Unsolved True Crime Season 6 Marathon

[Music] this week on the season premiere of buzzfeed unsolved we look into the death of edgar allan poe a case as mysterious and macabre as the infamous writer's stories jesus season premiere i'm enthusiastic i don't know much about edgar allan poe i'm really bringing the energy yeah that's good that's good he wrote some fun yarns a gloomy fella didn't know he had an untimely death quite honestly i don't know seems like a cool guy they named a football team after him sorta they did the ravens i didn't realize that until a few years ago i was like i don't think they named it after the baltimore ravens they did not name that was from baltimore are you kidding me wait why are you kidding me yes that's the whole thing holy [ __ ] i just thought they liked rape and raven's a scary bird it is this is the this is the second time we've talked about like a tortured artist type when we did uh old vincent back in the day was poe truly tortured tortured i'd say he did kind of look the part yeah he kind of looks like like but you're dawning right now facial hair wise i don't hate to hear it don't hate to hear it edgar ellen poe was born on january 19th 1809 in boston to a pair of actors elizabeth arnold poe and david poe jr within the first three years of his life both his parents were dead and the we po was brought to richmond to live with his presumed godfather john allen how do you kind of pursue a presumed godfather i don't know people get kind of fast and loose with that right what year is it it says 1809 18 00. i've got other stuff to worry about tbs out there they're like oh yeah so we definitely will pick a godfather don't worry about it uh oh we're dead now in 1826 poe enrolled at the university of virginia where he was an excellent student though john allen was a wealthy tobacco merchant he was also a tightwad who sent poe to school with less than a third of the money needed to try to make up for the shortfall poe started gambling as you might expect this strategy didn't quite pay off and by the end of his first term poe was so poor he was burning his furniture to stay warm i think it's okay that john allen wasn't just handing him piles of money what does he want i mean you could hand him the adequate amount no make him work for it make them strong jesus christ well i mean you know get him out there get him working get him burning his own furniture i agree teach him a few lessons the the experience of losing both of his parents probably didn't make him strong enough i could i could walk back on some of this okay okay at this time alan was actually angry at the young student for gambling while poe was likewise upset at his godfather for refusing to contribute more to his education with no other options poe was forced to drop out of school thus began a tumultuous time in poe's life upon returning to richmond poe discovered his fiancee almira shelton had become engaged to another man despairing poe moved to boston and enlisted in the us army to support himself so he could write his godfather however then bought poe's way out of the military which was apparently something you could do poe then enrolled in west point only to be expelled eight months later after making himself absent from all drills and classes for a week with nowhere to go poe attempted to seek out his father's relatives in baltimore where he was promptly robbed by one of his cousins bad bad cousin i don't that's rough this guy is being followed by a dark cloud yeah it just seems like what do you do when when life throws curveballs at you i know you have a nice cry you you film a gaunt season of buzzfeed unsolved supernatural card yeah i make buzzfeed unsolved that's what i do finally poe fell into the care of his aunt maria clem and established some semblance of stability poe started to publish poems around the time when he moved in with his aunt poe also began publishing short stories one of which won a contest that grew his notoriety and led to an editorial position at the southern literary messenger in richmond gotta feel good right yeah win a contest if all this happened to me my life is just the pits and then i won a contest i'd be like back on top it still feels like the the scales have not tipped but yeah but this is the beginning it is the beginning it's the beginning this is a little uh a little pebble on the scale that's true night's darkest before the dawn poe's luck was finally turning around in addition to his newfound career attraction poe had fallen in love with a girl named virginia grossly virginia was his cousin even grosslier virginia was half his age despite these circumstances poe and virginia married in richmond in 1835 when poe was 27 and virginia was 13. can i say yeah can't be doing that you know obviously but it is a time it is a thing of the times you can't be doing that i mean you see what i'm saying though right we don't need to condemn from our vantage point in history and so we do condemn wholeheartedly while their marriage was said to have been a happy one it was also largely marked by money troubles you're telling me she wasn't out there in the uh i mean raking in the dollars as a you know a secretary somewhere turning into her finger paintings to city hall getting a nice little quarter poke continued moving about the eastern seaboard piecing together different writing jobs but finding it nearly impossible to make an adequate living when his first collection of short stories tales of the grotesque and arabesque which contained his famous story the fall of the house of usher was first published in 1840 po's pay wasn't even in money but instead 25 copies of his own book five years later in 1845 the new york mirror published poe's poem the raven which catapulted him to national acclaim five years later five years later rough that's five years five years ago we started working at buzzfeed i know imagine or even five years later imagine all we have to show for it is your video dogs watching tv for the first time it's a classic a copy of it an impact it's a classic i don't know why that is glued to every internet biography of me because it's amazing it's always like shane midday a producer of dogs watch television for the first time it is a good video for the record and his dogs do watch tv and that's all you have is that mov file for five years that's all you have to show for it no money not bad just a copy of the video a cat comes on screen and they get it they're like for a brief period poe was finally living relatively comfortably in the life of edgar allan poe however tragedy was never far off in the winter of 1847 virginia died of tuberculosis at age 24. poe was devastated and literary critics assumed that poe himself would be dead before long in two years time they'd be proven right by 1849 poe was said to have embarked on a wild spree presumably relating to alcohol abuse by the summer however he'd made his way back to sobriety back to richmond and back to his first fiance amyra shelton so is he going back to her now with like a copy of the raven be like how about this now huh would you would you give elmira a second chance no you wouldn't no you don't believe in the capacity to forgive she i mean i would forgive but i wouldn't forget they were soon and once again engaged with plans to marry after poe returned from some business in philadelphia on september 27th poe left richmond by steemer stopping the next day in baltimore for the next five days poe's whereabouts are unknown easy to disappear back then though is the thing not hard yes it is it was easier to do nowadays we got this uh surveillance surveillance date yeah you go get your money out of the atm and they i don't care i'm on the internet you know everybody everybody's on famousbirthdays.com that's right where it says that i am the producer of dogs watch television there it is we're back on october 3rd poe was found by an employee of the baltimore sun joseph w walker delirious immobile and dressed in shabby clothing poe was discovered in a gutter outside of a public house that was being used as a polling place what do you think about polls being in bars do you think that helps voter turnout yeah that's actually not a bad idea it is right i thought that was a pretty good idea he's pretty good you got to get the kids out there oh my god uh register to vote that's a good debt this is a good one be registered to vote talk to your friends about registering to vote scream at them and celebrate with a nice brewski yeah if you're if you're if you're over 21. a po essay wrapping at death's chamber door poe was taken to washington college hospital that afternoon assumed to be drunk the weak and weary po was brought to a special room reserved for patients ill from intoxication poe never fully regained consciousness to be able to detail what had happened to him dr john j moran wrote to poe's aunt mother-in-law maria clem that poe's last days were filled with quote vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls his face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration end quote on october 7th five hours past midnight dreary at the age of 40 edgar allan poe died some reports claiming he used his last breath to calmly say quote lord help my poor soul end quote the official cause of death was fernidus or brain swelling poe was buried in a baltimore graveyard two days later in an unmarked grave with little ceremony and nothing more it's a sad story and hopefully that doesn't happen to any of us or the people we care about i would hate to sweat for that long which part not getting married or dying in a gutter or getting buried in an unmarked grave all of the above sure yeah all of them yeah i mean if you don't want to get married live your life if you maybe you don't have a significant other it's not the end of the world you know find some hobbies just trying to make everybody feel good out there with poe unable to explain what happened while in the hospital and no autopsy ever performed theories abound regarding what happened to the famous gothic writer today we're going to address some of the most interesting ones so without further ado let's get into the theories our first theory is that edgar allan poe died of some alcohol-related syndrome such as dipsomania alcohol dehydrogenase or delirium tremens poe had a problem with alcohol yeah sounds like it yeah not only did he possibly struggle with alcoholism but it appears he was genetically predisposed to not be able to handle booze according to chris sempner curator of the poe museum quote it has been documented that after a glass of wine he was staggering drunk his sister had the same problem it seems to be something hereditary end quote some say frenitis may have been a common euphemism to politely attribute a death to alcohol a few months before his death poe had a traumatic experience after becoming ill from drinking in richmond according to biographer susan archer tally weiss poe's doctor apparently warned him that quote another such attack would prove fatal end quote this may have contributed to him becoming an active and vocal member of the temperance movement for the months leading up to his demise if poe had fallen off the wagon during his five-day disappearance that could have explained the disheveled and terminal state when he was found temperance was dumb as hell can i say that you know don't why you gotta be just because you don't like a chili boy here and there you gotta go tell other people how to live their lives you know i don't like heroin i don't think it's them getting on what you say what are you wait what i mean i don't wanna why would i say i don't like heroin that doesn't mean why did you have to point that out how much heroin have you done today none i don't who are you trying to convince here i don't know i don't enjoy this joke our second theory is that poe was fatally beaten perhaps after drinking since poe would become inebriated after only one drink he would have been an easy target for ruffians indeed if poe was beaten and robbed that would explain his shabby state of dress as poe hadn't been known to wear ragged cheap ill-fitting clothes there are even a couple theories that a potential beating would have been because of a woman biographer e oak smith wrote in an 1867 article quote at the instigation of a woman who considered herself injured by him poe was cruelly beaten blow upon blow by a ruffian who knew of no better mode of avenging supposed injuries it is well known that a brain fever followed end quote in author john evangelist walsh's book from 2000 he posited that the brothers of poe's again fiance almira shelton drugged poe with alcohol and beat him to death according to walsh shelton's three brothers had warned poe against marrying their sister walsh suggests that poe had made it to philadelphia where he was ambushed by shelton's brothers but would have then disguised himself in shabby clothing and gone into hiding walsh contends that when poe tried to sneak back to richmond shelton's brothers would have found him in baltimore beaten him and drugged him with alcohol knowing it would have made him deathly ill it was a meek well-dressed man who wears cloaks if you wanted him dead you didn't have to get he was like a weird little spindly man with the head the size of a pumpkin you've seen him or maybe i'm just thinking of the phone call would you not want him would i not want what po has a brother-in-law no i wouldn't he's a would you be here i would not beat him to death i can't even imagine you're throwing a punch no i mean neither if i'm ever gonna throw a punch i i could only imagine you like backhanding somebody no no like like a lord it would be mid-conversation and i'd maybe set it up a little bit like there's there's a great line from the oc where ryan yes the main character who's like from the rough and tumble parts of yeah yeah he says you know what i like about rich kids and the rich kid says he's like huh he goes nothing and he walks away that's what i do baby but i might kiss my fist first i might be like you know so your only fight that you've ever imagined is you sucker punching someone yeah oh i'm a sucker puncher all right i'm a coward baby that i'd get on a train and i'd move to a different city and i changed my name our third theory is edgar allan poe was the victim of cooping a violent form of voter fraud that was extremely common in baltimore at the time cooping was when gangs would kidnap a victim and force him to vote multiple times in a variety of disguises strange that's strange when crimes were like this just walking in there with a little groucho marx yeah very odd yeah it's weird it's a weird time also it's a crime and yet these people need to have some sort of trunk full of disguises walking around with a carrot like like hardened criminals be like we got you now put on this feather boa okay okay now the now the pink number the pink put that one on that one with the spaghetti could you audition those glasses i don't know if that frame fits on off glass you know what let's go with the other one i was right the first time i ever thought it this was good this was good character work for us let's keep going this theory makes a lot of sense as it explains why poe was not in his normal clothes and why he was found outside of a polling place during this time voters were often given some alcohol after voting as a celebration because of poe's genetic sensitivity to alcohol if he had been forced to vote several times thus having to drink multiple drinks it could have explained the drunken stupor he was discovered in biographer j.h ingram during the late 1870s received several letters that caused him to believe this was how poe met his demise a member of the faculty at johns hopkins william hand brown wrote ingram saying quote the general belief here is that poe was seized by one of these gangs cooped stupefied with liquor dragged out and voted and then turned adrift to die end quote if you're gonna kidnap someone to coop them yes wouldn't you want to i don't know how recognizable he was but maybe don't pick edgar allen yeah i don't think these people were beating up edgar allan poe and then one of them stopped midway and was like wait a second this dude wrote the raven this guy wrote follow the house of usher haven't you guys ever read that it's incredible it's a beautiful story you know what i'm down here i'm sorry man get up get up get up we love your pros we're sorry about it we're really good we'll take it easy i don't think that's what happened i think it was just yeah it was just he was a guy yeah okay our final theory is that edgar allan poe died as the result of a brain tumor which could have explained his odd behavior in the days leading up to his death though poe was buried in an unmarked grave two days after he died 26 years later a statue was erected to honor his gravesite during which his coffin was dug up so his remains could be exhumed i used the term honor loosely as the marker lists his birthday as january 20th the day after poe was actually born they tried to remedy their mistake from before with the unmarked grave and then they uh they beeped it real hard beefed it literally etching it in stone you don't want to double check that i guess not imagine if your headstone said like ryan bergara loving wife i mean yeah sure you wouldn't care yeah i mean i'm dead so yeah i mean yeah i mean you know my outlook on things it's like whatever leave me in the street for the dogs to pick up my bones that's another thing too i've always wondered with graves like when people leave things at the grave like flowers or even like food or things that they liked yeah if you die isn't your grave like one of the last places you'd want to go check out i mean that's where your body is maybe your spirit resistance dia de los muertos it's like the cemetery has become like a fun that is i saw coco it's just i don't want to hang out at a cemetery if i'm coming back to earth but the cemetery should be a happy place let's make them happy places i'm just saying that most times ghosts haunt the house that they were in or where they died they don't work or whatever is convenient for the story yeah i know i'm gonna rip that mustache off your face i'd love to see you try understandably poe's coffin and corpse were in terrible condition as workers tried to move the coffin it fell apart spilling poe's remains this guy can't catch a breeze this is comical at this point it's what you get from marrying your 13 year old cousin jesus man you can't i can't say you can't oh i can't say that i don't know if that's fair you can't say that i think it's how dare you judge him for marrying his 13 year old he was historically accepted at the time i don't care i judge thee i can say that without condoning it i judge workers noted that there was a mass rolling around inside the poet's skull at the time news articles reported it was poe's brain dried and hardened in the skull end quote claiming quote the cerebral mass evidenced no sign of disintegration or decay though of course it is somewhat diminished end quote so what happens to the brain i have no idea that's gnarly man i do not think the brain hardens into a funny little ball i don't think that's what happens wouldn't it be funny if a funny little mouse came out i guess however if there truly was a mass remaining in poe's skull it is unlikely to have been his brain soft brain tissue would have been some of the first to decay after poe's death it is much more likely any mass would have been a tumor which could have calcified and hardened after the death expert testimony also suggests poe had been told earlier in his life by a doctor that he believed poe had a lesion on his brain that explained his adverse reaction to alcohol well i will say that the tumor does explain a lot of things it makes things make more sense because like all the sobering up and all that stuff it was you know it was all nullified by the fact that he just had a tumor that's why he wasn't getting anything i mean they also said he was talking to specters in his final hour you know it could have could have explained some we talked about could explain some hallucinations or things that um might not actually be there well his illusionations weren't caught on campus what his hallucinations weren't caught on camera hallucinations you idiot unbelievable this is not the season to talk about ghosts also [ __ ] you as you may have noticed none of our theories rules out the others edgar allan poe may very well have been beaten and kidnapped in a cooping scheme sent to a stupor with alcohol after voting and unable to recover due to a brain tumor or any combination thereof wow that's fun i mean sad but we've never had have we ever had a theory a a case where the theories kind of serve as like a mad lib of sorts or like yeah where all theories are possible but could also all have contributed at the same time yeah interesting other theories such as rabies the flu carbon monoxide poisoning syphilis epilepsy cholera and many others have also been posited though poe was beginning to attract the literary credit he deserved he could not have known the impact his gothic tales of the macabre and mysterious would have or that an annual prize for excellence in mystery the edgar award would be named after him cementing his legacy evermore with no autopsy and no official death certificate ever found what caused the death of edgar allan poe one of america's most famous authors and poets will likely remain unsolved i will say the close thing does make me kind of give a little bit more credence to the the cooping theory in the sense that that involved disguises though you could also say the clothes were the results of getting into a drunk altercation and people robbing him but also who's keeping tabs on which clothes he owns well it was maybe he had some raggy like some raggedy ones that he never wore that often and was like i'll take these traveling i feel like if you showed up to work one day in raggedy ill-fitting clothes well actually that would be kind of conducive to who you are right now because i mean you've said yourself your goal in your 30s is to look weird it is so actually that was a bad example but anybody else that's normal it would be weird if they all of a sudden showed up in things that didn't make sense i'm different i guess it's just unsolved i guess so [Music] this week on buzzfeed unsolved we sift through the case of the lady of the dunes a murder mystery from cape cod with theories that stretch from the boston mafia to hollywood jesus christ what this is the turtleneck the jacket you just went in for a slow sip for your coffee it was insufferable i'm intrigued i've never been to cape cod i don't know much about it other than what is it like some gatsby [ __ ] going on it's like a party town people go there to bang it out you could probably catch cod there yeah and hell i might bring a cape but here's the thing you put a bunch of rich people together oh there's gonna be some murder all rich people are murderers what's fancy coming from you and your silk turtleneck here eleven dollars on amazon.com anyway yes safe to say all rich people are emerging i don't think that's what this case is about nor do i think that's a factual statement agree to disagree okay yep drink your coffee drink it go ahead oh you son of a all right let's just get into this on july 26 1974 12 year old leslie metcalf was returning from the beach in provincetown massachusetts with her family in the late afternoon a local dog had followed them and when it took off barking leslie decided to run ahead of her parents and follow first off got any guesses what that dog was barking at i don't know i don't like dogs i was running for exercise and a rotten dalmatian jumped right up against a fence and started growling for no reason just because i was passing i'm a nice man well they do hate squirrels do you think he thought there was a little bushy squirrel tail on your face no it was dark out i worry about this if i ever have kids them running away then you see parents with their kids on leashes and you're like well that's wrong but the more i think about it i'm like yeah maybe put your kids on a leash i spent that whole time didn't even answer the question what did what was the dog barking at yeah anything dogs barking all right that that would have been barking mailman dogs bark it a bird in a tree anything would have been an acceptable answer you'd be a horrible contestant on family feud in the dunes at race point beach amongst the scrub pines a mile east of a ranger station leslie discovered the decomposing body of a naked woman approximately five feet six and a half inches tall 145 pounds between 20 and 40 years old lying on one side of a beach towel with her head on top of a folded pair of jeans and a blue bandana it's estimated the body had been lying there anywhere from 10 days to 3 weeks before being discovered her head had been crushed on the left side and she had been almost entirely decapitated while no weapons were found it's believed that something akin to a military entrenching tool was used to nearly sever the head also noticeably absent from the corpse were the victim's hands presumably removed to avoid identification via fingerprints well that's a lot i will say that when you look at the details of the crime scene it would seem that this was done by somebody who wasn't i guess like an amateur also in saying that it had been there for ten days to three years a long time the body goes through some stuff but even from beyond that like beyond the the state of the body when you find it ten days to three weeks is a long time for it not to be discovered but out there on the dunes man it's wide it's expansive though it is only a mile away from the ranger station it would suggest that maybe the killer is a little bit more ballsy than would let on or they just know that the ranger is a doofus who's not good at their job the violent state in which the body was left obviously suggested murder and with no apparent sign of a struggle at the time authorities believed that the unidentified victim would have known her murderer some of the only evidence of another person being around were size 10 footprints that indicated a heavy person who was running and provincetown police chief jimmy meads said the killer likely drove the victim to the dune in a four-wheel drive sand vehicle to sunbathe it's interesting to me that the footprints lasted that long could have also been someone who just stumbled upon the body and was like you know what we run into this a lot about this if you saw a body would you call it in yes i would do right i would but i can understand where if let's see you got a warrant out maybe you didn't pay your taxes you stumble upon a body you don't want to invite any of that it's probably safer to walk away sometimes you do usually paint yourself as suspect number one when you call in something yeah which isn't that fair so you stumble upon this body what's your tone when you tell them hey how's it going i just uh oh buddy well you can't sell too much panic in the voice how's it going i found a body out on the on the beach we should probably uh you should come out here and pick it up send out the paddy wagon send out your boys my kids play on this beach oh i didn't know you had kids in this scenario were you lying about that to them because that's oh [ __ ] would i be you're lying now oh now they have that on tape my kids play on this beach and now those cuffs are going to be on my wrist and probably a day's time yeah [ __ ] i just got arrested this is why people don't call it in i just got arrested despite using bloodhounds studying missing persons bulletins scouring the registers of local lodgings and looking into anyone who had a permit to bring their vehicle into the area police turned up nothing margie childs a provincetown local noted in 2019 that the fact that no one could identify the lady of the dunes in the tight-knit community was very strange in their attempt to id the victim police turned to the victim's extensive dental work worth thousands of dollars at the time and noted to be of new york style details of the dental work were sent to every dentist in massachusetts published in two dental journals and distributed to organizations like the fbi and interpol no one came forward recognizing the work so they can't identify the victim they looked at the dental work which is i guess of new york style big apple choppers as a chicago guy you're more into deep dish denton did you have that like in your notes app last night that day nailed it um weird so no one even in the community is missing yeah we know you did it so no yep so yeah so no one in the community is even missing um no now the dental work is interesting to me because that is a fair amount of work being done so obviously this person is not somebody that just wandered in off the street when they say new york new york dentistry i have no idea what the hell that just means fancy like this was clearly done by you know not your country bumpkin dentist i have no idea my dad's a dentist himself never heard him refer to california dentistry the body was exhumed in 1980 so blood samples could be taken and an approximation of the victim's face could be molded from the skull photos of the resulting bust were sent around the country in the hopes that someone would recognize it no identification resulted 20 years later in 2000 the body was exhumed again when a bone fragment was taken to test a potential lead that again turned up nothing in 2013 the body was exhumed for a third time to obtain even more dna still nothing has produced a positive identity for the lady of the dunes this has been hanging over the community for decades now yeah they did three examinations examinations that's a word right yeah yeah they did three of them and still after all that for that to produce no kind of dna evidence of like who this person is it's kind of insane to me because 1974 is not that long ago no you would think that dna would be fresh enough that you could figure out this person's identity oh just also weird that nobody's like hey i don't know where my friend is which makes you think this person could be off the grid in sorts yeah there is a lot of shady [ __ ] out there with an unidentified murderer in an unidentified corpse it's time to launch into theories our first theory is about the victim's identity and comes from the tumbler of joe hill the son of stephen king is this the first time tumblr has played the first time tumblr has made an appearance the tumblr crowd is such a vocal fan base of our show they're very supportive of unsolved they always have been that being said i'm pretty sure this tumblr user is not but i could be wrong he's the son of stephen king so maybe well i'll tell you if anyone knows horror it's going to be the son of stephen king hill's interest in the lady of the dunes was sparked after reading deborah halber's book the skeleton crew how amateur sleuths are solving america's coldest cases about an hour into a 40th anniversary screening of steven spielberg's classic film jaws hill spotted an extra with a face that looked eerily familiar the face reminded him of the composite drawings of the lady of the dunes the extra appears in jeans and a blue bandana the same clothing found with the lady of the dunes while this may at first sound like a simple coincidence of wardrobe jaws was filmed on the cape during the summer of 1974 meaning the scene in question may have been filmed weeks or days before her death an entertainment weekly reporter contacted universal about the identity of the extra but they could not locate a record and the casting director had already died hill admits his theory could be bogus but says quote if nothing else it's a pretty good little ghost story end quote that's some good lore it does look similar to the composite it would potentially explain her being an outsider stevie spielberg shows up in town it's going to attract people from out of town that want to be a part of the magic he wasn't a big director at that point so the security around that probably wasn't as you know stringent yeah also kind of crazy that that set was so loosey-goosey that they don't even have notes of the names of all the extras i wonder if that's because it was just such a long drawn-out debacle that they just sort of a lot of that got lost in the shuffle or she did truly sneak onto the set yeah and when they were shooting just walked into the shot also it fits the timeline yeah the location she kind of looks like the person frankly joe hill i think you've done it yeah let's just end the episode there well we can okay let's move on then for our next theory we move from movie monster to real life mobster whitey bulger whitey bulger you may recall was the infamous boston mob leader who was beaten to death in prison while serving two life sentences for 11 convicted murders and it's widely thought he was responsible for many more in 2015 a woman named sandra lee who suggested her family was close with bulger at the time of the murder and even called him uncle jimmy told a reporter that the lady of the dunes bore a striking resemblance to one of whitey's alleged murders in particular lee believes the method of disposal and attempts to avoid identification of the body are strikingly similar to the murder of debbie davis in davis case the victim's teeth were removed presumably in an attempt to avoid identification davis was strangled to death and the lady of the dunes showed signs of strangulation davis hands however were not removed and the lady of the dunes teeth were left in place bulger has never been officially associated with the case as a subject lee also claims to remember seeing whitey in provincetown at the time of the lady of the dunes's murder what's more for some reason lee has also claimed that when she was 9 years old she discovered the unidentified body on the morning of july 26th 1974 before leslie metcalf but did not alert authorities i was starting to see what she was selling there for a second but then she mentions that she saw the body and didn't identify it which makes her kind of just seem like a kid making up a tall tale is she the one who also saw whitey in town yes that's what she says this is a word of mouth theory here however debbie davis also was found near a shoreline so there's similarity there but like i said the hands weren't cut off but teeth the teeth removed so still care taken to mask the identity in some way whitey bulger does fit the description of the professional that i was suggesting earlier that this didn't seem like an amateur killing or a perhaps even a crime of passion yeah i don't know enough about him to really peg him for this but i guess all we really need to know is that he was a vicious murderer true so that's why like if he were theorizing that he may have murdered somebody else i don't really feel too bad about it our third theory is that serial killer had in clark who is currently serving 70 years in prison for theft and the murder of two women was responsible for the murder this theory was first presented by haddon clark speaking with journalist and former police officer alec wilkinson clark claimed that while staying with his grandfather on cape cod in 1974 he lured a woman into the dunes where he struck her in the head with a surf casting fishing rod he claimed he then retrieved a saw from his truck and removed her hands using some of her fingers as fishing bait and burying the hands elsewhere casting doubt on clark's claims is the fact that the details he provided about the murder were featured in newspaper articles clark also has a history of claiming involvement in other murders that never checked out [ __ ] what a liar yeah don't don't even give them the satisfaction we should just move to the next yeah let's just swipe away go to hell dude our final theory holds that the lady of the dunes was herself a criminal the fact that her hands were removed could suggest that the murderer knew the victim's fingerprints would be on file somewhere this led authorities to suspect the lady could be rory jean kessinger kessinger had a criminal history of bank robberies and attempting to shoot police including once in a hospital with the officer's own gun when the lady of the dunes was discovered kessinger had recently escaped from plymouth county jail just across cape cod bay from provincetown while awaiting trial someone was able to get kessinger a hacksaw blade which she used to free herself in classic escapee fashion she used tethered bed sheets to rappel out of a window and was met by a car that drove her away i'm a guard at the prison yeah i'm supposed to be making sure nobody gets out i'm up there on the little tower i swing the spotlight because i hear a commotion i see a woman crawling down the side of the building i go to sound the alarm and then suddenly i put it down i'm so impressed with this lady is she a monster is she is she back she did attempt to shoot a police officer with his own gun what are you gonna do not that that's what you're going to do but i'm so charmed by her savviness she just tied bed sheets together that's like some fairy tale [ __ ] that's not even created and it worked most people would probably scoff at that and say well that's only in cartoons nobody does this yeah but i think if you're sitting around in a locked cell long enough you'll think of anything yeah and you ought to i mean assuming you're a little lady like this what did she do should just rob some banks well the cop was you know probably being mean to her it said the sculptural bus made of the lady of the dunes after the 1980 exhumation had a striking resemblance to kessinger in the late 90s authorities tracked down kessinger's mother who agreed to give a saliva sample to see if her dna meant she was the mother of the victim the theory was so strong that it's what led to the body being exhumed again in 2000 both tests failed in determining whether it was a match which led to another test in 2002 that proved conclusively that there was no match between kessinger and the lady of the dunes what but did she just disappear then yeah and i think so she may be i mean that's mission accomplished for someone who escapes prison she actually may be watching this video and hearing me lavish praise upon this is the first theory that we've had that has i guess a somewhat happy ending because if you escape prison the goal is to not be caught yeah and if we found out that lady of the dunes was hurt she got got yeah if you're watching this episode don't be tweeting like that lady's so cool cause then the law's gonna remember like oh yeah she escaped yeah they're gonna be going after her so just keep quiet about it this case has been closely followed in the more than 45 years since leslie metcalf discovered the lady of the dunes resulting in numerous other theories with varying degrees of plausibility in the 1980s a psychic told provincetown police chief jimmy meads that the victim was a canadian nurse named either carolyn or marilyn o'leary while the word of a psychic may not seem like enough to merit further scrutiny another person had also reported the victim to be an american nurse named carolyn o'leary who had gone missing upon investigation authorities found o'leary to be very much alive great job psychics what a shock what do you think about that investigative technique i mean i think all psychics are [ __ ] but i don't care i will say that there has to be at least one case that a psychic actually solved otherwise why would we keep using them no one's using them i think they're just like you must believe me and then some [ __ ] at the station is like i think we should hear this lady up despite over four decades of dead ends investigations continue according to journalist mary ann bragg after three examinations authorities currently have the skull ribs the left scapula the right scapula a tissue sample of a leg and hair samples in their possession cape officials are looking into a new method for identifying the body using dna evidence and genealogy da's from california who worked on the golden state killer case which was finally solved using genealogy records have been brought over to look into the case there's even a twitter account dedicated to discovering the identity of the lady of the dunes still an answer is anything but guaranteed prior to his death in 2011 police chief meads stated that the only way to solve the case would be if someone on their deathbed wanted to clear their conscience before passing without that it appears the identity of the lady of the dunes as well as her murderer will remain unsolved not so yeah it's a crazy case i gotta say after all those theories and this is not just because i love the film jaws i do think it's actually a very interesting theory it is interesting but at the same time i don't know if there's enough there maybe frankly i'd like to enjoy the film jaws without every time watching it being like it's the lady of the doom the thing about the theory though is it doesn't solve the case it just solves the identity of her it doesn't have any kind of bearing towards what who the criminal or the killer is yes but once you figure out the identity then you can start opening up a network quite a prominent one i would say that is true well we've once again failed thoroughly upsetting story with no conclusion you know what the turtleneck grew on me thank you how about that mustache [Music] no this week on buzzfeed unsolved we look into the death of 20's and 30's hollywood starlet thelma todd another murder in her own backyard oh that's some gravitas there it's just sad hollywood was just silent films then a lot of silent slapstick and then a lot of murdering murdering going on behind well the city was figuring itself out you know do we want to be a movie town we want to be a murder town and in the end to figure it out let's do it all 20s and 30s crime you got the old 20s and 30s mustache on your face shall we jump into the case file let's do it let's get into it in 1906 thelma alice todd was born in lawrence massachusetts she trained to become a school teacher while doing some modeling on the side and in 1925 won the title of miss massachusetts after her win paramount pictures signed todd to a one-year contract that set her hollywood career in motion over the next decade todd made a name for herself as a talented comedic actress playing leads and films with the marx brothers lauren hardy and zazu pitts her rise in hollywood however was no walk in the park one of todd's early contracts involved a clause that specified her weight at the time of signing 122 pounds and that if she gained more than three or lost more than six pounds from that mark the contract could be terminated hollywood's concern with her weight resulted in todd becoming addicted to diet pills not good it's bad don't do it don't just eat body positivity i got it out there hey he nailed it hey love your body every day wake up smile that's right wink at yourself in the mirror grow mustache if you gotta between 1932 and 1934 todd was married to agent pat decicco a union which could hardly be described as happy when todd filed for divorce she cited the reason as quote grievous mental and physical suffering end quote todd also found herself fighting against typical hollywood casting couch situations even at the threat of being blacklisted she refused to entertain producers at parties and was outspoken about her experiences nevertheless todd was known as a fun-loving party girl extremely popular in the la social circuit carrying on multiple love affairs with men and often overheard ordering her signature drink three fingers of rye three fingers of rye that's a little holy moly i drink three fingers of rye i'm on the roof fiddling sure just for context yeah that's now whiskey you know i like whiskey but i'm not drinking three fingers awry i mean i'm not drinking three fingers or rocks i feel like you are i'm drinking ten fingers baby every time we go out to a bar ryan's like give me a a pint glass full of whiskey yeah that's a hell of a signature drink yeah you know what that's good bourbon she was known for elevating the typical dumb blonde stereotype in her films often playing independent women rare in early hollywood shorts at the time wary about being used in films simply for her looks todd once said in an interview quote building on beauty seems to me the worst thing any girl can do end quote seems like a cool lady i would have liked to party with her and maybe i have one of her signature dreams actually just realizing that this sucks because this episode's about her so this cool lady is uh yeah it's gonna end not well forgot forgot what we were doing forgot what show we were i've recalled and now i'm sad yeah i'll say this about this lady she was obviously a beautiful woman did not want to rest on that as evidenced by what i just said but also she was able to do things her way without getting blacklisted which is also admirable because sometimes especially back then and even now when you were a woman it would be taken out on you and it didn't happen for her so that's actually pretty goddamn cool acting was not todd's only pursuit in 1934 todd opened the successful restaurant delma todd's sidewalk cafe on the pacific coast highway her business partners in the venture were director and producer roland west with whom todd had been having an on-again off-again affair for the past three years and silent film actress joel carmen who was also roland west's wife they had a little love triangle oh saucy and then they thought let's open up a restaurant i smell a sitcom regardless of what they were doing there was it was there they were free-loving business pleasure oh you know mix them together why not i would like to see you never mix those together ever again i mean that's what they were doing that's what they could do that's what you should never do in front of me you imagine going to that restaurant be like i'll uh oh i'd like a cheeseburger and they'd be like we'll get that to you in a sec after we finish doing it just wiping sweat sorry a little extra sauce on this one todd kept an apartment above the cafe as did the west carmens with only a single drawing room separating the units in a detail that will come into play later weston carmen also shared a house about 500 yards from the cafe on saturday december 14 1935 todd attended a party thrown in her honor at cafe trocadero a popular nightclub on hollywood's sunset strip attendees said todd seemed to be having a great time at the party sipping brandy and champagne and at one point betting some friends a free dinner that they wouldn't visit her restaurant the next day i love free food i do too tastes very free every time yeah and that's the best i need free food off of well never mind i don't want to get into it i love free food roland west had asked todd to be home by 2 a.m and at 1 50 a.m todd asked famous theater manager sid grauman to call west and inform him she'd be leaving soon regardless todd stayed at the party until around 3 15 a.m todd's chauffeur ernest peters dropped the starlet off at the roadside cafe sometime between 3 a.m and 4 20 am sunday the friends todd head bet wouldn't show up came to collect their free dinners though no one had seen todd at the restaurant the friends nevertheless enjoyed a comped meal the next day december 16th todd's maid mae whitehead began her morning routine which included getting todd's lincoln phaeton ready from roland west's home and bringing it down to todd at the apartment above the cafe when whitehead opened the garage she found the body of thelma todd slumped over the steering wheel with a broken nose and two cracked ribs todd's obituary in the la times described the scene in graphic detail coagulated blood marred the screen comedian's features and stained her mob and silver evening gown and her expensive mink coat when she was found her blonde locks pathetically awry in the front seat of her automobile in the garage of roland west oh yeah yay this is a bummer um she seemed like i'm i was having fun with her uh in her honor maybe we could uh try and figure out what happened to her maybe do a fun little screening a little marathon or we could try and figure out what happened to her because that's what we're here to do that's is we're behind the desk that's right with more than a day unaccounted for between when she was last seen alive and first seen dead it's time to dive into theories about what happened to thelma todd our first theory is the official grand jury verdict of her death that thelma todd died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning it was a cold evening in the middle of december her apartment was near the ocean and todd was wearing a lightweight gown though she also had a mink coat it's assumed that upon arriving home early sunday morning todd was locked out of the building her apartment was in and went to the garage of west's house where she got into and turned on the car to stay warm making the fatal mistake of leaving the engine running with the garage door shut i mean we're going to get to the obvious yes which is that generally carbon monoxide poisoning doesn't result in broken nose yeah yeah you know that is a good point perhaps you're not the idiot i figured maybe you do have a detective brain i do i'm very observant big brain big head big hair yeah all three in tandem you're the triad of detectives my brain is large has many synapses i could already hear people typing away making that into a gif the county autopsy surgeon dr af wagner fixed todd's time of death about 5 a.m sunday morning the new york times quoted dr wagner as saying quote the autopsy showed monoxide poison to the extent of 70 of total saturation in her blood there may have been other contributing causes but that definitely was the major factor end quote it's interesting dr wagner mentions how there may have been other contributing causes as there are some notable details that may point away from an accident for instance while it's possible todd's nose could have broken as she slumped unconscious onto the steering wheel it is harder to say how todd sustained two cracked ribs trying to entertain the idea that she could have somehow done that herself it seems tricky maybe she could have fallen outside somewhere and then was like oh my mind was injured let me take a seat in the car oh it's chilly i'll turn the car on i mean was she potentially a nebri yeah it seems far-fetched however i try to figure it it doesn't work i'm not sold not buying it todd was also known for her interest in cars and there was apparently a media campaign informing the public about carbon monoxide poisoning it seems highly likely todd would have known the dangers of running a car in a closed garage there's also the question of how todd wound up in the garage in the first place todd would have had to trek up the hill from her apartment to roland west's garage her shoes however were not consistent with having walked 500 yards on uneven ground in the damp night additionally when her body was found her hair was still neatly styled for the party at the trocadero not as tussled as one would expect after walking through the reportedly windy evening air this is what i meant about her not maybe taking a tumble because she had heels on the hill that she would have to walk up to get to the garage was substantial yeah no dirt on her shoes nothing on her gown that would suggest a fall her hair still styled it was a windy night seems much more consistent that she was placed in the car as opposed to getting there herself yeah especially in a drunken stupor i know also though you know sometimes they're you know the hair back then very firm firm yes yes firm and look i've uh when i've been drunk at the end of the night i've done some funny things to get into like my bedroom if i forgot my key but even still don't think i would be capable of doing that while still looking intact for the most you make strange decisions i i one night i was very cold i slept in my trunk one night i was very cold and i slept outside the front door like a little dog like a little dog that's pretty funny because i couldn't get in well we've slept places and i tell you what my hair was very tussled west himself seemed to think todd's actions were a bit suspicious apparently although todd had been locked out of her apartment before she had never walked to the garage or attempted to sleep in her car west testified that todd was fully aware she could have woken him up to gain entry even citing an example of one case when todd had broken a window to gain his attention maybe i could see this if you had messed up while drunk once before you don't want to do it again yeah like oh what a racket i made last time roland was awful sore about it yeah no no window breaking this time i'll go in the garage instead cozy up in a car something that young shane midday even did yeah you did not turn on the engine though i did not nor did you have broken ribs as far as i know no broken ribs never broken a bone big bones hard to break long unless he's bluffing well we don't know you know yeah you guys better look into this look over there maybe oh what about that guy i don't know i've never been accused of murder before so yet perhaps no one was more confounded to hear todd had died early sunday morning than one mrs martha ford ford was throwing a party at her home in laurel canyon and reported to police that she received a phone call from todd on sunday afternoon saying she was on her way with a surprise guess ford even claimed todd told their quote i went to a party last night and i'm still in my evening clothes do you mind end quote ford put the call around 4 pm around 11 hours after the coroner pegged the time of todd's death ford told the new york times quote i've known todd for years and i couldn't be mistaken end quote and that she was quote positive beyond all question and quote that it was todd on the phone okay okay all right plot dickens yes thick something that didn't occur to me is that the coroner or the lapd might be dirty it could be dirty yeah or i've seen l.a confidentially ladies and chinatown she could be lying telling a little fib we got more details on her but back then people weren't known to throw themselves into controversy just for the notoriety for that simplicity yes for the ink and as somebody who's throwing parties in the hills maybe she wants to get her name out there a little bit more i like that nowadays they just they're like let's steer clear of the murder stuff like tom hiddleston will date taylor swift for a week and they'll look like a couple of [ __ ] on a beach wearing shirts that's all they gotta do nobody's gotta murder each other to get in the papers you know though if tom hiddleston didn't murder somebody he would be in the papers can you imagine loki no i mean there's a darkness in him i don't think he's a murderer for the record though a police officer testified that no phone records showed any calls had been made from todd's property on sunday it's easy to imagine todd could have used a different phone still ford's insistence on having spoken to todd is not the only wrinkle in the timeline todd's autopsy found peas and carrots in the starlet's stomach neither of which had been served at the trocadero party the peas had just started to digest at the time of her death which could suggest todd had been picked up again after being dropped off by peters taken to eat somewhere else and then taken back to west's garage to die i cannot imagine your last meal being peas and carrots yeah that's rough that's like a bunny right especially after a night of partying yeah no one's waking up eating peas and carrots that stinks just being blasted like i need some peas and carrots stat with all of these factors surrounding the possibility of todd's death being an accident nothing is more confounding than the contents of her purse found next to her in the car her bag contained lipstick a cigarette case some handkerchiefs and a coin purse which itself contained the key to the side door of her apartment building why is that confounding that's that's in the garage because somebody [ __ ] killed her that's the that's the point oh okay i know somebody killed they were trying to list reasons why somebody maybe didn't kill somebody spoiler alert somebody murdered her yeah she has it she has a key to get into her and they got away with it have you ever been so drunk you didn't remember you had your key on you i haven't no that hasn't happened to me no yeah yeah i think she was murdered yeah i think so too with all of these complicating factors it makes sense that the coroner's jury verdict read quote the death of the deceased appears to have been accidental but we recommend further investigation to be made in this case by the proper authorities end quote and while we may not be the proper authorities further investigation is exactly what we're going to do good we'll do what they couldn't here's how it works though you're a powerful man in hollywood you're a piece of [ __ ] you got an axe to grind with young starlet wipe her off the map you pay off the people who should be doing the investigating swept under the rug so do you think this corner got some heat maybe i don't know but i'm sure he got a little grease on his palm for this one you got some salad yeah cut a couple leaves for a salad yeah a couple of queens in that fat pocket of his yeah i could see that yeah little bones in his graveyard sure yeah i like that our next theory is that thelma todd intentionally killed herself in the garage of her lover in addition to her having the key to her apartment building with her when she died her chauffeur said todd was unusually quiet as he drove her home that night he reported that she did not ask him to escort her to her door as she usually did one source also claimed todd had received an upsetting message from an anonymous person on the night of the party with her interest in cars todd would likely have known running a car in her garage would result in her death this theory is however admittedly thin and her actions had not aligned with self-destructive behavior around the time of her death her restaurant was a hot new success she had recently signed a new film contract and the trunk of her car was full of christmas presents for family and friends the host of the party at the trocadero also said that todd told her she was newly involved with a man in san francisco i know i listed a bunch of reasons why she would not commit suicide there i will say this though that doesn't mean anything usually you don't know what's going on inside someone's head unless you actually talk to them which should be a lesson to everybody out there me i don't like talking to people i care about that's my personal wait you never talk to me yeah do you care about me clearly that's crazy because i don't care about you oh our third theory is of course that thelma todd was murdered it's unlikely she was killed by a stranger who wanted to rob her as none of the jewelry she had been wearing was missing though there are some particular suspects we want to bring up the first is roland west her lover in whose garage todd's body was found west was said to be a jealous man and todd and west opened their popular cafe so they could spend more time together if todd had actually begun dating a new man in san francisco west may have been hypocritically upset on his deathbed west actually admitted to being responsible for todd's death and accidentally locking her in the garage his recounting of the events which occurred that night however was full of inconsistencies and contradictions yeah it's it's an odd thing to admit there's a bunch of inconsistencies the ocean is down the hill you could dispose of it that way but i guess he's not thinking straight it's not disposed in the ocean better than ty just kicks it all back up rather than leaving her in the garage in your own garage well clearly that seemed to work i mean fair enough nobody nobody got the cuff slapped on him so it's a weird thing to admit definitely not worth glossing over but somehow i still don't buy it i don't know why but him locking her in the garage wouldn't necessarily she knocked her if he knocked her out then turned the car on and then locked her in the garage yeah yeah you know that makes it seems like a weird way to do it though to be quite honest another suspect is jewel carmen roland west's wife while a jealous wife might sound like an obvious suspect into her husband's mistress's death it is said she did not resent her husband's affair instead the chicago tribune claimed carmen threatened to kill todd for squandering money at the restaurant in which she her husband and todd were business partners beyond a potential motive however there is no physical evidence carmen was involved in todd's death so joel carman's beef with thelma todd wasn't over the affair necessarily as much as it was over money from the business yeah but what's murder going to fix you know nothing right obviously i guess it could have been like a fit of rage yeah i'm pissed at you yeah for skimming a little off the top um seems a little obvious circumstantial no real evidence just a motive yeah not not enough to it there you could make the argument that after todd is out of the picture joel carmen and uh now roland west have full ownership of the cafe though it is called thelma todd's roadside cabin yeah also that's more work for you you know yeah who wants that yeah you know what i'm not buying it the third suspect in a potential murder is todd's ex-husband pat decicco a self-described quote agent with underworld connections end quote jesus who describes himself as an agent with underworld connections i do generally when have you ever slipped that into account it's on my business card agent with underworld connections yeah yeah yeah yeah shame a day agent with underworld connections nice to meet you let's talk about this prius i'm trying to say desicco was said to have a violent temper and his second wife heiress gloria vanderbilt described him as a brute with a bad temper who would physically abuse her when he was drunk not a surprise that deseco shows up here um and not a surprise that he was a human garbage pile um yeah flaming human garbage pile i mean if he you know picked up a young starlet as his wife knowing the system probably not a nice guy i can't think of a colder take than a guy who puts hands on women not a good dude i called him a pile of garbage i know that's what i'm saying it's like it's very obvious hot take yeah i'll take there i don't think this guy's a good guy the night before her death at the trocadero todd ran into desicco many eyewitnesses said their interaction seemed heated when summoned for the grand jury deseco testified that he hadn't heard about todd's death in todd's will dated from when they were still married decico was left one dollar brutal it's kind of like at that point don't leave anything at all but it's sick burned it's a sick burning yeah a fourth suspect one that was especially popular at the time is that mobster lucky luciano had put a hit out on todd earlier in 1935 todd received a string of eight letters threatening her life if she didn't pay ten thousand dollars signed by the quote ace of hearts end quote don't blackmail people i mean one it's illegal and if you're going to do it get a better pseudonym then like ace of hearts of hearts that's a shitty it's not even threatening no it's not after a suspect was arrested in august 1935 however the letter stopped nevertheless todd who was found dead four months later was convinced the whole ordeal was mob related many speculated luciano had wanted to set up a high-ticket casino on the third floor of her restaurant but todd refused resulting in her murder this theory supposes that after she was dropped off at the cafe someone with ties to luciano picked her up again took her out to eat killed her and put her in west garage afterwards which could explain the peas found in her stomach and her two cracked ribs while it appears luciano left los angeles abruptly shortly after todd's death never to return it should be noted that this entire theory is merely speculation in reality there is no evidence that todd and luciano ever actually met lucky he's shown up here before yes he's shown up in a couple cases namely the bugsy seagull case yes oh this guy got around i guess if you're a mob man in early los angeles yeah your fingers are in a bunch of but people finger you for a lot of different things huh it's a verb it is that means what what it does it does mean what you said it means lots of lots of different pots was that you putting fingers in pies or pots i don't know gone at age 29 thelma todd was in the midst of a successful hollywood career tragically cut short while her death was officially ruled an accident there are enough suspicious incongruencies in her final hours to keep her story alive these more than 80 years later whether accident suicide or murder what actually happened to the starlet that night after leaving the sunset strip remains unsolved of all these theories which one do you think is the most likely i'm gonna go with um it i mean honestly it seems like to me she was possibly assaulted and then placed in the car maybe not very conscious car was turned on that was that i too believe it was murder and if i had to say who it was probably exception but you know i can't say that seems pretty cut and dry tough to end a sad episode huh it was an untimely end to an otherwise very cool lady yeah and i guess we'll just leave it at that rib see you next week [Music] this week on buzzfeed unsolved we tap into a mystery that you the unsolved masses have often requested bella in the witch elm you think we're not listening to you out there we're listening we always got our ears open i'd rather do this than someone who's like hey my aunt would it be disappeared to look into that yeah can you boys get on the case and crack a couple funny jokes about marge by the way i have this on my head because my hair's too long i don't know what to do anymore sure i just tied it up like a little present incredibly respectful let's dig in oh you never i'm usually the sipper we did that reverse should you open the case file it feels wrong it does let me do that give me that before you hurt yourself on april 18 1943 four teenage boys from birmingham england were marching through hagley wood searching for food world war ii was raging across europe and due to rationing bob farmer robert hart fred payne and thomas willits were on the lookout for birdness that might have some free eggs fun to hunt for eggs with your boys because they were starving though yes but that's what they were doing starting a joke because you started the scent it was fun to hunt with eggs with your boys it sounds like a fun thing to do when you're starving though let's say you're not starving still fun to go out in the woods and hunt for things with your boys i suppose yeah one of the boys split off to look in the stump of an old witch elm tree when he peered through the tangled branches a round white object caught his eye the young man had not discovered an egg however but a human skull one of the boys used a stick to remove the skull from the tree before leaving the scene the skull was replaced and it said the boys vowed never to speak of it again by the next day one of the boys squealed to his father who in turn alerted police do you think how would you react actually i'm curious i was actually going to say here's how i would react oh dude like that to a human skull probably you wouldn't go zoinks let's get home because that's better zoinks i would drop it i'd scream and i'd run straight to my mother it doesn't shock me actually now i don't know why i was shocked by you not being alarmed by you it's different though when it's a skull because it's like well it's just a funny skeleton it's a funny bone man it was a human's head it was now imagine a skeleton with hair coming out of it how scary that is you ever think about that how does hair go through the skull or is it coming from the top absolutely not how do you understand anything about science how does where does hair start do you think it starts in the brain ryan yeah it starts to grow no but what part of the epidermal area is it on like is it just like i don't know but it's above the bone then why is it sometimes on the skull what are you talking because it's connected to the skin that is connected to this but the skin is gone that's what i'm saying and i've see i've heard that sometimes the hair is stuck into the skull that's not true does hair grow through the skull one of the boys thomas willits accompanied police back to the stump located just 35 yards from hagley wood lane authorities found a tree approximately five to six feet tall with an opening that tapered down getting as narrow as 17 inches in diameter at one point investigators gathered the skull and other bones from the tree as well as some bones found in the surrounding area believed to have been scattered by foxes and squirrels i wouldn't bother jesus it's bones there's a [ __ ] person there but they were bones they're bones by now your bones now i am bones now but there's a lot of meat around those bones when i am bones if you find me somewhere you want me to use your fever as a frisbee or something sure a boomerang dog i'm not going to do that with your bones i'll bequeath my bones to someone else you strike me as a cremated kind of guy i am a do whatever the hell you want kind of jesus i did see a video of a sky burial and i love that where they put your body out in a field and they kind of chop you up into fillets and then a bunch of giant vultures come and eat you i had a much different image in my head oh like you put me in a cannon and shoot me at the sun put you in a plane and just throw you off the plane actually sounds pretty baller too someone chilling on like a inner tube in their pool and all of a sudden just shave my day's corpse rainstorms rockets into the ground ruins like god shot me out of a gun forensic scientist professor j m webster was then able to partially reconstruct the skeleton of a woman between 25 and 40 years old most likely closer to 35 the bones showed no signs of disease or violence though a large piece of taffeta had been stuffed into the mouth leading to a suspicion of asphyxiation as a possible cause of death a probable description of the woman was released to the public describing a woman just five feet tall with light brown hair dressed in a striped dark blue and mustard colored cardigan in a mustard colored skirt one blue shoe size five and a half was found outside of the tree inside the trunk was its matching partner as well as a cheap rolled gold wedding ring it was believed the woman had been dead for at least 18 months suicide as a possible cause of death was ruled out due to the peculiar shape of the tree webster said quote i cannot imagine a person getting into the tree voluntarily even a small person like this could not have gone in without doing herself a considerable amount of tearing end quote what a verdict yeah i think someone murdered her this lady couldn't have shoved herself in that tree i think someone else did it case class but who put her in there is the question and also the question if someone were to have say murdered her you would have to do it almost immediately before rigor mortis set in either that or they waited till complete decomposition and then shove the bones in there but i don't think that's the case either because it's a long wait for complete decomposition do you ever think about how weird it is to like okay so you pick up a body right you're picking it up when you're talking about one of these no when it's fully a skeleton how strange that sensation would be to pick up a what used to be a body but now it's just fully bones it's a full skeleton yeah but i think the skeletons do they stay together no i don't think so i don't think it's like a like a kind like like a merry melody's cartoon playing the ribs like a xylophone this episode is called ryan does not know a lot about human physiology police rooted through records of missing women but turned up nothing after releasing the probable description of the woman calls came in from around the area but none of the leads produced a match an inquest jury found a verdict of quote murder by some person or persons unknown end quote on may 4th a report was published in the birmingham daily gazette calling for dentists to come forward who may recognize some distinctive features in the woman's teeth in her lower jaw her front teeth overlapped and a tooth was missing from the right side likely pulled by a dentist within a year of the woman's death still no identity could be given to the remains your dad ever helped out on a kid i'm just starting to wonder how useful are dentists when it comes to these cases it seems like every time we call in a dentist i got nothing yeah those those are teeth all right in march of 1944 an empty building in birmingham was graffitied in chalk quote who put bella down the witch elm hegley wood end quote it had been almost a year since the body was found though this was the first time she was given a name the words appeared too high up on the wall to be attributed to boys pulling a prank and police were intrigued after discovering this graffiti another report came in to authorities about a house on hayden hill road that had similarly been vandalized months prior with the words quote who put lubella down the witch elm end quote because the graffiti was all in the same handwriting and because the tags all spelled witch correctly police believed a lone countryman was responsible anyone who knew of a bella who had gone missing were asked to alert police what is this person accomplishing by doing this raising hell you know getting people talking about creating hysteria yeah also probably putting pressure on the investigation do you think this is someone trying to pressure the investigation to get closed or you think this is a killer mocking the police which one do you lean towards i lean toward the former i feel like someone is just like stirring the pot i actually think it's someone mocking the police like a zodiac of sorts then why won't you just put i put bell in the witch helm because who put bella in which elm is me no i'm saying that's like more provocative i feel like more provocative is like i put bell in the world you imagine that's how they solved the case they're at a town hall meeting and they're like who put a bell in the witch and someone goes me it was me in august of 1944 the writings began to appear again quote hagleywood lubella was opposite rose and crown hasberry end quote was found written both in nearby hales owen and wolverhampton again the handwriting appeared to match the previous vandalism still no one could turn up records of any lubella or bella that matched the body found in 1953 nine years after the last graffiti of note appeared police finally found their witch home banksy though it turned out the authorities had been barking up the wrong tree the county's detective superintendent remarked quote it was the work of a crank who we are satisfied knew nothing and had nothing to do with the case so it seems that bella wasn't even bella after all end quote so just a fun stir just a fun stir you live in a quiet town most exciting thing that's happened in the past decade is that they found bones in a tree oh you do anything else that's not as disrespectful well i'm saying there's a big bone commotion and that's fun and then it dies down and everyone stops talking about the bones you're going to work nothing exciting is happening well it sure would be fun if everyone got a tizzy about them bones again right about the bones well why don't you do something else like crop circles well they do that all there too so that's what i'm saying you could do something that's fun like that crop circles are a lot of work with police stumped it's time to examine some theories our first theory was one advanced by police early that the mystery woman's death occurred during one of the war's air raids upon hearing air raid sirens the woman may have sought safety in the woods police suppose the woman may have been attacked and ganked perhaps dying accidentally as a result and then stuffed into the elm her family would have then assumed she died in the raid and not alerted any authorities however this theory fails to explain how the woman got in the tree and who was responsible one thing about the airway could be the actual sirens going off would then cover any screaming true air raids are scary man i can't even imagine you're growing up in illinois you get those tornado sirens every now and then knowing you i'm surprised you wouldn't just walk out into the open with your arms spread wide just screaming take me at the sky tornadoes not for tornadoes you ever seen twister i've seen twister yes it's no joke it's strange when your life is just interrupted by a large noise that everybody else can also hear there's no excuses you know it's like well i guess me and everyone in this neighborhood and county have to uh hide now time to hide everybody a spookier theory detailed in a 1950 article in the birmingham daily gazette and harbored by egyptologist dr margaret murray posits that the woman may have been a human sacrifice murray stated she believed they were quote still remnants of witchcraft in isolated parts of great britain end quote according to murray quote the sacrifices are carried out by people who still believe in a religion practiced in britain before christianity whom we call devil worshipers they still practice black magic the belief is that if life is taken out of the ground through farming it must be replaced by a blood sacrifice end quote murray believed not just the woman found in the witch elm but also another person later found murdered in the area could be attributed to these devil worshipers what a crock of [ __ ] why do you say that here's the thing i think what happened was somebody bad committed something very bad and then somebody else took that and tried to wedge it into this narrative of a devil worshiping and then like had an agenda but i know i'm the resident supernatural guy but to me this just seems like plain old murder but this doesn't feel like supernatural so much as people believing in the supernatural and acting out on it there's no evidence of supernatural here it's just people being like i really want to win the prize at the farmer's market so i'm going to feed my soil with the blood of a virgin i just don't know if shoving someone in a witch elm is very ritualistic i'd say so i think it's i mean clearly it worked as a way to to hide a body according to author donald mccormick there had always been talk of hagley wood being the home of some covens of witches he even pointed to an ancient tradition of trapping a witch's spirit inside a hollow tree using it as a sort of prison to prevent her from causing any further trouble in the world there were indications that the tree in which the body was found had before the body was placed inside been occasionally trimmed which stunted its growth i gotta plant one of these trees that's what you took from that yeah i guess that's alarming it'd be fun to have people over and be like you see that there's a witch i swear to god i thought you were going to say it'd be fun to have people in a tree and i got really scared you're fun to have people over and stuff them into my witch helm to went to my witch prison though there isn't much physical evidence that occult rights are to blame for bella's death one man did turn to alternative methods in an attempt to unearth some answers late one night in january 1954 mr george elwell a british railways official and spare time inventor went for a walk in hagley wood pausing at the infamous witch hill after quote assimilating to the atmosphere end quote elwell returned home and decided to place himself in a hypnotic trance using a blinking car headlamp and a mirror and recording the results he's sitting in front of his car headlight in his driveway saying this aloud staring directly at the blinking like turn signal is that what he's doing what a weirdo i mean there's no way to explain that without it seeming psychotic be honest you're hearing them out though you want to hear what this craziness yes after the 15 minutes elwell came too he sent a transcript to police which included the alleged murderer's name any description it's unclear what police did with the report but suffice it to say they never announced case closed i bet they filed that in the special filing cabinet the trash can our final and most intricate theory as to why no one came forward to identify the woman was because she was a foreigner and possibly even a nazi spy in november 1953 a wolverhampton newspaper received a letter claiming the sender knew the identities of the woman in the tree and her murderer the letter signed simply anna explained quote you will never solve the mystery the one person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts the affair is closed and involves no witches black magic or moonlight rights the person responsible died insane in 1942 and the victim was dutch and arrived illegally in england about 1941. end quote that's cool that is the coolest way to say someone has passed away that i have ever heard i do very much love it god it's good so much flavor i'm salivating that's a juicy wing that i'm peeling all the meat off dunk that [ __ ] in some ranch buddy i really think this if you're that good at writing why would you lie about this it's still under the guise of anonymity it's still a tale regardless the anna who wrote the letter was eventually found and questioned by police reports say this anna's identity was one una massab una claimed that her husband a royal air force pilot named jack mossob got caught up in a branch of a spy ring that the woman in the tree was involved in una claimed the woman was a spy looking for intel on where future air raids should strike in england there are different accounts of jack's possible involvement with the woman found in the tree one claims jack and a dutch man named van ralt who was also part of the spy ring were out drinking in a pub with the woman she allegedly got too drunk passed out and the two men stuffed the poor woman into a tree as a joke when she awoke she was unable to free herself and ended up dying there another version of the story states that van ralt and the woman were in a car when they picked up jack a little while later van ralt strangled the woman presumably due to a disagreement within their spy ring and then put her in the tree you know what we do with spies around there we put them in the witch helm love spy stuff i feel like spy stuff happens all the time and probably a lot of the things that seem unsolved are probably spy stuff spies are good at covering their tracks sure they could have just disposed of the body but if it's someone that nobody knows and who doesn't really have a quote-unquote identity yeah leave the body there you're murdering a ghost at that point yeah however can we just revisit that first story uh if that's how people in england treat their their their fellow uh mates that are drunk yeah by stuffing them in a witch elm who's stuffing in a tree see in america when you do something like passing out with your shoes on you draw a funny little thing on their face a funny little what ryan could be a wiener whatever happened to the woman una stated it gave her late husband nightmares causing a decline in his mental health jack died in a mental hospital before the remains were discovered while not much was made of una story there's a bit more to this theory than the popey claims of a wartime widow after hearing of the anna signed letter which claimed bella was dutch author donald mccormick traveled to holland to see if he could find anything to substantiate the claim there he found remarkable evidence that confirmed at least some of what una had written mccormick learned that within the nazi espionage system a man named lehrer worked on recruiting accomplices who could work in britain as spies lehrer allegedly had a dutch girlfriend who lived in birmingham in the 30s giving her great knowledge of britain and allowing her to speak with no detectable dutch accent mccormick states that in march and april of 1941 records show five german spies were sent into england from holland during operation sea lion one of these spies a woman with the code named clara was reportedly dropped by plane over an area that happened to encompass hagley wood clara never made contact and was presumed m.i.a digging deeper mccormick spoke with a former nazi franz rothkip who was living in paraguay under an alias rathgib gave mccormick a description of clara that largely matched that of the woman found in the dream talk about going the extra mile this guy actually went to holland to track down his theory what do we do we sit here and do a little googling i mean we don't do [ __ ] declassified mi5 files reveal the existence of a german spy captured while parachuting into england in 1941 by the name of joseph jacobs once apprehended one of his possessions in particular sticks out a photograph of a german singer actress clara bauerlea jakobs claimed clara was both his girlfriend and a german spine jacobs claimed that clara parachuted into the midlands where hagleywood is located in 1941 but was never heard from again that's three independent sources now kind of filling in the gaps here about clara i never in a million years thought that this would take a spy turn what an episode this is starting to round out here and to be something much more than it seemed can you i like seeing the full picture isn't it also i didn't like doing it i don't like you rubbing the picture like that why don't you unrub the picture also creepy can you also uh remember that the first theory was maybe there was an air raid oh it stunk while this story does seem to have a lot of different and corroborating angles bella in the witch elm is likely not clara bauerlea clara stood 5 foot 10 a good 10 inches taller than the skeleton found in the tree even more damning there is a log of clara dying in a berlin hospital in 1942 what the [ __ ] why would you do this i'm sorry what's the point because i'm doing here because it was i was having so much fun i knew that was gonna knock the wind out of you and you know what did you not have fun until that moment happened i did but now it's all negated that's true and uh we're not here to tell the truth we're here to spin sometimes it's like i ate a delicious meat pie it was all sitting in my stomach then you punched me and i vomited all up all right just untie your little underwear get them out of the knot okay okay it's still possible clara could just be a uniform code name for all german spies it did come from the declassified mi5 file who's to say that records from a berlin hospital would actually be accurate if it was in fact a spy do i believe that i don't know about that because it kind of ruined the anecdote we got from jacobs you know what i'll take it the rejection of the clara bauerlet theory leaves one to consider other possibilities perhaps she was still a spy of a different name or possibly a foreigner tangled up with the wrong crowd of course maybe it was a witch according to west mercia police bella's remains have been lost over the years meaning the case can't take advantage of modern dna analysis and clouding the chances of future progress in the case perhaps like the four boys who stumbled upon the mystery that spring day in 1943 someone will come across another clue hidden away and waiting for a chance crossing of pass until then the case of who put bella in the witcher will remain unsolved my big takeaway is let's look after our bones a little better oh why are they throwing these things out left and right if you find bones and you think like well maybe in 90 years they'd like to make a funny youtube video about this case it would be the right hang i'm all in on spots i won't be all in on spy if not just so that it makes this less sad but also it actually is the most compelling theory she was a spy i'm going to say it right we're going spot we're going spotty you say we solved it you guys got spy out there that's we can't say that we didn't solve it but [Music] this week on buzzfeed unsolved we're taking a look at the murder of marilyn shepard a homicide case that broke a quiet suburban town wide open and became the basis for a major hollywood blockbuster jurassic park that's stupid i don't know what's it a move what movie is it i ca i could can you tell that too much away i know you know the movie so i can't tell you what it is because then you're just gonna know there's gonna be a point in the script where you're gonna be like oh that film that film starring you can put in the actor's name interesting this is not going to become a is it this movie guessing game it may that aside i will say one thing interesting about this case is it's the first case we've ever covered where there's actually a conviction whoa so that being said let's get into it on february 21st 1945 dr samuel shepherd and marilyn reese were married and settled near lake erie ohio two years later they had their first and only child affectionately nicknamed chip revolutionary road oh yes you're guessing two sentences in huh yeah does anybody even die in that film yeah maybe i don't remember you don't even you just maybe people get married in it sam was a respected neurosurgeon and the attractive couple was believed to have a happy marriage their small suburban community was the kind where all their neighbors were friends and maybe a little too friendly on july 3rd 1954 the shepherds hosted their neighbors for dinner drinks and a movie just after midnight sam fell asleep on the couch and marilyn said her goodbyes to the guests what transpired in the next few hours has been the source of intense scrutiny and is still a mystery at about 5 40 a.m on july 4th mayor spencer hoke a close friend of the shepherds awoke to a phone call from sam saying quote my god spence get over here quick i think they have killed marilyn end quote hoke and his wife esther raced to the house to find sam shirtless in his study holding his neck seemingly in a state of shock they called the police and first responders arrived by 6am he falls asleep yes but then he's calling the cops he doesn't call the cops he calls the mayor that's kind of cool skip the cops call the mayor i mean i guess it's a small town what the hell's the mayor going to do i'd love to know the mayor from the police report marilyn's body was found lying upwards her face turned toward the door beaten beyond recognition she had over 20 gashes curved deep into her face and scalp blood covered the sheets and the walls were dripping with heavy spatter her pajamas were partially removed leaving her exposed eventually the autopsy determined marilyn's time of death was quote about 4 30 a.m end quote it also sadly revealed that marilyn had been four months pregnant with her second child also a boy according to shepherd he had been asleep downstairs when he heard marilyn shout his name he ran up to the bedroom to find marilyn being attacked by a quote white form end quote they fought but sam was hit on the back of his neck and knocked out when he came to marilyn was dead and the white form was gone worried for his son's safety sam ran to chip's room where he thankfully found him sleeping soundly he then hurried downstairs to see the form exiting through the back door he chased the tall and bushy-haired figure down to the shore of lake erie sam explained that he quote lunged or jumped and graft and quote at the form on the beach and then quote i felt myself twisting or choking and this terminated my consciousness end quote when sam woke it was nearly dawn and he was missing his shirt and watch it's weird i don't get it he wakes up from a nap here's commotion upstairs he goes he's a ghost no a white form i don't know why he keeps saying it's a form like it's michael myers shape the shape he sees she sees the shape truth or story thus far well i mean i don't really have a if you had to call it truth or story i guess i'd go truth i don't know the man well enough to really gauge his character yeah i'll give him the benefit of the doubt what makes you think this is more plausible than i don't know he seems scared you know i guess i will say at this point it sounds like a story to me mainly because all the details seem wildly convenient in terms of what's convenient about a white form though because if you were lying you'd be like yeah there's like a person if i'm fighting you and i've never seen you first things i'm saying big head weird mustache unkempt hair kind of gangly pale big nose kind of smelled like cottage cheese i don't smell like cottage cheese so throw that testimony out but you agree with all the other stuff yes okay in the early morning hours of july 4th 1954 the police arrived at the shepherd house to find a gruesome crime scene where the only witness to the possible murderer was also the most likely suspect with that let's get in to some theories by the way do you know what film this is yet i don't know what film this is yet okay our first theory the fugitive is it the fugitive maybe i mean yes or no yeah i didn't kill my wife our first theory and the most popular one is that the entire story was made up and that sam shepard murdered his wife in cold blood there was no sign of forced entry and no murder weapon present at the scene the desk drawers were neat which would not be normal in the case of a robbery coroner sam gerber commented on the blood on marilyn's pillow saying quote in this stain i could make out the impression of a surgical instrument end quote a weapon that would have been convenient for a neurosurgeon in a bush outside gerber found a canvas bag with sam's wristwatch fraternity ring and key all covered in blood oh he's a doctor sam shepard is a doctor yeah that was yeah that was also like the fugitive that was also when the first occurred yeah i got that now when's tommy lee showing up i i don't know i think you're getting a little bit away from what we're talking about here why does this not look good for sam cause all his [ __ ] is covered in blood in the days following maryland's murder investigators began honing in on sam's rumored infidelities as a possible motive evidence pointed them to a woman named susan hayes a lab technician at the hospital meanwhile media fervor escalated by july 20th headlines read quote someone is getting away with murder end quote calling for sam's arrest and conviction on july 21st the cleveland press headline read quote why no inquest do it now dr gerber end quote sure enough later that day dr gerber called an inquest and subpoenaed shepard to attend the three-day spectacle was a quote media circus culminating with gerber asking sam quote did you and sue hayes at any time sleep in the same bed end quote to which sam replied quote absolutely not end quote following the inquest on july 30th 1954 sam shepard was arrested and charged with the first degree murder of marilyn shepard well i got to that quick huh and honestly like investigating these things like we just sort of brush the fine details a little bit really don't dig too deep seems like a huge pain in the ass just arrest somebody i'm not gonna even there's no granted it's not our full-time jobs but if it were mine i'd be like i just want to chill at the station man i'm so glad you are not any kind of investigating authority i mean i have never claimed to want to be good i'm not saying that like we should just throw innocent people in jail kind of what you just said you just said i can get this wrapped up before noon so i could open a chili boy i'm just saying i can understand the impulse to be like no do your this guy i mean if this guy's putting himself in the situation where oh while your clothes are covered in blood that doesn't happen to nice people they didn't do their throw away the key unbelievable the first trial began on october 18th the prosecution relied heavily on coroner gerber's damning evidence at the scene along with the heavy media pressure to convict their last witness was susan hayes hayes confirmed the two-year-long affair and when sam took the stand he finally admitted to the infidelity unfortunately in addition to revealing that he'd lied he also came off as arrogant and glib do you buy the the logic that they were clearly uh peddling here which is he lied about that he could be lying about this murder nah two different things right two different things okay yeah that's fair and it doesn't surprise me that he'd be arrogant and glib because doctors are well that part you can maybe not do that when you're on the stand probably hard to avoid you're you're playing god every day well i mean i'm also a doctor he's like i have fixed brains though every doctor does have to have bedside manner you can't put a little bit of that up on the stand i don't know if the surgeons have to do that though oh i guess you're knocked out they're like little beethoven how are you doing down there mr bidet i'm looking at your brain i've done my i'm brilliant i've done my work yeah that's true i'm done here on december 16th the jury found sam shepard guilty of the second degree murder of his wife marilyn shepherd received life in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years but the damage reverberated far beyond his sentence shepard's mother died by suicide just a few weeks later his father passed away just days after that and several years later marilyn's father would also die by suicide in 1963. okay so there's you know consequences to locking up the wrong person for i get it i get it look i learned my lesson that's kind of why i was going on the do your job bit well you have the luxury of knowing where this little weird garden path ends up i still think generally you should do your job within reason not within reason you do your job stop staying within reason i mean don't be working nights and weekends no i what i said was when you step in between work hours you do your job okay now that i respect that's what i said at the beginning okay i thought you were saying like stay till 7 30 pm you know that's dinner time but this was only shepherd's first trial his brothers continued to support him even after the devastating toll the trial had on their family they hired a forensic scientist dr paul leland kirk to review the state's physical evidence because coroner gerber had not introduced any fingerprint or blood evidence that could have exonerated their brother gerber had decided shortly after he arrived at the scene that sam was guilty telling another detective quote it's obvious that the doctor did it end quote in 1961 shepherd's brothers hired a new attorney f lee bailey who got the trial reopened on grounds that it was poorly managed by the presiding judge edward blythen bailey argued that judge blythen denied shepard's defense motion to move the trial out of cleveland where there was no chance of a fair trial due to the bias press coverage because he was seeking re-election and used the spectacle for his own game you're this man i am this man you're a doctor ryan bergara is a doctor look at me ryan be a doctor you've murdered your wife oh would your brother jake nice guy can we go back to the doctor part just first you're a doctor what does my diploma look like i don't know but it's spattered with blood is it framed nicely where is it in my in my den yeah it's in your den sick okay go back to go with google next to your wife's bleeding body okay okay because you've murdered her jesus christ i didn't murder her though didn't you i didn't i don't care i got him you're such a idiot we got him there popular syndicated columnist dorothy kilgallon who covered the original trial confessed years later that she had an unethical private conversation with judge blythen in which he told her he saw the case as quote open and shut end quote and quote he's guilty as hell end quote had she reported this at the time blythen would have been removed from the case sounds like a person who should be presiding over this murder case yeah very unbiased judge the most unjudgly thing i've ever heard the most unhonorable thing i've ever heard that's crazy you shouldn't be doing that as a judge no yeah i think you should go in there and hear him out at the very least but he's the guy that's like we got applebee's talk yeah he's me we gotta get out of here that dude's guilty as hell i got i got me as a judge yeah that's chained my day as a judge by july 15 1964 bayley's petition that judge blythen failed to shield the jury from media making them biased was granted the court called shepard's trial a quote mockery of justice end quote and ordered his release shepard's retrial began on october 24 1966 once on the stand forensic scientist dr kirk analyzed that the blood splatter would have covered the murderer in the victim's blood but sam only had one spot on his pants kirk also determined that much of the splatter came from the backswing of the weapon indicating the murderer had used their left hand but sam was right-handed he also noted that marilyn's teeth were found underneath her body meaning that she had likely broken them while biting her attacker sam had no bite marks or open wounds when he was examined at the hospital but the most damning evidence was when kirk revealed the largest blood spot found on the closet door didn't match marilyn or sam's so was likely from a third party entirely forensic science is crazy to me yeah also not fun i know people have a passion for these things but gosh imagine going home and being like well how was your day how was my day uh i don't know it was great i found some teeth under a lady yeah or i covered a knife in fake blood and i went like this to see where it would fly that actually sounds pretty fun you know they leave bodies decomposing out in the field that's how they know this is it's fascinating stuff they leave bodies out and they just let them decompose and based on how those look after a certain that's how they like date how long bodies have been decomposing is that incredible didn't you say you wanted your body to be left in the field when you died it's called a sky burial and i want the vultures to eat me i still think dropping you out of a plane and seeing where you land is funnier that's funny too do whatever the hell you want just me at a red light trying to change the radio station just yeah the roof of my car holy [ __ ] it's a noodle man which leads us to our second theory our second theory is that sam shepard was telling the truth and his wife was murdered by a quote bushy-haired white form end quote beyond sam's statement as many as three witnesses testified to seeing someone matching that description richard and betty knitter told the police they saw such a man near the shepherd's home around 3 30 to 4 o'clock am on the morning of the murder which lines up with marilyn's time of death at around 4 30 am just really quickly i don't know why it didn't occur to me till now what are richard and betty knitter doing up at 3 30 and 4 o'clock in the morning they have the presence of mind while doing that to look out the window maybe they're freaks man it looks like a bushy haired white form maybe they're like i just know from my own personal experience when i hear a bump in the night my immediate reaction is not to go to the you go no what happened a phantom has entered my home that's exactly what i did i talked exactly like that hello is this 9-1-1 and i have a cartoon phone dude the devil is here send god they described him as quote white between 32 and 42 years of age wide nose bushy crew cut hair light auburn in color bushy eyebrows long sideburns end quote this was enough detail to provide a forensic sketch it sounds like creamer no no that's the last face i saw before leaving this earthly coil um i wouldn't like it the presence of the bushy-haired man was substantiated in shepherd's first trial by medical professionals who attested to the seriousness of the injuries he sustained fighting maryland's attacker a nurse testified that sam's quote feet were all shriveled up as if they had been in water a long time end quote consistent with sam's story that he got knocked out on the shore a radiologist said sam's x-ray revealed a probable fracture of his second cervical vertebra two other doctors said there was no way to fake his neck spasms or the swelling at the base of his skull yeah it's not like he could have committed to the craft knocked himself out in the back of the head and then put his feet in a bucket of water or something like that i mean he could have knocked himself out by the lake but that feels like an insane number that's too much but it was sam shepard's son chip who would provide a name to a bushy-haired face he had spent years trying to solve his mother's murder and he believed that the blood belonged to richard eberling richard eberling had been the shepherd's handyman for a time and had intimate knowledge of the house's layout including an obscure basement entrance additionally he had been found in possession of two stolen cocktail rings that had belonged to marilyn shepard however when questioned about the murder he passed a polygraph test where he denied killing marilyn which cleared him of being investigated further polygraphs are stupid baloney yeah do we need to say anything more about that no they're [ __ ] also he had two rings that were stolen i'm not saying that every time uh somebody in the house deals something they're a murderer but it doesn't look great no i stole a little lego man from one of my friends growing up didn't murder him yeah despite being cleared in 1989 eberling was convicted of the aggravated murder of ethel may durkin nine years into his sentence eberlin gave a deathbed confession that he had also killed marilyn shepard one witness testified quote eberling told me that he had killed her and that he hit her husband on the head with a pale and that in eberling's words the [ __ ] bit the hell out of me end quote as much as like infidelity and petty theft don't necessarily you know equate while this person is morally bankrupt enough to commit a murder i would argue that committing a different murder probably equates to committing another murder i think you have it in you at that point to maybe murder someone else i agree with that analysis case closed lock him up go i guess he's dead he's dead put a skeleton in jail we have like a special graveyard for for murderers i don't think they do that's an interesting thought though like what do you it's a cool idea start a gofundme skeleton jail but was richard eberling telling the truth besides the main theories there were two other suspects that raised some questions the first one was esther hoke f lee bailey believed that the murder of marilyn shepard could have only been perpetuated by another woman there were rumors that marilyn was having an affair with esther's husband spencer the mayor and the first person sam called that fateful morning bayley said of hoax motive and means quote one possible motive is feminine jealous hatred sparked to action by some event disturbing to the killer a jealous killing requires a woman killer end quote well everyone knows a jealous killing requires a woman killer everybody knows that trust me i'm a doctor trust me i'm a man during the retrial bailey got esther to admit she had ignited her coal fireplace the morning of the murder despite the fact that it had been a warm summer evening he implied she might have been trying to burn bloody clothes and other evidence and also that she was left-handed like the killer however there was no evidence to prove spencer and marilyn had an intimate sexual relationship and seemingly no further legal action was ever taken against the hoax i'm tired of this what is this guy talking about it seems like a flailing yeah especially when it's preceded by the handyman this seems kind of out of left field the second suspect was major james kahn ex-fbi agent bernard connors believed that marilyn was murdered by major james call an air force pilot who went awol in 1954 to embark on a murderous crime spree conor said the shepherd murder fits with call's mo in which he would break into a house of sleeping people and use violence against anyone he came across a small crowbar found in caul's possession could have been used to cause marilyn's injuries even more compelling marilyn likely bit her attacker and call had a scar that seemed to be from a deep bite mark on his left index finger when they captured calm they questioned him about marilyn's murder but never pursued the link where's this guy coming from i don't know about this man who is this man i mean i think this is kind of like common in most of these kill of these murder cases where they try to link it to a notorious serial killer it just seems like if not for the sensationalized aspect of it yeah it's an easy theory to posit can i be honest with you this man sounds scary obviously this man's a murderer i don't know if he's the murderer for this case maybe not our murderer but a murderer this sounds kind of like when you're asked to give like a quarterly report to your business and you have to have a certain amount of figures to make it look like you were doing a good job so as a detective you need a certain amount of theories and you just pat it with this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you've had your stats a little bit yeah you're just you're making your your essay look a little more exactly up in the font size you're up you're up in the font size of periods yes that's what this person's doing is that when people do the periods i used to do it all the time just fat circles in the middle they would never know it was enough it was enough and now he solves crimes but whether it was hook call eberling or simply just not shepherd reasonable doubt was all they had to prove i would say case closed in that aspect reasonable doubt has been proven in my mind yeah that he did not do it i agree and he spent roughly a decade in jail so so i thought i had to sneeze i thought you were getting choked up for a second no i was like this is what does it all because some lazy lazy judge also i mean like even without the judge your spouse gets murdered you're suspect number one that's just how the game goes if it wasn't for that watch keep an eye on your spouses make sure they don't get informed that's shame a day's disclaimer make sure your spouse does not get murdered at all costs you should that's part of the deal and in june 1966 the supreme court ruled that shepard did not get a fair trial in an 8-1 vote shepard was acquitted his innocence however remains in question the last years of shepard's life were not necessarily happy ones following his release he married a german woman who he had exchanged letters with while in prison it was later discovered that her half-sister was the wife of joseph goebbels adolf hitler's propaganda minister wait what yeah that's crazy not good i mean you know half sister so maybe maybe fine you know we've all got weird cousins and i mean it doesn't mean that she's a bad person that's right like we got bad apples in our families i'm sure yeah they're out there like if my brother won a murder spree i'm not a murderer no you're a nice guy thanks man yeah i think you're a nice guy also for the record i don't think jake would go on a murder and i don't think scott would go on a murder spree we have great brothers what about us would you go on no i wouldn't go on emergency either would i okay so we're good shepherd had his medical license reinstated then soon revoked after two patients died in surgery his german bride divorced him and he became a professional wrestler working under the name killer i'm happy for him i will normally not cool that he became a wrestler i think that kind of makes up for it you think that's a normal pivot you see neurosurgeon to wrestler how many neuroscience is not normal that's why i kind of applaud it you don't become a wrestler because you don't love wrestling i suppose but to me it's as weird as if you became a pro wrestler after we do this now i kind of want to see a sequel to the fugitive holy [ __ ] man he also ended up marrying the 19 year old daughter of his wrestling manager at 46 years old he died from liver failure after many years of alcohol abuse and depression it's certainly one of the stranger six-year arcs i've ever seen it's a sad arc that has weird interesting details in it while not guilty sam shepard was never really proven innocent the court of public opinion bolstered by the ongoing media frenzy surrounding his wife's murder made finding the truth impossible shepard's release was more about the mismanagement of the trial rather than the actual evidence in his defense but one thing is for certain in the early morning hours of the 4th of july 1954 marilyn shepherd was brutally murdered and the truth of who killed her will remain unsolved what a doozy good one ryan it's crazy you know that is an important thing to note as crazy as the circus was that surrounded sam shepard lost in it sometimes is the fact that marilyn sheppard was murdered obviously that's a tragedy and it tacking on to that it's a tragedy what happened to sam shepard if he in fact did not do it yeah so what i'm going to do is i'm going to cling on to the memory of him being a pro wrestler i was going to say it makes me happy all of these stories are awful and miserable and i walk away from them feeling sad and i don't enjoy hearing them but the one thing we can hang on to is that maybe he loved being a wrestler maybe in his last days he enjoyed giving a nice elbow yeah so hey i'm walking away with that and no one can take it away from me i'm fine with that [Music] this week for the season finale of buzzfeed unsolved true crime and in celebration of our 100th episode we pay respect to our own history by revisiting the first case we ever covered the somerton man 100 episodes that's right what a journey 100 yeah the century mark yeah of dustin off old cases and this is the first case it is and one that i was not here for one that i was deeply fascinated with even before the show began so i'm very excited to hear it now the first time we looked at this case brent was still alive and you know we didn't really go over the case in the way that we traditionally do in this show we didn't really present any theories it was very much a brief look at it we're going to take a little bit more of a robust look at the case at large go into some theories and uh try and crack open this cold case with a little bit more i guess of a like what the hell magnifying glass a mess so this will be a more thorough up and down okay let's get into it on december 1st 1948 16 year old neil day was riding horses with a friend along summerton beach in adelaide australia i didn't want to jump into the story this quickly but i did want to say it sounds fun to ride horses on the beach with a friend i rode a horse one time i think he was in hawaii i had a horse whose nickname was crazy that was actually his name and then he went rogue and then tried to buck me off and ran into a little creek what happened to you i'd like to think i survived uh-oh what if i just started fading away right now what if your world just started dissolving into vapor oh like it like like i was being hypnotized by mysterio yeah you're bruce willis at the end of the sixth sense and like it all just could wait a minute it just cuts to a montage of a bunch of times where it's obvious remember all of my bones breaking my mother screams your mother was with you yes when they passed the body of a man lying in the sand the friends didn't pay much attention thinking the man was simply napping on the beach when they came back to find the man in the exact same position they discovered he was actually dead the man was clean-shaven wearing a dry and neatly pressed suit and tie oddly all of the tags of his clothes had been removed and he was found with no belongings or form of identification his fingerprints were not in any database and no one came forward to identify the man spy probably why do you immediately go spy well i don't know how robust are fingerprint databases at this point like nowadays they get everybody's little fingerprints when they're a baby in the first episode i actually posited i believed that every baby was fingerprinted when they were born and therefore their their fingerprints were in a database i don't know if that's actually in place now either way i don't know if they did that to this man obviously they didn't because there was no identifying marks or he had them burned off like that machine they haven't been implanted in black which always looks so goddamn painful i feel like we've referenced that on this show before hey 100th episode no rules call back baby my mom also said that you know the scanner thing at the grocery store she said if i put my fingers on it it would erase my fingers funny as hell she once took a wig put it hanging out of the washing machine and told me my mom had been abducted and then my real mom was stuck in the washing machine and i could go look for proof and then she showed me the washing machine and i saw the wig sticking out and i cried your mom's the funniest lady i've ever met a postmortem revealed the man had a strikingly enlarged spleen an internal bleeding in his stomach and liver there were no indications of violence and no traces of poison symptoms of poisoning such as vomiting diarrhea or convulsions were also not present the coroner also found a pasty in his stomach in the official publication of the investigation the coroner wrote i am unable to say who the deceased was i'm unable to say how he died or what was the cause of death end quote i wouldn't say this guy blew it he's examining an alien spy corpse do you think it's an alien is that one of the theories no it's not but i'm just saying it's a very uh i can't think straight i'm going to take this off because are you toasty it seems like this i don't know season finale i could do what i want i suppose i've never even been back there you haven't have you ever left that chair no they turned the lights out and i remain like an animatronic so he is a bad corner whatever i don't know he has he's got nothing to go off of he was dealt pretty bad cards yeah in january 1949 a month after the body was found a suitcase was uncovered in the cloak room of the adelaide railway station the suitcase dropped off the day before the body was found contained among other odds and ends clothing with the labels removed and a waxed thread not sold in australia but of the type used to repair the trousers found on the body many of these objects indicated that the man whoever he was had recently been in the united states the name keen ending in e and keen ending in n were found on some of the items according to an adelaide newspaper authorities concluded the name keen had been left on the belongings to intentionally obscure the man's true identity look i'm not a spy i have never need to disclaim that everyone knows that perhaps the easier way to obscure the identity would be to not put any names on anything could you imagine your gangly ass chasing down another spy through a railway station how ridiculous that i could do it i'd be like jaws from from your feet bounding over little children's heads that's amazing i could do that i'm very fast you fell all walking running and you also fell while walking there was a big rock and i walked into it so anytime there's any element that's in them that's the only time i've fallen in my life how many bones have you broken [ __ ] zero oh really yeah hey i mean we've never broken any bones in april 1949 police came upon a mysterious clue that had been overlooked in the four plus months since the body was found sewn into the waistband of the man's pants was a secret pocket which contained a tightly rolled piece of paper with the persian words tamum should typed on it the paper appeared to be torn from an 11th century book of persian poems the rubaiyat of omar khayam or simply the rubaiyat themes of the rubaiyat center around life's transients and in english tamim should roughly translates to the end or finished the discovery of the secret pocket and its haunting message was enough for coroner thomas cleland to declare the man's death was quote not natural end quote this to mom should thing should shed some light on this situation i love it what do you think about that a secret pocket and a secret little note from a rare book so you know i love that whoever is responsible for this whether it be the corpse itself or someone who murdered this person they really could have had a successful job in the current era as like an arg advertising agent do you ever get sucked down one of those rabbit holes i mean sure do you like args alternate reality games sure man movies coming out you send some videos out on the internet get people what's going on here what's going on here oh there's a new fast and the furious film how about instead of talking about alternate reality we talk about reality i don't care for it i'm surprised at you to be quite honest because you are a big fan of spy tales i'm serving you one up on a platter here i'm still enjoying the story yes what do you want from me i don't know just like maybe yahoo and maybe some insight into what it may mean on july 23rd three months after police discovered the tamim should paper a businessman who had read about the unidentified body in the paper came to police with a copy of the rubaiyat the man claimed that he found the book in the back seat of his car after parking it near somerton beach with the windows down sure enough a section had been torn out of the last page of the book that perfectly fit the piece found in the unknown man's pants on the back cover of the book police discovered five lines of letters apparently a secret code and what appeared to be a phone number to this day the code has never been cracked and the australian navy determined it to be virtually unbreakable explaining quote there is an insufficient number of letters for definite conclusions to be based on analysis the letters do not constitute any kind of simple cipher or code a reasonable explanation would be that the lines are the initial letters of words of a verse of poetry or such like end quote yeah no i got nothing it's a bunch of letters you know i actually when we first covered this case i did pour over this code for a bit and uh i don't have any code cracking capability so i looked at it for probably a good hour strained my little eyeballs and was like mysterious while the code failed to yield any new leads the phone number found in the back of the rubaiyat led investigators to 27 year old nurse jessie joe thompson's doorstep just hundreds of meters from where the body was found eight months prior thompson admitted to once owning a copy of the rubaiyat but claimed she'd given the copy to a man named alfred boxel upon investigation boxel turned out to still be alive and in possession of a fully intact copy of the rubiot by this time the still anonymous body had been buried but not before a plaster cast had been made for investigative purposes according to detective sergeant lionel lean when joe thompson was shown the cast in the hopes of identifying it she looked like she was about to faint nevertheless thompson denied knowing the man thompson died in 2007 still claiming she did not know the man found on the beach lots to unpack there yeah the book thing is a bit of an enigma obviously how many people have a copy of this book maybe it's a page turner i guess so what's interesting to me is that joe thompson clearly recognizes this person no one sees a picture of a person faints gets back up and goes i don't know that person well she was shown a cast of a dead man's face i don't know maybe she's got some hang-ups man perfectly normal i don't think she's suspicious with an unnamed dead body an 11th century book of persian poems and an uncrackable code it's time to lay out some theories surrounding what happened to the somerton man our first theory is that the somerton man was responsible for his own death and killed himself this could mean he put the paper reading tamim should in his own pocket to be found as a sort of suicide note supporting this theory are the similar elements of another suicide that of immigrant george marshall in june 1945 marshall was found dead in mossman australia after poisoning himself with barbiturates with his corpse was another copy of the rubaiyat while another dead man turning up in australia with the same collection of persian poems may sound like too large of a coincidence to overlook the rubaiyat apparently had become quite popular in australia during world war ii since the work deals with life and mortality it's possible both men could have had similar inspiration to have at least a piece of the book with them during their final moments oh yeah has anybody else read this book and are they still living because what if it's a ring oh like seven days it's a ring situation i don't remember much from it except that when you watch the vhs tape you get a call saying you're going to die in seven days so in this case and this yeah that's our entirely plausible scenario that anyone who reads this book let me let's what do you think about this theory at large though possible if he was a i mean it's weird to explain the fingerprints obviously or maybe he'd been compromised he knew it was coming to an end because he is a spy and he figured just take control of the situation that's maybe i could see that i don't know i don't know if this is the strongest theory to me yeah our next theory is that the man was murdered by russian spies the body was found at the dawn of the cold war and paranoia about soviet spies loomed large a few months before the discovery of the corpse a soviet embassy spy ring had been uncovered in canberra australia a statement given in 1959 by a man who was on summerton beach the night the unidentified man died claims to have seen quote a man carrying another on his shoulder near the water's edge end quote in 2013 a theory came out that joe thompson the woman whose phone number was found in the back of that copy of the rubaiyat may have been a soviet spy the woman who publicly suggested this theory was none other than kate thompson joe thompson's daughter in a 60 minutes interview kate thompson said her mother had quote a dark side a very strong dark side she said to me she knew who he was but she wasn't going to let that out of the bag so to speak there's always that fear that i've thought that maybe she was responsible for his death end quote yeah that would be that would be hard to wrap my head around no my mom did pretend that she were she was abducted by well your mom's not a murderer mom's a murderer she's the nicest murderer i've ever met yeah she's a regular uh norman bates everyone thought he was the nicest guy they shouldn't have though that guy was a creep yeah everyone i always thought that was like what a sweet man he's got so many stuffed birds there was a bunch of red flags in the first act of that film love the way how he doesn't blink he's a sweet guy i love how he smiles in moments where it doesn't make sense to smile according to kate she would hear her mother speaking in rushed quieted russian to someone over the phone her mother had also mentioned she was teaching english to newly arrived immigrants from russia kate remembered her mother at one point saying something along the lines of quote oh i can still understand russian end quote though she never mentioned where she learned it hang on a second do you think that her mother went to the same school of mothering as your mother i see that her mother's playing a little funny prank what's the funniest thing to do in the world if you have kids i mean kids are a lot of work i imagine trick them into thinking you are a spy yeah or that's the funniest [ __ ] in the world trick them into thinking you're an alien same thought that's exactly right either this woman is a spy or one of the funniest mothers i've ever heard of it's possible you know what i would say that seems impossible until i realized my own mother did that to me so then maybe maybe she is just playing a funny little gag sounds like that's one funny mummy oh my god if the somerton man met his end thanks to russian spies whether joe thompson was involved or not there's also the question as to how he died at the time a well-known professor sir cedric stanton hicks proposed that the man had indeed been poisoned but with an extremely rare variety which would decompose soon after death this would of course explain the absence of poison found in the corpse in court hicks refused to say the name of the poisons he was referring to allowed believing they were too dangerous sir hicks did however write two types of poison down on paper and gave it to the coroner digitalis and strophanton yeah you're just reading it aloud all right we blew it never mind here's the poison you can use did you tell it you really turned the corner on that one quick it should be noted that joe thompson worked as a nurse and perhaps could have known about and had access to some rarer poisons such as those written down by hicks while spies might explain the mysterious code in the back of the rubiot there is admittedly no physical evidence joe thompson was ever involved with russians in any capacity much less associated with espionage still one could always argue this only means thompson was a very good spy you can't get away from the fact that her number was written in the back of the book that was linked to the dude that makes me think she was not a very good spy oops yeah i woke up there with my phone number in it probably not a good spot can you think of anything worse to leave behind at a crime scene than your numbers will leave your business card spy or your confession note yeah i did it it is me or she just has very bad luck and somebody took her no i don't get yeah i can't get around the fact that her name is in the book that's linked to him so be that as it may i don't know maybe he was peeping on her he was like pretty like he lives on the beach or loves you pretty late on the beach or is maybe later we might talk about how they might have been romantically linked and he had her number written down maybe he was reading the rubaiyat at a bar strikes up a conversation with a lovely lady she gives him her number he writes it down in the book because that's what he has at the time maybe that's what it is okay all right maybe we cracked it maybe she's not a spy maybe she just uh struck up a conversation she got a heart our next theory is that the man was killed as the result of a romantic relationship gone awry this is a relatively recent theory and it comes thanks to the tireless work of university of adelaide engineering professor derrick abbott abbott discovered that about a year before the man's body turned up on summerton beach joe thompson had given birth to a son named robin thompson robin grew up to be a professional ballet dancer which meant it was easy for abbott to track down photos of the man based on photos abbott found that robin had a similar strange ear feature to the somerton man additionally both robin and the man found on the beach were missing their incisor teeth a genetically inherited trait this information along with the fact that joe thompson was unmarried the year robin was born led abbott to conclude joe and the somerton man had a liaison together and she had robin end quote by the time abbott made this connection robin had already died however abbott was able to track down one rachel egan the biological daughter of robin thompson who was living in queensland in what might be the craziest reveal in a story full of strange twists abbott and egan eventually fell in love and got married i love it that's sweet that's crazy that's something that's never happened in the show before the person who's theorizing about a case meets one of the people he's theorizing about and then falls in love with that person love it one thing that just crossed my mind is not not that but people ask you all the time how you met your significant other you imagine that's pretty good also what do you think about first off joe thompson having the son robin who bears a resemblance to the mystery man i think uh i think yeah i'll buy it i'm there because that that will fit my thing that i was saying earlier about the number being something that he scribbled down in a book when he met her at a bar or something like that i've never met anyone who who didn't have incisors you know i don't walk up to everyone and inspect their mouth like a horse that's what my dad does in late 2018 while inspecting the original plastic cast police made of the body the same one that allegedly made his grandmother-in-law nearly faint abbott found three hairs which he believes could contain dna evidence of a genetic link to his wife if the somerton man was her son's dead father that could explain joe thompson's near fainting upon seeing the plaster cast while the hare's abbott discovered may not be able to provide a conclusive answer it is the most promising lead in the case so far even if professor abbott is able to prove his wife's relationship to the summertime man many questions remain unanswered such as who he was how he was killed and why he was left dead on the beach joe thompson or another man for instance the one spotted carrying a body on the beach could have been angry at the somerton man for not taking responsibility for the child that resulted from his love affair or perhaps joe thompson the dead man or even both were spies and weren't supposed to get involved in a relationship if the man was robin thompson's father and rachel egan's grandfather perhaps the biggest question of all is why was joe thompson so unwilling to identify the body it feels like we have a little piece of this puzzle enough that i'm satisfied sure there's a mystery but out of that mystery was born love are you the type of guy that gets like 75 percent done with a jigsaw puzzle that's enough i could kind of see the picture i get it yeah kind of looks like the box we could walk away from this right you're never going to finish the whole thing anyway i'm going to go usually a piece missing or something most frustrating thing in the world why bother yeah whatever it's been over 71 years since two friends riding horses along the australian beach came upon a dead man lying in the sand despite decades of effort and no shortage of cryptic clues the man's identity his killer's identity and the way the man died are all still unknown perhaps new dna evidence and the steady march of time will finally provide some answers to the many questions surrounding this case but for now the mystery of the summertime man remains unsolved i feel like both he and joe thompson may have been spies yeah that'd be cool and that is the reason why she could not say the identity of the man because it would both compromise her and him and their resulting family that is my theory and i'm sticking to it i mean it's highly probable because uh spies you know it's probably easier to love another spy here's a question at large that encompasses the whole series if you shane midday disappeared under mysterious circumstances or you died and we didn't know how it happened would you want people to know how it happened no not for your loved ones you know i i'd prefer that they knew what happened but i'm gonna tell them right now don't worry about it obviously as a living person i care about my loved ones i want them to be safe if i disappear if i'm still alive you know i'll pop out there eventually i'll show up somewhere and be like hey here i am sorry about that just chilling in costa rica sucking on coconuts but if i disappear for sure and you don't see me i'm dead a hundred percent don't worry about it all right maybe i got that sky burial i've always been hoping for what about you of course i'd want people to know what happened to me not for me but because it would drive i know my mom insane to not know what happened yeah of course it'd be tough for the loved ones and i i sympathize it's not on me to to look into your disappearance though right i can just i would hope you would i'm not qualified i'd look into your disappearance very kind of hugh huge waste of time well that does it for this season i guess we'll see you guys for some ghost hunting in supernatural another incredible season of many many questions and zero answers another season of mysteries oh almost forgot my coat you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 2,356,183

Rating: 4.8908892 out of 5

Keywords: Cold case, Creepy, Mini doc, Mystery, Ryan bergara, Shane madej, Unsolved, Unsolved True Crime Season 6 Marathon, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, buzzfeed unsolved network, buzzfeedunsolvednetwork, cold case, creepy, investigation, marathon, mini doc, mystery, theories, true crime, true crime marathon, unsolved, unsolved mysteries, unsolved mystery, unsolved true crime

Id: wwzFB_UjtVQ

Length: 142min 12sec (8532 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020