Most interesting unsolved non-serial killer cases

[sdreid]

Thanks Holly, I'll be looking for that. Sometimes PBS stations don't all follow the same schedule. I think their stations have more latitude than stations in the other networks.

[sdreid]

It's on Nova in less than an hour here.

[louisa]

For what it's worth my all time favourite non-serial killer crimes are:

1. The Dominici Affair (book by Jean DuBord) The 1952 murder of a respectable English family who stopped for the night at the side of a road in Provence. The murderer was found to be Gaston Dominici, the owner of a farmhouse up the road. Or was it? I suspect his son had a hand in it. A fascinating case.

2. The Croydon Poisonings (book by Richard Whittington-Egan). Another true life whodunnit. In 1930 a small family who live at different addresses in Croydon are gradually being killed by poison. The finger points to one of the family....but was it? A brilliant book that I've read many times.

3. Who Killed Julia Wallace. You all know all about this one! Another fascinating whodunnit.

4. The case of Philip Yale Drew. Yes, another whodunnit!

5. JonBenet Ramsey. The debate still continues.

[sdreid]

The case of Philip Yale Drew. Yes, another whodunnit!

Thanks for bringing that one to my attention.

[RivkahChaya]

No one has mentioned Philadelphia's Boy in the Box? The link is to a semi-official website. Here's wiki on it, which is pretty accurate. Practically every US cop show has had some variation on it. Cold Case did one, Law & Order: SVU did one, CSI did one, and some older shows did more veiled references to it, but it's a pretty disturbing case, so older takes on it are not as obvious.

Most people in New England are very aware of this case, even though it's pretty old by now, although it's not as old as the Black Dahlia. The boy, if he were alive, would probably be eligible for social security right about this year. Maybe most of the responders to the thread are UKers, which is why it hasn't come up yet; I find it much sadder than the Black Dahlia, and also more puzzling, since the boy was never even identified.

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, yeah-- I would love to see, finally, the right person arrested in the West Memphis, Arkansas murders of three eight-year-old boys in 1993. Whoever did it has to answer not only for the three boys who were murdered, but also for the three teenagers, who each spent 17 years in prison-- half of their lives at the time that they were released.

[RivkahChaya]

The most interesting kidnapping/murder case to me is that of 10-year-old Charles Mattson in 1936/37. It is completely unsolved without any serious suspect.

Do you know about the Charley Ross case? It was the first ransom kidnapping in the US (as far as anyone knows), and it is tantalizingly unsolved. It also has some classic legend and "trope" elements, which may actually be true.

Charley Ross was four, and his brother Walter was six. They would play in front of their house, and some strangers came by every day for several days, and give them candy, something no one thought anything about, in 1874.

On July 1, the men told the boys to get in their carriage, and they'd take them to a store to buy firecrackers. They drove pretty far, and finally stopped. The men gave Walter 25 cents (about $5, today's money), and told him to go in the store and buy the fireworks, they'd wait. When he came back out, the carriage was gone.

Two days later, a ransom note arrived, and two days later, another note demanding $20,000, and giving specific drop instructions, which the child's father, Christian Ross, tried to follow, but didn't meet up with the kidnappers, and never found his son. The notes said not to contact the police, but by the time the note had arrived, the police had already been contacted.

Police thought the handwriting on the note looked like that of a fugitive convict named William Mosher. In December, 1874, Mosher, along with someone named Joe Douglas, were shot while attempting a burglary. Mosher died immediately, but Douglas lived for a while. He was pressed for a confession, and said something, but it's not clear what he said. He may have been delirious, or he may not have believed he was dying, and didn't really want to admit anything. He did say that Mosher was involved in the kidnapping, but the he, Douglas, did not know where Charley was.

When both men were dead, Walter Ross was taken to look at the bodies, and said that they were the men who had taken him for firecrackers.

No one ever found Charley, or a body, though. Christian Ross continued to look for him for the rest of his life, and a lot of pretenders came forward, but they all turned out to be just that.

[sdreid]

Yes, I do know about Charlie Ross. There is a missing persons web site named after him. www.charleyproject.org

[RivkahChaya]

Another really interesting case, not for its unsolved-ness, so much as its social implications, is the Bobby Dunbar case. In the summer of 1912, a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar, from a fairly well-off, sort of "All American" family, disappeared during a picnic by a lake, and eight months later, the police found a similar-looking boy traveling with a guy named William Walters, who said the kid was Bruce Anderson, the son of Julia Anderson, a field-worker for the Walters family. Anderson said the yes, Bruce was her son, but she hadn't seen him in 13 months, after giving Walters permission to take him on a two day trip. However, she couldn't (after 13 months, or 1/3 of the child's life) immediately pick him out of a line-up of six little blond boys.

So, despite the fact that there were witnesses who had seen Bruce with Walters before the day Bobby Dunlap disappeared, the police decided that Bruce Anderson was Bobby Dunlap, and turned him over to the Dunlaps, who had an amazing "whatever" attitude about it. Newspaper reports are mixed, with some claiming the child immediately recognized and knew the name of his brother, and called out to his mother, and others reporting a lukewarm and awkward reunion.

Nonetheless, the Dunbars' hometown welcomed Bobby home with a parade, and he stayed with the Dunbars.

Walters was convicted of kidnapping, and served a couple of years in prison, but was later released on appeal.

Anderson made an attempt to get her son back, but she was unmarried, and had another child out-of-wedlock. There was a lot of prejudice against her to begin with, and as long as the kidnapping verdict stood, the child was legally Bobby Dunbar. By the time of the appeal, "Bobby Dunbar" was in another state, so getting him back, for Julia Dunbar, who had no money, would have been next to impossible.

The ad hoc Bobby Dunbar died in 1966, but he had four children. In 2008, his granddaughter, Margaret became interested in the story, and at first was determined to prove that she was, in fact, a Dunbar, but the more she looked into it, the more she began to wonder if there had not been a grave injustice in 1912. Her father, and one of his cousins, underwent genetic testing, and it was demonstrated that they were unrelated in any way. "Bobby Dunbar," it turns out, really was the son of Julia Anderson.

What happened to the real Bobby Dunbar is still a mystery, although unsupervised four-year-olds do fall into lakes, and Margaret Dunbar Cutright points out that this particular lake had a population of alligators, so if he fell in and drowned, or was actually snatched by an alligator, his body probably didn't last long, which is why search parties would not turn up anything.

[sdreid]

Yes, both cases were beset by impostors. I think the presumption is that Dunbar fell in the lake a drowned is probably most likely. Mattson was found murdered after the kidnapper failed to continue communicating so there was no doubt about where he was. There were also an unusual number of "older" witnesses to his abduction.

[Mayerling]

Bobby Greenlease

Another fascinating (and tragic) kidnapping was in the midwest in the 1950s.
Bobby Greenlease was the son of a wealthy couple who was kidnapped, and later found murdered. The kidnappers were eventually caught and executed. What was fascinating about the case was the venality of a couple of the detectives involved, who pilfered some of the ransom money. Also, Mr. Greenlease did business with banker Arthur Eisenhower, brother of the President at the time.

[RivkahChaya]

For non-USA people, a note, if you are reading about US kidnapping cases, you might see a reference to the "Lindbergh Law," or other notes about the FBI being called right away, because it is a kidnapping.

The FBI was a new agency at the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping, and was formed for the purpose of investigating crimes against the federal government. Later, it was given the power the assume jurisdiction in crimes where there was evidence that they had taken place over more than one state, for example, if bank robbers in one state were known to be hiding in another state, where they were "abetted" (which is a specific crime itself) by other people not directly involved in the robbery. The reason for this is that without special warrants, police from one state cannot arrest people in another state. Generally, they must be arrested by authorities in the state where they are, and then extradited, just like they were in another country.

When the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped, the Lindberghs themselves were in New Jersey, but NJ is a small state, and there was reason to believe the child had been taken to New York, which presented jurisdictional problems. By allowing the FBI to assume jurisdiction, there was no problem, because FBI agents have the power of arrest anywhere in the US.

Anyway, the Lindbergh Law makes kidnapping a federal crime by definition, so the FBI can automatically assume jurisdiction, even without specific evidence that the victim has been taken out of state. The reasoning is that since finding a kidnap victim is so time-sensitive, it's wrong to use time simply trying to establish extra-jurisdiction, just to get the FBI involved, and if a kidnapper could avoid arrest simply by hiding the victim out of state, they'd be motivated to do so.

In general, when a crime is not known to take place across jurisdictions, the FBI cannot get involved without an invitation from the local police or sheriff (or possibly a mayor, or governor, but I'm not entirely sure about that).

I've been asked to explain that before, several times, by people who have watched American TV with the FBI, so I thought I'd post it.

[sdreid]

Yes, I believe kidnapping is still a Federal capital crime so you can still be executed for it even if the entire event occurred in a state that does not have the death penalty.

[RivkahChaya]

Yes, I believe kidnapping is still a Federal capital crime so you can still be executed for it even if the entire event occurred in a state that does not have the death penalty.

Yes. Kidnapping is a federal crime even if you never leave the city. The presumption that you might do so is the basis for its being a federal crime, but it does not revert to being non-federal if you turn out to have remained in one jurisdiction.

Indiana has the only federal execution chamber in use right now (there are two others, but I don't think they have been updated to use lethal injection), in a city called Terre Haute. It's used mainly because of it's central location. Indiana state executions are carried out in the state capital, Indianapolis, at the men's prison. I don't think we currently have any women on death row, but I guess if we did, they'd be transported to the men's prison for execution. But the federal prison is about two hours south. It's where John Walker Lindh is currently incarcerated, and where Timothy McVeigh was executed.

Indiana has the death penalty, but not many executions. The last governor was particularly bloodthirsty, though, and oversaw more executions, IIRC, that all the previous governors before him from the lifting of the moratorium in '76, until his election, put together. Mainly cop-killers, and one rather infamous child-killer, have been executed. Our biggest nuts have committed suicide. Herb Baumeister, a Gacy-type serial killer, the Rev. Jim Jones, and a student at an Indiana university who went on a shooting spree down I-80, killing Jews in Chicago, and attempting to kill some in Indiana, finishing off with a Korean Methodist on his way to church, all killed themselves.

[louisa]

Did they commit suicide whilst in prison? Hmmm...that's convenient.