She had only been abroad in a small town in central Italy, for a few months, as a foreign student. The babble spoken all around her was just starting to sound like something intelligible, Italian. In fact she’d started a comfortable romance with an Italian guy, and life was looking up. Meredith Kercher Until disaster […]
In the evening of November 5, plutonium-239 was found on Karen Silkwood’s hands. Silkwood had been working in a glovebox in the metallography laboratory where she was grinding and polishing plutonium pellets that would be used in fuel rods. At 6:30 P.M., she decided to monitor herself for alpha activity with the detector that was […]
THE UNIQUE, UNPRECEDENTED CRIME SCENE Let’s start with the fact that the case, as a supposed break-in-kidapping-pedophile-murder, presented unusual features not seen before or since. FBI agents observed to local officials that kidnappers of children are either motivated by perversion, or monetary reward, but never in their experience both in the same package. Thus, a […]
We need to know – Featured this week… The case of Michelle O’Connell, from our Crime and Disappearance Section: Michelle’s case, a death on Sept. 2, 2010, was officially ruled a suicide by medical examiners but remains complex and controversial: 1. We need independent testing of the weapon used. What are the results of firing it […]
Daphne Caruana Galizia Our guess is that the 2 or 3% of the U.S. American public who were aware of this murder back in October of 2017 have now long forgotten it. In Europe, the percentage who might remember this is surely higher, slightly, that is. How quickly we forget about tragedies that aren’t ours. […]
Liu Yongbiao He feels “relieved” to be arrested now, in fact, to “finally be free from the mental torment” of knowing the day might come. He doesn’t dispute, after all, that he killed four people years ago, for nothing more than the worth of their measly possessions. He’s always known those murders might come home […]
Perhaps especially in death penalty cases, a jury’s subjective read on a person’s face was writ large. The correlation between a face judged untrustworthy and imposition of the death penalty was unmistakable, according to the scientists. Mind you, many of those “untrustworthy” faces belonged to defendants later proved entirely innocent by forensic science. We’ve never […]
LaVena Johnson was a soldier who had just completed basic training, and had began settling into duty in Iraq. The army says she shot herself with her own rifle the night of July 19, 2005. She was known to be a bright and spirited girl, so there was nothing to suggest that she would turn […]
Their sworn witness offered stunning testimony–that he’d worked on computer programs to rig U.S. elections, that the programs could deliver 51% of the vote to any candidate you wanted, and that local election officials would never know it happened. And thus they asked him, so “how could it be detected?” “You would have to view […]
One of the blessings, or curses, of mystery studies is that every intriguing case suggests dozens of subtle questions, and can send you down the path of some new, complex studies. Suicide, a depressing subject, stands as a field of its own–organizations like the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the American Association of Suicidology attempt […]
The year was 1967. Ferment and experimentation were rife, and nowhere more than the world of academia. At Cornell, a two-story red brick building had been converted to a dorm and primarily housed young members of a very experimental class: young students, some only 17, who would earn a Ph.D. in only six years on […]
But here’s the mystery angle: Why? Why, when anyone with enough sense to have a responsible job knows that purchases leave an audit trail? Why would anyone throw away their career on some temporary luxuries, that you’ll surely have to pay back anyway? How can you enjoy soaking in a spa, when: a) your comforts […]
If you’re professionally suspicious, as espionage professionals are paid to be, you’ve got to be wary of these people who seem to just love your country, your culture, who always want to snuggle up closer to it. Just what’s their agenda, you always ask yourself. If you’re a cynic. If you’re a professional spy yourself, […]
The highest paid spy in American history managed to pass polygraphs and keep under the radar, even though the CIA suspected an in-house mole. He lied, repeatedly, with an absolutely icy calm. Aldrich “Rick” Ames became wealthy selling secrets to the Soviet Union from 1985 to his arrest on February 21, 1994. He received $2.5 […]