A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. Submissions should outline a mystery and provide a link to a more detailed review of the case such as a Wiki article or news report. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. -
It could be unsolved murders, missing people, cryptids/the paranormal, unsolved events, scientific unsolved, UFOs, etc.
Edit: Thank you, everyone, for your amazing contributions! I’m definitely going to be sitting back with my tea and reading through these.
Edit 2: Some of my personal favorite unsolved mysteries (which I hope we one day find the answer to) are the Isdal Woman, Jonbenet Ramsey, the Black Dahlia, Brandon Lawson, Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?, The Belmez Faces, Natalee Holloway, Bessie and Glen Hyde, Everett Reuss, Madeleine McCann, the American Dyatlov Pass, Gloria Ramirez, The men in the iron masks, Kurt Cobain, DB Cooper, Allagash Abductions, Zodiac Killer, EAR/ONS, Dorothy Jane Scott, Asha Degree, Maura Murray, and Jack the Ripper.
Timmothy Pitzen. His mom took him out of school and they went on "an adventure", she them committed suicide and left a note saying she gave him to friends and he's safe. No one has ever found a trace of him. It's likely she killed him and put his body someplace but it's still sad and unsolved.
From this article the Grandmother refers to Timmothy in past tense:
That's never a good sign. :(
I think the mother took Timmothy's life and hid him.
Yeah. I feel like his mom killing him and hiding the body is the obvious answer. I just wish they would find his body for his dad's sake. I think it's just weird that if you are going to kill yourself then what's the point of elaborately hiding your sons body? I mean there are obvious reasons to do it. To spite the kids father or mental illness but it's just so sad.
Huh. Is that a very common thing, I wonder? Seems to me most stories of parents killing their kids, then themselves, do so in one location. It is rather strange.
I think it's strange she would kill him someplace else. I would assume she would have just killed him then herself in the same place as well. That's why I find this case so frustrating. I feel like she killed him and hid the body to spite timmothy's father. I would like to think she gave him to trustworthy people but that seems so far fetched.
Ugh, I just posted about him yesterday. Poor little dude, sick fuck Mom. She wasn't abused, she was just the Ultimate Narcissist and wanted to control the narrative so badly she did...all of this. And I don't want to hear about her mental illness. I am mentally ill and would never pull this shit. She had a plan, she acted on it had she not killed herself she would be sitting in jail right now and she knew it.
Sorry I realize I'm behind, but please don't generalize like this. Your mental illness will treat you differently than the way my mental illness treats me. Even with the same mental illness, you cannot confidently say that somebody wouldn't act xyz because you wouldn't act xyz.
Just saying.
Anna Myrle Sizer - Mary Doefour
Back in the 70s a newspaper journalist decided to find out who Mary Doefour really was, and he collected a lot of evidence to convince Anna's brother that this really was her but the brother said it was too painful to think that the family had left her in institutions for 50 years, thinking she was dead. I wonder if the brother ever changed his mind.
http://ancestrysisters.blogspot.com/2013/08/was-mary-doefour-really-anna-myrle.html
What a sad, sad story. Here's a lead I am super curious about: an article published on the front page of the Davenport Daily Times on 20 Nov. 1926 begins:
Did anyone ever follow up with Wendell Webb and Binford Arney? Why would they think threatening letters were a joke? Who would joke about such a thing?
Edited to add a link Imgur to another picture that appeared in the Davenport Daily Times on 12 nov 1926
If Mary Doefur was A.M. Sizer, then coupled with the fact that she was kept in institutions and got completely ruined, makes me think her rapist was someone powerful or rich. Maybe she escaped him and then was wandering around until someone on the payroll of her rapist found her.
puts down tinfoil hat I know it's crazy but made me think.
I try to be very down to earth about these things but the same thought popped into my head, even though it's kind of nuts. Something about this just seems so strange.
Yeah there must have been some kind of report or anything by the police if they find a Jane Doe (or Mary in this case). But no one apparently made the connection despite newspapers in the area printing about the case extensively in some cases. The staff didn't recognize her either. Iirc someone mentioned all paperwork was burned from her first hospital. Why wasn't a copy sent to the next institution? I figure medical history is important when caring for someone. I must also say it's remarkable how long she survived given the things done to her. Something in her must have held onto something, though thats just speculation.
This comment from the May 1978 Pantagraph newspaper in Illinois makes me think Mary Doefour was quite far along: "Shortly after she was admitted to the Kankakee mental ward, it became obvious she was pregnant as a result of the rape. And shortly after that pregnancy was discovered, the young schoolteacher was transferred to the Manteno State Hospital for the Criminally Insane."
It's not that crazy. It doesn't even have to be that powerful or rich. Just a prominent person in town, or someone with some connections, or anything like that. It wouldn't have to be anyone of any particular renown.
Let's say police chase it down close enough to lead to someone that would be a very uncomfortable, like a cousin of the police captain, or a prominent local businessman with a family.
It's easy to see how they could look at the situation, say it's utterly impossible to prove, and with her amnesia there's virtually no way for it to bounce back on them. Better to just leave it be. And they didn't necessarily know that she'd be locked up for 50 years, or abused...they could have just dropped it.
Please run this by the ancestry sisters, linked above!
Edit: didn’t realize the blog was dated 2013. Might be worth an email anyway.
I did reply and added a few more clues that I found. I think it is possible that she was hospitalized and drugged purposely - to prevent her from talking. The young men who were threatened were both students from upper middle class families of good standing. Someone clearly wanted the problem of Myrle Sizer to go away. :(
Good read and sad. I like her last name. Didn't hit me that her last name was "Doe four" until like the middle of the article. So far back in history now, all of this.
I just thought she was french until then too haha
Wow, this was interesting, crazy, and gut wrenching. That poor woman. I can see why her brother couldn't deal with that being the truth. Her suffering must have been unimaginable.
What stood out to me were these lines: "She was pregnant as a result of the rape, and she had a child she probably never saw while at the hospital for the criminally insane" and "The next report in the Mount Vernon paper is in mid-January. It says rumors that Miss Sizer is now home are false. 'There is nothing else to report except this wildly false story.'" The same thing happened after Dorothy Arnold's disappearance; allegedly Dorothy either died during an abortion or her father disowned her & she had a baby at some point. Hopefully Mary / Myrle's parents didn't do the same thing to her :( Both Mary / Myrle & Dorothy's cases reminded me of something that happened in my family in the 50's: one of my dad's female cousins was sent to college but later pulled out of school by her father "because she became ill" and was not allowed to ever go back. She lived to be almost 80 years old & was as healthy as a horse, so I suspect my cousin had an abortion or gave a baby up for adoption during that time.
A unmarried mother with a rape baby in 20s small town America.
I wonder if the brother knew exactly where his sister wasAfter reading the follow up comments... He knew.
There's a January 1927 story over on newspapers.com saying police had a "definite clue" she might be in a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri called The Willows, but they couldn't gain entrance to the hospital & verify it or not. Which I find hard to believe in a pre-HIPAA world. A quick google search shows The Willows was a "Maternity Sanitarium" for unwed girls & "The Ritz" of maternity homes. The "wildly false story" about Myrle being home is here. The story about her father maybe going to check the maternity home is under "Myrle Sizer is located" on this old tripod site.
The records from there were burned and the building doesn’t even exist anymore.
Oh damn. I was just feeling sympathy for him and now I totally see how this is a possibility for sure.
Maybe I need more coffee.
Wow, what a read. Very frustrating that the answer to this seems just within reach but for the cremation.
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Would there be any records of the baby she gave birth to? I wonder if there could be some DNA matching done.
Someone asked in the comments. It looks like a book was written about this as well. The author of the book tried to find records of the baby was was not successful.
Frankly, I think it's unlikely records of the baby even exist today.
Assuming she did not undergo an illegal abortion, we have no idea whether the baby survived infancy or even if it was a live birth. If she was already in a mental institution at this point, she may have been subdued with barbiturates or bromides during pregnancy to the extent that the fetus was harmed. It could also have been harmed by misuse of physical restraints.
If it was adopted, it may have happened on an informal basis with no official paperwork or state involvement. For all we know, a birth certificate could have been forged that named a different woman as the child's mother, to make things simpler. And if there WERE documents related to the adoption, it's unclear whether anyone would even maintain these records nowadays. The adoptive parents and the child are almost certainly deceased. I don't know if any state agency exists that would preserve an adoption record for nearly a century.
Back then, it was highly unlikely that any sort of record connecting the mother to the child would have been kept. I worked in a group home for the mentally disabled and several of them were born to mothers in institutions. Essentially, their case files just read "Mother was a patient at (insert name of institution)" and that was it. It's awful and reading the case files was heartbreaking.
Thank you so much for sharing that! Riveting, tragic stuff.
(And if I’d been that reporter, I might’ve been tempted to just forge the brother’s signature in order to get those records released!)
That was a really great read, but terribly sad.
To think the entire time she was wasting away in an institution somewhere is just heartbreaking.
Wow that was a great read. Thanks for posting it!
Ooo double mystery. Even if it's not her, what the hell happened to either one before she disappeared?
What happened to Connie Converse? In the 1940s, she dropped out of college to become a folk singer, with little success. She eventually moved to Michigan and became managing editor for an academic journal. In 1974, she packed up her car and was never heard from again. In 2009, someone put together an album of the songs that Converse recorded and it became a hit on Spotify.
After weeks of lurking these threads, I’ve joined specifically to comment on this.
Some years back, I contacted a young woman who had made a documentary on Connie for a school project. There’s previews available on YouTube. She flew out to Ann Arbor to interview Connie’s brother Phil, his wife, and their son. She also interviewed Gene Deitch, who had recorded some of her music back in the 1950’s.
I was surprised when a while later, she emailed me back with a link to a secured file of the film itself. Unfortunately I don’t have access to it anymore, but I’ll share what I remember.
Connie left behind a filing cabinet in Ann Arbor full of a lot of things— her writing, poetry, and various personal effects. The young woman, I believe her name was Andrea, was given access to it and its contents for the film.
In one of the previews on YouTube, she’s seen flipping through a checkbook. When it gets to the back, some had been ripped out, where Connie had made a note of change of address.
Her social security number hasn’t been listed as a death. The sister in law said that she was most puzzled by what happened to the car. When they tried to track down the VIN, they weren’t able to find it.
Her brother Phil said that she had a fascination with these narrow pieces of land that extend out into bodies of water. Once they had gone on a family trip with Connie, and took a considerable detour for her so she was able to see one.
Her nephew, when asked as to whether or not he thought she was still alive, commented that he thinks she may have tried to start a new life somewhere else for a little while, but that he didn’t think it would have been for very long.
She also reportedly gave her brother a sum of money and asked him to pay her health insurance up to a certain point, of which he did.
I think that Connie Converse is dead, one way or another. She would be 94 in August. She was a heavy drinker and a chain smoker. I work in a nursing home, and people with lifestyles like that tend to end up here in their 70’s at the least.
I think that she may have tried to live a life somewhere else for a while, or at least attempted to create the illusion she was going to for the sake for her family. I believe she’s still in her car deep in a body of water.
A thread listed somewhere else on Reddit posted a link to her missing persons profile, and they do have familial DNA. If they ever dredge a lakebed and find a rusted out VW Bug with a skeleton inside, they’ll be able to conclusively know if it’s her.
Oh my God, the guitar work in some of her songs are completely ahead of her time. This is insane.
This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn0Wjw-EiY
And at 9:55 to 10:10 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-Ez_1ooJRs especially the chords at 10:03, you just don't hear that in the 1950's. Wow.
In Northern New Jersey, where there are a lot of lakes and narrow roads, many missing people cases wind up being solved when they check the lakes for cars... If we have any idea where she liked to drive, then we can look on Google Maps for dark botches in lakes by the road -- these usually signify a car or other object, and it's possible she met her end by accidentally driving into a lake.
Thanks for the info. I agree with your theory.
Also, I joined Reddit 3 years ago to make one comment on here and I stayed. Welcome. :)
I do think she killed herself, but it would be nice to know for certain what did happen. I really like her music - I think if she'd been born in a different decade, she would have made it big. Some of it is really haunting, and then other songs are quirky and fun.
Converse's recordings are lovely, and very ahead of their time. She made all of her recordings (that we know) in 1955, when Elvis Presley had barely started, but they sound like she could have made them in the 60s folk scene. Or the 70s singer-songwriter scene. Or any time at all.
What a sad story! It really sounds like she might have killed herself 😢
Or changed her identity, however unlikely that may be.
Second this. I am a huge fan of her music.
Disapperance of Lars Mittank. He was on hokiday in Bulgaria in 2014, went to the airport to fly back to germany with belongings. Went into the medical office and was seen sprinting out of the airport with no belongings and over a fence and was never seen again. Events leading up to cctv footage, he got into a fight and got a ear injury.
Definitely an interesting one, but I've heard a couple reasonable explanations about it. There was one explanation I read that pretty much convinced me but it's been a while and I can't remember it all. Basically it could be boiled down to mental illness. I don't remember what was claimed to be the cause of it tho. I think it was either a medication he was given by the doctor, or a pre-existing condition that was exacerbated by the head trauma he received in the fight. IIRC he was exhibiting noticeable symptoms of something akin to schizophrenia. I think he called his mom all paranoid saying something was going to happen to him.
He might have just had a schizophrenic episode in the airport, booked it out the door, hopped the fence and disappeared.
I LOVE this type of shit, and I've seen pretty much every single "Top 10 Mysteries/Disappearances/Etc" videos on YouTube, and this case is feautured heavily in a lot of them. One thing to remember, though, is to take the information in those videos with a huge grain of salt. It's videos like those that kinda put these types of incidents on the crazy mysterious pedestals, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because it's always fun to wonder. But I've found that if you actually research these events yourself instead of reading/watching someone else's research, you'll see that there's many facts that are either made up or mistaken to make it seem more mysterious.
Edit: Also I remember a post a while back on either this sub or r/Unexplainedphotos and it was about this dude that wound up in a hospital in a foreign country and no one knew who he was. It was a short article asking readers to spread it around to see if anyone recognizes the guy, and it had a picture of him attached. It was a white guy, bearded, laying in a hospital bed. And I swear this guy looked fucking EXACTLY like Lars. And this was a good amount of time after he disappeared, like years after I think. It turned out it wasn't him and the guy's identity was figured out not to be Lars but it was insane how much he looked like him.
Falling into the “interesting” category, the “murder” but better named “justice” of Ken McElroy.
The summary of this is that he was just a complete piece of shit in the small town of Skidmore, Missouri. This town is about 20 miles from where I live, so it’s brought up around here quite a bit. Anyway, he raped women ages 13-14, stole cattle, shoplifted, etc. You name it, he did it. Like I said, a real piece of shit. This was in the 70s and early 80s. Anyone willing to testify against him, he’d intimidate them and their whole family. He’d follow the school buses their children rode home and sit outside their house for hours. Tried to burn one of their houses down. Was charged for nearly 20 felonies and never convicted. He had just recently shot a shopkeeper in the neck because he was going to testify against him. This brought up another charge of attempted murder. The townpeople had had enough though. In early afternoon in 1981, he was parked on Main Street in the middle of town in broad daylight. The whole town was watching. A minimum of three shooters unloaded on him. Several bullets went into his body. He was dead instantly. Although the whole town saw it, their story was all the same. “I don’t know who it was. I had my back turned. When I heard gunshots, I ran inside. When I emerged, Ken was dead”. To make matters better, it was essentially condoned by the sheriff. They’d all just had a town meeting discussing what to do about Ken. They saw him pull up and park on Main Street and go into a store. At that moment, the sheriff told them, “Don’t do anything”. Then left town. Immediately following, Ken was dead. Middle of Main Street. Broad daylight. Whole town watching.
To this day, very few people know who did it. Everyone has kept their mouth shut. People around here think that the shooters will admit to it when they’re toward the end of their life. It’s a fascinating story, especially around here.
For anyone who likes reading, I suggest the book In Broad Daylight by Harry MacLean.
Ken McElroy Wikipedia
This is a case of justice served.
Reminds me of Murder On the Orient Express, and he so deeply deserved it.
Connecticut River Valley Killer - serial killer who abducted and murdered at least seven women during the late 1970s and 80s. The last suspected attack was on a pregnant woman at a deserted market. She fought back and was stabbed several times. She was left for dead, but survived and drove away to get help. Shockingly, she was driving so fast that she ended up behind the car of her assailant. Over the years, there have been several suspects in the case, including a Vietnam veteran who killed his wife and stepdaughter and is suspected of killing another wife.
Cynthia Anderson - a young legal secretary who vanished from her job. Prior to her disappearance, she had nightmares about being abducted. She had several security measures set in place at her job, but all was apparently for nothing. Before she vanished, she received a phone call at work that disturbed her. After she vanished, police found evidence that she was killed because she knew too much about drug trafficking involving a lawyer at her job. However, no arrests were ever made.
Circleville Writer - a mysterious letter writer who terrorized residents of Circleville, Ohio. The letters seemed to specifically target a school bus driver named Mary Gillespie. The writer claimed to know that she had an affair with the superintendent of schools. Her husband Ron also received letters about the affair. One night, he received a call, allegedly from the writer, and went out to confront him. He later died in a suspicious car accident. Years later, Mary found a sign along her bus route that made fun of her daughter. She tore the sign down, only to find a booby trap with a gun attached. The gun belonged to Ron's sister's husband, Paul Freshour. Paul was arrested and convicted of attempted murder. It was assumed that he was the letter writer. However, more letters kept coming, including several that were sent to Paul. The letters were being sent far from the prison where he was held. Eventually, Paul was released. When "Unsolved Mysteries" went to film this story, they received a letter from the writer. The identity of the letter writer remains a mystery, although several theories have been looked at. Suspects include: a mentally ill coworker of Mary's, the superintendent's son, and Ron's sister (Paul's ex-wife).
I just listened to a podcast on the Circleville writer, it was so bizarre.
Drunk History just covered it on an episode they called "Drunk Mysteries." Georgia Hardstark of "My Favorite Murder" actually did a surprisingly coherent retelling of the case. The whole think is straight out of an Agatha Christie novel.
Amusingly, when Karen did it at the Columbus show, Georgia shrieked a couple minutes in because she'd forgotten that she'd covered it for Drunk History. She made us all promise not to tell that she'd told us about the episode. It was cut from the recording that was released.
was it generation why?
No, it was The Trail Went Cold, episode 60.
After a quick read of the Circleville story, the sheriff really stands out to me. Particularly the letter that said "Do nothing to harm Sheriff Radcliffe." Circleville is a small town (I used to drive through it occasionally), and I'd imagine the town sheriff would be a guy that had the dirt on people. Just a thought.
Or could it be some relative of the sheriff’s? He seems like he’s protecting them by insisting that Paul was guilty.
Also this case sounds a lot like the premise of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple story The Moving Finger.
I have been looking for an old aerial photo of my property and came across some hand drawn ones from like 1887 or something way back. There is a tiny town drawn on one about a mile south of my place. There is no trace of it today, only the acknowledgment that it did exist, but not what happened to it. We have lots of ghost towns in KS, but usually they come with some explanation and a house or church to show that they were there.
Wow, that is fascinating! You should do a write up of your story and link the photo. What part of Kansas are you from? My family is from Winfield and Oswego, which are tiny to begin with, but there are definitely very small towns that probably have gotten lost over time. Have you ever heard of Melrose? It’s probably the smallest town I’ve ever been to.
Seconded! I’m from Lawrence and I love my state (even though we’re kinda fucked up at the moment) so I’m always interested in some of our history!
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News links? I haven't heard anything about this
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😱😱😱
Your username is perfect for this sentence.
It's really creepy.
Cunningham was last seen on Feb. 12 after he left work early, telling co-workers he felt ill. After two days of no contact, family members went to his Atlanta home to find his cell phone, keys, wallet, car and dog — but no Timothy. The door was locked, but two windows were open.
The murder of Al Kite has stuck with me since I heard about it years back. He was tortured to death by a still unknown assailant who had contacted him under the pretence of wanting to rent his basement apartment. Police don't seem to think robbery was the motive - he probably just wanted to torture someone, and had it all planned out, adopting different disguises. One witness described him as using a cane and walking with a limp, another said he walked normally. There's an ATM surveillance still of him, but he was wearing a balaclava, and the case seems to be ice cold now.
Israel Keyes.
Ugh, he scares the shit out of me. I wonder how many unsolved murders were his handiwork. Shudder.
The Angie Housman case happened in my town. It has always haunted me. So tragic!
That case is beyond fucked up. I read about that and had to step away from True Crime for awhile because it messed with my head so bad. That poor poor little girl.
I worked at a hospital for 33 years and the FBI made the nurses all sign an affidavit stating they would never speak of it. And they do not.
This is a terrible case, it's a NSFL for me, her and Sophie Hook (admittedly solved) but the details stay with me and haunt me.
Cases like this make me hope that hell exists for a select few. The killer of Angie, the Russian hammer guys, David Parker Ray etc.