Most interesting unsolved non-serial killer cases

[sdreid]

Lucan is "technically" unsolved like Kiss.

Yes, this thread is still listed in Shades of Whitechapel with a designation of "moved". I don't get it though.

[sdreid]

2-The Tylenol Poisoner (7) 1982 Illinois

I see that the cops raided James Lewis' residence in regard to this case today. Wonder what's up.

[HollyDolly]

Most interesting unsolved non-serial killer cases

Those are all good ones you mentioned.

There is the Texarkana Killings of the late 40s,which they made into the movie,The Town that Dreaded Sundown.
The Grimes Sisters of the 50s in Chicago.
www.praireghosts.com has something about it, and the area where their bodies was found is said to be haunted. People hear a car drive up, a door open, and then speed away, but no car is there.
The Glidden,Texas murders.A family was murdered with an axe in the late 1890s, early 1900s.www.texasescapes.com has a photo of the house
with sightseerers standing by it.

[HollyDolly]

If you go to the Seguin Gazette website, they should have something about the Zodiac Murders.It was in the San Antonio Express news, as well as on the local tv stations. Aparently this man claims that his stepdad, I can't recall his name,was the Zodiac Killer.The man was considered at one time a possible suspect.They had lived in California at the time of the murders, and then the family moved to Texas. He was living in Seguin in a trailer court there. According to news reports, the FBI was taking this seriously, and were going to go to Seguin to look for information.
Crime Library at TruTV,formerly known as Court TV, has information on the Texas killings of the 1940s.

[sdreid]

Hi Holly,

I think someone mentioned the Glidden case somewhere but I don't remember which thread. Texarkana is on another thread about non-JtR unsolved serials. Regarding the Grimes Sisters, I remember that case when it was ongoing. It still generates a lot of interest.

[sdreid]

It hadn't been mentioned here but it was just announced last week that the Trick-or-Treat Murders have apparently been solved after nearly 25 years so there's always hope. While out for Halloween in 1984, two little girls named Theresa Hall and Sherry Gordon were abducted, raped, strangled and left in an abandoned building at Decatur, IL. Police matched DNA from the crime scene to a convict named Melvin Johnson. Unfortunately, Johnson died in 2003 and is thus beyond Earthly punishment. This case was of local notoriety and was one of the featured crimes in the book Getting Away With Murder.

[sdreid]

Does anyone have any idea why the murder of Josephine Backshall in England during 1974 receives so little coverage. It's a very interesting case but, of all the books I have, only one even mentions it.

[Doug Irvine]

1. 1. The two princes in the tower
   2. Jimmy Hoffa?
   3. Huey Long
   4. Christopher Marlowe
   5. Edgar Allen Poe?
   6. William Desmond Taylor
   7. Edward W. Hall and Elanor Mills
   8. Sir Harry Oakes
   9. Mary Meyer
   10.Roberto Calvi

[Doug Irvine]

1. The two princes in the tower
2. Jimmy Hoffa?
3. Huey Long
4. Christopher Marlowe
5. Edgar Allen Poe?
6. William Desmond Taylor
7. Edward W. Hall and Elanor Mills
8. Sir Harry Oakes
9. Mary Meyer
10.Roberto Calvi

[sdreid]

Thanks Doug. Hall-Mills was in my top ten and Oakes as well as Taylor would have probably made my top twenty.

Interestingly, I don't believe that the Brighton Trunk Mystery has been mentioned yet and it would be my #11.

[sdreid]

The Grimes Sisters of the 50s in Chicago.

I should have added this earlier.

Some books tie these 1956 murders to the 1957 slaying of fifteen-year-old Judith Andersen. They assert that these crimes were the work of a serial child killer who they call the Matinée Murderer.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Stan, Doug, et al,

Seeing William Desmond Taylor's name here reminded me of a site I found a long time ago while trawling through search engines for arcane journals. I had found there used to be a journal, similar to Ripperana, only about the William Desmond Taylor murder. So, a minute ago I typed his name into google and there it was in no time. The editor of the old journal now has all the issues (almost 100) on the website along with other stuff.

You can find it at www.taylorology.com. I apologize if this was shared somewhere earlier in the thread.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[sdreid]

Thanks Tom. I guess this guy has his niche. Some interesting stuff there.

I did read A Cast of Killers, out of the library, about 20 years ago and enjoyed it although that site doesn't look like it's all that excited by the book. That's my quick impression anyway.

[Tom_Wescott]

I too read a little more on taylorology and found that only the first four issues were print, and it became an online journal in 1993, which is staggeringly early to me. Was there really even an internet in 1993? Anyway, the editor is kind of a Chris Scott fellow, and he's amassed a huge collection of reports and data on the crime.

Regarding Cast of Killers, he clearly wasn't fond of all the errors it had in it, but he said all the errors were corrected or qualified for it's 20th anniversary edition in 2006. I'm planning on getting that.

Can you and Doug tell us a little more about some of your top ten cases and where we can get info on those?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[sdreid]

I haven't checked but I would suppose the cases I mentioned are covered on the internet somewhere. The top six are pretty well known, I think.

Regarding the other four:

The Zip-Gun Bomber was an unknown person who sent attractively wrapped booby-trapped packages to random people in the NYC area in the 1980s and 90s. In 1982, a woman, named Joan Kipp, opened one of the mailings thinking it was a Mother's Day gift and triggered the trademark three barreled homemade gun. She was struck in the chest by two standard .22 caliber bullets and died as a result. My first knowledge of this case was from a segment of the old Unsolved Mysteries TV program.

Due to computer issues - to be continued for the other three less well know cases as follows.