unsolved mysteries with potential ties to scandals

susan sue taraskowitz was one of three children and grew up in saugus massachusetts she was very creative and as a teenager she helped make halloween costumes for the younger children in her family's neighborhood after she graduated from saugus high school she developed her creative aspirations further through higher education attending a local community college and then the massachusetts college of art sue had a dream of one day becoming a cartoonist knowing that an art career might not fully support her financially she took a job with northwest airlines at logan international airport after graduating from college she wanted to work on the ramp but she had to start out at the airline in other positions sue began her career at northwest leaning cabins and working the ticket counter but quickly progressed with the company within five years not only was she working on the ramp but she was a ramp supervisor sue reported to work for her 11 p.m to 7 a.m shift on saturday september 12 1992. around 1 a.m on september 13th 27 year old sue left work to pick up some sandwiches for her and some of her co-workers she never returned none of her co-workers did anything when she failed to come back for the rest of her shift which was something that she had never done before during her years with the company when sue wasn't home that sunday morning her parents assumed that she had gone straight to church they left home for the day and when they came back they looked in sue's room and saw clues on the floor they assumed that they had been left there recently and that sue had come home and then left for her next shift while they were out of the house sue's mother marlene typically saw sue coming home from her chefs as she was leaving to go to work so she was slightly concerned when she left home at 8 30 a.m on monday the 14th without seeing her daughter after marlene arrived at work she got a phone call from her other daughter debbie debbie had just gotten a phone call from someone at northwest asking to speak with sue sue had still not come home even though she was due to go with debbie to a fitting for her wedding dress later that day sue's car was found outside an auto body shop on route 1a in the city of revere north of the airport sue's body was discovered in the trunk of the car she had been severely beaten as well as stabbed sue had loved the cartoon character snoopy and had a massive collection of snoopy memorabilia she had the opportunity to meet snoopy's creator charles schultz seven months before her murder after her death he drew a snoopy for sue that was put on her gravestone sue was a valuable employee and had advanced to a supervisor position with northwest many of her co-workers appreciated how hard she worked and how far out of her way she would go to help her co-workers however her work life was far from perfect zu had to fight for her job and fight to keep it she worked mainly with men and in a position traditionally held by a man when she finally became a ground services employee working on the ramp as she had hoped she was only the second woman northwest had given that position to at logan international she had to fight to finally be promoted to a supervisor position there becoming the first woman to do so she had initially been passed over for a supervisor position in favor of a less qualified male co-worker who had illegally bid for the job sue was subjected to widespread sexual harassment and threats from a large group of her male co-workers while working in ground services they left filthy messages about sue and photographs of her throughout the airport and urinated on her locker she received phone calls late at night and a male co-worker smashed her radio following her promotion her locker was also vandalized with graffiti an image of a casket with sue's name on it sue kept a detailed diary of eight months worth of these incidents although according to some of her co-workers the harassment continued on well beyond the period sue detailed in her diary sue filed reports with both her union and with northwest but the behavior continued on unchecked sue assumed that she was being targeted by her co-workers simply because they did not want to be working with were for a woman and that the harassment was being carried out in hopes of getting her to quit her job she was determined to not be forced out despite the emotional toll that the harassment was taking on her no one was going to take the job sue had fought so hard for away from her sue's mother marlene has come to believe that there was an entirely different motive for at least some of the leader harassment as well as for sue's murder not long after sue was killed several of her co-workers were arrested for being part of a credit card theft ring the arrests were made as part of a federal investigation that had begun in the summer of 1992 baggage handlers on the ramp were stealing new credit cards that arrived at the airport through mail deliveries on northwest aircraft they were then either using the cards themselves or selling them the individuals involved in the ring ultimately stole more than seven million dollars from the various credit card companies sue was not involved in this illegal activity however the fact that she was a supervisor meant that she could make decisions that would make continuing the scheme more difficult for example if she made sure the employees she was supervising were always at their assigned work site they would not have time to sneak off to hide the stolen cards there is no evidence that sue was aware of the thefts but if the individuals committing them thought that she was they may have increased their efforts to harass her with the aim of getting her to quit not just because she was a woman but because she was a threat to their criminal activities three out of the ten employees who were ultimately sentenced in the case had been named by sue in her diary as some of the co-workers who had been harassing her while the incidents listed in the diary pre-date sue's promotion these men's motives for harassing sue could have shifted over time if the members of the theft ring became more convinced that sue was on to them keeping her from reporting their illegal activity could have been a potential motive in her murder the taraskova's family sued northwest airlines for sexual harassment following sue's murder three years after her death northwest settled with the family for 75 000 they also agreed to provide 250 000 as a reward for information that leads to the arrest of sue's killer while the airline no longer exists the reward fund does sue's father and brother have passed away leaving her mother marlene and sister debbie as the main champions for justice in her case zoo now has two nieces and a nephew who have been raised on stories of their aunt sue and assurances of how much she would have loved them marlene regularly gives interviews and has made two videos with the massachusetts state police to keep the case active in people's memory and to ask for witnesses to come forward even after almost 30 years of looking for answers her dedication to her daughter's case has not wavered i am a very healthy woman and i am not going away she said in 2014 speaking to her daughter's killer she said you are going to look over your shoulder until the day that i go but i will get you and i will get justice for my susan 38 year old jonathan oj had thursday june 11 1998 off from work he was a deputy of the los angeles county sheriff's department a canine handler with the elite special enforcement bureau john planned to spend the majority of the day at devil's punch bowl natural area some 20 miles southeast of the home he shared with his wife deborah and five-year-old daughter chloe in palmdale california john was able to handle his prestigious but exceptionally challenging position because of his background as a paratrooper with the army's special forces unit and his commitment to remaining in peak physical condition he was a skilled runner who trained in rugged remote locations and knew how to survive in the wilderness he had just completed his sixth 50-mile ultra marathon a few days prior and was at the punch bowl to train for a 100 mile run he would be undertaking in just two weeks participating in the western states 100-mile endurance run was a long-held dream of john's and he had been training for it daily and organizing a support team to assist him for the over 20 hours he would spend running the mountains south of the devil's punch bowl were a regular training site for him since he was familiar with them and they helped prepare him for the difficult terrain he would be running over during the endurance run in northern california it is believed that jonathan parked his truck and began his run around 11 45 am shortly after he began his run he encountered a group of elementary school students john and his canine partner bosco had recently spoken to the class at their school so he stopped to briefly speak with the teacher he told the teacher that he would be running to the summit of mount baden powell which was roughly 20 miles away and back returning to the parking lot around sundown two park employees saw a man believed to be john in the park over the following several hours and a third saw a man with a backpack like the one john had taken with him walking towards the parking lot around 6 pm jonathan did not return home as planned however and his wife called the palmdale sheriff's station to report him missing at 11 pm two deputies found john's white ford pickup truck still in the parking lot and the search and rescue squad with the department was called in to look for john by 11 30. multiple other organizations and agencies would join the effort the following morning even as the search for jon went on for over a day there was still hope that he would be found alive because he was so well trained in outdoor survival and physically fit however as several more days went on with no sign of him despite extensive aerial and ground searches the optimism began to wane six days after john went missing the sergeant leading the search announced to the search teams that it was believed that jon had committed suicide while the official search ended friends of john's and members of law enforcement continued looking for him on their own the closest thing to physical evidence that john took his own life was the fact that his off-duty firearm which he did not normally take with him on runs was unaccounted for a local resident had also reported hearing what they believed to be a gunshot in the early evening hours of june 11th the suicide theory was best supported by john's mental state at the time of his disappearance john had been going through a difficult time his marriage was falling apart and he and deborah had gone to their first to join therapy session the day before he vanished on the morning of june 11th he had told debra to have a nice life and tell chloe that he loved her before he left to drive out to the site for his run at the time deborah thought that these statements indicated that he was through with their marriage although she realized that they could have indicated that he was suicidal after he failed to return home most of john's loved ones do not believe that he would have taken his own life however most importantly he was dedicated to his daughter chloe he was also excited about a new romantic relationship he was pursuing john was tired of living in southern california and had been looking into moving to a remote part of alaska where he would be surrounded by few people and many opportunities for outdoor activities john's sister believes he may have staged his disappearance and left for alaska under a new name one of the other reasons john had wanted to leave california was the explosion of crime in the more rural areas of the antelope valley six violent drug rings were producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in the area these drug rings and the investigation into them by the authorities would prove to have numerous uncorroborated connections to john's disappearance within the first week of john going missing two individuals with ties to biker gangs producing meth in the area told authorities that john had come across a meth lab that was operating underground near the area where he had last been heading during his run in their words john was then taken care of by early 2000 nine more individuals connected to the meth trade had provided the same story some of them also reported that the resident deputy assigned to the area that included devil's punchbowl natural area had been involved in john's disappearance a los angeles county sheriff's deputy being involved with criminal activity was not inconceivable 35 deputies from the department had been indicted for stealing millions of dollars from drug dealers in the early 1990s other deputies were arrested for unrelated crimes and the fbi had video evidence of other criminal activity committed by deputies the sheriff at the time had asked the fbi for assistance in removing the corrupt deputies from his department but he passed away in 1998 by that time rumors were circulating that deputies were working with the drug rings warning them in advance of any planned reads homicide detective larry brandenburg learned of john's potential murder and the alleged involvement of the resident deputy in december of 1999 he found a location near devil's punch bowl that could have been the site of the underground meth lab the informants had described and collected evidence that seemingly corroborated some of their statements based on these findings he applied for a search warrant to examine the phone and financial records of the local resident deputy to see if his involvement in the case could be corroborated the district attorney signed off on the warrant but when brandenburg took the paperwork to his boss for his signature not only did he refuse to sign it but he ultimately took brandenburg off the case when he tried to pursue it further during his investigation detective brandenburg had asked deputy darren hager to speak with one of his informants about the resident deputy's possible involvement with drug rings the informant claimed that the resident deputy was involved with drug trafficking and potentially john's disappearance when hager reported this information to his superiors he was told not to investigate any wrongdoing by other deputies or john's disappearance information about the former was to go to internal affairs and information about the latter should be sent to detective brandenburg in march of 2000 hager had been assigned to a joint task force with the drug enforcement agency operation silent thunder as it was called spent almost a year infiltrating local drug rings setting up wiretaps and obtaining informants the operation resulted in the arrests of hundreds of people who were prosecuted by the state of california 32 federal convictions and five out of the six area kingpins going to prison in 2002 hager traveled to washington dc to be presented with the dea's administrators award in honor of his work on the operation during the course of the operation hager had witnessed specific incidents of deputy misconduct and learned of specific connections the resident deputy alleged to be involved in john's appearance may have had to a local drug dealer he also had three new witnesses provide information about john's disappearance one of them claimed to have witnessed his murder one claimed to know where his body was buried and the third said that he had heard screaming after he saw john walk in the direction of two armed bikers the day he went missing as instructed hager passed all of this information on to other departments the homicide captain who had previously refused to sign off on detective brandenburg's application for a search warrant refused to meet with members of the task force to discuss the new leads or assign a detective to follow up on them in june of 2002 the resident deputy suspected of wrongdoing and five other deputies filed a complaint against hager claiming that he had used falsified documents and warrants to defame the resident deputy during his time on the task force within a week the department concluded that all of the witnesses hager had identified who had been vetted by the dea and were being used in federal court cases were all unreliable and that john o.j had taken his own life because of his marital problems haggar was reassigned while he was investigated by internal affairs for the next 11 months at the end of the investigation hager faced two charges falsifying information and conducting a personnel investigation of the resident deputy the first charge was based on errors and summaries haggar had not written the standard punishment for these offenses under the disciplinary guidelines of the department was a 15-day suspension instead hager was fired despite having been rated as outstanding during his three previous performance reviews with the department haggar could not find work due to the nature of these charges and eventually filed for bankruptcy protection he filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against both los angeles county and the los angeles county sheriff's department alleging that his termination was whistleblower retaliation a jury awarded him 4.5 million dollars in lost earnings and damages the county and department appealed the judgment for the following three years but eventually had to pay hager 2.5 million dollars plus interest which made his final payout around three million dollars haggar no longer feeling safe within the jurisdiction of the los angeles county sheriff's department has since moved out of the area in 2015 john's wife debra was homeless and living in her car supporting herself with only a 950 a month disability check she receives because she cannot work due to an extreme form of obsessive-compulsive disorder and his daughter chloe was living in los angeles with her boyfriend and his mother in march of 2020 a woman named chloe oj who was the same age as john's daughter passed away in idaho although it is unconfirmed if this woman was in fact john's daughter or just another woman with the same name in the more than 20 years since john disappeared no sign of him or his remains has ever been found do

Channel: heavy casefiles.

Views: 40,395

Rating: 4.9131145 out of 5

Keywords: cold cases, unsolved, mysteries, mystery, true, documentary

Id: VUZPoYCHVfc

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020