Can you imagine life in the slasher universe? Do you have a shocking monster out there, eating people's faces and easily avoiding capture, who is ready to appear in the next sequel? Of course, you can imagine it, because we all live in such a universe. As we've shown you many times before, the world is full of strange, creepy crimes that baffle investigators.
1. A phone was found in a taxi with a video of the murder of four people in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
In 2014, in Fiji, a student found a mobile phone forgotten by someone in a taxi. Wanting to find out the owner or hoping to find obscene photos (most likely for both reasons), he decided to look at the contents of the phone. As a result, he found there a 10-minute video of the killing of four people who were clinging to the wreckage of a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by four ships. More than 40 bullets were fired at the victims despite raising their hands in surrender, while the voice of an unknown man was heard off-screen, shouting "shoot, shoot, shoot" in Mandarin Chinese. And, of course, the student uploaded this video to YouTube.
The situation is getting stranger …
To this day, no one knows who these people are. The authorities ruled out the possibility of a hoax, but no bodies were found and there were no official reports of such an incident anywhere. They think the victims were pirates who contacted the wrong fishing vessels, but that's just speculation. The killers have not been identified either.
The only clues are the flag with the words “Safety is No. 1”(“Safety First”) and the registration number on the ship's hull in the background. This vessel was eventually identified as a Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel named "Chun I 217". The owner of this vessel was found, but he was able to provide little information as he owns over a dozen such vessels and stated that tenants are very difficult to track.
At the same time, the Fijian authorities considered that this was not their problem, since they had not received any reports of missing sailors, and that the killers were not on their territory.
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2. Found dead man who sent the strangest voice message before his disappearance
One September evening in 2015, 32-year-old Minnesota resident Henry McCabe went to a club with two friends and never returned. One of his friends, William Kennedy, stated that he dropped McCabe off at a convenience store at a gas station after 2 am, but did not know what happened to him later.
Almost two months later, McCabe's body was found in a lake about 10 kilometers from a gas station. According to McCabe's friends, he was very drunk, so this could just be another tragic incident of a drunk man falling into the water. This explanation would be easier to believe if McCabe hadn't sent the worst voice message on his cell phone.
The situation is getting stranger …
McCabe's wife was in California that night, and at 2:28 a.m. he dialed her, and she could hear him shouting about being killed. She tried to call Brother McCabe, and it turned out that he received a voicemail message of the last two minutes of the call, containing strange inexplicable growling sounds, followed by high-pitched groans of pain and silence, after which a male voice said "Stop."
At first, they suspected William Kennedy, as the CCTV cameras near the store at the gas station did not record how he dropped McCabe. In addition, the keys to McCabe's house were found with Kennedy. McCabe's wallet ended up with another friend of his, who claimed that he had taken it from the deceased in a nightclub so that he would no longer buy drinks. However, the cops soon found footage of Kennedy dropping McCabe off at another gas station. He just got the name wrong.
It is still unknown what happened to this man. Even if the suspicion of murder for the purpose of robbery, how then to explain the strange voice message? Did the villains turn into werewolves before killing McCabe? And although McCabe was heard talking about being shot, no gunshot wounds were found on the body.
3. World famous Sherlock Holmes fan died a mysterious death
Richard Lanceline Green was considered the world's most famous expert on Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, Green did not live to see his favorite character played by a guy from the TV series "Ellie McBeal". On May 24, 2004, he was found dead in bed in his London apartment. He was strangled with a shoe lace tied to the handle of a wooden spoon.
The situation is getting stranger …
Before his death, Green hinted that his life was in grave danger. To complete Doyle's biography, Greene needed access to a recently recovered archive of the writer's personal papers and diaries, and was apparently not deterred by the rumor that these documents were cursed. When Green learned that they were going to be auctioned off to private collectors, he tried to prevent this, and he believed that this could be sufficient reason for his murder.
Green was seized by a persecution mania, and he told everyone that an unknown American was following him. When he invited a friend for coffee, he insisted that they talk on the street, as there were bugs in his apartment. Moreover, when Green's sister called him on the day of his death, she heard the American's voice on his answering machine. It turned out that this voice was an automatic message that plays whenever you delete your own message, which Green apparently did for some reason.
Since there were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, many began to lean towards the fact that Green committed suicide, deliberately leaving evidence pointing to the murder.
It turns out that Green took his life to make everyone believe in murder? This could be a plausible explanation, if not for one circumstance. The coroner did not recognize this as suicide and had a rather weighty argument for this: strangling yourself with a lace is very difficult. In the past 30 years, there has only been one such suicide. Ultimately, the coroner did not deliver any verdict, so the mystery of Green's death has not yet been solved.
4. The boy disappeared after his parents crashed in a truck with sulfuric acid
On June 25, 1986, on a mountain pass near the Spanish Somosierra, a truck was seen traveling at a speed of more than 120 kilometers per hour, which is not recommended when transporting over 23,000 liters of sulfuric acid. Naturally, the truck rolled over and all the sulfuric acid spilled out. After everything was removed, the identity of the people in the car was identified: they were Andre Martinez (the driver) and his wife, Carmen Gomez. This tragic news was reported to Andre's parents, who asked about their grandson's condition.
The situation is getting stranger …
It turned out that the couple had a 10-year-old son, Juan Pedro Martinez-Gomez, who was seen with them at breakfast that morning. They found children's clothes, toys and cassettes in the truck, but the child was not there.
You probably thought that since we were talking about such a large amount of sulfuric acid, the child could simply dissolve in it? This is exactly what the investigators immediately thought about, but experts considered it impossible. At least there should have been bones. What then happened to the child and why was his father driving along the mountain road at such a breakneck speed?
A year after the accident, a packet of heroin was found in one of the hidden parts of the truck, suggesting that Juan Pedro had been kidnapped to force his father into drug smuggling. The truck's tachometer showed that it stopped 12 times on a mountain road, each time stopping for no more than 30 seconds. Juan Pedro's father chasing kidnappers? Was he desperately looking for a child? Or did he deliver heroin to local addicts? Nobody knows that.
The case was complicated by statements by witnesses who allegedly saw a white van driving behind the truck before the accident. And after the accident, two men of Nordic appearance allegedly got out of this van, who approached the truck and pulled out a bale. Was Juan Pedro in this bale? If this couple was involved in drug smuggling, why did they pick him up after the accident? And if they weren't drug dealers, what were their motives? And besides, if Juan Pedro was in the truck at the time of the accident, did he survive at all? He must be in his 40s now if he is still alive. But, one way or another, nothing is known about him so far.
5. In the chimney of an abandoned hut, the remains of a young man who disappeared 7 years ago were found
In May 2008, 18-year-old Josh Maddux, by all accounts a calm dude, walked out of his home in Woodland Park, Colorado, and never returned. His disappearance remained a mystery until seven years later, a mummified body was found in the position of a human embryo in the chimney of a shack that was about to be demolished and which was located just 500 meters from the missing guy's house. The body was subsequently identified as Josh Maddux. But that's not the strangest thing yet.
The situation is getting stranger …
Officially, the coroner recognized Maddux's death as an accident, painting a rather gruesome picture of what happened: the young man tried to climb through the chimney, but got stuck there and died.
However, no real explanation was given for the reason that prompted Maddux to climb the chimney, although the bigger problem was the very physical possibility of what he did. The owner of the shack claimed that during the initial construction of the chimney, a heavy steel grate was installed closer to the roof to prevent animals from entering. Maddux wanted to get into that damn chimney so badly that he pulled out a steel grate?
Then there is the problem of Maddux's clothing, or rather the lack of it. When the body was found, he was wearing only a thermal shirt. The rest of the clothes lay near the fireplace in the shack. Perhaps, seeing that he could not get into the chimney from the roof, he undressed and decided to climb into it through the fireplace? But there are two problems here: 1) the owner put a large wooden bar in front of the fireplace that was blocking it, and 2) this is crazy. We should note that Maddux did not use drugs.
Then it turns out that some very strong man killed Maddux, removed the bulky counter and put the body in the chimney? If so, no one can prove it. Although it was rumored that one inmate bragged about killing Maddux, no characteristic injuries were found on the latter's body. Therefore, officially, his death is still considered an accident.
6. A human heart of unknown origin was found in a Ziploc bag
In August 2016, a couple of EMS workers were resting at a gas station in Norwalk, Ohio, when their work overtook them there in a rather grim manner. They spotted a Ziploc bag with a human heart in a nearby field.
The situation is getting stranger …
The situation took a strange turn when the authorities tried to match the heart with the human body and simply could not do it. Even after this find was written in the newspapers, no one reported the loss of human organs. Norwalk is a small town with few murders or violent crimes, and there have been no reports of serious robberies or heartless bodies.
Worse, since the heart was fresh and showed no signs of decay, it was probably removed from the body shortly before workers stumbled upon it. Investigators considered the version of accidental loss of the heart during transportation, since cases of transportation of organs after autopsy were not uncommon. However, it is highly unlikely that a human heart could have been transported in a Ziploc bag unless there were major budget cuts in local organ donation organizations.
Therefore, the most likely terrible explanation here can only be that some serial killer has lost some of his trophies and that the body of his victim has simply not been found yet.
Sergey Maltsev