[OVERVIEW]
As much as we wish to believe every victim will get their justice that just isn't the case. There are hundreds of unsolved cases, some as minor as stealing something off your front porch to something major like murder.
With technology getting better many of these cases get reopened but even then some cases just cannot be solved.
[CLEVELAND TORSO MURDERER]
In the 1930s a string of murders happened in the neighborhood of Kingbury Run. The killer became known as the Cleveland Torso Murderer.
The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered his victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages. In many cases the cause of death was the decapitation or dismemberment itself. Most of the male victims were castrated, and some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths; occasionally in excess of a year.
The official number of deaths is 12 but it is believed to have been 20 victims.
The victims were drifters and people of lower classes. So when found they couldn't be identified because they had no connection to anyone.
Of the 12 known victims only 2 have been identified.
On August 24, 1939, a Cleveland resident named Frank Dolezal, 52, was arrested as a suspect in Florence Polillo's murder; he later died in suspicious circumstances in the Cuyahoga County jail.
Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Nevertheless, Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, threatening postcards with Sweeney's name mocked and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton in 1964.
In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run because the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were expert or slapdash. Second, his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore, the only thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered.
[CHICAGO TYLENOL]
There was once a time where safety deals weren't on every bottle of pills. This was the same time where all Tylenol were in capsules instead of pills. This proved to be a very fatal mistake but caused medicine companies to take more precautions.
In 1982 a total of 7 people died after taking some Tylenol. When they looked into it it was discovered that someone put Cyanide into the capsules.
On September 29, 1982, twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, died after taking a capsule of Extra-Strength Tylenol.
Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died in the hospital later that day after ingesting Tylenol; his brother Stanley and sister-in-law Theresa, of Lisle, Illinois, later also died after taking Tylenol from the same bottle.
Within the next few days, Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, Paula Prince of Chicago, and Mary Reiner of Winfield all died in similar incidents.
Warnings were issued via the media, and patrols using loudspeakers warned residents throughout the Chicago metropolitan area to discontinue use of Tylenol products.
Police, knowing that various sources of Tylenol were tampered with, ruled out manufacturers, as the tampered-with bottles came from different pharmaceutical companies-and the seven deaths had all occurred in the Chicago area, so sabotage during production was ruled out. Instead, police concluded that they were likely looking for a culprit who was believed to have acquired bottles of Tylenol from various retail outlets. Furthermore, they concluded the source was most likely supermarkets and drug stores, over a period of several weeks, with the culprit likely adding the cyanide to the capsules, then methodically returning to the stores to place the bottles back on the shelves. In addition to the five bottles that led to the victims' deaths, three other tampered-with bottles were later discovered.
In an effort to stop the killings Johnson & Johnson sent out a warning to hospitals and distributors in order to halt distributing their medication. Afterwards other companies did the same and recalled all of their products.
During the initial investigations, a man named James William Lewis sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million to stop the cyanide-induced murders. Police were unable to link him with the crimes, as he and his wife were living in New York City at the time. He was convicted of extortion, served 13 years of a 20-year sentence, and was released in 1995 on parole. WCVB Channel 5 of Boston reported that court documents, released in early 2009, "show Department of Justice investigators concluded Lewis was responsible for the poisonings, despite the fact that they did not have enough evidence to charge him". Lewis has consistently denied all responsibility for the poisonings for several years.
A second man, Roger Arnold, was investigated and cleared of the killings. He had a nervous breakdown due to the media attention, which he blamed on Marty Sinclair, a bar owner. In the summer of 1983, Arnold shot and killed John Stanisha, whom he mistook for Sinclair. Stanisha was an unrelated man who did not know Arnold. Arnold was convicted in January 1984 and served 15 years of a 30-year sentence for second-degree murder. He died in June 2008.
Laurie Dann, who poisoned and shot people in a May 1988 rampage in and around Winnetka, Illinois, was briefly considered as a suspect, but no direct connection was found.
[BEAUMONT CHILDREN]
Jane, Arnne and Grant, also known as the Beaumont Children. The three siblings went missing on January 26, 1966. Their ages were 9, 7 and 4 respectively.
Jane, Arnne and Grant lived with their parents in Australia not far from a beach the kids loved to go to. At this time most parents weren't super strict because not as many known kidnappings happened around this time. Their parents let them go to the beach alone, as they had numerous times before, with the agreement that they be back by 2. When 2 came, they kids didn't. Worry grew in the parents but they waited, hoping they were on their way. Around 3 the father went to the beach but couldn't find them. By 5 they went to the police.
The police immediately organized search parties to try to find the kids. They search the beach and surrounding areas hoping they just lost track of time or they got lost, but they found nothing.
Many witnesses said they saw the children at the beach with a tall blonde man who looked about in his 30s. The children were playing with him. Many didn't find this odd as the children seemed very comfortable around him so they figured they knew him.
Jim and Nancy, the parents, described their children, especially Jane, as shy so them them to be playing with a stranger would be out of character for them.
Investigators theorized that the children met this man previously and grew to trust him. A chance remark at home, which seemed insignificant at the time, supports this theory. Arnna had told her mother that Jane had "got a boyfriend down the beach". Nancy Beaumont thought she meant a playmate and took no further notice until after the disappearance.
A shopkeeper at nearby Wenzel's Bakery also reported Jane Beaumont had bought pasties and a meat pie with a £1 note. Police viewed this as further evidence that they had been with another person, for two reasons: the shopkeeper knew the children well from previous visits and reported that they had never purchased a meat pie before; and the children's mother had given them only 6 shillings, enough for their bus fare and food, and not £1. Police believed it had been given to them by somebody else.
At about 3:00 pm the children were seen walking alone, away from the beach, in the general direction of their home. The witness, a postman, knew the children well, and his statement was regarded as reliable. He said the children were "holding hands and laughing" in the Main Street. Police could not determine why the reliable children, already one hour late, were strolling alone and seemingly unconcerned. This was the last confirmed sighting of the children. The postman contacted police two days after his initial statement and said that he thought he saw them in the morning, not the afternoon as he had previously said.
Several months later a woman reported that on the night of the disappearance a man, accompanied by two girls and a boy, entered a neighbouring house that she had believed empty. Later she had seen the boy walking alone along a lane where he was pursued and roughly caught by the man. The next morning the house appeared to be deserted again, and she saw neither the man nor the children again. Police could not establish why she had failed to provide this information earlier. Other reported sightings of the children continued for about a year after their disappearance.
To this day their bodies have never been found so their fates are completely unknown. As of 2018 there is a 1 million dollar reward for any information that leads investigators to the truth about what really happened.
[ANGIE HOUSMAN]
Angie was just 9 years old when her life tragically ended in 1993. Angie was getting off the school bus in a small, quiet town in Missouri when she was abducted. She wouldn't be found for 9 nines after her disappearance.
Two days before Angie was discovered a young boy only know to the public as David had attended a Thanksgiving get together at a neighbors home. During a commercial Angie's photo came up. Afterwards people at the get together were weirded out by David. David has claimed he had a dream of Angie being tied to a tree in the Busch Wildlife area. None of the adults seemed to be alarmed enough however.
Two days later a hunter was in the Busch Wildlife area hunting deer when he spotted a tree that seemed weird. When he approached the tree he found the naked body of Angie chained to the tree with duct tape over her mouth and eyes. Her hands were also handcuffed.
When an autopsy was performed they found evidence of sexual abuse in extreme manors as well as being beaten for up to nine days. Her cause of death was exposure as she was alive when tied to the tree. At was so cold out that ice was forming on her skin.
Examiners called Angie a fighter as she had died just a few hours before being found.
The duct tape used had fingerprints and DNA of her killer, but they haven't been able to match it.