Unsolved crimes are shrouded in a veil of mystery that arouses curiosity and unhealthy interest in the general public, far from the criminal world. In such cases, it is not possible to put an end to the matter, and instead of an explanation, only new questions appear. Even years later, the controversy continues about what happened and who (or what) is the real culprit of the events. And at this time, the criminals, perhaps, are walking free, and, perhaps, preparing to strike a new unexpected blow. So, what crimes shocked us in the 19th and 20th centuries? What criminal mysteries remained unsolved? What sets them apart from hundreds of thousands of other unsolved crimes? First of all, the mysterious circumstances, the original motive or meaning they had on the development of history and pop culture of the last century.
Airplane hijacking by Dan Cooper
November 24, 1971
Unremarkable passenger Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 747 bound for Seattle and announced that it had a bomb. The invader was not going to kill anyone. He just demanded $ 200,000 and four parachutes. After Cooper received everything he wanted in exchange for the hostage passengers, the plane took off, and a few minutes later Cooper jumped out of the plane with a parachute. No one saw him again. Nine years later, in 1980, the FBI found nearly $ 6,000 in bills on the banks of the Columbia River where Cooper might have landed. This led investigators to assume that Dan Cooper did not survive the jump, but so far this hypothesis has not been confirmed or refuted.
Robbery of the Gardner Museum
March 18, 1990
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Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her own art museum in Boston in 1903. Since then, the Museum has amassed a respectable collection of art of world importance. In 1990, the Museum became famous as the site of the largest theft of art objects in the history of the United States, moreover, committed with defiant audacity. The robbers, disguised as police officers, calmly entered the Museum and, without arousing suspicion, took away 13 masterpieces of painting and graphics, estimated by experts for a total of more than $ 200 million. Among the plunder of the robbers were sketches by Rembrandt and a painting by Vermeer. The culprit could not be found.
Robbery in Japan
December 10, 1968
Four Nihon Shintaku Ginko employees were transporting 400 million yen destined for Toshiba employees. On the way, their car was stopped by a policeman, who said that explosives might be hidden in it. The law-abiding Japanese obediently got out of the car, and the "policeman" took over the inspection. When the smoke appeared, he told the would-be collectors to "save themselves", and he jumped into the car and was like that.
Despite the discovered evidence (almost 100 pieces!), Including the motorcycle of an imaginary policeman left at the crime scene, this crime remained unsolved. The list of suspects included a record number of suspects - more than 100 thousand people - the main of whom was long considered the 19-year-old son of a police officer. However, the persecuted and desperate young man took his own life, and the money was never found.
The assassination of Bob Crane
June 29, 1978
Actor Bob Crane's life was great: he became the star of the popular American TV series Hogan's Heroes and was happily married to a girl with whom he had been in love since college. But the years passed, the marriage broke up, and the popularity naturally degenerated into drugs and drinking, the addiction to which Crane shared with his friend John Carpenter. Carpenter was engaged in electronics, and drinking companions decided to shoot pornography. One evening, after a rowdy fight, Crane was found dead.
The cold-blooded murder weapon was never found, but all other evidence pointed unequivocally to Carpenter. He called Crane at home when the police were already working there, and did not even ask what happened. In addition, traces of blood of the same type as Crane were found on the car rented by Carpenter. In 1992, an examination was to take place in order to check the conformity of the DNA, but it turned out that the surviving blood sample was not subject to analysis. Then the charges against Carpenter had not yet been dropped, and although the court emphasized the strangeness of his relationship with the murdered man, Carpenter was found not guilty and died six years later, in 1998.
The assassination of JonBenet Ramsey
December 25, 1996
The winner of several children's beauty contests, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey lived with her parents in Boulder, Colorado. On December 26, 1996, the day after Catholic Christmas, the girl's mother, former beauty queen and Miss Virginia title holder, found a note in her daughter's bedroom demanding a ransom of $ 118,000. Despite the kidnappers' instructions, the parents contacted the police, who six hours later found the body of the murdered JonBenet in the basement.
Ten years later, in 2006, an American citizen, John Mark Carr, was detained in Thailand, who, according to his own words, was with the girl at the time of her murder, but his DNA did not match the murderer's DNA (the criminal's blood remained on the girl's underwear), and Carr released without charge. JonBenet's murder has not yet been solved.
The murder of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls
September 7, 1996 and March 9, 1997
Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls or Notorious BIG) are popular rappers of the mid-1990s, whose deaths are only a few months apart. Shakur was returning from a boxing match in Las Vegas in the car of Suge Knight, co-founder of Death Row Records. The car cut off the car the rapper was in and forced her to stop. Fire was opened from the car, and Shakur received four wounds, two of which were fatal. Six days later, on September 13, 1996, he died in the hospital.
Six months later, this situation was repeated with another rapper, Notorious BIG: he left a party early at the Peterson Automotive Museum, Los Angeles. On the way, two cars blocked the way, a man in a bow tie got out of one and shot the rapper four times.
Both murders took place in crowded places, with witnesses, but the killers were never found. Investigators tend to attribute the silence of witnesses to their fear of reprisals.
The murder of the "black orchid"
January 15, 1947
After the sudden death of fiancé Matthew Gordon, Elizabeth Short moved to Los Angeles. Dreaming of the fame of an actress, beautiful and ambitious, Short tried to break into Hollywood. In her last letter, she mentions upcoming auditions for one of the main roles in the film. On January 9, 1947, Robert Manley took Elizabeth to the Biltmore Hotel, from where she disappeared without a trace a few hours later. He was the last to see Short alive. The body of the failed actress, severely mutilated, was found on January 15. The killer not only took the girl's life, but also mocked her, cutting her mouth from ear to ear.
During the investigation, an impressive list of suspects was drawn up. The case had such a wide resonance in the press that the police received 60 (!) False confessions to the murder. The police nicknamed the murdered girl "Black Orchid" for her beautiful dark hair and mysterious ending. In 2006, the eponymous thriller with Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank was released, which offered a version of the solution to this crime.
The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
July 30, 1975
Jimmy Hoffa began his career in 1957 and subsequently became head of the influential Teamsters Union. He called for unification of workers in the transport sector, but ruined his reputation with connections with the underworld and the mafia, which he resorted to to intimidate the intractable rich. It is not surprising that after a while Hoffa ended up behind bars for bribing a judge, but was soon released under President Nixon's amnesty, after which he mysteriously disappeared from the Manchus Red Fox restaurant in Michigan, where he was going to meet with the mafiosi Antonio Giacalone and Antonio Provenzano.
"Threads" in the case of the mysterious disappearance of Hoffa have appeared only recently. DNA analysis shows that on the day of his disappearance, Hoffa was in the car of his colleague Charles O'Brien. Richard Powell, Louis Milito of the Gambino clan and contract killer Richard Kuklinsky are the likely organizers of Hoffa's kidnapping and the perpetrators of his alleged death. The most convincing version seems to be that the culprit of Hoffa's disappearance is Frank Sheeran, a mafia hired killer, who in 2004 confessed to ex-prosecutor Charles Brandt that he took Hoffa's life at the request of one of the mafia clans.
Jack the Ripper
August-November 1888
In 1888, a series of brutal murders of prostitutes took place in the Whitechapel borough of London. The identity of the five killed was identified, and the rest died unknown. One of the trademarks of the maniac, in addition to the special, sophisticated cruelty with which the murders were committed, was the choice of the crime scene (necessarily a room or a street with an open entrance). While this increased the likelihood of being caught in the act, the Ripper seemed to be tempting fate.
There were no obvious suspects in the Jack the Ripper case, although since then many have claimed the identity of the most mysterious maniac - both the author of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, and the artist Walter Sickert. Today, it is obvious that the identity of the Ripper will never be established, but his case can serve as an example of the coverage of a sensation in the press of the 19th century.
The Zodiac Killer
1968-1969
The elusive "Zodiac" claimed to have killed 37 people, but detectives were able to prove his involvement in only five murders. After the murders in December 1968 and July 1969, the criminal sent several letters to the largest newspapers in San Francisco, each of which contained fragments of a cryptogram of 408 characters. The cryptogram was unraveled, but it did not contain any clues to identify the killer. Letters and cryptograms continued to arrive (but none of them were solved), and the murders did not stop. According to police, the Zodiac murders ended in 1969, although letters continued to arrive until the mid-1970s.
The mystery remains a mystery
Every day, more and more evidence appears in the case of each unsolved crime. It often happens that these pieces of evidence are so diverse that they do not allow us to single out one version of the crime. Sometimes it is also difficult to draw the line between truth, falsehood and coincidence. We can only wait and closely follow the further development of events in the hope that the villains walking on the loose will not commit other crimes.