Some of the most visited national parks in the country have a dark side. Aside from crowds of hikers, campers, and general tourists, there’s a dark side to many that can be found in the great states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. From strange disappearances, grisly murders and bone-chilling paranormal hauntings and ghost sightings; these pristine locales have a lot more to offer than just serene hiking trails or camping. In this third installment of National Park Mysteries & Disappearances, Steve Stockton, along with Bill Melder, presents the reader with a side to these locations you've never heard before.
Experimental Magic: Myrtlewood Mysteries Book 2 : Beaglehole, Iris: Amazon.ca: Books
These might make you want to stay home for a while!
From murders to disappearances, these unsolved mysteries all have hotels in common.
Emerson Edward "Red" Carbaugh disappeared November 11, 1985, in Robertsdale, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Revised May 2024 64-year-old Emerson Edward "Red" Carbaugh, of St Thomas, Pennsylvania, and his brother-in-law, Ralph Issett of Saxton, went turkey hunting in the mo
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The disappearance of Joan Nattras Risch is a disturbing story, no matter which view of the case you believe. Either a troubled woman fled her life in what was probably a futile search for happiness, or she was the victim of a terrible crime that will never be avenged. In 1961, Risch lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She was married with two young children. On October 24 of that year, her husband Martin was away on a business trip in New York. (He was an executive in a paper company.) Neighbors described the couple--who had only lived in their home for six months--as "quiet and reserved," but showing no visible signs of any domestic trouble. That morning, Mrs. Risch did some routine errands. Two tradesmen who visited the home later that day recalled that she seemed in good spirits. Around mid-day she settled her two-year-old son David in for a nap, and sent her four-year-old daughter Lillian to visit at the home of a neighbor. Around 2 pm, a neighbor glimpsed Joan in the Risch driveway. She appeared to be "walking fast or running and carrying something red." Lillian arrived home about two hours later. She soon returned to the neighbor’s home, saying that her mother was gone, the baby was crying, and there was “red paint all over the kitchen." What the child saw was not paint, but blood. It was type O, the same as Joan Risch's. (Although it was never conclusively proved it was her blood.) Investigators believed the blood came from a superficial wound which would not have been fatal. The telephone receiver had been ripped from the wall, and a telephone directory lay open at the section showing emergency numbers. (No such calls had been made.) A kitchen chair was overturned. Risch's son was still safely upstairs in his crib, and the house was otherwise undisturbed. Curiously, considering all the blood, there were no bloody footprints anywhere. Unidentifiable bloody finger and palm prints were found on the wall. There are conflicting reports about those prints. Some accounts state that they were from an unknown intruder. Others say that there was no record on file anywhere of Risch's fingerprints, making it impossible to say if they were hers, or some stranger's. Drops of blood led from her son’s nursery to the kitchen, and then out to her car on the driveway. It was also noted that someone had made an attempt to mop up the blood with a pair of little David's overalls and some paper towels. The trench coat Joan had worn earlier in the day was in a closet, but her cloth coat was missing. Her purse and other belongings were also still in the house. Neighbors later reported that an unfamiliar blue/gray sedan was parked in the Risch driveway around 3 pm, although investigators decided that what they had seen was an unmarked police car parked there some time later. (These witnesses, however, continued to insist the car had been there before police were summoned.) Later that day, other witnesses saw a disheveled woman generally matching Risch's description walking aimlessly along a nearby site where a highway was being constructed. Her legs were covered either in reddish mud or blood. Unfortunately, no one stopped to talk to her. That is the last we know of Joan Risch. It is anyone’s guess what happened to her or where she went. Her husband was questioned by police, but nothing was found to connect him to his wife’s disappearance, and he was quickly eliminated from suspicion. However, this left police with no possible suspects at all, and they began to publicly suggest she had left voluntarily, possibly "for medical treatment." They pointed to the lack of evidence there had been an intruder, and declared that "certain key persons" in the case were not telling authorities all they knew. One day early in November, an unknown woman called the Risch home at least twelve times. The calls were answered by the missing woman's father-in-law, who reported that the caller refused to speak to him. One of the Risch's neighbors said that on that same day, a "terribly excited" woman called her, complaining that she had been calling the Risch house, but had not been able to contact anyone she knew. This neighbor claimed that she had gotten a similar call the day after Mrs. Risch disappeared. This mystery-within-a-mystery was never solved, or at least publicly explained. The investigation into her presumed kidnapping took an even more peculiar turn when it was learned that in the months prior to her vanishing, she had obtained from the library at least 25 books dealing with murder or disappearances. One book she checked out revolved around a woman who vanished, leaving nothing behind but blood stains that had been smeared with a towel. Although she had always been fond of mystery novels, many people begin to suspect that she had used these books, not as casual entertainment, but as how-to manuals to stage a “hoax” kidnapping that would leave her free to start a new life. It’s dangerous to read too much into anyone’s taste in reading material—if I should ever, for any reason, catch the eye of law enforcement, I shudder to think what conclusions they may reach about me by examining my blogs—but there is more that gives this particular scenario some credibility. Friends said that Risch, who had a successful career in publishing before she gave it up to raise a family, was a naturally driven, ambitious woman who was frustrated as a homemaker. Although she seems to have been deeply devoted to her husband and children, they may not have been enough for her. But was this dissatisfaction enough to make Mrs. Risch--described as "a very intelligent and well controlled woman"--abandon them in such a cruel fashion? Even before her marriage, the missing woman’s life had been deeply troubled. Her parents died in a suspicious house fire when she was only nine, leaving her to be raised by an aunt and uncle. According to some reports, she had been sexually assaulted as a child. Perhaps, it was suggested, she was so miserable being Joan Risch that she gave it all up in order to try her hand at being someone else altogether? Or perhaps, according to another school of thought, her present-day stresses and past traumas, combined with an injury from some fall in her kitchen, left her an amnesiac. Some believe she simply lost her memory and wandered blindly away, possibly—assuming the woman on the highway was Risch—making a fatal fall into the highway construction pit. To this day, there are those who believe Highway 128 is the grave site of Joan Risch. It has even been theorized that the sedan seen in Risch’s driveway was a doctor there to give Joan an abortion she wished to keep secret from her husband. Perhaps the operation went wrong and she began hemorrhaging, causing her to wander off in a state of shock? Until the day he died in 2009, Martin Risch continued to express the belief that his wife was alive somewhere. For some years after her disappearance, he kept his old telephone number, just in case she called. He never remarried. Or perhaps, to take the simplest, albeit grimmest, view of the case, the attractive 31-year-old was the random victim of a brutal fiend. After all, there was all that blood and those mysterious prints in her kitchen…
Hillary Clinton’s mysterious handler has disappeared.
Taos, New Mexico, is in an area of the world that has hosted many strange happenings. One of the eeriest involves the so-called “Mystic Gold Mine” and the impressive body count associated with the site. The mine was in an area long believed by the native population to be cursed. As events were to prove, they very well may have been right. The Mystic was found in 1863 by a man named Stone, who, two years later, took a John C. Ferguson as his partner. In 1882, Stone disappeared from the scene. Whether he left on his own free will, or, as seems more likely, he was murdered, is unknown. Several of the mine's employees died in bizarre and unexplained ways. One particularly luckless worker was found at the bottom of the mine shaft, decapitated. However, The Weird only really kicked into high gear when, in 1895, an English mining promoter named Arthur Rockfort Manby entered into a gold-hunting syndicate with Ferguson and another miner named James Wilkinson. The Mystic proved extremely profitable. It was only five miles away from the Aztec, then one of the richest gold mines in the world, and it was suspected that Manby—who seems to have been one of Nature’s born grifters—had somehow found a way of stealing nuggets from this other site. In any case, the trio quickly became exceedingly wealthy. And then in 1915, Wilkinson vanished. Although ominous rumors circulated about his disappearance, no one knew for sure what became of him. Not long after this, Ferguson ended his days in a mental hospital, tormented by visions of angry ghosts and decapitated bodies. His daughter Teresita inherited his share of the mine. In 1921, Wilkinson, who had long been given up for dead, suddenly reappeared on the scene, only to quickly vanish again—this time for good. In 1929, it was Manby’s turn to meet his fate. On June 30, a deputy sheriff came to Manby’s home to serve a judgment in a breach of promise suit filed against him. When he was unable to contact Manby, he returned three days later with backup and broke down the front door. When this search party broke into the house, they made a dreadful discovery. Manby’s decapitated corpse was discovered in a bedroom of his home. His brutally mutilated head was discovered in an adjoining room. The front door of the house, it was noted, had been locked from the inside. Manby and his mansion had a sinister reputation long before his gruesome death. He had become a strange recluse who lived in great fear of something—fears that were certainly eventually justified. His 20-room estate had bars on every window and multiple locks on every door. He insisted on cooking all his own food, to guard against poisoning. His only companionship in the sprawling, lavishly-decorated hacienda was a pair of fierce Alsatian dogs who guarded him everywhere he went. He was periodically seen on his roof, using colored flags to send who-knows-what signals to who-knows-whom. All in all, his neighbors were quite happy to leave him to his own devices. The coroner’s jury, faced with this grim and puzzling demise, responded with one of the most astonishing verdicts on record. They decreed that Manby died of natural causes. One of his dogs, crazed with hunger, then chewed off his head and carried the body to the other room. This bit of absurdity was just too much for anyone to stomach. Manby’s brother back in England put pressure on Washington to arrange a less deranged investigation into Manby’s death, with the result that a detective, Henri Martin, was dispatched to Taos. When he had the body exhumed, he discovered that the gold tycoon was riddled with shotgun bullets. The assassin then, for some unknown reason, carefully removed the head. The mystery of who shot and decapitated Manby—not to mention the puzzle of what that coroner’s jury was thinking—remains unsolved to this day. Martin received some interesting, if ultimately unhelpful, information about the other peculiar deaths associated with the Mystic Mine. He discovered that over the years, at least half a dozen men associated with Manby had been mysteriously murdered--with several of them being decapitated. A woman who had been Wilkinson’s housekeeper told the detective that her employer had been killed by his business partners. She claimed the body—like Manby, full of bullets and decapitated—had been placed in her room one night. She directed Martin to a certain place where she said Wilkinson was secretly buried. The spot was exhumed, and a skeleton was found, but it was uncertain if it really was the vanished Wilkinson. At least nine other beheaded bodies were found in that area. Martin also heard from locals that Ferguson, who had become a drug addict, was so terrified of…something…that he killed himself in the asylum. It also came out that a few years before, Manby and Teresita Ferguson—who had a very close relationship until, so she said, he cheated her out of all her money--organized a shadowy organization known as the “United States Civil Secret Service Society.” Men were persuaded—or, more often, compelled--to invest in this group, which was presented as a clandestine society working with the U.S. Secret Service. In return, investors would share in the reward money earned when the organization captured criminals. In reality, of course, it was one of Manby’s many swindles. However, the general fear that the group was Manby’s private criminal gang, responsible for many unsolved robberies and murders, scared many people from seeking justice against him. (The hints that the "society" also practiced black magic undoubtedly added to the general unease.) Perhaps, it was suggested, one of the men he had defrauded with this scheme finally got his bloody revenge. Or perhaps the killer was one of the many other people Manby had cheated during his astonishingly busy career? Or did Teresita Ferguson, the one person to come away from the Mystic alive, have something to do with the death of her former business partner/lover? And what of Margaret Waddell, the Los Angeles woman who successfully brought the breach-of-promise suit against Manby? Through his typically shady, complex business maneuvers, he engineered it so she would be unable to collect her $12,000 damages. Did she obtain a less lawful payback? Or was this mutilated body really Manby’s? Some observers insisted the skull found in his house was far too small to be his. The body was too decomposed to permit a positive identification. Many were convinced that the old crook, ever fearful for his safety, staged his own “murder,” and escaped to a new life. This idea has been largely ignored, but with a story like this, it’s hard to believe anything is impossible. What was it that reduced both Manby and John Ferguson to such a state of mortal terror? The knowledge we have about the long, twisted history surrounding the Mystic Mine is bad enough. It seems likely that the details hidden from us were far, far worse. [A footnote: The strange goings-on of the Mystic crowd did not end with Manby’s death—or, if you prefer, “death.” In 1930, not content with looting Manby’s mansion, Teresita Ferguson, her common-law husband Carmel Durand, and her nephew George Ferguson, were tried and convicted for committing a series of burglaries (and at least one arson) in Taos. The trio got four to six years in prison. After her release, Teresita was, for whatever reason, given a full pardon by the Governor. In 1955, she was charged with witchcraft and fraud. She had obtained $100 from a Santa Fe couple on the claim they were "bewitched" and she could cure them. She also told them that--for additional funds--she would lead them to $25 million worth of buried treasure hidden on their property. Her run of peculiarly good luck continued when she was acquitted. Perhaps the fact that her son, Columbus, was a former Taos sheriff (!) had its influence. Teresita Ferguson died at the age of 91 in 1979. And, oh, the stories that must have died with her.]
What was the reason Christie gave for her disappearance? What happened to Agatha Christie disappearance? Where did Agatha Christie stay during her disappearance? What is the mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie?
In 1934, the "Baroness" of the Galapagos Islands mysteriously disappeared. Was it murder? Here's more about the Galapagos Affair.
Actor Martin Freeman was spotted carrying a decoy baby in a carrier as he filmed scenes with co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Amanda Abbington in London's iconic Borough Market on Tuesday.
Investigators have been searching for answers in some of these cases for decades.
Rebecca Agheli and her partner Michael, had rented a caravan for a weekend away in Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne , last Thursday in the hopes they may come across some gold.
On the night of December 30, 1919, twenty-year-old Jeanne De Kay, daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur and socialite, left her residence at Jane Addams’ famous Chicago settlement home “Hull House,” and never returned. The disappearance of a member of such a rich and prominent family set off a worldwide manhunt. The papers were full of the usual “sightings,” rumors, and theories ranging from the plausible to the lurid that are common to any high-profile mystery, but Jeanne remained nowhere to be found. Finally, nearly four months later, her body was found in Lake Michigan, where it had been washed ashore by a gale, but the mystery of her fate remained unsettled. The frigid waters of the lake made it impossible to tell if she drowned immediately after her disappearance, or soon before she was discovered. Although there were many unanswered questions surrounding her death, it was ruled a suicide. Jeanne De Kay had been a restless, unhappy young woman. She had absorbed her father’s socialist ideas, and felt a deep sense of guilt at her inherited wealth. As a way of grappling with these emotions, she had recently left home, hoping to live and work as a “normal girl.” At Hull House, she trained to be a social worker, while begging to do the most menial chores. It was suggested that this sudden immersion in a working-class life was too much of a “culture shock” for the formerly pampered young woman, and, unable to handle either her new life or the shame of admitting failure, she saw no way out but death. Jeanne had other troubles. As a girl, she contracted smallpox, which left her face deeply scarred. She was said to have been neurotically obsessed with her plainness, a feeling that intensified painfully when a young man she loved chose to marry another woman. According to some friends, this left Jeanne convinced she was a disfigured outcast who would never find love and happiness. Not everyone was persuaded by this solution to the mystery, and there are enough oddities surrounding the De Kay family to make this skepticism understandable. Her father, John Wesley De Kay, was a peculiar man. As a youth, this Midwestern cattle rancher moved to Mexico, where he got into the meat-packing business. Thanks to a friendship he cultivated with President Diaz, he gained almost a complete monopoly of the Mexican meat industry, and became a millionaire many times over. He had more on his mind than just sausage and steak, however. De Kay was full of eccentric political and social notions, and, as he also had literary ambitions, he set out to express them on the stage. He was, to put it most kindly, ahead of his time. His 1910 play “Judas,” showcased the title character as a misunderstood hero. The storyline had Judas’ lover, Mary Magdalene, cheat on him with both Pontius Pilate and Jesus himself, causing Judas to betray his former friend to the Romans. The lead role of Judas was played by none other than Sarah Bernhardt. It all went over about as well as you'd think. “Judas” played in New York for only one night, and was promptly banned everywhere else. De Kay followed this up with equally controversial books about economics, women’s rights, the labor movement, politics, and history, all from what was then a scandalously left-wing perspective. He also courted scandal by his “ill-reputed” business practices, most notably during World War I, when he entered into complex dealings with the French government in order to buy arms which he then shipped via a German steamer for the use of the Mexicans. (It was this deal that prompted the United States to invade Veracruz.) In 1915, the French sought his extradition on the charge of having defrauded the Belgian government in this munitions deal, and he thereafter made his home in Switzerland. (That is, he made his home there until a decade or so later, when the Swiss kicked him out for swindling a bank in Lucerne.) In 1914, a London bank sued him for fraud. In 1919, he was thrown out of Berlin for arranging the International Socialist Conference. In 1921, he was arrested in Budapest on the charge of "conspiring against the security of the state." In 1930, the Austrians arrested him for passing bad checks. By the time he died in 1938, it seemed that there was hardly a country in the world that had not labeled him as "an undesirable" for some reason or another. De Kay seems to have been a curious mix of capitalist robber baron, flamboyant fat-cat conspicuous consumer, socialist ideologue, international political intriguer, and habitual crook. Small wonder poor Jeanne grew up confused. It is not particularly surprising that some people believed that De Kay’s many colorful activities had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance and death, especially since the family was very reluctant to allow the police to become involved. Was the young heiress the victim of a botched kidnapping for ransom? Was she murdered outright in revenge for some of her father’s shadier activities? Or did she kill herself due to fear of the central role John De Kay had played in the murky “plot and counter-plot” of Mexican politics? (There was another detail about the De Kays that might—or might not—be relevant. Two months after Jeanne disappeared, her uncle Henry De Kay was sentenced in the Federal Court to five years in State Prison for his participation in the wrecking of Providence R. I.’s Atlantic National Bank. When Jeanne disappeared, her father was unable to return to America to help in the search because of pending indictments stemming from his complicity with this same crime. This was quite a family.) There were a couple of other facts about Jeanne's disappearance that led many to think there was more to her death than a simple suicide. For one, she left her room at Hull House carrying nothing but a purse containing two dollars and a toothbrush. If she was setting out to kill herself, her brother John Jr. pointed out, would she bring her toothbrush with her? Immediately after Jeanne vanished, John Jr. remembered that during their recent voyage to America from Europe, Jeanne had become close to two Romanian women, a Mrs. Salter and her daughter. (Some newspapers stated these ladies may have been involved in crooked art deals, and at least one report suggested that Mrs. Salter’s husband was a secret agent.) When found in New York, the women denied knowing anything of Jeanne’s whereabouts. However, while the police were still looking for the Salters, they intercepted a cablegram John De Kay sent his son reading, “Very anxious. Jeanne confided in Romanian lady. Stop.” What did John De Kay think his daughter had told these women? What was he so “anxious” about? There were more head-scratchers involving cablegrams. One message to Hull House that was supposedly sent by John De Kay mentioned the “Romanian lady” and begged John Jr. to do everything possible to find his sister. It was dated on the same day that John Jr. sent word to his father in Switzerland of Jeanne’s disappearance. The elder De Kay would not have had time to get his son’s message before he sent this reply. So, who sent this cable, and why? Another puzzle was a phone message Hull House received a couple of days after Jeanne vanished. It was from a woman saying there was no cause for worry; Jeanne was well and would return in a few days. No one ever discovered who left this message. One newspaper, shortly after Jeanne’s body was discovered, wondered if “the answer to the riddle of unhappy little Jeanne De Kay’s fate will some day be found in a Mexican bandit camp or in the secret archives of some European government?” It is a crackpot-sounding thought, to be sure. But, then, the crackpots are sometimes right.
1926 was the worst of years for Agatha Christie in spite of her successful career as one of the world’s most famous detective fiction authors. Her sixth novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was publis…
A 48-year-old mysterious missing person case has never been solved.
Real Name: Unrevealed Aliases: Circleville Writer Wanted For: Harassment, Attempted Murder, Murder Missing Since: 1994 Details: In 1976, several Circleville, Ohio residents began receiving strange letters detailing personal information about their lives. Bus driver Mary Gillispie was accused of a supposedly non-existent affair with the superintendent of schools. The writer told Mary that he/she had been observing her house and knew she had children. It was postmarked Columbus, Ohio, but had no r
It’s often seen as a romantic idea for a loving couple to run away and disappear, leaving everything behind in order to start a new life together. However, in real life, it rarely ever works that way. Whenever you hear a story about a couple disappearing together, it usually happens under very sinister, mysterious circumstances
Jean was only 8 and Annette was only 7 when they were sadly murdered at Auschwitz Birkenau on March 9,1944
"New York Daily News," September 20, 1959, via Newspapers.com Q: What do you get when you mix auto theft, disappearances, amnesia, murder, and far too many tattoos? A: One of the crazier true crime cases I’ve encountered. At the center of our weird little saga is James Eugene Harrison of Indian River City, Florida. He was the owner of a successful window sash plant, happily married, a father of two young children. A perfect example of a solid middle-class citizen. On October 7, 1958, the 32-year-old drove to Cocoa Beach, about fifteen miles away, to conduct some routine business. And promptly disappeared. When he failed to return home that night, his wife Jeanne immediately knew something was very wrong, and she phoned police. However, their investigation found no trace of Harrison. No clues emerged regarding Harrison’s disappearance until a week later, when police in Jacksonville, about 150 miles from Indian River, found his abandoned station wagon. It had been sitting there since the morning after Harrison had last been seen. Ominously, the front seat was saturated with blood. “Somebody was murdered in that car,” a Jacksonville officer concluded. When the blood was found to match Harrison’s Type O, the natural conclusion was that the “Somebody” was the missing man. It was presumed that Harrison had been unlucky enough to pick up a hitchhiker who robbed and murdered him, then buried him in some obscure place and ditched the car. However, the only fingerprints found in the car were Harrison’s. Poor Jeanne Harrison was naturally distraught, and at a loss what to do next. As she had no idea how to run her husband’s business, she felt she had no choice but to liquidate everything, and she and her children went to live with James’ mother in Miami. To support her children, she took a job as a receptionist while waiting in an agonizing limbo, not knowing if her husband was alive or dead. On January 18, 1959, Mrs. Harrison finally received news about James. Unfortunately, it was the worst news imaginable. A Californian named Roy Victor Olson, who had just been convicted of the murder of television announcer Ogden Miles, confessed to killing James Harrison, as well. According to Olson, before stabbing Miles he had murdered a Seattle man named John Weiler. After the Miles murder, Olson fled to Florida, where he fell in with a young Kentuckian, James Leach. The pair spent several days hitchhiking together. Olson went on to say that on October 7, 1958, he and Leach were walking along Highway 90, between Lake City and Jacksonville, when they were picked up by a man in a station wagon. He seemed like someone who would have money on him, so when the driver stopped to stretch his legs for a few moments, the pair attacked him. “I stabbed him while Leach stood by with a rock in his hand,” Olson told his interrogators. “We robbed him of $500. We took a shovel we found in his car, dug a grave, and put him in with his business cards. We filled it in, then drove up to Jacksonville and left the car. His name was Harrison.” Olson did not know Leach’s current whereabouts but said he shouldn’t be hard to find. “He’s just about the most tattooed fellow in the country.” Under further questioning, Olson added more details. He and Leach covered their victim’s body with two bags of “something” they found in the car--”I think it was lime.” He described minutely the wooded area south of Jacksonville where they buried Harrison. Olson concluded with, “Well, that’s that. I wonder how many more I’ve killed?” He was, in the words of Jacksonville officer Roy Sands, “the coolest killer I’ve seen in 17 years of police work.” Everything the police found corroborated Olson’s horrifying story. Harrison had bought two bags of fertilizer just before he disappeared. He did indeed carry a shovel in the car identical to the one described by Olson. Two fertilizer bags were found in the area where Olson said the body was buried. To wrap up this murder case, all that was needed was to find the body...and, of course, James Leach. "New York Daily News," September 20, 1959 The FBI issued a warrant for the tattooed Kentuckian. Florida Governor Leroy Collins sent extradition papers to California to bring Olson back to the state. On January 23, Leach was apprehended in Knoxville, Tennessee, and his captors quickly noted that Olson had not been exaggerating about his cohort’s body art. Leach had “The Kentucky Kid” tattooed on his right leg. “Six months I lived and lost,” was on his right arm. His chest sported a panther and the word “Crime.” His left shoulder read, “Born to raise Hell.” The left arm was adorned with “Born to lose,” and “Death.” His left leg featured a skull wearing a top hat. Give Mr. Leach the prize for "Suspect least likely to be overlooked in the identification parade." The 21-year-old Leach--who had never been found guilty of anything beyond vagrancy--protested his innocence. He admitted that he had spent a few days hitchhiking with Olson, but he had no idea the man was a murderer, and he himself certainly had no role in killing anyone. “I have no idea why he implicated me in something neither of us did,” he declared. Given what the police had uncovered, it was small wonder no one believed him. It was then that this seemingly straightforward murder took a bizarre twist. In Phoenix, Arizona, on the same day Leach was arrested, a well-dressed, freshly-shaved man stopped a car backing out of a residential driveway, and asked the driver to take him to the police station. This driver, understandably wary of this odd request, declined, but agreed to telephone the police to come and get the man. The Arizona man did contact police, informing them that either a robber or a lunatic was standing in his driveway. When officers arrived, they found a man, seemingly in a great state of confusion, muttering, “How did I get here? How did I get here?” At the station house, he informed them that he was James Eugene Harrison of Indian River City, Florida. He was stunned to find that it was January 1959, not October 1958, and had no idea at all how he came to be in Arizona. According to Harrison, “yesterday--at least I thought it was yesterday” he was driving to Cocoa Beach. When he stopped at a traffic light, a man with a gun forced his way into the back seat. This man said, “I want to go to Jacksonville. Take me there and you won’t get hurt.” When they arrived in Jacksonville, the gunman ordered him to pull into a parking lot. After that, he said, “The lights went out.” He explained that “I woke up just a little while ago...I was lying on a parkway beside a street. My clothes were dirty and this T-shirt wasn’t mine...I never wear them. My $300 was gone. So was my watch and my Masonic ring. I found I was still wearing my wedding ring and I had 67 cents in my pocket. I started walking...I thought I was in Jacksonville…” The police, eyeing the man’s dapper appearance, felt a bit skeptical of his story. They warned Jeanne Harrison that this Phoenix oddball was almost certainly a fraud. However, as soon as she spoke to the man on the telephone, she began screaming in joy. “It’s Jim! It’s Jim!” she cried. Still unable to believe the man’s story, investigators showed her a wire photo of the mystery man. “It’s Jim!” Jeanne insisted. “I don’t care what happened as long as he’s alive.” The ecstatic woman wired her husband the money to fly home. “It will be like starting our life all over again,” she said. "Knoxville Journal," September 25, 1959, via Newspapers.com Law enforcement saw their nice, tidy murder case suddenly turn into an inexplicable muddle. Somebody had left all that blood in Harrison’s car, and, judging by the quantity of it that was found, that somebody just had to be dead. But who was this person? Did Harrison kill his carjacker? Or did his assailant attack Harrison and steal his wallet and papers, only to be murdered by Olson? As for Olson, he now repudiated his confession, claiming that he only admitted to killing Harrison in order to get “a free trip to Florida.” As the erstwhile murder victim enjoyed the reunion with his family, authorities began compiling a long list of questions for Harrison. His whole story struck them as, in a word, fishy. They noted that Harrison bore no signs of any injuries, old or new. Police also found it odd that he had a reddish streak in his hair that appeared to be dyed. However, his family insisted that the red spot was natural, and Harrison himself maintained that he had no memory of what had happened to him. Harrison’s return from the dead forced police to drop the murder charges against Leach. However, they continued to investigate his confession, along with the riddle of Harrison’s disappearance. During the three months when everyone assumed he had been murdered, where was the Window Sash King, and what had he been doing? No one could say. Although his photograph was published in newspapers across the country, no one came forward claiming to have seen Harrison during the period when he was missing. When asked to take a lie detector test, Harrison declined, stating that “I’ve been pushed around enough.” He and his family went into seclusion, refusing to say any more to anyone about the whole ordeal. On February 4, a Phoenix woman who had seen one of the published photos of Harrison contacted police. She claimed that he had been her seatmate on a bus trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix. This witness said that she had chatted with him, and he seemed perfectly rational, showing no sign of distress or confusion. The man carried no luggage with him, and left the bus in Phoenix on January 23, just a few hours before Harrison went to the police. Frustratingly enough, there the matter rested. As far as I have been able to tell, the main questions surrounding this mystery were never resolved. Police never learned how or why Harrison vanished, or where he was for those three missing months. If--as authorities continued to suspect--Harrison knew more than he was saying, the Floridian kept his secrets to himself. The identity of the person who left all that blood in his car was fated to remain equally mysterious. Police were able to validate at least one part of Olson’s confession: he had indeed murdered a Seattle restaurateur named John Weiler. (It was said that “perverted sex acts” figured in the stabbings of both Weiler and Ogden Miles.) He was sent to Washington state long enough to be tried and convicted, after which he was transferred to California’s Folsom Prison. In the 1970s, he was paroled, only to begin serving his 75-year sentence for the Weiler murder in Washington. In the mid-1990s, Olson--who had a religious conversion in prison and claimed to be a reformed character--was released on parole. He seems to have lived a law-abiding life until his death in 2001. In 1960, the skeleton of a man was found near the Jacksonville Expressway, in the general area where Olson claimed to have buried his victim. It was speculated that this man--who was never identified--was the victim stabbed to death in Harrison’s car, but that, of course, was impossible to prove. All in all, this story is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when you’re missing most of the pieces.
She hiked into the woods one winter afternoon and was never seen again.
19-year-old Jason Jolkowski went missing during a half-mile walk to the nearby high school on June 13, 2001. No evidence for what happened to him has ever been discovered.
One unexplained disappearance is strange, but two are sinister. In Lower Hembrow, an idyllic village nestled beneath Ham Hill in Somerset, the villagers are preparing to enjoy the autumn traditions of the rural English countryside until Joe Trevillion, a curmudgeonly local farmer and the father of six children, vanishes. When Adam Hennessy, the ex-detective proprietor of The Plough, the village's popular Inn, investigates, he finds ominous undercurrents beneath apparently harmless rumour and gossip. Meanwhile, a vicious campaign of vindictiveness forces Adam and his three amateur sleuth friends to dig deep into the secret lives of their neighbours to expose the source of a cruel vendetta and prevent another death. As they uncover the disturbing truth, the friends learn they must also lay their own past lives to rest before they can hope to make their dreams for the future come true. A brand new cosy mystery series from the bestselling author of A Village Murder, and A Racing Murder perfect for fans of Faith Martin, Betty Rowlands and M.C. Beaton.
Johnny Gosch's father usually accompanied him on his morning paper route, but not on September 5, 1982.
Someone called Crime Stoppers with what police believe is legitimate information about the unsolved missing persons case. Now, police need that someone to call again.
About All About History History's Greatest Mysteries Over 500 years ago, two young brothers disappeared, seemingly off the face of the Earth. These weren’t just any boys, however – one was Edward V, king of England, who had recently been declared illegitimate and quickly usurped by his uncle, Richard III. After their strange disappearance, rumours of murder spread through the country, with suspicions falling upon the boys’ uncle as well as other power-hungry figures at the royal court. To this day, debate rages about the curious fate of the Princes in the Tower...
