[truecrimecrystals]

Eugene Wekesa has been missing since November 24th, 2010. Eugene was 22 years-old at the time of his disappearance, and he lived with his mother and brother in Bellevue, Washington. He was a student at Bellevue College and was very dedicated to school. According to his mother, Eugene spent the morning of November 24th studying. It was the day before Thanksgiving, so while Eugene studied, his mother went grocery shopping at Safeway in preparation for their Thanksgiving meal. When his mother returned from shopping, Eugene was still studying. However, once his mother realized she had forgotten to get a few things, Eugene offered to go back to Safeway to get them. Surveillance cameras captured Eugene both entering and exiting the store by himself. 

Eugene then returned to his home, but quickly realized that he, too, had forgotten an item. Instead of going back to the grocery store, he opted to walk to the Crossroads Mall shopping center-which is located near his residence. Eugene never returned home and has never been seen or heard from again. Although Eugene left the house to go buy something, he left his wallet behind. He also left behind his keys and cell phone. Once Eugene was reported missing, investigators pulled surveillance footage from both the Safeway he had visited earlier that day and from the Crossroads Mall shopping center. The Safeway footage (pictured above) did not yield any clues about his disappearance. The footage from the Crossroads Mall never captured Eugene entering or exiting the shopping center. It appears that he never actually made it there. Eugene’s disappearance is considered suspicious. According to his loved ones, Eugene spent most of his time studying and did not socialize often. It does not appear that he planned to meet up with anyone on the day he vanished. In 2014, investigators stated that “there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate foul play,” but they still consider Eugene’s disappearance to be suspicious. There have been no known sightings of him, and his social security, bank accounts, and social media accounts have remained inactive since he vanished. Eugene remains missing today. If you have any information that could lead to his whereabouts, please call 1-800-222-TIPS to submit an anonymous tip.

[truecrimecrystals]

29 year-old Jeanette “Jenny” Herum gave birth to a baby boy at the Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center in Santa Cruz, California on November 22nd, 2012. Just a few hours after the birth, Jenny walked out of the hospital without her newborn baby and never returned. There is no known explanation as to why Jenny left the hospital, and she was never heard from again after that.

Despite the fact that Jenny vanished under seemingly suspicious circumstances, her family did not report her missing until 2014—two years after she was last seen. Her family said that they were initially not concerned when Jenny first came up missing; she had disappeared for stretches at a time in the past and they were used to going a long period of time without hearing from her. When Jenny was finally reported missing, authorities classified her as voluntarily missing. News about Jenny’s disappearance was not distributed to the media until 2015.

Months later, in early 2016, a couple taking a walk spotted human remains and notified the Santa Cruz sheriff’s office. In March 2017, the remains were identified as those of Jeanette Herum. Authorities are calling Jenny’s death suspicious, and it is still being actively investigated. They are currently appealing to the public for any information about Jenny, especially information regarding how Jenny was transported off of hospital grounds the day she disappeared. If you have any information that may help the investigation, please contact the Santa Cruz police department at 831-471-1121.

[morbidology]

On 28 September, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico went bike riding on Highway 47 in Belen, New Mexico, and was never seen again. The case went cold until 15 June, 1989, when a woman found the Polaroid above in a car park outside a convenience store in Florida. She stated that a white van had previously been parked in the space where the photograph was found. The disturbing polaroid shows a teenage girl and a younger boy, both gagged and bound. It is theorised that the girl in the photograph may be Tara and the boy, 9-year-old Michael Henley, who disappeared on a camping trip the previous year. Michael’s remains were found soon after the photograph was found, adding more mystery to the ominous finding. Two more photographs featuring the same young girl, gagged, were found over the next few months although none were ever made public. The true identity of the boy and girl in the photograph is still not known.

[morbidology]

It was the 15th of November, 1977, when 13-year-old Megumi Yokota and her friend were walking home from school in Niigata, a seaside town in western Japan. As the duo approached Yokota’s home, the two said goodbye and went their separate ways. Yokota never made it home.

For the next 25 years, Yokota’s family searched in vain for her. Finally, in 2002, there was a break in the case. North Korea admitted that they had been operating a state-sponsored abduction program in which Japanese civilians had been kidnapped and brought to North Korea to teach spies Japanese language and culture so that they could successfully infiltrate the county. North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, publicly admitted to the practice and apologised. He allowed a few abductees to return to Japan but stonewalled the rest, claiming that the victims - including Yokota - had either died or killed themselves.

Japan estimated that around 17 of its citizens had been abducted during the 1970s and 1980s. The cremated remains of eight kidnapping victims were flown back to Japan and it was claimed that one urn contained the remains of Yokota. However, DNA testing proved that the remains weren’t Yokota. Yokoto’s family believe that she is still alive today.

[myhauntedsalem]

The Mysterious Death of Carissa Glenn

In 2008, tragedy struck the Glenn family in England when their 18 year-old-daughter was found dead in her room, evidently from self-inflicted hanging. Unfortunately, stories like this are not uncommon, what is, however, is what lead up to Carissa’s untimely demise. She had a history of sleepwalking and complained for weeks to her family that she believed her apartment was haunted by the ghost of a woman who died by hanging herself. Her parents reported she had been nervous in the weeks prior after hearing stories of the previous tenant who had also often dreamed about a mysterious woman hanging herself in the room. The court was never able to verify if the hanging was intentional or accidental, after autopsies revealed little about the wounds and that she had been intoxicated before going to bed. According to family and friends she was not suffering from depression, just a growing fear that there was a presence in her apartment she could not shake.

[myhauntedsalem]

The Mysterious Moving Mannequins of John Lawson House

Are these mannequins haunted by the lost souls of those killed in a tragic train crash?

The John Lawson House, New York is rapidly becoming known as one of Americas most creepy destinations. No one lives in the house… apart from a collection of mannequins which are said to change their position of their own accord. The porch at the house is occupied by life-sized female dolls dressed in different trends from the twentieth century, whose number, position, and theme vary from day to day, regardless of whether anyone is there to see their display.

Some believe that the dolls are trying to convey a message, gesturing or pointing towards an unsolved riddle. What that riddle is remains a mystery, however there are those who think the key to understanding the mannequins strange and unexplainable appearance is linked to a local tragedy that claimed the lives of 22 people.

During a two-week cold wave in the winter of 1871, a train crashed two-hundred feet from the house located in the vicinity of the New Hamburg train station, killing 22 people on impact. The mannequins its claimed are often found to be looking towards the area of the crash site. On other days, they’re discovered with their heads looking towards the only other historical house left of the street, which has sat abandoned for many years.

Though the dolls have been known to disappear from the porch on rainy days, there’s no sign that they will be disappearing for good any time soon. Neighbors have reported that on certain nights a faint light can be seen in the kitchen, shining through the dark drapes that conceal the inside of the house from curious eyes. They have no idea who lives there or who the current owners are. Does someone actually live in the house? Or is there a supernatural force behind the mannequin’s eerie movements? For now, the answers to these questions remain a mystery. 

[truecrimecrystals]

Brittany Brown was only 26 years old when she was found brutally murdered in Detroit, Michigan during March 2014. The young mother of two was last seen by her family members a month earlier–after she told them she was going to a local restaurant in Detroit. Brittany never returned home and her family never heard from her again.  On March 22nd, 2014, a man taking a walk on the 15000 block of Kentucky Street spotted a suspicious looking duffel bag in an alleyway. Inside the bag was Brittany’s body. She had been tied up, raped, and brutally beaten to death. Her body had been burned. Brittany’s death was very quickly labeled as a homicide. Her killer remains unknown to this day. Brittany’s family members are heartbroken and baffled by her murder. According to her mother, Brittany was well-liked in the community, but mostly kept to herself. There are very few details available about the investigation into Brittany’s murder. Investigators reportedly said that Brittany was spotted near I-96 and Telegraph before her death, but it is unclear when, exactly, this sighting took place. There is a cash reward available for anyone with information that could lead to Brittany’s killer. If you have any information that could help the investigation, please go here to submit an anonymous tip.

[weirdoe-deactivated20230927]

On Thursday, February 28th 2019. in Pag, Croatia, Josip Rođak (54) threw his four underage children across the balcony from his flat. The girls are five, seven and eight, and the youngest son is only three years old. The children were still in their pajamas when their father picked them from their beds and threw them from the first floor onto the ground. He did not call the Emergency, but walked past his blood covered children, sat in the car, and drove to the police, whose station is just 50 yards from his house. Two of the children sustained life threathening injuries but are stable now. Josip Rođak is currently detained and facing attempted murder charges.

[weirdoe-deactivated20230927]

Update: Josip Rođak was convicted on 4 counts of attempted aggravated murder and sentenced to 30 years in jail with mandatory psychiatric treatment.

[a-study-in-crime]

The Murder of Gabriel Kisch

The murder

Gabriel Kisch was born in 1917 in Romania but moved to Sweden sometime during the 70s. He was happily married until his wife died in 1993, and he subsequently remarried. His new wife, who was also from Romania, was named Maria and she was 36 years younger than her husband. They lived together in an apartment in Stockholm, Sweden, and had together saved around 230 000 Swedish crowns (around 25 443 dollars).

On 30th November 1998, multiple people reported to the police that they could observe something looking like human body parts in a lake. It was indeed body parts, and soon more parts of the body emerged in the lake. In an attempt to identify the person, the police sketched how the person could look like based on the head they had found. A man soon contacted to police and told them that their sketch was eerily similar to his father Gabriel Kisch, who had disappeared a few weeks earlier. The body was soon identified as being Gabriel by looking at his teeth.

It is not unusual for the partner of a murder victim to be the first suspect, but Maria was even more interesting than usual spouses were. Maria had left the country shortly after Gabriel’s disappearance and something extremely peculiar was observed in the couple’s apartment. It was clean; in fact, it was too clean, especially the bathroom. The police soon suspected that the dismemberment of Gabriel had taken place in the bathroom, but there were almost no traces of Gabriel in the apartment. However, when the oven was searched, a couple of strands of hair from Gabriel was found. This made the case even more interesting since Gabriel’s head had shown signs of being heated. A knife with Gabriel’s blood on it was also found, as well as identical plastic bags to the ones Gabriel’s dismembered body had been wrapped in. More and more evidence pointed to the apartment being the scene of the murder, and Maria became the main suspect. She was soon arrested but denied having anything to do with the murder. However, she could not explain why Gabriel’s blood was found on the knife and why his hair was inside of the oven.

Trial and aftermath

Maria Kisch was found guilty of the murder of her husband and was sentenced to life imprisonment. She spent her first few years in prison in Sweden but was later moved to a prison in Romania. Maria was released in 2011 and has never confessed to the murder.

Since Maria never made a confession, it is not entirely clear why she murdered her husband. However, the police have several theories. One theory is that she wanted the money she and Gabriel had saved up for herself and that she wanted to send more money to her daughter in Romania, which Gabriel refused to agree on. Another theory is that the murder was sexually motivated since Gabriel’s genitals and rectum had been severely injured.

[morbidology]

Barbara Graham was born in 1923 in Oakland, California. As a teenager, she spent time at a reformatory and attempted to change her troubled ways. In 1939 she married but within two years, the marriage had fallen apart. She then drifted into sex work and eventually married a mobster by the name of Henry Graham. It was Henry who introduced Barbara to Jack Santo, who was a gang leader.

Barbara, her husband, Jack Santo, and two other accomplices - Emmett Perkins and John True - set out one night to rob a wealthy elderly woman, Mabel Monahan. Enraged that they could not find any valuables, they smothered and beat the elderly woman to death. They were quickly apprehended and Barbara became known as “Bloody Babs” in the press. She was sentenced to death after John True testified against the group.

She was told that she may receive a stay of execution, to which she replied: “I never got a break in my whole goddamned life and you think I’m going to get one now?” On 3 June, 1955, her execution was pushed back from 22:00 to 23:30, to which she said: “Why do they torture me? I was ready to go at ten o’clock.” She was led to the gas chamber and pronounced dead at 11:42. Her last words were:

“Good people are always so sure they’re right.”

[myhauntedsalem]

The Face on the Wall

After working for the railroad for 5 years Nick Yelchick was laid off in 1927. He looked for another job but found none. Discouraged he started to drink. To his wife’s chagrin he would come home drunk, tear up the house and then beat her.

Eventually Nick did find work in the coal mines. But after his first week his need for a drink overwhelmed him. He asked a buddy if he would punch his time card so he could get to the liquor store before it closed.

After Nick ate his lunch he decided to explore the “played out” parts of the mine. Within a short time he knew he was lost. The more he tried to find his way to the main line the more lost he became.

He walked for hours. At one point when he stopped to rest he realized that no one would know he was missing since he had asked his friend to punch out for him.

No one knew he was still in the mine; no one would come looking for him. Even his wife would probably just think he had gone off on one of his weekend drunks.

When 10 hours had passed his light burned out. He was now in worse trouble. He stumbled around for 2 more hours and then exhausted he sat down and fell asleep.

While he slept he dreamed. He saw his wife’s face on the wall of the mine. She was beckoning to him and she kept saying, “Follow me.”

He woke up with a start and saw his wife’s face was still on the wall near where he sat. As he approached– it moved further down the wall. He chased his wife’s face for several hours until he reached the main line. Now he could find his way out of the mine.

As he exited the mine’s main entrance a night watchman approached him and told him his wife had been looking for him yesterday. “We told her you had gone home.”

When he reached his home he found his wife had killed herself. He found her note, it said, “I thought you would stop drinking when you got this job, but now I know different.”

After this, Nick stopped drinking. He lived in Grant Town the rest of his life and remained sober until he died in 1947.

[schooltragedies]

“She will show up soon”, said Rozalba Grimm (left) in regard to the disappearance of her friend, Flávia Godinho, who she had bludgeoned to death with a brick before removing her unborn child from her womb with a utility knife.

At 28, Rozalba Grimm dreamed of becoming a mother. Even after she suffered a miscarriage in January 2020, she never stopped fantasizing about pregnancy and started talking to pregnant women on social media. She then became close to Flávia Godinho, 24, a school teacher from her city who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time of the gruesome murder.

On August 27, Grimm lured Godinho to a fake baby shower in a remote neighborhood in Canelinha, Santa Catarina. Instead of a baby shower, the victim was taken to an old ceramics warehouse. There, Rozalba brutally bashed Flávia’s head with a brick and ripped the baby out of the victim. Then, she fled the scene taking the newborn in the backseat of her car.

At a certain point, Rozalba got out of the vehicle and showed the newborn to residents, telling them that she gave birth in the car. Shortly after, she was taken to the Hospital of Canelinha by her husband, Zulmar Schiestl. The baby, a girl who was named Cecilia, had injuries caused by the knife and got transferred to Joana de Gusmão Children’s Hospital in Florianópolis, capital of Santa Catarina. She survived.

Once Flávia Godinho’s body was found the next day, Rozalba Grimm confessed to murder and was arrested. Her husband was also arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder. Both were charged with femicide, attempted murder, abduction of the baby and concealment of a body.

[truecrimecrystals]

Amaria Hall has been missing since July 7th, 2019. Prior to her disappearance, the 16 year-old girl  lived with her family in Trenton, Michigan. Amaria was known by many as a smart and well-rounded teenage girl. She was a good student and involved many extra-curricular activities. However, Amaria also suffered from asthma, anxiety, and other ailments that required her to be on medication. Her health conditions also caused her to miss a fair amount of school, so she was taking online classes to catch up during the summer of 2019. Around 3am on the morning of Amaria’s disappearance, her mother reportedly heard their sliding glass door open and close. Her mother fell back asleep shortly thereafter, but woke up a few hours later to go to church. When Amaria’s mother went to wake her up, she was nowhere to be found. Her mother then found a note written by Amaria that said she had run away and did not want to be found. She reportedly brought a bag of clothes and a few pair of shoes with her, but she left her inhaler and other medications behind. About a month after her disappearance, Amaria called her family. During the call, she said that wanted to come home but she was being prevented from doing so. The line went dead before her family could respond. Amaria has never been seen or heard from again. Shortly before her disappearance, Amaria received a package from a man in his 40s whom she had met on social media. Her mother believes that this man lured Amaria to run away. Her mother also fears that Amaria has fallen victim to sex trafficking. There is a $10,000 reward being offered for anyone with information that could lead to Amaria’s whereabouts. If you have any information that could help the investigation, please go here to submit a tip.

[truecrimecrystals]

Keisha Murray (34) was found murdered in Jacksonville, Florida on July 7th, 2013. The mother-of-five was found in broad daylight at a cemetery on Ribault Scenic Drive. Keisha’s body had been set against a tree, and it appeared that she had recently been bathed. Police quickly labeled Keisha’s death as a homicide, though they have never publicly revealed her exact cause of death. Her killer remains unknown to this day. Investigators believe that Keisha was killed somewhere else before her body was placed against the tree at the cemetery. Other than this information, there are very few details that have been publicly released about the murder investigation. Most of the known information about Keisha and her life prior to her death has come from her family members. In 2019, Project: Cold Case published a write-up on Keisha’s case on their website. Project: Cold Case is an organization that works with families of cold case victims in hopes of bringing more public attention to those cases. On their website’s write-up on Keisha’s case, her sister Julia Clover was quoted. She explained that Keisha had struggled in the years leading up to her death after meeting a new group of friends and being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Julia also said that two women who were a part of Keisha’s new group of friends were also found murdered just two months after Keisha’s death. The identities of these women have not been revealed, nor has this information been corroborated by investigators or in the media. Still, if the murders of Keisha and these two women are connected, it’s likely that they were killed by somebody they knew. It’s also possible that Keisha’s murder is connected to her legal troubles. In the years leading up to her death, Keisha had been arrested several times on charges of burglary, battery, forgery, and possession of cocaine. However, Keisha’s mother stated that Keisha was working to get her life back on track before her untimely death. Investigators have not revealed whether or not they believe Keisha’s murder is related to her past, nor have they elaborated on any potential suspects in the case. There is a $3000 reward in place for information leading to Keisha’s killer. If you have information that could help the investigation, please contact 866-845-TIPS to submit an anonymous tip.

[morbidology]

On the 14th of March, 2013, Henry Chau from Tai Kok Tsui in Hong Kong asked his cousin, Flora Siu Wing-kwan, to meet him at a local restaurant. When she arrived, Chau confessed that he and a friend, Tse Chun-kei, had killed his parents and cut up their bodies. Chau said he planned on killing his brother as well and that he felt like confessing to Wing-kwan because he felt that she was a “truly warm person.” Following the revelation, Wing-kwan went to authorities and Chau was swiftly apprehended.

On the 1st of March, 2013, Glory Chau and Moon Siu had went to their son’s Tai Kok Tsui flat and subsequently disappeared. Chau and his older brother went to the media to seek help from the public in search of their parents. As police and the public were embarking on a search for the elderly couple, Chau confessed to his cousin. After his arrest, police discovered the bodies of Glory and Moon in Chau’s apartment and one of the most gruesome murders in Hong Kong history was unearthed.

After luring his parents to his apartment, Chau attacker them with a knife. He dismembered them, kept their heads in the refrigerator, and then cooked their flesh to look “like barbecue pork.” Chau had claimed that Chun-kei was his partner in crime and had been involved in the slayings. He denied any involvement and told police that Chau had showed him a box of the remains and threatened to kill his mother if he told anybody. Chau then forced Chun-kei to dispose of some of the remains in the sea to which he complied out of fear.

Following Chau’s arrest, he told police he planned on embarking on a murder spree. He said that he hoped to kill his brother and then rape and murder women and sex workers. While Chau’s parents had provided him with a wonderful education and family life, he grew up to hate them, blaming them for his failures in life. He was known to manipulate those who knew him and idolised Adolf Hitler, using a photograph of him as his icon on MSN. “I thought that if I could resolve the emotional connection with my parents, it would be a solution. If they died, I could be reborn,” Chau said.

Chau was found guilty while Chun-lei was cleared. The court had decided that Chun-lei had been bullied and manipulated by Chau and that he wasn’t involved in the murder.

[morbidology]

It was the 28th of March, 2016, when 4-year-old Liu Yi-jie Wang was cycling her bike to a Taipei metro station with her mother, Claire Wang, to meet her grandfather. Liu was around a meter ahead of her mother when her bicycle became stuck and she was unable to get it up on to the sidewalk. Claire saw a man approaching her daughter and assumed that he was going to help her lift her bike onto the sidewalk. However, this couldn’t have been further from the truth… As the man approached little Liu, he produced a large meat cleaver from behind his back and started to slash the young girl.

Liu’s mother started to scream and attempted to get the man off her daughter but he was far too strong. The man overpowered Claire and continued to slash and stab at Liu. A number of onlookers successfully got the man off Liu but it was already much too late. She had sustained traumatic injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The man was later identified as 33-year-old Wang Ching-yu, who did not know the Wang family and had purchased the meat cleaver earlier on in the morning. Prosecutors said that a toxicology report found no drugs in his system, adding that he did not display any signs of mental illness following the attack. However, it was noted that he had previously been hospitalized due to mental health issues.

Wang pleaded guilty to the murder. During his sentencing hearing, he got down on his knees and begged Liu’s family for forgiveness. Outside of court, she said it was too early to even consider forgiveness. Wang was sentenced to life imprisonment.

[missing-and-unidentified-deacti]

The Missing of Auxerre

Top row: Christine Marlot, Jacqueline Weis, Chantal Gras, Madeline Dejust

Bottom row: Bernadette Lemoine, Françoise Lemoine, Martine Renault

Between the years 1977 and 1979, seven young women went missing from the Yonne area of France, more specifically Auxerre. They had many similarities, as they all had slight learning difficulties and even attended the same school at some point in their lives; The Medical-Educational Institute (IME) of Grattery in Auxerre. However, their disappearances did not alert authorities, as many were in the foster care system and had no close family in the area.

The first of those to disappear was 15-year-old Christine Marlot. Marlot, a young teenager with emotional problems, was last seen on January 23, 1977, climbing onto the back of a man’s motorcycle. Her disappearance did not alert authorities very much, as she had run away from her host family numerous times. The next to vanish was Jacqueline Weis. Weis, a “reserved” 18-year-old was last seen on April 4, 1977. Her body was later found and identified in 2001 along with another woman who disappeared later that year. Not long after Weis vanished,18-year-old Chantal Gras disappeared into thin air. Gras was last seen running outside of her home in Villefargeau, Auxerre, France sometime between April 20-22, 1977. Madeline Dejust vanished not long after, in July of 1977 at the age of 21 years old. Her body was found and later identified in 2001 as well as Weis’ body. The next disappearances were those of Bernadette Lemoine (20) and Françoise Lemoine (27) who vanished sometime in March of 1978 after staying in a hotel room booked by an unknown male. The last disappearance to have been connected to the other six was that of Martine Renault. Renault was only 15 when she vanished from her foster home in Montmercy sometime in September of 1979. When her case was looked into, it was considered suspicious, however, no connections to the other disappearances were made until nearly 20 years later.

Over the years, suspicion had arisen regarding their disappearances. Many questioned how the justice system could have just ignored these disappearances, alleging that they were purposefully ignoring the mystery. There had even been official reports indicating that foul play was somehow involved in their disappearances and a local detective had been looking into the disappearances as early as 1981, but the reports were ignored. In 2000, a confession was made by Émile Louis. Louis, a retired school bus driver, confessed to murdering the seven girls and later led authorities to the bodies of Dejust and Weis. He claimed to have picked up the girls on a school bus, kidnapping them. However, he retracted his confession a month later, but he is the prime suspect, as he knew his victims and some even had “great admiration” for Louis and had even claimed to be Françoise Lemoine’s lover. In 2004, Louis was given a life sentence for the alleged murders of the women, raping and torturing his second wife and daughter, and of sexual assault against minors in 1983 and 1989. Louis died in October of 2013, aged 79. Despite efforts to find the remainder of the missing, no traces of them have ever been found.

Sources:

Doe Network (View each of the missings’ pages: Gras, Marlot, B. Lemoine, F. Lemoine, Renault)

Galerie de Serial Killers

Murderpedia