Ok y'all. Let's get weird.
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So far, we've talked unbelievable suspects and what passed for occult mysteries in the 1980s. But how about just truly
weird mysteries? These are strange by any accounts, including one described as "one of the strangest we've ever profiled."
In this ONTD original series, resident true crime junkies
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patchsassy go to the way-back machine for some of our favorite segments from the 1980s classic Unsolved Mysteries. (Note: all old episode numbers correspond with episodes on Amazon Prime.)
Cindy James (old: 3x18, new: 4x03)
This is one of the creepiest cases that Unsolved Mysteries has ever done. Cindy James was a pretty blonde Canadian nurse. The 44 year old was found dead in June 1989, drugged and strangled. It seemed like your typical murder case at first, however...
Cindy started receiving strange threatening phone calls shortly after she separated from her husband in 1982. For the next 7 years, Cindy would be victimized in strange and grotesque ways. One time, her neighbor found her tied up with nylon stockings. During the next seven years, she reported nearly a hundred incidents of harassment. Five were violent physical attacks while others were whispering to silent phone calls. This got worse after she involved the police. At night, she heard prowlers. Her porch lights were smashed and her phone lines severed. Bizarre notes began to appear on her doorstep. Someone was trying to scare her to death. She became reluctant and frightened to give details. Over time, the police began to doubt her stories.
Once she was found crouched down with a nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck. She'd gone out to the garage to get a box and someone had grabbed her from behind. All she saw were white sneakers. She even moved to a new house, changed her name, and painted her house a different color. Nothing would work and the harassment continued. Eventually she was committed to a psychiatric hospital because her parents thought she was suicidal.
In Vancouver, the coroner ruled that her death was not suicide, an accident, or a murder. They determined that she died of an "unknown event." Cindy's parents never doubted that their daughter was murdered. Her father believed the police did not investigate the possibility of homicide or of somebody murdering her, instead zeroing in on trying to prove that she committed suicide. They believe someone in Vancouver is getting away with murder. Its commonly believed a friend of Cindy's ex-husband, who worked in the police department, is responsible for her death.
Deaths of Clarence Roberts (old: 1x11, new: 8x02)
For decades, 52 year old Clarence Roberts and his 49 year old wife, Geneva, lived in the town of Nashville, Indiana with their four sons. Clarence was one of the town's most respected citizens and owned a successful lumber business and hardware store with his brother, but in the late 1960s, Clarence sold off his interest in those businesses to invest in an apartment building and several grain elevators. Clarence was hoping to achieve millionaire status, but his investments went belly-up and by 1970, he found himself $200,000 in debt.
On November 18, a barn on Clarence's property caught fire and a charred body was discovered inside. Since a shotgun was found near the body, it was initially assumed that Clarence started the fire and committed suicide to escape his financial problems, so that his family could cash in on several life insurance policies, totaling $1.2 million.
However, doubt surfaced that the body actually belonged to Clarence. There was no trace of a gunshot wound and the victim's blood type turned out to be AB even though Clarence's blood type was B. In the days following the fire, Clarence's Masonic ring was discovered in the rubble, but since it had no trace of fire damage, it seemed likely it was planted there. Two days before the fire, Clarence was seen in a nearby town alongside an unidentified man who appeared to be a vagrant. The man keeled over and appeared to have a seizure, so Clarence put him in his car and said he was going to take him to a hospital. This vagrant was never seen again and there was no record of him ever checking in to any hospitals. It was theorized that Clarence had murdered the vagrant and burned his body beyond recognition in order to fake his own death and skip town.
As a result, the life insurance companies refused to pay out on Clarence's policies and a grand jury would indict Clarence for kidnapping and murder in 1975. Geneva Roberts made an unsuccessful attempt to have her husband declared legally dead and filed a lawsuit against the insurance companies to collect the money from his policies. At the civil trial, Geneva's attorneys got a criminal pathologist to testify that he believed the body belonged to Clarence, but the defendants countered with a lot of evidence to suggest Clarence faked his death. There were alleged sightings of Clarence after he died, including a witness who claimed to have seen Clarence at a restaurant in Mexico and a tavern owner who saw Clarence in his establishment with an unidentified woman in April 1972. One witness even testified that in September 1970, Clarence had shown him a card for a secret Swiss bank account, which he claimed had more than $100,000. In May 1979, Geneva's lawsuit was officially dismissed, as the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove that Clarence was dead. By this point, Geneva was a social outcast living in poverty in a house outside of town and there were numerous sightings of a man on her property, though no one ever seemed to get a good look at him. While some people believed Geneva had a secret boyfriend, rumors circulated that the man was Clarence, but after putting surveillance on Geneva's house, the police never saw anyone.
After losing her lawsuit, Geneva filed an appeal, but it was dismissed on October 15, 1980. On the evening of November 29, Geneva's house caught fire and burned to the ground. Two bodies were found in the rubble: Geneva and a man who was positively identified as Clarence Roberts (ironically enough, he was ID'ed by the same pathologist who had testified Clarence died in the first fire back in 1970). An accelerant had clearly been used to start this fire. In 1983, a grand jury ruled that Geneva likely went unconscious because of alcohol consumption or a diabetic coma before Clarence poured turpentine around the house to start the fire. However, since his body was found in a storage room containing solvents and other flammable liquids, it's possible Clarence passed out and burned to death before he could escape.
While it may seem like what happened is obvious, members of Clarence's own family still insist that he died in the first fire.
Charles Morgan (old: 3x09, new: 6x16)
First, I'm going to throw this out there: this case is WEIRD. Organized crime is very likely involved, and so is a clue in the form of a $2 bill clipped to the inside of some underwear. Intrigued yet? Let's talk about Chuck Morgan.
Chuck was a figurehead who was potentially handling real estate escrow duties for organized crime (mainly drug trafficking and money laundering) that was going between Arizona and Mexico. At the time that all of this happened, Morgan was also a potential witness in a federal case against these figures.
The first time he disappeared, it was a routine day. He left one morning to go to work, and didn't come home for a few days. When he finally did stumble home at 2 in the morning, he was unable to speak because he wrote a note to his wife that his throat had been sprayed with a hallucinogenic drug that might eventually drive him crazy and/or kill him. Chuck also told his wife not to call the police because the entire family might be killed.
Before he got his voice back, he noticed that his US Treasury ID was missing from his wallet. His wife did not know that he had been working for them for 2-3 years, but she suspected that this had a role in his work with the Mafia.
Following this ordeal, he began wearing a bulletproof vest. He also was concerned for his teen daughters' safety and insisted on driving them to and from school. Two months after his initial disappearance, he disappeared again. This time, a possible person involved called his wife, Ruth, and said he was fine and gave her the Bible verse Ecclesiastes 12: 1-8.
Two days after the phone call, Chuck's body was found in the desert. He had been shot in the back of the head with his own gun while wearing his bulletproof vest. Clues at the crime scene included a paper in his car with directions to the site and prescription sunglasses that were not his. Clipped inside his underwear (can we just say EW?) was a $2 bill, and written on the front were 7 Spanish names (which started with the letters A-G) and the Bible verse given to his wife in the serial number. On the back, the signers of the Declaration of Independence were number and there was a crude map, of which was more than likely a pipeline for smuggling between Tucson and Mexico.
A woman also claimed to LE that she had been the one to call Chuck's wife, she met with him the day he disappeared the second time and he had a briefcase full of cash that was meant to pay out of a contract on his life, and what likely transpired was he went to buy out the hit men, who murdered him and stole the cash.
Law enforcement believes that it was a suicide. Shooting oneself in the back of the head while wearing a bulletproof vest? That totally happens, you guys. OH and two guys claiming to be from the FBI came in after his death, ransacked the house and found nothing. The journalist who was all over this case filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) on the government and found no indication that this was a sanctioned raid on his house.
This case is still unsolved and one of the weirder cases featured on UM. I feel bad for his family but I generally agree with the assessment that he got in over his head with the wrong people and before LE could intervene to arrest people, he was murdered.
Blair Adams (old: 9x17, new: 3x06)
OK, when even the Unsolved Mysteries people say, "This is one of the strangest cases we've ever covered", you
know you're in for a trip. Let's just start with a basic timeline.
Blair Adams lived in Surrey, British Columbia, and worked as a foreman for a construction company. He was described as being "well-liked" and lived a relatively normal life, which is why the last 6 days of his life in 1996 are so strange.
Friday, July 5 - Blair withdraws all of his savings (cash, gold, jewelry, platinum).
Sunday, July 7 - Blair tries to get across the border into the United States, but was turned away because he was a young, single man, carrying a large amount of cash (the profile of a drug trafficker).
Monday, July 8 - Blair quits his job. He spends $1,600 on a round trip ticket to Frankfurt, Germany. Then, in the middle of the night, he shows up at a friends' house, begging for a ride to the border. He seemed paranoid, but the friend couldn't drive him because she didn't want to leave her kids home alone.
Tuesday, July 9 - Blair cashes in his plane tickets, rents a car and gets into the United States. In Seattle, he paid $770 for a one-way ticket to Washington D.C. (paying around twice as much as he would have for a round-trip ticket)
Wednesday, July 10 - Blair arrives in DC, rents a car and drives to Knoxville, Tennessee. Later that day, he pulls into a service station to get gas, then says he can't start his car. With the attendant's assistance, they realize that he has a Nissan key for his Toyota rental car, although he insists that it's the key that got him there. They search high and low for the Toyota key, but do not find it. He is towed to a local mechanic until the rental car agency can get him a replacement key. The motel staff describe him as paranoid and agitated, and he leaves and enters the lobby multiple times before actually renting a room. The last time he was seen alive was 7:37 p.m. on the hotel surveillance cameras.
Thursday, July 11 - Blair Adams is found dead. He is naked from the waist down and has $4,000 in German, Canadian and American currency scattered around his body. A fanny pack with gold and jewelry was also there, along with, mysteriously enough, the key to his Toyota rental car. Blair had cuts and abrasions consistent with defense wounds on his body and was killed by a violent blow to the stomach.
Before all this went down, Blair told his mother, "I don't think I should tell you about it." She had no idea what he was talking about, but he was very certain that he was being followed. His mother now claims that he was traveling to Atlanta for the upcoming Summer Olympic Games.
Knoxville police were baffled because he knew no one in the area, there was no reason that they can find for him to be even in the area. At the crime scene, his clothes that were removed were done so in a way that led them to believe that another person did it (i.e. his pants, socks, etc. were inside out). They tried to look into his background to see if he had encounters with prostitutes or other men...anything to explain why they found his body the way they found it, and came up with nothing.
Blair's case is sadly, unsolved. According to
this article in the Knoxville newspaper, despite struggling with addiction (likely alcoholism) in his past, toxicology tests showed no drugs or alcohol in his system at his time of death. He had not officially been diagnosed with any mental illness and I'd prefer to not speculate beyond saying that most people who did not know him that interacted with him during this time period described him as "not all there". And we all know of the statistics that someone who is suffering from some sort of mental issue or break with reality is much more likely to be a victim of crime.
True crime post! Weirdest true crime case you've ever seen?Source
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