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Sometimes the most baffling cases aren't solved by the FBI or police detectives, but by everyday heroes! Join us as we count down the most chilling mysteries that were cracked by ordinary citizens. Our list includes the wrongfully accused mother exonerated by a biochemist, a king found under a parking lot, and the shocking discovery that freed three kidnapped women!
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00:00It's a case that's enthralled amateur sleuths for three quarters of a century.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 unsettling mysteries
00:09that were finally cracked by everyday people unaffiliated with law enforcement.
00:14Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms.
00:19Something is wrong here.
00:21The biochemist and the TV show.
00:24It was just a shock to see a little baby incapacitated the way he was.
00:30It was to the point where they said, well, they don't know how long he's going to be here.
00:34We don't know what's wrong with him yet, so you might as well just go to the waiting room
00:38and stay out there until we can tell you what's wrong.
00:41Back in 1989, infant Ryan Stallings grew horribly sick,
00:45and tests revealed high levels of ethylene glycol, which is the main ingredient in antifreeze.
00:50Investigators deduced that he had been poisoned,
00:52and his mother, Patricia Stallings, was charged with murder after Ryan tragically died.
00:56Patty Stallings was booked on charges of poisoning her infant son.
01:02I knew it wasn't true.
01:04I didn't care what they thought.
01:06I just thought, well, you know, I'll be home in a couple hours.
01:08This will be over with.
01:09You know, I'll get to go be with Ryan.
01:11And then the day turned into a night, and then it got really serious.
01:19I got really scared.
01:20Her story later appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries,
01:24and it caught the attention of a biochemist named William Sly.
01:28Sly recognized that Ryan's symptoms matched a rare genetic disorder called methylamonic acidemia, or MMA,
01:34which can mimic antifreeze poisoning in lab tests.
01:37Sly helped push for further analysis, which confirmed that Ryan indeed had MMA,
01:42and that his mother had been wrongfully accused.
01:45Stallings was exonerated, and she won a large settlement from the lab that tested Ryan's blood.
01:49How they can live with themselves, knowing that they sent an innocent woman to jail the rest of her life
01:55for something that she didn't do.
01:59If Ryan would have been correctly diagnosed with MMA, none of this would have happened.
02:07Yaakov German plays detective.
02:09It's a disturbing story from right here in New York,
02:11where a young child walking home for the first time alone was abducted and then killed by a stranger.
02:18In July of 2011, 8-year-old Libby Kletsky went missing while walking home from day camp.
02:23Yaakov German, a retired plumbing contractor from Brooklyn, took it upon himself to find the missing boy.
02:29German volunteered to help by reviewing hours of surveillance footage taken from businesses throughout Borough Park.
02:35Using his observational skills, German found Libby,
02:38and noticed that he was walking with a man later identified as Levi Aron.
02:42Prosecutors say at the hands of Levi Aron.
02:44The stranger police say Libby turned to for help,
02:48and shown here on surveillance tape, walking behind him and getting into a car.
02:52German carefully tracked the boy's movements from camera to camera,
02:56narrowing down the search path and providing detectives with crucial leads.
03:00His persistence helped police identify the suspect's car and apartment.
03:04But unfortunately, this only led to the tragic discovery of Libby's remains.
03:08Aron pled guilty and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
03:12Going back like he's lost, back and forth.
03:14And then we saw somebody walking by, the kid following.
03:19We opened another camera.
03:20We saw him going to the car with that perp.
03:23A fitting place for a king.
03:24And for almost 530 years, this is where he lay.
03:29Downtown Leicester.
03:30Richard III died on August 22nd, 1485, felled during the Battle of Bosworth Field.
03:50And then he just sort of disappeared.
03:52For centuries, his remains were considered missing,
03:55resulting in one of England's most famous and enduring mysteries.
03:58However, they were finally unearthed in 2012.
04:01And not in some grand fashion fit for a king, but in a parking lot.
04:05On the very first day, digging for mere hours on a renewed hunt for Richard's remains,
04:12they stumbled on the king.
04:14Researchers at the University of Leicester combined forces with the Leicester City Council
04:18to finally find the missing king.
04:20Guided by historical maps and ground-penetrating radar,
04:23the excavation began in a seemingly unremarkable parking lot.
04:27And Richard's skeleton was quickly discovered.
04:30The site had once been a Greyfriars friary,
04:32where historical sources had long suggested that Richard was buried.
04:36So he had quite a number of injuries, eh?
04:38He did.
04:39He had 11 wounds, but nine of those were on his head.
04:41Somebody really wanted him dead.
04:43Yeah, really.
04:44Todd Matthews finds the tent girl.
04:46At what point do you say enough's enough?
04:49There's so many times I said I'm done.
04:51But it was more than obsession.
04:52It felt more like an obligation.
04:54Online sleuthing doesn't often come to much, but there are exceptions.
04:58Todd Matthews played a key role in solving the decades-old mystery of the tent girl,
05:03an unidentified Kentucky woman whose body was found wrapped in canvas in 1968.
05:08Matthews, fascinated by the case ever since marrying the daughter of the man who discovered the body,
05:14spent years poring over missing persons reports.
05:16Snuck off to my little office and just again, missing sister, missing this, missing that.
05:21And I would see different databases that would pop up.
05:24And I did find a note where a lady in Arkansas was looking for her missing sister,
05:29last known to be in Lexington, Kentucky, very short distance away, in December of 1967.
05:35In the 1990s, as the internet grew and proliferated, Matthews scoured online forums and databases.
05:42His persistence and skillful sleuthing led him to a missing persons notice that matched the tent girl's description.
05:49That of Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor, a young woman who had disappeared in 1967.
05:55Authorities were alerted, and in 1998, DNA testing confirmed the identity.
06:00Once there was an announcement that this was indeed the tent girl, and I'll always remember those words.
06:05The tent girl is indeed Barbara Hackman Taylor.
06:09You know, that was just chilling.
06:11A dinner to remember.
06:13Harry's screaming. I meet my McDonald's.
06:16I come outside.
06:18I see this girl going nuts, trying to get out of her house.
06:21Charles Ramsey was eating dinner at his Cleveland home when he heard screams for help coming from a neighboring house.
06:27Suspicious, he went outside and found a woman trying to break through the house's locked front door.
06:33Ramsey rushed over, helped kick in the bottom panel, and pulled the woman and her young daughter to safety.
06:38The disheveled woman then told Ramsey that she and two other women had been held captive in the house for nearly a decade.
06:45And she comes out with a little girl, and she says, call 911.
06:49My name was Amanda Berry.
06:51Did you know who that was when she said that?
06:53When she told me, it didn't register until I got to call 911.
06:58And I'm like, I'm calling 911 for Amanda Berry? I thought this girl was dead.
07:01Berry herself called 911, and police promptly arrived to free the others.
07:06And with that, Ramsey finally found the missing Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight.
07:12His willingness to respond to Berry's cries played a crucial role in ending their long and horrific ordeal.
07:18So when they say, dude, you a hero, man, good looking, I say, man, you need this.
07:22Carol identifies Pierre April.
07:24Imagine waking up one day with no sense of who you are, where you are, or where you came from.
07:30That is exactly what happened to a mysterious young man named Pierre, who seems to be suffering from near-total amnesia.
07:36Amnesia is a weird thing.
07:38In May of 1992, a man woke up in a California ditch, knowing absolutely nothing about his own life.
07:45All he had was a blue duffel bag, $17 in cash, and a library card with the name Pierre April.
07:52A bus driver took him to a shelter, and he was diagnosed with trauma-induced amnesia.
07:56In the past six months, Pierre has undergone a battery of physical and psychological examinations.
08:02Doctors theorize he may be suffering from trauma-induced amnesia.
08:06The man's story was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, and they brought in a sketch artist to work with the man.
08:12He recalled a co-worker named Carol, and the show aired her sketch.
08:16Funnily enough, that very same Carol happened to be watching the episode, and she called the show's tip line to identify him.
08:23With his identity known, April's parents were contacted, and his memory slowly returned.
08:29It is strange to be told who you are and what you did.
08:34I am someone, again.
08:36And for quite a few months, I was nobody and nothing.
08:42A professor solves the famous Somerton man.
08:45Now, a man who has dedicated his adult life investigating the case thinks DNA has provided the answer.
08:51The best match we found to the Somerton man happened to be somebody in Victoria.
08:57A world-famous mystery for over half a century, the Somerton man was an unidentified corpse that was found on Somerton Beach, Australia, in 1948.
09:06He carried no ID, his clothing tags were removed, and a tiny scrap of paper with the words,
09:12Taman Shud was hidden in his pocket, sparking decades of speculation about espionage and poisoning.
09:18It's not the end of the story by any means, just finding his name is really just the beginning of the story.
09:24Despite extensive investigation, his identity remained a mystery for over 70 years.
09:29And it wasn't the police who finally solved it, but University of Adelaide professor Derek Abbott.
09:34He and genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick pursued the magic of forensic genealogy, constructing the man's family tree from his DNA.
09:43In 2022, they identified the Somerton man as a Melbourne electrical engineer named Carl Webb.
09:50His career, working to identify the Somerton man, he has cracked the case.
09:55And the professor joins us now from Adelaide.
09:57Derek, good morning to you.
09:58Congratulations, I believe, are also in order.
10:00This has been a long time coming, but finally, you've given us some answers.
10:05A sketch artist finds the Cali Doe.
10:07A frustrated family firing back a 36-year-old mystery finally solved,
10:12but the answer they'd been searching for overshadowed by what they call an outright lie.
10:17The body of a Brooksville teen who was missing for decades finally found.
10:20In 1979, the body of an unidentified Cali Doe was discovered in Caledonia, New York.
10:27Fast forward to 2014, when Laurel Knoll tried getting in contact with her old classmate Tammy Alexander.
10:34Knoll found Alexander's half-sister, Pamela Dyson, who said she hadn't seen Alexander in decades,
10:40believing that she had simply started a new life.
10:42The two realized that Alexander had never been reported missing, so they filed one.
10:46This case could have been solved long ago, had she had a parent, had she had a family,
10:53that cared enough to want to even make a missing persons report.
10:57This caught the attention of amateur forensic artist Carl Koppelman,
11:00who by chance had recently finished a facial reconstruction of the Cali Doe.
11:04He realized that Alexander bore a striking resemblance to his Cali Doe reconstruction,
11:09and alerted the authorities.
11:11They gathered DNA from Dyson, and confirmed that the Cali Doe was her missing half-sister.
11:16To finally be able to put a name to her, like I said, I can't even tell you how much it means,
11:22how proud I am of our sheriff's office.
11:25An events manager helps find J.C. Dugard.
11:28This was J.C. Lee Dugard when her childhood was stolen.
11:32This was J.C. Lee Dugard five years ago when she talked to me after her rescue.
11:37My world changed in an instant.
11:39And this is J.C. Lee Dugard today.
11:42On June 10th, 1991, 11-year-old J.C. Dugard was abducted in Meyer, California,
11:48and she wasn't seen again for nearly 20 years.
11:51In August of 2009, a man named Philip Garrido visited the campus of UC Berkeley with two young girls.
11:59His unusual behavior, coupled with the girls' odd mannerisms,
12:02concerned special events manager Lisa Campbell,
12:05who informed Officer Ali Jacobs of the UC Berkeley Police Department.
12:10Jacobs ran a background check and discovered that Garrido was a registered sex offender on parole.
12:15She falls to the ground unconscious.
12:17The man driving is Philip Garrido, a convicted sex offender sentenced to 50 years in prison,
12:23but released after just 11.
12:25In the car with him is wife Nancy.
12:28Prosecutors will say she helped scout the little girl as his prize.
12:32It is Nancy who has the 11-year-old child pinned to the backseat floor.
12:36She alerted parole officers and an investigation into Garrido was launched.
12:41It ultimately led to Dugard, who had been imprisoned by Garrido and his wife for 18 years.
12:47The two suspicious girls with Garrido were found to be his daughters with Dugard.
12:51There's no other word for it.
12:54Philip Garrido is a monster.
12:56What he's done is beyond belief.
12:58It's pure evil.
13:00Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel
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13:15The Zodiac Ciphers
13:17Many things about the Zodiac have entered the pop culture consciousness, including his use of creepy
13:41ciphers, which he sent to the media and law enforcement agencies.
13:44The first cipher was cracked very quickly, but funnily enough, not by professionals.
13:49Despite the combined efforts of the FBI and CIA, it was a couple from Salinas who finally
13:55cracked the code, having found it in the newspaper.
14:00Despite the excitement, the cipher revealed little meaningful information.
14:07And then that was it until 2020, when an international team composed of a mathematician,
14:12a programmer, and a software developer, finally cracked the Z340 cipher after half a century.
14:19Again, no meaningful information.
14:21And the other two ciphers, named Z13 and Z32, remain unsolved.
14:27Maybe one day.
14:28The chances of solving this after 50 years was next to zero.
14:32And so, being able to play a role in this is fantastic.
14:36Do you think you could have solved the crimes?
14:38Let us know in the comments below.
14:40Hey, take a gander at this code thing.
14:42Okay.
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