Justice For Elizabeth Short

PSA: I DONT CONDONE ANYTHING AND THIS BLOG CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

[burn-bundy]

Deaths at the Cecil Hotel

- Percy Ormond Cook (1927) due to a self inflicted gunshot to the head

- W.K. Norton (1931) due to ingesting poison pills

- Benjamin Dodich (1932) due to a self inflicted gunshot to the head

- Sgt. Louis D. Borden (1934) due to a slit throat deemed a suicide

- Grace E. Margo (1937) due to a fall from a 9th story window with telephone wires wrapped around her body unclear if it was suicide

- Roy Thompson (1938) due to jumping from the roof

- Erwin C. Neblett (1939) due to ingesting poison

- Dorothy Segar (1940) due to ingesting poison

- Dorothy Jean Purcell’s child (1944) due to being thrown from a window immediately after birth

- Robert Smith (1947) due to jumping from the 7th floor

- Helen Gurnee (1954) due to jumping from the 7th floor

- Julia Frances Moore (1962) due to jumping from the 8th floor

- Pauline Otton and George Gianinni (1962) Pauline jumped from the 8th floor and landed on George killing them both

- “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood (1964) was found raped, stabbed and beaten to death in her room the case remains unsolved

- Jane Doe (1975) jumped from the 12th floor

- Richard Rameriez started staying in the hotel (1985)

- Jack Unterweger becomes a resident (1991)

- John Doe (1992) was found in an ally behind to hotel police determined he had either been pushed, fallen or jumped

- Elisa Lam (2013) was found decomposing in a water tank he death remains a mystery

- John Doe (2015) was found the cause of death remains unclear

[morbidology]

Dr. Arthur Duperrault had always promised his family that they would one day go sailing. That day finally rolled around on 8 November, 1961, when Arthur, his wife, Jean, and their three children, 14-year-old Brian, 11-year-old Terry Jo, and 7-year-old Renee, departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to sail to the Bahamas. Also in attendance was WWII and Korean War veteran, Julian Harvey, and his wife, Mary Dene; Julian was there to skipper the yacht.

The trip started out as an idyllic getaway, but it soon turned to horror… 

One night, Terry Jo was awoken by deafening screams. As she came up to the deck, she was met by a bloodbath - her entire family and Mary had been brutally murdered. Standing at the other side of the deck was Julian, who shouted to Terry Jo to stay on board as he escaped on a dinghy. Terry Jo soon realized that the yacht was quickly sinking. She managed to untie a small cork float which she launched into the ocean.

Four days later, Terry Jo was rescued by a passing ship. She had been floating on the cork float with no food or water. Meanwhile, Julian was picked up by a different ship and spewed some tale about how the yacht had mysteriously sunk, killing everybody onboard. Unbeknownst to him, Terry Jo had survived and was able to counteract his claims.

As it turned out, Julian had killed his wife to pick up the insurance money and killed Terry Jo’s family as a way to cover up the murder. Terry Jo later said she believed that Julian hadn’t killed her because he expected her to sink with the yacht. After discovering that Terry Jo was still alive, Julian took his own life.

[deadstrangeblog]

On June 15, 1989, a disturbing Polaroid photo was found in a Port St. Joe, FL convenience store parking lot. The photo was of an unidentified young girl, bound and gagged. A suspicious white cargo van with no windows was seen in the parking lot on the same day. Investigators now had to determine the girl's identity, and whether or not the photos were consensual or if she was taken against her will.

There have been speculations that the girl in this case file is Tara Calico , who disappeared from New Mexico in 1988.

Today, November 29th 2022, Law Enforcement announced that the case was closed, releasing no further information. The case continues.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Bizarre Death of Jonathan Luna

At the time of his death in 2003, Jonathan Luna was a reputable Assistant United States Attorney living in Baltimore, Maryland. On the night of December 3, 2003, Luna left the Baltimore Courthouse late at night, and began a strange trip that ultimately ended in his death at the hands of his own penknife.

Through surveillance cameras and toll stations, authorities were able to piece together most of Luna’s erratic, mysterious evening. After leaving the courthouse, Luna began driving Northeast to Delaware, which was strange, since he lived in Baltimore. He used his EZ Pass toll permit at several stations, but as he traveled further North, he began to pay for paper toll tickets instead.

After making several other strange stops, such as withdrawing $200 from an ATM in Delaware in the early hours of the morning and purchasing gas in Pennsylvania, Luna’s car was eventually parked in a remote parking lot in Denver, Pennsylvania, where it was spotted by a witness.

Approximately two hours after this sighting, employees of a nearby business noticed Luna’s car, driven into a nearby creek, and his body, facedown in the creek and lifeless. Initially, authorities ruled his death a suicide. But this is where the story gets even more eerie.

During the investigation, coroners discovered that Luna had been stabbed 36 times with his own pen knife. He had head injuries as well, and there was evidence that drowning was the ultimate cause of death, to boot. Strangely, the blood in Luna’s car was mostly centered in the REAR seats of the car, lending credence to a theory that somebody else had been driving him around all night. Luna’s blood was found on several toll tickets obtained on the drive, indicating that he had been injured for some time, but in surveillance footage from the gas station he entered shortly before his death, he did not appear wounded. Stranger still, Luna’s glasses – which he needed to drive – and his cell phone were found untouched on his desk.

No evidence of DNA belonging to anyone but Luna has been found, and his case remains shrouded in mystery.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Halloween Incidents that got mistaken for Decoration

Five days before Halloween in 2005, the corpse of a female suicide victim was hanging about fifteen feet about the ground in full view of the public for hours in Delaware, and it was not immediately reported because people thought it was a Halloween dummy. Instead it was the dead body of a woman who’d deliberately hanged herself.

For the better part of one day in October 2015, people assumed the human-like figure leaning against a fence in a small Ohio town was a gory Halloween decoration. It wasn’t until that evening that they realized it was the battered corpse of Rebecca Cade, whose boyfriend had beaten her to death with a large rock. Her face was so bloodied and disfigured, neighbors at first assumed it was a Halloween prop.

In mid-October 2009, the body of a California man who’d shot himself dead and was slumped over a chair on a balcony for THREE DAYS garnered no suspicion because neighbors in the apartment complex thought it was a Halloween decoration.

In October 1990, a 17-year-old male worker at a Halloween haunted hayride event in New Jersey accidentally died of strangulation while attempting to performing a “gallows stunt.” The hay wagon’s tractor driver grew suspicious when the boy, Brian Jewell, failed to deliver his scheduled speech when they arrived at his stop. It turns out that Jewell was already dead.

In 2001, a 14-year-old Michigan boy who was working at another haunted hayride—and whose friend claimed he “felt awkward simply jumping out of the woods to scare passers-by…[and] decided to take the place of a hanging skeleton.” When he struggled to remove the noose, observers thought this was part of the performance.

In September 2013, a 16-year-old boy from Kentucky died after spending a whole day decorating for Halloween after he decided to pretend he was hanging from the noose as a “prank.”

[morbidology]

Barbara Newhall Follett was the epitome of a child prodigy, having released her first novel, The House Without Windows, when she was just 12-years-old. Follett began writing when she was 4-years-old, encouraged by her critic and editor mother, her skills developed extensively as she got older. There was no doubt that she was exceptionally intelligent.

When she was 19-years-old, she married Nicherson Rogers. As the years went by, Follett became depressed and unhappy in her marriage, believing her husband was being unfaithful. On 7 December, 1939, Follett and her husband had an argument and she stormed out of their apartment, never to be seen again. Her disappearance wasn’t reported by Rogers until two weeks latter. Her missing person report was filed in her husband’s name, therefore the media had no idea that the once child prodigy was missing. Due to her husband’s cavalier attitude regarding her whereabouts, her family have always believed him to be involved somehow.

Still to this day, nobody knows the true whereabouts of Barbara Follett or even if she is still alive.

[morbidology]

In the early morning hours of 13 November, 1974, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. systematically shot and killed his father, mother, and his four siblings, as they slept in their beds of their Amityville, Long Island, New York home.

During his trial, he claimed that he had killed his family in self-defense because he had heard their voices plotting to kill him. But the story doesn’t end there… In December 1975, the Lutz family purchased the house where the murders had taken place, and over the course of 28 days, they claimed they were plagued and terrorized by paranormal phenomena  before fleeing the property. 

Some such claims included green slime running from the walls, hidden rooms, images of half headed demons, a demonic pig, as well as mysterious welts and wounds appearing out of nowhere.

After the family fled the macabre home, they called in investigators. This was when the photograph above was snapped. It allegedly shows a ghost of a little boy peering out from behind the door; many believe it to be the ghost of 9-year-old John Matthew DeFeo. 

Whether the truth in this haunting case was stretched or even a hoax all together, it still remains one of the most sensationalized ghost stories worldwide, even inspiring multiple books and movies.

[morbidology]

It was the 7th of July, 1960, when Freda Thorne kissed her son, 8-year-old Graeme Thorne, goodbye and sent him off to school. Tragically, it was the last time she would ever see her son alive. He would become the very first victim of kidnap for ransom in Australia’s history.

Graeme went to wait at a nearby street where family friend, Phyllis Smith, would collect him to take him to school along with her own two sons. When she arrived as the designated spot, Graeme wasn’t there. Phyllis drove to the Thorne residence to check if Graeme was there. Freda immediately called police to report her son missing.

At around 9:40AM, Freda received a phone call. “I have your son,” said the voice down the line. He demanded £25,000 before 5PM, adding that if she didn’t get the money, he would “feed the boy to the sharks.” Sergeant Larry O'Shea, who was with Freda when she received the call, took the phone and pretended to be Brazil Thorne, Freda’s husband. He told the kidnapper that he didn’t have enough money to pay the ransom. Larry was clearly unaware that just the previous month, Brazil had won £100,000 in the Opera House Lottery. His win received extensive media coverage which included the Thornes’ names and addresses.

The kidnapper rang again around 10 minutes later. He gave instructions to put the money in two paper bags before abruptly hanging up. He never called back. Investigators scoured the area in search for clues. They searched every house and apartment in the vicinity. Several days into the search, they found Graeme’s empty school case in a bush near where he was to meet Phyllis Smith. Several days afterwards, they found his lunch bag and school books approximately 1.5km away.

Then came the grim find that his family dreaded from day one. On the 16th of August, the body of Graeme was found on a vacant land in Grandview Grove, Seaforth in Sydney. He was wrapped in a tartan blanket and tied up with a string and gagged with a scarf. He had been dead within 24 hours of his abduction. The pathologist could not determine if he had died from asphyxiation or a skull fracture of a combination of the two of them. Forensic analysis found two types of cypress foliage on Graeme’s coat, pants and scarf. Soil samples also showed minute fragments of a pink-coloured substance identified as limestock mortar.

An investigation into these findings led police to the home of Hungarian migrant, Stephen Leslie Bradley. By the time police went to arrest him, he had fled to Britain. He was apprehended at Colombo, Ceylon, on the 10th of October. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison on the 6th of October, 1968.

The tragic case led to lottery procedures in Australia changing. Winners are now given the opportunity to remain anonymous.

[morbidology]

It was Friday the 13th of October, 1972, when 18-year-old Helga Konrad from Germany said “I do” to 21-year-old Ernest Dumoulin. They had met through a lonely hearts advert. They eloped to Edinburgh where Ernest had paid three weeks rent in advance on a lodging run by Herbert Wood. They had only known each other for weeks when they decided to get married. 

Herbert Wood and his wife were the only guests at the wedding. After they sat down and had a meal, Ernest and Helga returned to their room. Shortly afterwards, they departed the house. Herbert thought this was strange: where would they be going on their wedding day?

Later on that night, the body of a dead woman was discovered along the foot of Salisbury Crags. Shortly afterwards, they came across Ernest who said he was running to get help. He told police that the body they had found belonged to his wife of just a few hours. He said they had gone to Salisbury Crags to watch the lights of Edinburgh when she slipped and fell to her death. Initially, everybody felt sympathy for the seemingly heartbroken man but soon sympathy turned to suspicion.

Herbert soon went to police to tell them he had found something ominous in Ernest’s room: a large insurance policy that was taken out on Helga’s life the day before she died. He had attempted to claim the policy the day after her death. As police started to investigate, they discovered that Ernest was a conman back in Germany. Her autopsy showed that there were no scrapes or bruises on her body like one would expect if she had accidentally fallen. He initially claimed Helga had tried to kill him and fell off the cliff when he defended himself but ultimately confessed.

He served his time and went back to Germany and ironically, became a minister that carries out marriages.

[deadstrangeblog]

On June 15, 1989, a disturbing Polaroid photo was found in a Port St. Joe, FL convenience store parking lot. The photo was of an unidentified young girl, bound and gagged. A suspicious white cargo van with no windows was seen in the parking lot on the same day. Investigators now had to determine the girl's identity, and whether or not the photos were consensual or if she was taken against her will.

There have been speculations that the girl in this case file is Tara Calico , who disappeared from New Mexico in 1988.

Today, November 29th 2022, Law Enforcement announced that the case was closed, releasing no further information. The case continues.

[morbidology]

Mark Jensen met Julie at college in 1981. They married and settled down in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and had two children together. On the 3rd of December, 1998, Mark called an ambulance, claiming he had found his wife dead in bed. He said that Julie had been depressed and that she had taken her own life.

However, what appeared as a tragic case of suicide soon turned even more sinister when Julie’s neighbor handed a letter to police. The letter was sealed and the neighbor claimed Julie had given it to him and told her to keep it safe and give it to police if anything happened to her. “I pray that I am wrong and nothing happens, but I am suspicious of Mark’s suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise,” she wrote in part. She also wrote that she refused to leave her husband because of their two young sons. An autopsy concluded that Julie had died of antifreeze poisoning and suffocation.

Mark Jensen was arrested and ordered to stand trial for his wife’s murder. Meanwhile, their two children moved in with the woman Mark had been having an affair with. The defense argued that the letter was just Julie trying to frame him for her suicide. Julie had seen a therapist for depression in the past and was aware of her husband’s affair. However, several witnesses were presented - including a neighbor and her son’s teacher - that all claimed that Julie had confided in them that she was afraid her husband was trying to kill her. Moreover, Mark had confessed to several other inmates.

Mark Jensen was found guilty of his wife’s murder and sentenced to life without parole. In 2013, his conviction was overturned but then in 2017, it was reinstated. In 2020, the decision to reinstate the conviction was reversed and Mark is scheduled to stand trial again in 2023.

[morbidology]

On the 14th of December, 1931, 10-year-old Vera Page left her home in Notting Hill, London, to pick up two school swimming certificates that she had left behind in her aunt’s home, around 50 yards from her own home. She arrived safe and well to her aunt’s house before picking up the documents and leaving to walk back home at around 4:45PM. However, Vera never made it home. That evening, her parents called the police to report their daughter missing.

A broadcast S.O.S. was sent out across the city and a number of people called in to report that they had seen a short man with dark hair, who was wearing a black overcoat, handing out candy or sweets to local kids in Notting Hill. Vera’s mother was so overcome with grief over her missing daughter that she was “taken seriously ill.”

An investigation into the disappearance revealed that at some point after leaving her aunt’s home, Vera chatted with a school friend outside a chemist at around 5:40PM. According to the witness, Vera was carrying a white envelope under hear arm and she overheard her telling her friend that she had to hurry home.” This was the last reported sighting of Vera.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞:

https://morbidology.com/who-killed-little-vera-page/

[clickrs]

the night of the amityville murders, 1974

[morbidology]

On 10 August, 1985, 42-year-old Ruth Cooper, her boyfriend, 27-year-old Stephen Harkins, and their dog disappeared while camping in a forest in South Pierce County, Washington. 

Days later, Stephen and his dog were discovered, shot to death and placed inside his sleeping bag. It wouldn’t be until two months later that the body of Ruth was discovered on a dead end road, strangled to death with a tube sock and her head, decapitated. 

Four months later, Diana Robertson and her boyfriend, Mike Riemer, disappeared while looking for a Christmas tree to chop down with their 3-year-old daughter, Crystal. Crystal was discovered late in the afternoon, wandering around on her own. With her parents nowhere to be found, her photograph was published in a local newspaper and her grandmother came to collect her from the police station. It seemed as though Mike and Diana had disappeared without a trace. All Crystal could say to the police was that “Mommy is in the trees.”

It wasn’t until two months later that Diana’s mutilated body was discovered in a forest in Elbe, Washington. She had been stabbed a total of seventeen times and then strangled with a tube sock. Her boyfriend, Mike, was nowhere to be found, but authorities discovered his truck nearby. There were bloodstains on the front seat and a note which read, “I love you, Diana” was discovered on the dashboard.

Authorities linked the murders of Ruth and Stephen to the murder of Diana and for over 25 years, it was believed that Mike was the killer of all three until 2011, when his skull was discovered only one mile from where the body of Diana was discovered. Authorities ruled Mike out as a suspect but believe that an unknown serial killer was responsible. The cases still remain unsolved.

[callese]

Source

[lucifinaspissed]

DELPHI MURDERS SUSPECT ARRESTED AND CHARGED

Richard Allen has been arrested and charged for the murders of Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14

Libby and Abby were on a hiking trail in rural Delphi when they were killed in the middle of the day on Feb. 13, 2017

[finnishcrimestory]

The Disappearance of Antti Hanhivaara

On Friday, 13th of October 2006, 21 year old Antti Hanhivaara was spending an evening with his friend Jaakko in Ivalo, Lapland. Some time after 12 am (14th of October), they got in Antti’s car and started driving to Karigasniemi, which is located about 140 kilometers (86 miles) away from Inari. When they got to their location, they spent some time with their other friends, before the four of them continued their journey to Angeli, where the two friends of Antti and Jaakko lived. Angeli is located 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Karigasniemi. They arrived to their destination at around 8 am, and they all went inside to continue drinking that had started during the drive.

(Click the pictures to see them better.)

They spent time together for couple hours, but some time before 10 am, Antti went outside and started his car. He was ready to go home, but Jaakko didn’t follow him outside, even though according to him he heard when Antti started the car. At some point Antti got tired of waiting and left. Now Jaakko went outside also and tried to get hold of Antti via phone, without success. Antti’s behaviour seemed peculiar, but his mother has stated that she does believe that he would’ve just simply left like that, but that there had to be some sort of a big fight or argument for him to act the way he did.

Antti’s car was Toyota Carina and it was spotted from two other cars. Three people noticed how similar Toyota passed them shortly before Angeli. Later the car with three people noticed one other car behind them, and shortly after that Antti’s Toyota appeared behind them as well. The three people let Toyota and the other car pass them. After driving for 5 kilometers (3 miles), they saw how the Toyota was at the side of the road. They stopped there and went talk to the Toyota’s driver, scolding him how he shouldn’t continue his rally on the road (apparently he had been driving pretty recklessly). The people in the car can’t say for sure if the driver was Antti. After this quick stop, they continued their journey and later spotted Jaakko walking on the side of the road.

Jaakko arrived to Antti’s car and they switched the driver. Their drive doesn’t last long though, approximately only for 1 kilometer. They were stopped by one local man, who was alarmed to the sound of a broken tailpipe. He knew the driver, Jaakko, but couln’t be sure who was sitting beside him. He remembers that one of the people in the car had an earring. Antti however didn’t have one.

Shortly after 10 am, Jaakko went outside the car and Antti continued the journey alone. This is the last sighting Jaakko has of Antti. When the man who noticed the broken tailpipe continued his journey, he saw some weird marks on the road, and soon saw Jaakko walking on the side of the road. After continuing driving, he then noticed Antti’s Toyota abandoned on the side of the road.

At around 10 am, Jaakko called his friend in Ivalo to come pick him up. The friend arrived to Angeli at 11:30 am. When they left to Ivalo, they drove past Antti’s abandoned car. They didn’t see Antti there. According to Jaakko, he thought that that meant Antti had got someone to pick him up.

At 11 am, two lumberjacks noticed a young man walking towards a forest with his hands in his pockets. If the man was Antti, this is the last known sighting of him.

(The man was seen walking around here.)

On 18th of October, Antti’s aunt left a missing persons report to the police. When Antti’s mother heard of the disappearance, she travelled to Angeli straight away. First she inspected Antti’s car which was still abandoned on the side of the road. The car was in a very bad shape, the tires were damaged and the wheel’s rim were visible. The car had also run out of fuel.

Shortly after all this it was revealed that the day before the missing persons report was made, Jaakko had returned to Angeli and searched the car for Antti’s phone. According to Jaakko, this was because he had tried to get in contact with Antti and since he didn’t answer, he checked if the phone was left in the car. 

When five days had passed since Antti’s disappearance, the police got informed that someone had broken into a cabin which was located 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from Angeli. The cabin’s window was broken, but nothing had been taken. From a river near the cabin, someone had found an abandoned canoe on 14th of October; the day Antti went missing. The canoe was 3 kilometers (around 1 mile) away from its location, and according to its owner it could not have strayed away on its own.

The police conducted searches around the area where Antti was last seen. Draftees, border guards, dogs and helicopters aided in the searches. The river where the canoe was found was investigated twice from a helicopter, in autumn and in spring. Border guards in Finland and Norway checked abandoned buildings and the police searched Antti’s apartment in Ivalo. They found his passport and it was made clear his bank account had not been used since the day of the disappearance. Antti’s phone is still missing to this day.

Theories

If the person seen walking towards a forest indeed was Antti, why was he walking to a forest? Antti had been hiking a lot in his life and he had also worked as a wilderness guide. The forests of Angeli were unknown for him, but he did know that one have to respect the nature and one without proper gear, map and a compass shouldn’t go hiking around an unknown area.

The police suspects that the most likely scenario is that Antti got lost in the vast wilderness of Lapland. 

The most exact description about the events of the morning has come from Jaakko. The eyewitnesses have supported his narrative. However he had been acting weird during the morning of the disappearance. After he got home in Ivalo, he didn’t go to Antti’s apartment to check if he was back home. Why did he go back to Antti’s car the day before Antti’s disappearance was made known to the police and his mother? The official explanation (as stated before) is that he went back to search for Antti’s phone. But why?

Antti’s mother has stated that someone had speculated that if Antti had money problems, he would’ve agreed to pick something up from Norway, or take something there. It was speculated that during this trip, Antti would’ve not wanted to do it after all and that would’ve ended badly. Some people on the internet have speculated drugs, but the police have not received any information supporting this theory. The police also said that speculations like this are not unknown when there are people missing; rumors start to spread like wildfire.

To this day Antti is still missing. The police have never investigated his disappearance as a possible crime. However Antti’s sister and father think the very possible reason behind Antti’s disappearance could have been homicide. Antti’s sister stated that it’s very interesting and weird how Antti’s friends do not want to talk about the case nor tell how the evening went according to them. She also said that when she saw one of the friends face to face and tried to talk to them about the case, they had run off. 

Antti’s sister has also speculated the possibility of a intentional disappearance. Antti often visited his mother in Laitila, Finland and the last time he was there was three weeks before the disappearance. During this visit he had given the key to his apartment to his mother, and when he was leaving, he had hugged his mother very long. He had also visited a convenience store and while there, he had said to the seller that he “doesn’t need any bonus cards, because he is going to a long trip.”

Antti was declared dead in 2018. In official papers Antti’s time of death is 14th of October 2011, five years after he went missing.