If you could solve any non-JTR mystery which would it be?

[Graham]

Were you in the British air force Graham?

Nein, mein freund!

I wasn't born until after WW2 ended. The guy who told me that story was a rarity in himself - a rear-gunner who survived the War. I had no reason to believe he was shooting me a line.

Graham

[GUT]

One of my older colleagues at the time of my first job (in 1963) was former RAF bomber crew. He told me that another crew at one of the bases he served at got badly shot up over Germany one night, and it was obvious that the pilot was wounded but stated he was still capable of flying the aircraft. They got back to base OK, made a good landing, but when another relieved crewman went to offer his congratulations he found the pilot stone dead at the controls.
He just did what he had to do.....

Graham

I heard the same story from an old bloke who was also retired RAF.

[Ginger]

I've heard a number of similar stories, but have no reason to doubt them. People who have been horribly injured can hang onto consciousness and life by sheer willpower when something important, such as the lives of their mates, depends on them putting off death for a little bit.

[Harry D]

I've heard a number of similar stories, but have no reason to doubt them. People who have been horribly injured can hang onto consciousness and life by sheer willpower when something important, such as the lives of their mates, depends on them putting off death for a little bit.

I recall another case that shows the power of human endurance. A couple were attacked with an axe while they slept. Despite suffering a fatal head-wound, the husband got up and went about his usual morning routine before he inevitably pegged it. His wife, however, survived the attack but was left disfigured. Their son was bang to rights as the murderer and I think he was prosecuted, but the mother refuses to believe he did it.

[Mayerling]

I recall another case that shows the power of human endurance. A couple were attacked with an axe while they slept. Despite suffering a fatal head-wound, the husband got up and went about his usual morning routine before he inevitably pegged it. His wife, however, survived the attack but was left disfigured. Their son was bang to rights as the murderer and I think he was prosecuted, but the mother refuses to believe he did it.

In the 1905 case of the Stratton Brothers (the case that established fingerprinting as a tool against criminals in England), they had attacked the couple who ran a small shop just before it opened, and killed both, but the husband (despite horrible wounds to his head) managed to open the shop door, possibly to see if the killers were still on the street. When he saw they weren't he shut the door, and shortly after died. A number of passers-by saw him in his state, and the police soon arrived.

Jeff

[Elizabeth]

I have noticed this as well, it's annoying!

[Elizabeth]

Case I'd most like to see solved

Definitely the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder. I think the extortion was separate from the kidnapping, and Fisch and possibly Hauptmann took part in that. Thanks to Lindbergh, the symbol on the ransom note found in the nursery was circulating in the underworld very quickly, so it was very easy for someone to fake letters. IMO much of the evidence against Hauptmann was faked by the police, i.e. the attic board, Condon's phone # in a closet. (Someone on this thread mentioned that Hauptmann had held up a woman and a baby in Germany--I think it was actually a woman pushing a baby carriage in the days when inflation required Germans to pay for groceries with enormous amounts of cash.) Lindbergh's behaviour throughout was suspicious, and the revelation of his post-war secret families indicates the big divide between his public persona/real self. He was notorious for cruel and life-threatening "jokes": one of Betty Gow's first actions was to ask him if he had the baby and there is a claim that he had hidden the baby in a closet previously and put the household in an uproar. He claimed to have heard a noise like an orange crate breaking (which he didn't investigate) and testified that Hauptmann's voice was the same as Cemetery John's (having heard him say 3 words several years before)--odds are that his hearing had been badly damaged through years of unprotected open-cockpit flying. Many are of the opinion that Lindbergh's testimony put the final nail in Hauptmann's coffin. IMO Lindbergh is an excellent suspect.

[Lipsky]

Who actually murdered the three children in West Memphis.
The WM3 were innocent.
I'd like to see Terry Hobbs further looked into. Lots of dirt there.
John Mark Byers should have his own TV show.

[Errata]

Who actually murdered the three children in West Memphis.
The WM3 were innocent.
I'd like to see Terry Hobbs further looked into. Lots of dirt there.
John Mark Byers should have his own TV show.

I’m not convinced the WM3 were innocent, though they absolutely were railroaded. An old boss fought to free them while absolutely believing in their guilt. Ideals are worth fighting for I guess.

Also, a chronic user of the unnecessary so. But only in online communications and in informal speech. Which doesn’t help you guys, but at least I’m linguistically housebroken.

I would clear up all the remaining mysteries of the murder of Nancy Spungen. Not so much who, more the why this and not that. I also find it genuinely astonishing how a a brain damaged schizophrenic teenager generates an amount of hatred we these days reserved for school shooters.

[Semper_Eadem]

Amelia Earhart turning up Missing followed by the Princes In The Tower.

[Lipsky]

I’m not convinced the WM3 were innocent, though they absolutely were railroaded. An old boss fought to free them while absolutely believing in their guilt. Ideals are worth fighting for I guess.

Also, a chronic user of the unnecessary so. But only in online communications and in informal speech. Which doesn’t help you guys, but at least I’m linguistically housebroken.

I would clear up all the remaining mysteries of the murder of Nancy Spungen. Not so much who, more the why this and not that. I also find it genuinely astonishing how a a brain damaged schizophrenic teenager generates an amount of hatred we these days reserved for school shooters.

The legal implications in the 1994 trial were jaw-dropping. I remember watching the first Paradise Lost back in the day.
They were guilty of being the local freaks , most of us teenage metalheads going through a goth phase identified with Echols.
Massive hatred for wasted rock blondes is a collective fetish. Courtney Love replaced Nancy on this one.
"Who murdered Cobain" enjoyed its brief period of internet whimsy a few years back.

[Robert]

Difficult to pick THE mystery, but one mystery is : did Harold Jones kill again?

[Robert]

Plus - and maybe I'm the only person in the universe for whom this is a mystery - if you shuffle a pack of cards you're supposed to be amazed if they end up arranged in their suits. Why? They've got to end up somehow. Why aren't all the other arrangements amazing?

[Errata]

Massive hatred for wasted rock blondes is a collective fetish. Courtney Love replaced Nancy on this one.
"Who murdered Cobain" enjoyed its brief period of internet whimsy a few years back.

True, but it’s also an odd death. She was probably stabbed standing, and moved around quite a bit by looking at the blood evidence. Eventually she ended up under the sink, But because the stab was only an inch wide, it took her two to three hours to die. Why not take the six steps to the phone to call for help? Or the six steps out the door? She was high, but ambulatory. And I’ve never known an upright junkie who wasn’t also capable of self preservation as long as we keep it in terms of very simple movements. Like some of the ripper victims, she died in a way that doesn’t altogether make sense. Even for a junkie.

[Graham]

Re: The Princes In The Tower, as an enthusiastic Plantagenet I have always doubted the Shakespearean finger of guilt that points at Richard III. I have also for some time been attracted to the theory that the younger of the two Princes, Edward Duke of York, survived whatever plot was hatched to get rid of him and his brother, and reappeared after a long absence in Ireland. If this youth, who called himself Perkin Warbeck, really was, as was claimed, the brother of the uncrowned Richard IV who disappeared and therefore the rightful King, it has never been proven and probably never will be. It's a long and complex story, but well worth reading up. Suffice to say that Henry VII took considerable interest in Edward, who ended up on the scaffold following his taking part in an unsuccessful rebellion against Henry.

The ultimate Cold Case.

Graham