Of course there is, silly! It’s also the name of Oz’s band on “Buffy!”
The Black Donnellys – solved, as well as history will allow, but there are still some unanswered questions.
It is isn’t it? From a Swede’s POV, it’s all rather strange. If there was a conspiracy, and a hit man was hired, why would they leave a witness (Palme’s wife)? If it was a random weirdo (ie Christer Pettersson), how the hell did he get away with it?
I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.
Some good ones here (and I’ve just finished reading another Edmund Pearson true-crime book from the 1930s!). Some others that are fascinating:
• William Desmond Taylor, the Hollywood director shot in 1923. Actress mary Miles Minter and her mother were both suspected; no one was ever tried.
• Dot King, a model killed in her New York apartment, also in the early '20s. Her gigolo boyfriend may have done it, but again no one was ever tried.
• Thelma Todd, terrific actress, died in her garage in 1935. Murder? Suicide? Accident? No one knows . . .
• Olive Thomas, Ziegfeld girl and movie star, died in her French hotel room in 1920 after drinking poison. It was never established if it was suicide or murder (she was married to Mary Pickford’s ne’er-do-well brother Jack, who collected a LOT of insurance on her).
Presumably because there was no need to bump off any witnesses. Whichever government was behind the murder (South Africa / US / the Kurds, ok they’re not a government but you know what I mean … take your pick!) would have been able to get the assassin out of the country before the blood was even dry.
Seems highly unlikely that he could have, which is why the conspiracy theories are so intriguing.
I also have to go with Zodiac. The sheer chutzpah of the guy, sending coded letters to the police and so forth, the craziness, the costume he made for himself, it’s all so bizarre. And it’s unbelievable that he was never caught.
I read a pretty good book on the case called, strangely enough, ‘Zodiac’.
I’ve always wondered if other serial killers made fun of the Zodiac Killer, just 'cause he was so hardcore and outrageous. I mean, a costume? A secret code? It’s really rather ridiculous. Almost silly, except it’s so scary and serious.
Likewise, I think they probably made fun of Richard Ramirez, too, because he was so half-assed and random in his killing. And he was caught in such an awful way, too–with all those bystanders beating the hell out of him and demanding the reward money.
For the most fascinating unsolved murder, I have to agree with those who have already mentioned the Jack the Ripper murders. I’ve always found them interesting, because of the variety of suspects and the letters to the investigators. I remember being terrified by a Jack the Ripper miniseries on TV when I was little.
Closer to home, I was fascinated by an A&E documentary about the I-45 Killer, who authorities think may have killed a number of young women along I-45 in the Houston area. A couple of young women have vanished in recent years. Whenever I’m home from college and driving along this freeway my mom always cautions me never to stop at night.
There is strong evidence that Edward II was murdered at Berkeley Castle by having a red hot poker applied to his bowels. This is the popular account.
Contemporary reports have him screaming so loudly that he was heard across the surrounding countryside.
The manner of his death fulfilled two criteria:
- There were to be no visible marks on his body.
- Symbolism. Edward II was very gay.
His death was reputedly ordered by Roger Mortimer and/or Queen Isabella (The She-Wolf of France). Edward, although already having abdicated in favour of his son (Edward III), was still considered a danger to Isabella & Mortimer who were effectively running the country.
I say ‘strong evidence’ because it’s really impossible to ascertain what happened in 1327 from this distance. It’s all anecdotal. To state the obvious.
Mrs. Robert Blake
Whatinhell happened to this case? I know the Chandra Levy stuff eclipsed the Blake case in the spotlight, but I’m damned if I can find even a trace of what happened to this investigation.
Wasn’t this case solved?
Yeah, I know all that…but thanks for the post anyway. 
Since others have already mentioned the cases that I find fascinating (Green River Killer, JonBenet, etc.), I would also like to add Jeffrey McDonald.
Ninety percent of me thinks that he is guilty, but there is still that small part that wonders if his story is true.
However, the case that I find the most fascinating of all is the murders of three little boys in Memphis in 1993. Although three teenaged boys were arrested and convicted of killing the little boys in a Satanic ritual, the only evidence was the coerced “confession” of one of the teens. The teen who confessed was mentally slow and got a lot of the facts of the murders wrong. He later recanted his confession.
Having followed this case closely, I am convinced that the stepfather of one of the murdered children is the actual killer. I doubt we will ever know for certain, but I truly do not believe these boys are the killers.
The official website that has been created to help free the three teens is http://www.wm3.org/ Click here for a synopsis of the case http://www.wm3.org/html/sauls.html . There is also a couple of documentaries - Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost II, as well as a few books written on the subject.
In eastern Connecticut there was a string of murders by a guy in a black pickup, and they never found him. He’d run people off the road and shoot them. For those familiar with the state, this wasn’t Michael Ross. As for a more well known one, the JFK one is just so intriguing. I mean, Nixon was in Dallas that day, the city was a dangerous pit full of racial violence, far right oilmen, far left communists, LBJ’s friends, the Cuban Mafia and the Italian Mafia (all of whom had a grudge against Kennedy), there was a chance LBJ would be indicted on bribery and dumped from the ticket if this hadn’t happened, Jack Ruby was at the press conference announcing LHO’s arrest…it’s just one big morass.
Not that I’m aware of.
**
You know, I read about this case in a book on the “Satanic Panic.” It’s frightening stuff- apparently some daycare providers were convicted of Satanically abusing children with killer robots and ball lightning and other such nonsense. The book convinced me that, sadly, we haven’t come that far from the days of the witch trials. It related the story of how one community found tires laid out in a field in a weird symbol. Some witchfinders-general (ie, people too incompetent to find any job other than blowing confident-sounding hot air,) were called in, and offered their opinions: definitely Satanic, probably Egyptian, or maybe Celtic, without a doubt used for human sacrifice, blah blah blah. Eventually some guys came forwards to say that they had invented a sport that they liked to play during the summer, and the weird symbol was the court they built for it. The police had just stumbled onto the court during the off-season.
-Ben
You gotta be kidding.
Where was this?
In America- that’s as specific as I can get. (I read the book maybe 4 years ago?) I checked the library catalog, but for the life of me I can neither find nor remember it. Can anyone help me out here? It was a book with a title like “Satanic Panic” or “Searching for Satan” or some such, and it was a skeptical review of Satanic ritual abuse cases. Very frightening stuff, not because of the Satanic element, but because of the witchfinders.
-Ben
Are you thinking of this?
I would go for the so-called Shark Arm Murder of 1935, in Sydney, Australia. A large shark had been captured on April 18, 1935, and placed in an aquarium at Coogee, an eastern suburb of Sydney. A week later the shark apparently disgorged a tattoed arm that was later identified by the tattoos as belonging to James Smith. Smith was believed to have been murdered because he was going to spill the beans on a large smuggling operation, but the only person who might have confirmed this story, a man named Reg Holmes, was shot and killed the night before he was due to tell the Sydney coroner about the motive behind Smith’s murder. There were suspects from the alleged smuggling ring arrested for both murders, but no-one was ever convicted and the murders remain unsolved.
A fuller account appears at:
http://homepage.mac.com/mollet/Mazie/TheSharkArmMurders.html