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Some mysteries keep investigators awake at night... Join us as we explore the most chilling details from unsolved true crime cases that continue to haunt us! From the Isdal Woman whose identity was meticulously erased to killers who lived inside their victims' homes, these disturbing facts reveal the darkest side of human nature. Which case will give you the most sleepless nights?
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00:00It gets really cold out here at night. We could freeze.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:08And today we're looking at 20 of the most disturbing facts about true crimes that have never been solved.
00:13A kidney had been removed from Catherine Eddow's body and apparently taken away by her murderer.
00:20Erased identity.
00:23It's a big mystery. We don't know.
00:26While many Jane Does are unidentified due to decomposition or lack of records, the Isdal woman was intentionally erased.
00:34When her charred body was found in Norway's Isdalen Valley, police discovered that the tags had been carefully cut out of every single piece of her clothing.
00:42Even more unnerving, the manufacturing marks on the bottom of her lotion bottles and combs had been scraped away.
00:48This seemed to be a professional liquidation.
00:50The meticulous removal of these tiny details suggests that she was being hunted by an organization that needed her to vanish completely.
00:58It turns a standard cold case into a chilling spy thriller, where the victim was potentially killed, burned and stripped of her name.
01:06Den ukjente kvinnen ble lagt i en umerket grav i Bergen. Bare politifolk var tilstede i begravelsen.
01:1446 år senere er Isdalskvinnen fortsatt en gåte.
01:19The ladle
01:20The murder of Lili Lindestrom in Stockholm is one of the strangest cases in European history.
01:31When police entered her apartment, they found her skull crushed.
01:35But the scene was suspiciously clean.
01:38Despite the violent nature of her death, there was almost no blood on the furniture or floor.
01:42However, her body was completely drained.
01:45The most harrowing piece of evidence was a silver-gray ladle found near the body, which contained traces of Lindestrom's blood.
01:52The implication is nauseating.
01:54The killer didn't just drain her, but they used her own kitchenware to drink her blood at the scene.
02:00It transforms a brutal homicide into a scene of gothic horror that feels too macabre to be real.
02:06But it is.
02:07We're going to harvest your blood.
02:10Every drop of it.
02:11Then bone marrow, organs, everything.
02:14The luckiest suspect ever.
02:16New hope in the search for an Orlando woman missing for nearly 20 years now.
02:20In the digital age, we expect cameras to solve pretty much everything.
02:24Which is why this fact is so frustratingly creepy.
02:27Jennifer Kessie disappeared on January 23rd, 2006, and police recovered CCTV footage of the person who parked her stolen car roughly a mile from her condo.
02:38The video is clear, and the suspect walks right past the camera in broad daylight.
02:42However, in a one-in-a-million stroke of bad luck, the suspect's face is perfectly obscured by the posts of a security gate in every single frame of the footage.
02:52They are hidden not by mask or shadow, but by the rhythm of their gait exactly matching the fence posts.
02:59It gives the impression of a phantom criminal who is supernaturally protected from being identified.
03:04Initially, the only clue police had was a picture of this mystery man, never identified because a pole blocked his face in every shot.
03:15The deleted clue.
03:16I remember calls that said that they were cut up into pieces.
03:23I remember one that said they were fed to the hogs.
03:26You know, horrifying things for a mom to hear.
03:29The disappearance of Cheryl Levitt, Susie Streeter, and Stacey McCall is a prime example of vanishing without a trace.
03:36But the most haunting detail is the what-if of it all.
03:39After the women vanished, friends began investigating the house.
03:43One friend reported answering a call from a man who made chaotic and sexual threats.
03:48Later, concerned friends accessed the answering machine and heard a strange message that they felt was important.
03:55But in the immense distress and confusion, they pressed the wrong button and permanently deleted the message.
04:00That split-second mistake erased the only potential recording of the perpetrator's voice.
04:05It's a heartbreaking detail that adds a layer of tragic human error to an already baffling mystery.
04:11I think this is my last candlelight vigil this time.
04:15I don't plan on doing another one.
04:18This is all I can handle.
04:2025 years.
04:21Jazz music.
04:22At which time he would spare anyone and everyone who was playing jazz music.
04:30Better safe than sorry.
04:32Have a jazz party.
04:33So it was a hot time in the old town that night.
04:37Serial killers usually work in the shadows.
04:39But the Axeman of New Orleans wanted the spotlight.
04:42After a series of brutal home invasions where he attacked sleeping victims with their own axes.
04:47He sent a letter to the press claiming to be a demon.
04:50He issued a surreal ultimatum.
04:52He would continue to kill, but he would spare anyone listening to jazz music.
04:57Sure enough, on that night, the city was filled with the sound of desperate jazz music.
05:02As people filled dance halls and clubs.
05:04It wasn't really a celebration.
05:06It was a citywide performance for an audience of one.
05:09Played solely to appease a monster who was listening in the dark.
05:12And then he just disappeared.
05:15That's one way to promote a genre of music.
05:17The axe murders seemed to cease just as mysteriously as they had started.
05:25And no closure to the case was brought.
05:30It sort of receded back into yet another New Orleans legend.
05:36The Stranger.
05:38What did they buy with the pound note?
05:40The children bought cakes and a pie for the man.
05:42That's what they said, a pie for the man.
05:44The kids were, the kids said that.
05:46They were heard saying this.
05:48They said it to the attendant at this shop.
05:50The Beaumont children didn't just vanish.
05:52They seemed to leave willingly.
05:54On January 26th, 1966, multiple witnesses saw three shy siblings playing happily at Glenelg Beach
06:02with a tall, blonde man in his 30s.
06:05The children appeared relaxed, which clashed with their reserved personalities.
06:09But the most chilling detail is the money.
06:11Jane, the eldest, went to a bakery and bought food with a one-pound note,
06:16which was far more money than her mother had given her.
06:18She also bought a meat pie, something the children never ate.
06:22This strongly implies the stranger had been grooming them,
06:25building enough trust to buy them lunch and possibly convince them he was a friend.
06:29Perhaps he was even Jane's, quote, boyfriend down the beach
06:33that Arna had innocently mentioned to her mother just days earlier.
06:37Have you been able to find an example anywhere in the world
06:41where three young children disappear and are never found again?
06:47Certainly not three siblings.
06:50And certainly I've never heard of anything like that since.
06:53The Relentless Calls.
06:55Hello?
06:57Hello?
06:57Hey, quiet!
07:01It's him again!
07:02Most stalkers stop after the victim is gone,
07:05but the killer of Dorothy Jane Scott was different.
07:08Months before she was abducted,
07:10Scott received anonymous calls from a man
07:12who tracked her daily movements and threatened to cut her up.
07:15And after Scott vanished from a hospital parking lot on May 28, 1980,
07:20the calls didn't stop.
07:21They just changed targets.
07:23For years, almost every Wednesday,
07:25the killer called Dorothy's grieving mother.
07:28He would either say nothing at all or just bask in the panic
07:31or taunt her by saying things like,
07:33I've got her or I killed her.
07:35The police traced the calls,
07:36but the killer always hung up just in time.
07:38Her remains were later found,
07:40but the killer never was.
07:41It is truly one of the cruelest cold cases on record.
07:44I'm going to kill you.
07:52The chaos next door.
07:54The alleged killers who lived here,
07:55did they have any problems with law enforcement prior?
07:58Yeah, both of them had records.
08:00The violence in Keddie Resort's cabin 28 were extreme.
08:05Three people were bound with electrical tape
08:07and bludgeoned with hammers so viciously
08:09that the stab wounds were almost an afterthought.
08:12Yet the most chilling fact is the silence.
08:15Sheila Sharp returned home to find the bodies,
08:17but she also found her two younger brothers and their friend
08:20alive in the adjacent bedroom.
08:22Bizarrely, they claimed to have slept through the entire event.
08:25Given the thin walls of the cabin
08:27and the chaotic nature of the murders,
08:29it's terrifying to consider how the killer maintained
08:32enough control to massacre three people
08:35without waking the children just a few feet away.
08:37Or worse, that the children did hear it
08:39and were just too paralyzed to act.
08:42We'll hear more from that tape at the bottom of this hour
08:44and from the person who found the bodies,
08:47a relative of the victims who tells us
08:49why she feels this cold case has been a cover-up
08:51from the very beginning.
08:53Fleeing the tent.
08:54Something drove the group from the tent so fast
08:57there wasn't even time to unbutton its entrance
08:59or put on the heavy winter gear
09:01necessary to survive the conditions outside.
09:04Everyone knows the story of the Dyatlov Pass,
09:07but forget the aliens or yetis.
09:09The physical evidence of the tent is the true nightmare.
09:12Investigators found that the tent had been cut open
09:14from the inside.
09:16These were experienced hardened hikers
09:18in the Russian wilderness.
09:19For them to destroy their only shelter
09:21and run into the freezing darkness without gear
09:23means they were faced with a threat so horrifying
09:26that freezing to death was the preferable option.
09:29The image of nine people frantically slicing through canvas
09:32to escape something inside their own camp
09:35is far scarier than any supernatural explanation.
09:38It suggests a sudden, overwhelming panic
09:41that we still cannot explain.
09:42That said, many experts suggest that the hikers were slammed
09:46by a sudden avalanche.
09:48A small slab avalanche released right above the tent
09:51and surprised them while they were sleeping.
09:54Some of them got injured
09:55and they had to cut the tent from the inside to escape.
10:00And without appropriate clothes,
10:01it was impossible for them to survive
10:04with these extreme weather conditions.
10:05The public display.
10:07In July, the headless body of a man
10:09was discovered in woods on Cleveland's west side.
10:13He'd been dead for two months.
10:15Then, in September, a man's severed torso
10:18was fished out of a stagnant waterway in Kingsbury Run.
10:22Neither victim was ever identified.
10:25The Cleveland Torso murderer
10:27was a Depression-era killer
10:28who treated his remains like puzzle pieces.
10:31He operated in the city's Kingsbury Run area
10:34and often left remains in plain sight
10:36to taunt the famous Elliot Ness, head of the Untouchables.
10:39Ness was tasked with finding the elusive killer
10:41and the killer knew it.
10:43So, on August 16th, 1938,
10:46he placed the dismembered remains of two victims
10:48at a dump site along the lakefront.
10:50This location was mere blocks away from Cleveland City Hall,
10:54but even more significant.
10:56It was clearly visible from the window
10:57of Ness's third floor office.
10:59The placement was interpreted by the press,
11:01the public, and Ness himself as a personal message.
11:04Just try to catch me.
11:06Unfortunately, he never did.
11:08Most of the victims lie in nameless graves.
11:11Their murders forever unsolved.
11:14Their stories forever untold.
11:17The warning note.
11:19The people in Locust Grove believe this is the worst thing
11:22that has ever happened to the town.
11:23And what kind of a person would do something like that?
11:26We obviously know that it's a person
11:28who doesn't belong to what we accept
11:30as the normal human race.
11:32We often comfort ourselves
11:33by thinking of violent crimes
11:35as random acts of opportunity.
11:37But the Camp Scott murders
11:38were meticulously premeditated.
11:40Months before three young girls
11:42were assaulted and murdered in their tent
11:43during a thunderstorm,
11:45a camp counselor found a handwritten note
11:46inside a raided cabin.
11:48The note explicitly read,
11:49We are on a mission to kill three girls in tent 1.
11:53Although the murders eventually took place in tent 8,
11:56the horror comes from the realization
11:58that the killer had been stalking the woods,
12:00watching the camp routine,
12:02and marking his targets
12:03long before the season began.
12:05He told them exactly what he was going to do,
12:07and then he waited patiently in the darkness to do it.
12:10It's not often that a killer tells people
12:12what they're going to do,
12:13and still get away with it.
12:15Hart was an escapee on the run
12:17when he was arrested for the murders in 1978
12:20after a 10-month-long manhunt.
12:22But a jury found him not guilty in 1979.
12:26The ransom note.
12:27So my first impression was
12:29that this guy wrote the Magna Carta.
12:32The killing of Jean Benet Ramsey
12:34is one of the most tantalizing American cold cases.
12:37And the ransom note found in the home
12:39is unique in the history of the FBI.
12:41It is incredibly long, rambling,
12:43and filled with movie quotes.
12:44Even weirder, it was written on the family's own notepad
12:48with the family's own sharpie,
12:50right there at the scene of the crime.
12:52So the killer sat in the quiet house,
12:54likely for over 20 minutes,
12:56composing a melodramatic narrative
12:57about a, quote,
12:58small foreign faction,
13:00while the family slept upstairs.
13:02It suggests a level of comfort and calmness in the home
13:05that completely contradicts the chaos of a botched kidnapping.
13:08Or, if you believe the other famous theory,
13:11it was written by Ramsey's own mother.
13:13That opens up a whole other can of worms.
13:16Does that look like her handwriting?
13:19Honestly, looking at that,
13:21she would always bug me about having good handwriting,
13:23and she would, like, make me rewrite stuff
13:27to try to get me to have good handwriting,
13:28and I think it's too sloppy.
13:31The covered mirrors.
13:33Eight people hacked to death while they sleep,
13:36six of them being children
13:38in this small 1900s home.
13:40After bludgeoning eight people to death in June 1912,
13:44the famed Villisca axe murderer didn't flee the scene.
13:48Instead, he lingered in the house
13:49to perform a strange and ritualistic cleanup.
13:52He took the clothes and linens from the drawers
13:54and systematically covered every single mirror
13:56and reflective surface in the house.
13:58He also covered the faces of the victims.
14:00It's a creepy detail,
14:02but it also offers a haunting glimpse
14:03into the killer's psychology.
14:04It suggests he was either afraid of the spirits
14:07lingering in the mirrors,
14:08or he was deeply ashamed of what he had done
14:11and was physically unable to look at himself
14:13after the slaughter.
14:14It adds a supernatural and superstitious layer
14:17to a crime that was already brutally violent.
14:19But the weirdest and strangest part is,
14:22is this killer didn't want to see himself,
14:25covered up all the mirrors in the entire house.
14:28Did he not want to see what a true monster looks like?
14:33And who was the killer?
14:35As an unsolved murder case,
14:37the suspect was never caught.
14:40The costume.
14:41Most people visualize the Zodiac killer
14:53as a shadowy gunman,
14:55but the Lake Berryessa attack
14:56reveals a much more theatrical horror.
14:58It was a bright, sunny day
15:00when victims Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard
15:02were approached by a man.
15:04He wasn't just wearing a ski mask,
15:06he was wearing a hand-sewn black executioner's hood
15:09with a square top
15:10and a white crosshair symbol
15:11emblazoned on the chest,
15:13worn over clip-on sunglasses.
15:15He had taken the time
15:17to stitch a complex supervillain costume
15:19to wear for an audience of two
15:21and an audience he fully planned to murder.
15:24However, Hartnell survived,
15:26recalling the tale of the weird executioner
15:28who murdered his girlfriend.
15:30The Zodiac was killing to build a myth,
15:32wanting his victims to see the persona
15:34in full regalia before they died.
15:36You know, just because people are going to ask,
15:38was that thing even loaded?
15:44Grooming.
15:45There was a wide range of emotions
15:47as they unveiled the new engraving
15:49and headstone,
15:50all of this happening
15:51on the day Joseph Augustus Zarelli
15:53would have turned 70 years old.
15:56The discovery of four-year-old
15:57Joseph Augustus Zarelli
15:59is one of America's saddest cases.
16:01While the violence was severe,
16:03the forensic details also reveal
16:05a disturbing level of intimacy.
16:07The medical examiner noted
16:08that the boy's hair had been hastily cut
16:10and his fingernails trimmed shortly after death.
16:13In fact, the hair clippings
16:14were still clinging to his body,
16:16and his hand and foot were wrinkled,
16:18suggesting he had recently been submerged in water.
16:21The implication is terrible to consider.
16:23The killer murdered the boy,
16:24then groomed and washed his body,
16:27perhaps in an attempt to hinder identification.
16:30And it did work to a certain degree.
16:32Zarelli was found in 1957,
16:34and he wasn't identified until 2022.
16:37In his very short life,
16:39it was apparent that this child
16:40experienced horrors that no one,
16:43no one should ever be subjected to.
16:46The Perfect Condition
16:47In November 1872,
16:50during the worst weather since records began,
16:53hundreds of vessels were lost
16:55or abandoned in the Atlantic.
16:57One of these would become a legend.
16:59When the De Gratia found the abandoned Mary Celeste
17:02drifting in the Atlantic,
17:04she was still in perfect sailing condition.
17:06There were six months of food and water on board,
17:08and the cargo of industrial alcohol
17:10was largely untouched.
17:11Even the crew's pipes and tobacco were left behind,
17:14items no sailor would willingly part with.
17:17However, the lifeboat was missing,
17:19suggesting that they abandoned ship
17:20for some mysterious reason.
17:22So the 10 people on board
17:24left a perfectly good ship,
17:26leaving behind safety and comfort
17:27for the dangers of the rugged Atlantic.
17:29Why?
17:30We still don't know.
17:32Maybe a mass hallucination
17:33or a sudden psychological terror
17:35that convinced experienced sailors
17:37that their solid ship was a death trap,
17:39leading them to jump willingly
17:41into the oblivion of the sea.
17:42We're trying to understand
17:44why an experienced captain
17:45would do the one thing
17:46that really is unthinkable,
17:47which is to leave your vessel.
17:49Experienced person would do it only
17:50if he thought the vessel was going down.
17:52Eating ice cream.
17:53The Setagaya family murder
17:55is a nightmare of intrusion.
17:57After brutally stabbing
17:58a family of four in Tokyo,
18:00the mysterious killer
18:01stayed in the house for several hours
18:03and began treating it like his own home.
18:06He went to the kitchen,
18:07took four cups of ice cream
18:08from the freezer,
18:09and ate them,
18:10even crushing the cups
18:12and leaving them on the floor
18:13near the bodies.
18:14He then used the family computer
18:16to browse the internet
18:17for theater tickets
18:18and even used their toilet
18:20without flushing,
18:21leaving precious DNA behind.
18:23Unfortunately,
18:24this was no use
18:25and the perp was never caught.
18:26The image of the killer
18:27casually relaxing,
18:29snacking,
18:29and surfing the web
18:30while the family lay dead
18:32in the rooms around him
18:33shows a level of detachment
18:34and entitlement
18:35that is truly alien.
18:37A Carved Smile
18:39Elizabeth Short's murder
18:48is the ultimate example
18:50of a body being treated
18:51as an object.
18:52When she was found
18:53in Limert Park in 1947,
18:56the witness initially thought
18:57she was a discarded mannequin
18:58because the body was so pale.
19:00While the bisection
19:01of her torso is famous,
19:02the Glasgow smile
19:03is the detail
19:04that haunts people.
19:06The killer took a knife
19:06and slashed the corners
19:08of Short's mouth
19:08upward towards her ears,
19:10freezing her face
19:11in a permanent,
19:12gruesome grin.
19:13Furthermore,
19:14her bisected body
19:15was completely drained
19:16of blood
19:17and scrubbed clean
19:18with gasoline
19:19before being posed
19:20with her arms raised.
19:22The killer turned
19:23an innocent woman
19:23into a grotesque art piece
19:25for the public,
19:26stripping away her humanity
19:27and forcing a smile
19:29onto her face.
19:30In terms of the nitty-gritty,
19:32the cause of death
19:32is either the mouth wound here
19:34or she was beaten to death
19:36with something like
19:37a baseball bat.
19:39The kidney.
19:40Try to stop him, Inspector.
19:41This arrived
19:42this afternoon's post.
19:44While Jack the Ripper's
19:46brutal mutilations
19:46are well known,
19:48the From Hell letter
19:49takes the horror
19:49to a visceral level.
19:51In October 1888,
19:53George Lusk,
19:54head of the Whitechapel
19:55Vigilance Committee,
19:56received a small wooden box
19:58in the mail.
19:58Inside,
19:59he found one half
20:00of a human kidney.
20:02It was accompanied
20:02by a letter,
20:03riddled with misspellings
20:04and smeared with blood,
20:06in which the killer
20:07taunted Lusk
20:07and claims to have eaten
20:09the other half
20:09of the kidney.
20:10Medical professionals
20:11at the time
20:12confirmed that the organ
20:13was a human kidney
20:14consistent with the victim
20:15Catherine Eddowes,
20:16who suffered
20:17from Bright's disease.
20:18The police received
20:19thousands of letters
20:20like this
20:21during Jack's reign,
20:22but this is one of the few
20:23that experts think
20:24may have actually been
20:25from the killer.
20:27Signed.
20:28Catch me when you can,
20:30Mr. Lusk.
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20:47Living with the family.
20:49This is the absolute pinnacle
20:50of disturbing true crime facts.
20:53On March 31st, 1992,
20:55six people were murdered
20:56in a small Bavarian farmstead.
20:58Days before the murders,
21:00the father noticed
21:01footprints in the snow
21:02leading from the forest
21:03directly to the house,
21:05but none leading back out.
21:06It was also around this time
21:08that the family noted
21:08strange occurrences
21:09around the home.
21:11A Munich newspaper
21:12was found on the property,
21:13despite the family
21:14not subscribing to one.
21:15The lock on the farm's
21:17tool shed had been broken,
21:18and the family consistently
21:20heard weird noises
21:21in the attic.
21:22Despite this,
21:23they never reported
21:24anything to the police.
21:25On April 4th,
21:26the family's bodies
21:27were found by a neighbor,
21:29suggesting that their killer
21:30had already been living
21:31with them for quite some time.
21:33What do you think
21:34is the most disturbing detail?
21:36Let us know
21:36in the comments below.
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