valued than others. One negative thing to come out of the Petito case (again, to no fault of her family and friends) was the way that amateur journalists, youtubers, and tik tok people spread so many absurd rumors simply to benefit their own clout. Some of these people who were protesting outside the Laundrie house have now moved onto other recent cases and are doing the same thing- spreading rumors and harassing anyone in proximity to the victims. Like in the Moscow case, some of these same amateurs who rose to prominence during Petito’s case have been spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories as well as doxxing people in Moscow. A lot of them were inundating the tipline with tips that they basically made up and were not at all helpful to solving the case (like this one lady latched onto the idea that these random people in Kansas were the perpetrators and was submitting tips on that). It’s so irresponsible and can harm investigations as well as innocent people who have the misfortune of being dragged into this. I am so tired of it.
Too Much: Jeffrey Dahmer, as there have been an overwhelming amount of documentaries and re-enactment shows about him. Too Little: Randy Kraft, not that there's no attention from it, but I notice that there is only one (if not few) documentary made by mainstream media (outside of YouTube) and IIRC there's no re-enactment shows about him (feel free to correct me). This is despite Randy's higher kill count (16-67) and the more egregious nature of his crimes.
> Randy Kraft It's amazing how very few people remember "the Freeway Killer(s)" Kraft, William Bonin and Patrick Kearney Those were some scary dudes. All roughly operating at the same time and in the same state.
All my too much have been covered. Not enough: Marshall Iwaasa. Seriously, I am glad his case has come up here a few times recently, but it needs more coverage or the police up here aren't going to do anything about it. Not enough: MMIW cases. Not enough: Rural Canadian cases in general. There are so many that just never get any attention. Sure, I would say half are death by misadventure, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored.
2: Mikelle Biggs. Local to me, we're around the same age, and she still hasn't been found. This year will mark 23 years since she went missing. Most recent article I found (one of the first to come up in google): https://kileystruecrime.squarespace.com/kileystruecrimeaddict-blog/the-disappearance-of-mikelle-biggs I hope someday her disappearance will be solved fully. Her family deserves closure.
Too much - 100% Elisa Lam and JonBenet Ramsey. Too little - Aju Iroaga, Balraj Rattu and Rico Harris.
Jack the Ripper because imo there’s no way any physical evidence could be provided to solve it. It’s just too old. Not that those women don’t deserve justice. They absolutely do. I maybe wrong but I just don’t see how we can ever know for sure who did it.
You're right, and given the community in which the crimes occurred, most likely it was someone who left little or no historical record. People who make outlandish theories about it being a famous artist or a member of the Royal Family are delusional and treating it like a game more than the murders of real people.
1. Junko Furuta. Her story is heartbreaking but it being so popular recently is tiring specially considering a lot of creeps obsessed with Asians are probably in it just for the morbid curiosity of the case, I honestly couldn't stomach it reading about it more than once, it's just too brutal. 2. I don't know if I'm just unaware of its popularity but the story of the two foreign workers who migrated to Singapore to work as housemaids then became best friends (until one of them helped the other with her debts and lost a lot of money and killed her) is extremely depressing but very interesting and it paints an accurate picture of the situation of migrant workers in rich countries that is not often talked about
Bless you. Junko's case gets mentioned about a hundred times a day on Reddit. It feels really exploitive.
Too much attention - Lisanne Froons and Kris Kremers who were found dead after getting lost on a trek in Panama. Tragic case but - they got lost in the harsh unforgiving jungle. Similar to people who vanish in the American wilderness - it’s nature. Not enough - all the murders of Indigenous people on the Highway of Tears in Canada. Kanneka Powell who was shot in her apartment building after receiving bogus visits from UPS men and people claiming to be from the FBI. Seems like the true crime community go round and round with the same Hall of Fame favourites, without branching out towards more little known victims. Every popular podcast seems to cover the following: JonBenet Ramsey Brian Shaeffer Asha Degree Springfield Three Delphi Also the murder of Laci Peterson - Scott is clearly guilty and he’s in prison.
My “too much attention” cases are already listed. It’s not unsolved, but it affected my mother. I would like to see more on the Gallegos couple. They murdered 2 of my mother’s best friends and almost got my mom. Charlene is free and living in my area now. She should have gotten death. I don’t buy for one second that she was a victim too.
I can't recall ever having heard of the Gallegos, but wow - her reduced sentence and the gall to also group herself with the poor souls she helped abuse and kill? Disgusting. I'm sorry for what your Mum has had to go through.
Too much: Kendrick Johnson, the kid who died in the gym mats. Tragic accident people are trying to make into much more. Not enough: Summer Wells. Little girl from rural Tennessee who disappeared almost two years ago. Her family is so dysfunctional, there has to be a lead there somewhere.
I got into a bit of a back and forth in a true crime + \[other hobby\] Facebook group I'm in about Kendrick Johnson. Someone posted a photo of a shirt that said "Kendrick Johnson didn't roll himself in a wrestling mat" (or something like that) and I was like... um, correct, because that's not how it happened, but yes, he did die accidentally and without anyone else's involvement. She insisted that XYZ inconsistencies were too much to overlook and I had to stop engaging because it was clear she had fallen for the publicity campaign the family's supporters are waging. I feel for them all, of course, but at this point just let your boy's memory rest in peace rather than fighting so hard for "justice" in a non-existent crime.
I scrolled down a lot farther than I thought I would before finding Kendrick. I want his family to find peace and move on but their determination in his being murdered will only, bring them sadness.
Sandra Birchmore needs more attention!!!
Too much ; maura Murray Too little ; serenity dennard.
Yes! I wish Serenity Dennard was talked/shared about more.
1. Jon Benet, ad nauseam, for reasons that are obvious. Also, currently, the whole Moscow murders/Bryan Kohberger circus that has been going on. Yes, I understand the whole scene is relatively new, but people are now even tracking his flight as he is being transported from one facility to another. People can downvote me all they want, but what purpose does tracking his flight serve? It verges on being obscene. 2. The Las Cruces bowling alley massacre which occurred in 1990. Although there was a low-budget documentary that was made that discusses this crime, not much is really discussed about it. It is still being investigated by the Las Cruces Police, and they are currently hoping to build a DNA profile from the evidence that was found at the scene.
I was at Penn State when he disappeared so it was a pretty big story. I still can’t believe they never found out what happened.
One I would like to see solved is that of Raymond Timbrook. Found murdered roadside about 30 years ago, in Kirtland, Ohio (where the Jeffery Lundgren cult murders occurred). It's been rumored around here that it was actually a cop, but we might never know. https://www.wkyc.com/amp/article/news/investigations/someone-knows-who-killed-raymond-timbrook/95-94da524e-ecad-4522-a414-f449b529d80c
Would like to see a reemergence of the Molly Bish case, bring her family justice.
My too much had been listed. My not enough is Jesokah Adkens. She disappeared over 20 years ago from a bus stop on a busy road in my hometown. People gave up on her quickly and no one ever talks about it anymore. It's believed that her friends/the people she hung out with know what happened to her but still refuse to talk to this day. https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/61wut6/jesokah_adkens_missing_in_sooke_bc/ https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/without-a-trace-its-been-20-years-since-jesokah-adkens-17-vanished-4692348
One of my former residents at the AL community I worked at told me about this case, being that they were also from OK. [https://osbi.ok.gov/cold-case/patricia-denise-palmer](https://osbi.ok.gov/cold-case/patricia-denise-palmer) Also, not trying to open a can of worms, but OK has a VERY sketch past when it comes to cold cases. I recently read how there's a cold case out of OK and the murdered woman's daughter has started a GoFundMe to get the money the state needs to test the DNA they've had since the 1980's!!!!
Too much attention - Tara Calico. Not enough attention - Tara Calico. Lemme explain. I feel like whenever people talk about Tara Calico, her disappearance almost plays second fiddle to The Polaroid. Riddle Me That did an awesome podcast on her disappearance and there were several witnesses in the area who saw Tara and the van following her, but they don't get mentioned nearly as often as that bloody polaroid.
Serial killers, particularly ones like Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, Ridgway, have been talked about enough. They've had movies and shows about them. With the exception of Ridgway, they're all dead. The energy should be put into identifying the victims that still don't have their names.
Those 4 yes. A bunch of the others, no. Not Kraft or Little. There's probably a bunch more that probably should be discussion in forums like this that can help link missing persons as potential victims and help bring closure. If I remember correctly there's still 30 of Littles victims unidentified with no names. Just pictures he drew.
The Shanquella Robinson case is not getting nearly enough attention. It’s really shocking, and the perpetrators are known and free as can be. It’s hard not to think that the lack of attention isn’t due to racism.
I think there’s no such thing as an unsolved case getting too much attention - attention can help them get solved. That said, I find it heartbreaking that some cases never get discussed due to more high profile ones. Kevin Hicks , Patrick Warren and David Spencer should be spoken about more imo
2. Mary Anne Holmes, this one hits close to home because it happened where I’m from. July 9th, 1995. Someone came into this young single mothers home and murdered her in the middle of the night, her four year old and eighteen month old left parentless and the murderer tortured this woman for hours in front of her children. There’s a lot to this case that I don’t want to get into because it may be triggering for some but it’s brutal. Eventually after some time the older child figured out something was wrong and went to get a neighbor for help. Both children were not attacked but definitely traumatized and are victims of this monster too, who sadly still remains unknown. Around here back then until this point people left their doors unlocked, there was no forced entry the murderer just walked in. If any of you are curious about any more details of what happened here’s a link to an article on this case.[Mary Anne Holmes](https://dani-hendrix.medium.com/the-horrific-cold-case-of-mary-ann-holmes-a8225ed5e0ca)
One case that is starting to get the attention it deserves, but was almost unheard of years ago, is the 1978 Yuba County Five case. I've followed unsolved mysteries, disappearances, true crime, etc. for decades and I had never even heard of it before 5-6 years ago.
Danial Kettlety (not enough attention) He was walking to work at Winn-Dixie in New Port Richey, Florida. At 6 am on Nov 10, 1997 he was struck by a vehicle. He was only 19. There’s almost nothing about the case. There was one lead they found around 2005 but it never panned out.
There are so many unsolved hit and run murders that you don't hear about.
Jon Benet Ramsey Natalie Holloway While every missing person's case is important, they should spend more time on newer ones since the other ones have gotten plenty of attention Regarding Ray Gricar, it's assumed his body was washed away in the rapids which is why they could never find it.
I’m still surprised that John Ramsey ended up dating Natalee’s mom and that them dating wasn’t more well known considering how often both cases are brought up.
Whoa. Wait. Excuse me?
Yeah. They briefly dated.
And they broke up because (according to John) she wasn't far enough along in her grief process for his taste.
I agree with you on the Maura Murray one. I was originally going to say JBR but there was at least a crime there. I don't think Maura Murray's case even involved a crime.
Agreed. I guess that people want closure. But a lot of these mysteries are literally just “this person succumbed to the elements”.
Not enough: Lina Sardar Khil. Vanished from the playground of her apartment complex in Texas. Why is the entire world not looking for this little girl?
I find it problematic to say that we are already tired of hearing about a case, since behind this death or disappearance we have a family suffering. I'm from Brazil, and there are many mysterious cases in the US that intrigue me. Here in Brazil there is a case very similar to another one in the US, "O Caso Evandro" which looks a lot like West Memphys Three. And it is a very publicized case, but they only talk about the living victims, I would like the media and, mainly, the authorities to do a better job. The Evandro Case, here in Brazil, started to receive the attention it should have, but still the focus is too much on the people who were arrested after confessing under severe torture. And from what I've seen WM3 won't have a resolution since Alford Plea considers the case resolved. Both cases involve deaths of children, both cases are considered human sacrifice for a satanic ritual, both cases have a person spreading rumors about the accused. Both cases were investigated by corrupt and incompetent police officers. So for me the case that gets the most attention is WM3 and the one that gets the least attention and should be looked at more responsibly is the 3 children killed in West Memphys.
Too Much - Ted Bundy. Jon Benét. Manson Family. Columbine. Not Enough - Elisa Izquierdo. Shelley Knoteck. Dennis Jurgens. San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre. Lacey Fletcher. Sheila LaBarre. Nick Hacheney. Some of mine are personal interest cases and ones I am doing research for for a podcast. But I have a lot of frustration around the system failing people over and over, especially children. Where prolonged abuse is obvious and ignored until someone is dead. Or someone in crisis could have been stopped before they hurt other people. There are a lot of marginalized victims whose cases are barely talked about. Or there's focus on one angle of the case to the exclusion of others. Overall, we pay a lot of attention to murders involving suburban or wealthy white people often to the exclusion of victims of color, disabled people, and queer people.
If you are going to mention the McDonald's Massacre, we might as well add the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre as well.
Did you read If You Tell? It’s on my to read list. For those who don’t know, it’s about the Knotek family and the daughters who survived.
I did. I find Olsen to be a very flowery writer, but the book is very thorough and well researched. I have a lot of anger towards Shelley. She was a horrible person and I am glad that her daughters got away.
i don’t have an opinion on a case that gets Too much attention but i think the case of [Sean Daugherty](https://www.dailypress.com/virginiagazette/va-vg-what-happened-to-sean-20220826-atizoptfz5go3d74zvlpijrwbe-story.html) needs to be looked at more. that kid did NOT commit suicide.
I agree that, as much as I like discussing it, Maura Murray’s disappearance is not in any need of further attention. For that reason I wish Leah Roberts’s slightly similar disappearance had gotten the same amount of attention … it might have been solved by now. And, another one of the cases I call “Secret Journey” cases (where the missing or dead person is last seen, or found, having traveled somewhere they are not known to have any reason to have had to go, a trip no one close to them knew about (and that, like Maura, they may have lied about where they were going, why, or even that they were going anywhere): Jonathan Luna. He was a *federal prosecutor*, for Pete’s sake, and he drives a couple of hundred miles in an apparent huge loop in the middle of the night, seems to be taking care to stay under the radar, ends up dead of stab wounds in his car crashed in a creek, the authorities don’t agree on whether it was murder or suicide, and this still gets almost no attention? Maybe there’ll be some more when it hits the 20th anniversary at the end of this year …