Unresolved: A True Crime & Mystery Podcast

Every morning, a group of retirees - who jokingly referred to themselves as the "Board of Directors" - met up at a Huddle House in North Augusta, South Carolina for coffee. They had done so for nearly two decades. On the morning of November 22nd, 2005, this group of friends separated for the day. They began going their separate routes just after 6:00 AM - right around the same time that an armed g...

On December 25th, 1964 - Christmas Day - a housewife living just outside of the English town of Warminster reported an odd experience. She claimed to have heard an odd sound that reverberated across the countryside, described as "branches being dragged across gravel." A small newspaper clipping would report this woman's finding several weeks later, but the woman's account was verified by dozens of...

Between April and November of 1971, five young black women were abducted and murdered along the Washington Beltway. All had been killed by an enigma nicknamed "The Freeway Phantom," who had become known for leaving the bodies alongside major roadways. The sprawling investigation was headed by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) - who were then joined investigators...

On March 26th, 1998, thirteen-year-old Tristan Brübach went to school (in the Höchst district of Frankfurt). He had tried to skip class, telling both his father and his teachers that he needed to see a doctor, but he would be in-attendance for most of the school day. Early that afternoon, Tristan would be granted an early release (by school officials) to see a doctor. Using public transportation,...

On February 3rd, 1980, the riot at the New Mexico State Pen carried on into its second full day. Negotiations continued, but with a handful of prison guards still captive, the inmates were holding most of the leverage. Eventually, a peace would be brokered and order would be restored to the penitentiary. The facility itself, though, was in total disarray, and the expensive cleanup effort that foll...

In the early morning hours of February 2nd, 1980, a dozen inmates at New Mexico's State Penitentiary took four prison guards hostage. Within an hour, more than ten guards would be taken captive, and hundreds of inmates were freed from their cells. The facility, which had been made aware of the dangers in the months preceding the riot, had done little to prepare for it. The rioting inmates made eas...

Throughout the 20th century, the New Mexico State Penitentiary earned a reputation of being, ironically, a lawless place - where violent and non-violent prisoners were forced to co-exist in cramped and deplorable conditions. Violence was constant, and certain cell blocks were allowed to run rampant over others. To make matters even worse, the prison's revolving door of wardens through the 1970's k...

In the early morning hours of October 9th, 1995, Amtrak's Sunset Limited - which regularly traveled between coasts - slipped off of the tracks in rural Arizona. As investigators began looking into the cause of this wreck, they discovered that this was no accident. A group (or an individual masquerading as a group) had conspired to make this derailment happen, leaving four copies of a rambling & po...

Between 2004 and 2006, a married couple took the Florida real estate market by storm. Victor and Natalia Wolf, who had immigrated to the U.S. a few years earlier from Russia and Germany, had a plan to reinvigorate the central Florida coast. In particular, they set their sights on a town called Citrus Springs, hoping to build a thriving community. Through a number of companies and subsidiaries, the...

On June 15th, 1985, the body of a young man was found in San Francisco's SoMa district. Despite being unable to learn the man's identity, police quickly discovered that the young man had been tortured and mutilated before his death. Just days after his discovery, the Santa Ana Orange County Register declared that the victim had been "bled to death and that he was butchered in ritualistic fashion i...

LeRoy Carter Jr. was a Vietnam veteran, who returned to the states and struggled to get his life back on-track. He became a transient, who spent several years trying to stay out of jail for a litany of petty crimes. On the evening of Saturday, February 7th, 1981, Carter found a quiet alcove along Alvord Lake, in the scenic-yet-troubled Golden Gate Park, where he proceeded to fall asleep. The next...

To celebrate the three-year mark of Unresolved, I decided to field some questions and do an impromptu "Ask Me Anything." I would like to thank everyone listening for supporting the podcast over the last three years. I cannot believe the podcast has been around for that long, but it would not have been possible without your patience and support. Thank you. Also, a special thank you to those that su...

On June 5th, 2010, Kenyan authorities reported that a 32-year old man living in Nairobi - named Philip Onyancha - had been taken into custody. Onyancha had come into police cross-hairs during a kidnapping investigation, exploring the circumstances in which a nine-year old boy had gone missing. Weeks after the boy disappeared, a ransom note appeared, demanding money be sent through a mobile applica...

On August 14th, 1977, a pair of blackberry pickers were walking in a wooded area of Everett, Washington - nearby Mariner High School and Paine Field. There, they found the decomposing body of a young woman, who had been brutally murdered.  Over the next week, police focused in their investigation on a single suspect: a man named David Marvin Roth, who had confessed to a friend (and who had also be...

In May of 1946, a violent crime unfolds just outside of Texarkana. A farm owner and his wife are shot multiple times by a mysterious attacker, who seems to have disappeared into thin air. While the assault bears a resemblance to a recent string of murders in Texas, it features a number of notable outliers; outliers which make investigators hesitant to officially name it a part of the recent spree....

Texarkana is a metropolitan area that is split between Texas and Arkansas. In the 1940's, as World War Two began raging overseas, the area became a hotbed of manufacturing and storage for the war effort. Just months after the end of the war - in February of 1946 - a masked menace began lashing out at young couples in lovers' lanes. The first two victims lived to tell their tale, but the next sever...

Starting in 1987, villagers in the central African nations of Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) began to float rumors of a vicious crocodile haunting the Ruzizi River.  This crocodile - a large male Nile Crocodile - was spotted several times over the next several decades. Eventually, his fearsome appearance and ferocity made him an urban legend throughout the region....

On the evening of July 24th, 2018 - a Wednesday - 39-year old Andrya DeGhelder was a no-show for her shift at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center. This was very unlike Andrya, a divorced mother of one, who had a reputation for being reliable and punctual. Her coworkers contacted a friend, who tried to get in-touch with Andrya. Eventually, after paying Andrya an unsuccessful house call, this frie...

On May 7th, 1982, 54-year old Joan Kipp returned home from her job as a guidance counselor. She was planning to spend the weekend away with her husband, at their Connecticut summer home, to celebrate Mother's Day. But when she arrived home, she saw that she had received a package in the mail: a cookbook, which she believed to be an early Mother's Day gift. Unfortunately for Joan, the cookbook had...

On November 1st, 2008, a 9-page whitepaper found its way online. Titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System," the whitepaper's author clearly articulated their goal to create a decentralized digital currency.  The only catch was: this author, named "Satoshi Nakamoto," was a complete unknown. Whoever they were, they had registered a domain for "bitcoin.org" in August of that year, and t...

In the mid-2000's, an Australian man named Fred Pattison moved to Thailand. He had recently fallen in love with a Thai woman named Vanidda, who had two daughters from a prior marriage: Siri ("Pang") and Siriyakorn ("Bung"). In 2008, the family moved to the area of Melbourne, Victoria. They began working towards a better future, and the two girls - Pang and Bung - began attending Australian schools...

In October of 1990, a man named David Scott Campbell was arrested in Philadelphia, Mississippi... the same city where, 30 years prior, three civil rights workers had been abducted and murdered by members of the KKK. On his first night in prison - which, coincidentally, was also his 21st birthday - Campbell took his own life. Two years later, in August of 1992, a young man from Jackson, MS met a sa...

On the morning of November 6th, 2001, a customer walked into a Florence, Montana hair salon. Just inside, she would make a shocking discovery. Inside the salon, just waiting to be discovered, were the bodies of three women: 62-year old Dorothy Harris, 44-year old Brenda Patch, and 71-year old Cynthia Paulus. All three were the last you'd expect to find in the middle of a murder investigation. Over...

In October of 1974, a young woman named Arlis Perry was brutally murdered in the Stanford Memorial Church. Over the years, her case has been bandied about as a potential cult-based murder, has been tied to unrelated offenders such as the Son of Sam, and even became the focus of many "Satanic Panic" theories in the 1980s. I covered this story in one of the first episodes of the podcast, back in Mar...

On September 11th, 2001, a massive attack brought America to a screeching halt.  In the immediate aftermath - while everyone was trying to figure out what had happened, and if it could happen again - another series of events began to play out. Originating in Florida, and then spreading into other populated areas along the East Coast, anthrax-laced letters made every American question their safety....