The Lets Read Podcast - 182: HE PRETENDED TO BE A COP | 22 True Scary Stories | EP 170

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Fake Cops, Missing Persons, & Pennsylvania... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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North Carolina couple Harold and Akilah Degree couldn't have picked a more romantic date for their matrimony. They settled on Oakcrest Drive near the small town of Shelby, and within two years were the proud parents of children O'Brien and Asha. But as the children grew, so did their parents' careers, and by the time they were in double-digit ages, they were regular latchkey kids, letting themselves into their home after school while being trusted to complete their homework unsupervised.

Despite this advanced level of responsibility, the degree children remained relatively sheltered, with their parents ensuring that their lives revolved around family, school, and most importantly, church. And while many of their friends and neighbors were investing in newly affordable personal computers, the degrees eschewed that kind of connection to the wider world. Every time you turn on the TV, there was news of some predator who's lured somebody's kid away, Akilah later said. Asha in particular seemed to take this in her stride and seemed more than content to remain within the boundaries her parents had set. She was a shy girl, Harold added, scared to death of dogs too.

I don't think she'd ever have left the house unless she'd absolutely had to. And in retrospect, this makes what happened next even more difficult to comprehend. By February of the year 2000, Asha was a fourth grader at the nearby Falston Elementary School. Then, on Saturday, February 12th, Asha fouled out of her basketball team's first game of the season. Asha was their star point guard and the team went on to lose the game, something which would severely upset her. However, her father later said that she seemed to get over the loss relatively quickly and was engrossed in her brother's game which commenced shortly afterward. Befitting their routine, both children attended church the next morning before returning home and heading to bed at around 8pm.

Around an hour later, the neighborhood's power suddenly went out after a car collided with a nearby electrical pole. Concerned that his children might be alarmed, Harold Degree went to the bedroom that his children shared and ordered a check on them, and both were asleep in their beds. Harold checked again at around 2.30am, once again finding them safe and sound. But then sometime between then and sunrise, 10-year-old O'Brien Degree recalled being awoken by the squeaking of his sister's bedsprings.

He assumed that she was simply changing her position and took no further interest in the noise. Yet, Asha wasn't just tossing and turning in her sleep, and what she did next would confound law enforcement and private investigators for decades to come. By police estimates, sometime between 3.15 and 3.30 a.m., nine-year-old Asha Degree got out of bed, packed a book bag with clothes and personal items, then walked out of her home and into the darkness. About a half hour later, a passing truck driver spotted Asha walking south along Highway 18, wearing a long-sleeved white t-shirt and white pants. They reported the sighting to police and after seeing a TV report regarding Asha's disappearance,

thinking it was strange that such a small child would be out by herself at that hour. This truck driver then circled the area three times and spotted Asha disappearing into a wooded area at the side of the highway. The Cleveland County Sheriff would later state that he was pretty sure it was her because the descriptions they gave are consistent with what we know she was wearing. The only thing that doesn't quite add up is that on the night Asha supposedly ran away, there was a huge storm raging outside. If she was indeed planning on absconding on her own terms, why not wait for the following night when the weather wasn't so dreadful?

However, we have to consider the reason Asha was dead set on leaving that night was in order to avoid attending school the following morning. She no doubt held herself personally responsible for her basketball team's loss, and it's entirely possible that the shame she felt caused her to act in an extremely irrational manner, running off into a rainy, windy night with only a few changes of clothes to aid her journey. The following morning, Akilah Degree woke up just before six, then walked to her children's room to prepare them for school. It should have been a joyous day, as it was the couple's twelfth wedding anniversary, but it was a day that would quickly degenerate from a celebratory occasion into a living nightmare. When Akilah walked into her children's room, she found Asha's

bed empty. She asked O'Brien where her sister was, but he had no idea, so as her young son climbed out of bed, Akilah began an increasingly frantic search of the family property. When she failed to find her daughter, Harold suggested that Asha might have gone over to his mother's house across the street But when Ikela called over, Asha was still nowhere to be seen That's when I went into panic mode, Ikela later said Not long after, we called the police Less than 50 minutes after the first 911 call was made, police officers had arrived at Oak Crest Drive and the search for Asha had officially commenced. Police tracker dogs were called to the scene, but not a single one could pick up the girl's scent.

After that, a combination of police officers, family members, and an increasing number of ad hoc volunteers began patrolling the neighborhood, calling out Asha's name. This is how the Degree's neighbors made the grim realization that she was missing, as one by one they heard the chorus of unanswered cries, the herald that something terrible had happened. By 7am, the entire neighborhood was in a near frenzy, with some canceling their family plans in order to assist with the search. Local clergymen, upon hearing of Asha's disappearance, flocked to the Degree's home in order to comfort, console, and advise them. Within the first 24 hours, literally hundreds of man-hours had been poured into the search, but not a single trace of Asha could be found. After a complete inventory of Asha's belongings was made, and in conjunction with her parents, investigators managed to figure out exactly what she'd taken with her that night.

Bearing in mind it was a freezing, stormy February night when she ran away, yet Asha didn't take a single item of winter clothing with her. This led many in the investigation to posit that Asha was only planning on walking a short distance because she was meeting someone that would provide her with much needed shelter and warmth. This seemed to be corroborated on February 15th when police searched an abandoned shed near the area she was last sighted. They found candy wrappers along with a pencil, a marker, and a mickey mouse shaped hair bow that were confirmed as having belonged to Asha. Police also found a photograph of a black girl around Asha's age but had no idea who the girl might be. These were the only traces of Asha recovered during the initial search effort and,

a week later, after 9,000 man-hours had been invested into the search of the 2-3 mile radius of where she had last been seen, the preliminary search effort was called off. Missing person flyers had been posted all over the area and almost 300 possible sightings had been reported, but still the police lacked a single, solid, substantial lead. County Sheriff Dan Crawford urged the media to keep the story alive, but behind the scenes, things were looking bleak to say the least. By February 22nd, Sheriff Crawford announced that the search for Asha was recommencing, but that the scope of the search was now long-range. Both the FBI and North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation put her on their respective databases of missing children, while agents conducted intensive searches in the area of her home and route.

Based on what Asha had taken with her, investigators believed she had been planning and preparing for her departure over the course of several days. She's not your typical runaway, said one FBI agent, while another expert from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children noted that most children who run away are usually at least 12 years old. To the federal agents, it seemed Asha had definitely run away to avoid the shame of returning to school on Monday. Yet most children who do similar things are quick to realize their mistake and soon return home. Therefore, the most probable explanation was that Asha had either been sidetracked or been straight up abducted. Shortly after she was declared missing, the Degree family succeeded in

gaining national media attention, even appearing on the Montel Williams show to call attention to the case. America's Most Wanted and the Oprah Winfrey show also devoted segments to it, ensuring that pictures of Asha's face and belongings were broadcast to homes all across North America and even the wider world. Then, on August 31st of 2001, Asha's book bag and other personal items were discovered by construction workers near Highway 18, about 26 miles north of Shelby. All had been wrapped in a single plastic bag. The FBI brought all evidence to their headquarters for further forensic analysis.

The results of this analysis had not been shared publicly, yet on the 20th anniversary of Ash's disappearance, the FBI confirmed that the book bag contained a copy of Dr. Seuss' McElligot's Pool and a t-shirt depicting the band New Kids on the block. Neither appeared to have been her property before they were found in her bag, and the book was discovered to be from the library at her elementary school. This led many to suspect that her abductor had not only lured her away from home with the promise of gifts, but also that Asha may have known her captor through her elementary school. In 2004, the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department acted on a tip reportedly received from an inmate at the county jail. Personnel from the sheriff's office began digging at an intersection in Lawndale, uncovering a cluster

of bones in the process. However, the bones were discovered to be from nothing more than an animal. It marked yet another disappointment in what had already been a series of them, and the Degree family had to fight to keep Asha's memory alive. In the year 2008, they established a scholarship in her name for a deserving local student, and began hosting an annual walk to raise awareness and money to fund search efforts for Asha. Pictures of Asha, both real and those showing her as she might appear in later years, are shown to participants, and Akilah Degree has often said that there's a wonderful energy surrounding these walks, so much so that Akilah has faith that her

daughter is still alive, saying that, I fully expect her to walk through the door one day. The Degree family's hopes were further renewed in February of 2015, when the FBI announced that it was working with the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office and State Bureau of Investigation to reopen Ash's case. Authorities also announced a combined $45,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Asha's abduction. It might well have been the prospect of financial gain that motivated the tipster, but in May of 2016, the FBI announced a possible new lead in the case. A witness had spotted Asha climbing into the passenger seat of a dark green early

70s Lincoln Continental, or possibly a Ford Thunderbird from the same era. The sighting was on Route 18, not far from where she was last seen, and the vehicle was described as having rust around its wheel wells. The FBI also announced that its child abduction rapid deployment team had arrived in Cleveland County to provide on-the-ground investigative, technical, behavioral analysis, and analytical support to find out more about what happened to Asha. And by September of 2017, investigators had conducted over three separate interviews with almost two dozen witnesses and people of interest. Then, in November of 2020, a federal inmate by the name of Marcus Mellon wrote a letter to the Shelby Star,

claiming that not only had Asha been killed, but that he knew where to find her. Shockingly, this lead unearthed an entirely separate murder case and was completely unconnected to Asha's disappearance. Some took this as good news, a sign that Asha might still be alive. Others found the disappointment chipped away at their already diminished hope. Yet both parties are still left without answers in a case characterized by false leads and dead ends. The February 2021 result of Marcus Mellon's letter is the most recent update in Ash's disappearance, a case that might well be solved any day now. If Ash is still alive, and there's still a chance of that, she'll be 22 years old this August. By some miracle, she might just emerge from the woodwork,

having lived her life under some other name and some other place, away from her loving parents. But those who care for her have to emotionally insulate themselves, because with a case like Asha's, there's very little chance that she'll ever be seen alive again. The much-celebrated Welsh musical group Manic Street Preachers are perhaps best known for the soft rock melancholy of hits, motorcycle emptiness, and the desire for life. But back in the early 90s, the band seemed to be heading in a much edgier artistic direction, one influenced by a young man with the rather unassuming name of Richard James Edwards. Born in December of 1967 in the southern Welsh town of Blackwood,

Ritchie showed a brooding intelligence from a very early age. He went on to study political history at the University of Swansea, but remained close to elementary school friends James, Nicky, and Sean, whom he had met while attending Oakdale Comprehensive. In 1986, the trio had formed a band, and although he was lacking in any kind of musical talent, Ritchie was keen to contribute, doing so vicariously by being their driver and roadie for much of their 1989 UK tour. He won the hearts of Mannix fans

up and down the country with their frantic antics during their live shows, often miming the act of playing guitar whilst whipping the audience into a frenzy. But Richie wasn't just a hyperactive hype man. He was a genuine artist in his own right, and although he couldn't physically contribute to the band's music, his vision and poetry heavily influenced both the sound and the lyrical content of the Manic Street Preacher's songs. In light of this, after wrapping up their tour in 89, he was officially invited to be the band's fourth member and spokesman. By 1994 and the release of the band's third album, The Holy Bible, Ritchie was responsible for around 80% of the band's lyrics. Some of his poetry was so profound that the band simply co-opted them wholesale for their songs.

For example, Ritchie once showed them a poem that read, Bless be the blade, bless be the scythe, Dionysus against the crucified. Clean your flesh and mock your fears, the brightest sun is the purest gun. They were stunned. Richie has written just 27 words, yet that handful generated hundreds of separate thoughts on religion, clashes of culture, mortality, and the nature of the universe itself. A few months later, the poem was used word for word as the bulk of the lyrics for the song, Judge Yourself. Ritchie did this time and time again. He was the band's muse, someone their fans latched onto, their angst and melancholy made flesh. But to say Ritchie was a tortured genius would be the understatement of the century. From an early age,

Ritchie suffered from a deep, unshakable depression, and often discussed it with the members of the press. During a 1991 interview with a journalist from the NME, his artistic integrity was called into question, with the journalist suggesting that Ritchie's pessimistic worldview was nothing but a careful curated facade. It's said that Ritchie gave a wry smile before asking, Want to see how for real I am? The journalist nodded and at that, Ritchie produced a razor blade from somewhere on his person and began to cut into his left forearm. The journalist recoiled at the sight,

horrified at how well practiced Ritchie seemed to be at butchering himself. When he was done, Ritchie showed the journalist a series of cuts that would later require 18 stitches. He had sliced, for real, into his arm. Richie later stated that he regularly self-harmed by either cutting himself or by stabbing cigarettes out onto his arms and legs. It makes me feel so much better, he said. All the little things that might have been annoying me suddenly seem so trivial because I'm either concentrating on the blood or the pain.

I'm not a person who can scream and shout, so this is my only outlet. It's all very logical, really. Just prior to the release of the band's third album, Richie checked himself into Whitchurch Hospital and later the Priory Hospital, both of which specialize in issues of addiction and mental health. During the recording of The Holy Bible, Richie had been suffering from insomnia and drank heavily in order to get himself to sleep at night. It had gotten so bad that, as lead singer James Dean Bradfield put it, inevitably, the day would start with a shh and the sound of a can opening. When he emerged from rehab, Richie's condition seemed to have improved somewhat. He was clean, sober, and had refrained from self-harm during his hospital stay. But during an appearance at the London Astoria on December 21st of 1994, he revealed that the improvements were merely skin deep. Towards the end of set closer You Love Us, Ritchie began smashing his guitar and damaging the venue's lighting system. Mannix fans mistook this as Ritchie's regular onstage antics,

not realizing they were watching him perform for the very last time. February of 1995 saw the Mannix Street Preachers achieve something that most, if not all, British musicians aim for, that elusive American tour. Their album, The Holy Bible, was riding the wave of grunge's successes that came to characterize the early to mid-90s, and Epic Records were hoping to capitalize on it. As you can imagine, everyone who knew or worked with the band were incredibly excited for them, but the band themselves were becoming increasingly anxious, and it was mostly down to Richie's increasingly bizarre behavior.

In the two weeks before the band's US tour, Richie withdrew £200 a day from his bank account, totaling £2,800 by the day of the scheduled flight. Richie mentioned this was a way to pay for a new desk for his flat. However, there was no record of the desk having been paid for, and this would have explained only half of the money withdrawn. The night before the flight to the United States, Ritchie gave a friend a book called Novel with Cocaine, which details the author staying in a mental asylum before vanishing. He also gave a gift to his on-and-off-again girlfriend,

although it's said that they had permanently broken up just a few weeks prior. The following morning, instead of traveling to the airport with the rest of the band, Richie checked out of his hotel, drove to his flat in Cardiff, and left his passport there. After that, he seemed to literally drop off the face of the earth, and just a few days later, he was officially reported missing by his bandmates. Over the two weeks that followed, Richie was apparently spotted in a number of different places. One witness said that he spotted a man almost identical in appearance at the Newport Passport office, and in a seemingly more reliable instance, a fan of Richie's spotted him at Newport bus station, actually conversing with him briefly before parting. A taxi driver later came forward claiming that he had picked Ritchie up from the King's Hotel in Cardiff, before driving him around a number of Welsh Valley towns, including Ritchie's hometown of Blackwood. The driver claimed that although the passenger had spoken in a Cockney accent

it had occasionally slipped into a Welsh one which had sounded considerably more natural. He thought nothing of it until hearing the news of Ritchie's disappearance at which point it seemed oddly pertinent. The driver also stated that the passenger had gotten out at the Severn View service station in South Gloucestershire. And this gives his claims a great deal of credence indeed. That's because in mid-February, Ritchie's car was discovered at this very same service station with a dead battery. The Vauxhall Cavalier had been abandoned for several days by the time the police discovered it. There was ample evidence that Ritchie had been living in the car for some time,

with takeaway containers and empty booze bottles strewn all over the interior. There were also several photographs of Ritchie's parents and siblings, which had apparently been taken in the weeks prior. The location of the car's discovery was particularly worrying to all involved, as the Severn View service station refers to the River Severn, and the bridge that runs over it is a well-known spot where people will take their own lives. Despite this, many of Ritchie's loved ones insisted that he was never the type to contemplate that sort of thing, referring to a quote from the previous year

in where Ritchie said, in terms of the S-word, that doesn't enter my mind, and it never has done in terms of an attempt, because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain. On top of the fact that no corpse was ever found, the claim that Richie is still alive has been supported by dozens of eyewitness sightings from India to Lanzarote. The frequency of these sightings meant his family was extremely reluctant to declare him dead, and only did so in November of 2008, six years after they were legally entitled to. But some of those closest to Ritchie have a far more pessimistic view of the situation. For example, Ritchie's sister once mentioned how his favorite poem was Tulips by Sylvia Plath.

It summed up everything he thought at the time he went, she said. He kept a copy of it and he asked for it to be read at his funeral. His thoughts must have been dominated by this poem, the themes and messages. Tulips describes Plath's desire for death, while the titular Tulips seemed to will her to carry on living. It's a poem of soul-crushing depression and conflict, and the fact that it spoke to Ritchie so deeply leads us to some very dark conclusions indeed. The more cynical among us might posit that Richie is dead, and has been since 1995. But money talks, and although it might be a purely symbolic gesture, the Manic Street preachers have been paying 25% of their royalties into Richie's bank account ever since he disappeared.

They were doing this as late as 2005, and a sizable amount has amassed in his name, almost as if they're just waiting for him to come home. As Manix basis Nicky Wire once put it, it's a genuine rock and roll mystery. And he's right. We have no definitive answers in this case, and no matter how likely it seems that Richie had taken his own life, there's simply no evidence to support such a hypothesis. In fact, it's just as likely that it looks like this because Richie wanted it to look like that. He'd amassed a small fortune in cash by the time he went missing, and it's entirely possible that Richie visited the Newport passport office in order to pick up a different passport to the one that he left back in his apartment, maybe even a passport in a different name. And if that's the case, then all those sightings of him start to sound a little more credible. Maybe through escaping

the spotlight and eschewing the rock and roll lifestyle he'd once embraced, Richie learned to stop judging and hurting himself, and finally started to heal. We'll be right back. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro.

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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca your pro at your local tread experts. On the evening of Monday, August 30th of 1999, 44-year-old Dr. Eve Goddard closed up his small practice in the northern French town of Caen. It had been an uneventful day, and neither the nurses nor the practice secretary had noticed anything amiss with Dr. Goddard. Yet the very next morning, Dr. Goddard cancelled all remaining appointments for the week and told his staff to take the remainder of the week off. When asked if everything was okay, Dr. Goddard told his staff not to worry and that he was simply taking some time off to take his children fishing. On this point, Dr. Goddard was true to his word and took his children fishing in the ponds of a place called Blonkery. The next day, September 1st,

Dr. Goddard loaded his children onto a small Jeanneau sailing boat named the Nick. Although their mother was absent, six-year-old Camille and four-year-old Marius were said to be very excited at the prospect of a waterborne adventure, and their father told the vessel's owner that he intended to take them on a cruise, one which would return on September 5th. Strangely, before setting sail, Dr. Goddard made a brief stop in the port of Saint-Malu. It was here that he purchased a large amount of cleaning products, but they were items that he left in his Volkswagen camper van, which he had parked in a Saint-Malu parking lot. The following morning after the Goddard set sail, French customs officers inspected the nick between the areas of Cap d'Héracly and Cap Frayella. They later testified that they had noticed one of the Goddard children sleeping in the boat's hold. Everything seemed

fairly in order with the Goddards, but when the good doctor was asked the reason behind his little cruise, the customs officer observed some very suspicious behavior. Dr. Goddard seemed reluctant to talk to them, and actually appeared to change his story in the middle of telling it. Each of the customs officers made a note of this, but since Dr. Goddard didn't appear to be breaking any laws, they were unwilling and unable to arrest or detain him. All they could do was corroborate his story with the boat's owner back in San Melu to ensure that nothing too sinister was going on. Over the next few days, several witnesses spotted the nick near the Bay of Breik. This included a waffle vendor at the small port, who formally testified that Goddard and his children came to buy waffles from

her on September 3rd. Yet little did she know, this marked the last time anyone would see any of the Goddard family alive. The very next day, the nick was spotted by a pair of hikers near a place called Pliuosec. It had been completely abandoned. The day after, the nick's small inflatable dinghy was recovered by a fishing boat. In the dinghy were a jacket and a checkbook in Goddard's name. The Maritime Gendarmerie in the port of Roscoff immediately opened an investigation into the family's disappearance and quickly found Dr. Goddard's VW camper van parked in Saint-Malu. This is how they discovered the abundance of cleaning supplies stashed away in the van's rear storage,

but investigators found something considerably more disturbing. Blood. A whole lot of blood, along with doses of the pain-killing drug morphine. September 8th saw the police conduct a search of the Goddard family home, and it was there that they found more traces of blood, September 8th saw the police conduct a search of the Goddard family home, and it was there that they found more traces of blood, this time in the family bathroom, the living room, and in the parents' bedroom. This blood was determined to have belonged to Marie Goddard,

Eve's second wife, who hadn't been seen since August 31st. This prompted French police to officially open a judicial murder investigation, with Dr. Goddard being the main subject of an international arrest warrant. Almost two weeks after the Goddards disappeared, sailors off the coast of the Channel Islands discovered a life jacket that had belonged to the Nick floating among the waves. A week after that, the inflatable survival raft of Goddard's boat was recovered half deflated on a beach at Lime Bay on the southern English coast. Those who discovered it noted with grim curiosity at how the raft's canvas canopy had been completely removed, something which would render the raft extremely vulnerable to high waves.

Obviously, due to the presence of Marie Goddard's blood in the van and at the Goddard home, French police had assumed that they were investigating a murder. However, the locations of the lift jacket and survival raft threw a huge amount of doubt onto the investigations. According to experts, it was impossible for these items to have been found at these locations as a result of ocean currents alone. In short, the items had to have been deliberately scattered in order to appear in their discovered locations, almost as if someone was trying to throw investigators off their scent. On top of that, once the dinghy's emergency inflation device had been detached, the dinghy

could only have remained inflated for 72 hours after this device was removed. This means that someone had activated the dinghy at least 24 hours after the Goddards were presumed to be missing. It took four months for the next big break in the case to arrive, when a canvas bag was caught in a fisherman's net just off the coast of the Ile des Batts on January 16th of the year 2000. The bag contained numerous items belonging to all members of the Goddard family, including clothes, driver's licenses, insurance documents, checkbooks, binoculars, a hammer, and the entire contents of Marie France Goddard's personal handbag. Six months later, on the 55th anniversary of D-Day,

a seashell harvester's boat brought up a human skull during a night fishing session. DNA testing revealed it had once belonged to six-year-old Camille Goddard, the first of the family to be confirmed dead. The discovery prompted speculation that the nick had sank, claiming the lives of all three passengers. But despite the area being trawled by a French Navy mine hunter, no trace of the boat was ever found. On Sunday, February 11th of 2001,

a business card belonged to Dr. Goddard was found by a man walking his dog on the beach. Then, on February 22nd, a bank card bearing Goddard's name was found on the very same stretch of beach. Investigators searched the beach thoroughly and ordered a minesweeper to survey the nearby seabed, but still no traces of the nick were found. These events led the investigators to believe that Goddard stopped off at this beach and emptied the contents of his wallet there, most probably as a way of misleading those that might seek to find them. Further searches were carried out at the beach, including a tractor being used to sieve through the sand, but no more of Goddard or his family's personal effects were found. Yet it was discovered that all of these cards had not been in the water for long before being discovered,

and had therefore not been thrown into the water in September 1999. Analysts believe they had actually been tossed into the English Channel sometime in early 2001. To all involved, the situation was clear. Someone was trying to make it look like the deaths of Eve Goddard and his children was an accident, but whether that was the murderer in question, an accomplice, or Dr. Goddard himself remained to be seen. It wasn't until September 13th of 2006 that Dr. Eve Goddard was officially declared dead. Two bones consisting of a femur and a tibia were dragged up from the seabed near a place called Herd's Deep, and once analyzed, DNA showed that they belonged to Dr. Goddard.

The confirmation of Dr. Goddard's death brought about an end to most of the public interest in the case, as an accident was considerably less scandalous than a quadruple murder. Yet there was still the matter of Dr. Goddard's missing wife, Marie. In light of this, the court file was not immediately closed, and it could be argued that some rather strange potential sightings contributed to them remaining open. In October of 1999, not long after the Goddards had gone missing, a hotel owner on the Isle of Man claimed that Goddard and his children had stayed in his hotel between the 7th and the 14th of September. This was the first of a series of witness statements placing Goddard and his children at various locations all around the world.

Sightings of them were also reported in Scotland, South Africa, Florida, and Crete. Yet perhaps the most credible sighting was on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Investigators discovered that Eve had inexplicably opened a bank account there in the time before his disappearance, but it's unclear if this was part of a wider plan that resulted in his accidental death. However, what's certain is that although Dr. Goddard placed funds in the account at the time of its creation, these funds remain untouched following the family's disappearance. Finally, in September of 2012, the San Malou public prosecutor stated that the only hypothesis we can exclude is that the family's disappearance was a simple sailing accident,

and, even if it is the most likely line of investigation, we cannot formally confirm that Eve Goddard murdered his family. And with that, the case of the missing Goddard family was finally closed. Yet questions still linger as to the nature of their disappearance. As the public prosecutor stated, the only thing they can be sure of is that this was not just a mere sailing accident. Foul play most definitely occurred in some form, but was this bizarre and tragic attempt by Eve to eliminate his own family? Or has the entire thing been perpetrated by some faceless, shadowy figure who, for all intent and purpose, had committed the perfect crime? On Boxing Day evening of 1996,

childhood friends David Spencer and Patrick Warren departed their homes in the English town of Solihull to play outside. Patrick was riding on his brand new bicycle, his most prized Christmas present of that year, while his friend David was on foot. They had supposedly headed out to a place called Meriden Park, where they had played with other children near the park's pond. Due to the frigid temperatures with other children near the park's pond. Due to the frigid temperatures of the season, the park's pond was completely frozen over, and as David and Patrick played with a group of other children,

a police officer recalled warning them to stay away from the frozen pond. Derek and Patrick then returned home and informed their parents that they were headed over to one of Patrick's older brother's places in order to hang out. Patrick had a number of older brothers by that time, some of which had moved out of the family home due to their advanced age. When the boys failed to arrive home later that evening, their parents assumed that they had slept over at Patrick's brother's place. Yet when this brother informed them that the boys had failed to arrive the previous evening, the first pangs of panic began to set in. The boys' parents quickly discovered that the last known sighting of them was when a gas station attendant had given them a packet of biscuits just after midnight. The attendant added that he witnessed the boys walking in the direction of a local shopping center. Police searched this gas station only to discover Patrick's brand new red Apollo bicycle

abandoned behind the petrol station trash cans, explaining why both boys were on foot at the time of the sighting. At first, the local police force treated the boys' disappearance like any other missing person case and refused to acknowledge that the boys may have come to any harm the decision was later slammed by the general public who champion one criminologist's opinion that if it had been two middle-class boys that went missing that case would have been treated initially very different and it's about the word we're never allowed to use class this was about a class judgment that was made which was prepared to see them as runaways, as opposed to vulnerable.

Some have argued that this same prejudice meant the boys' disappearance received very little media attention beyond local media sources, but it should be noted that David and Patrick's faces were the first to appear on milk cartons. The National Missing Persons Helpline had noticed a similar initiative in the U.S. had found a great deal of success, and launched an almost identical campaign in April of 1997. A few days after the boys went missing, the dead body of 17-year-old Nicola Dixon was discovered in a graveyard over in neighboring Sutton, Coldfield. Her killer was arrested, charged and convicted of murder, yet despite many of the boy's loved ones insisting that the man might have been involved in their disappearance, he was never investigated or questioned in connection with it.

It also seems like the Nicola Dixon case soaked up the majority of news coverage, leaving Patrick and David's very much on the back burner. In light of this, police resources were poured into the former case, while the latter seems to have been almost entirely neglected. Weeks without answers turned into months of mystery and as the years ticked over, the family seemed no closer to finding out what had happened to David and Patrick. In 2003, the family's hopes were renewed when West Midlands Police announced that they had arrested a 37-year-old man in connection with the disappearances, but these hopes were quickly

dashed when he was later released on bail shortly afterward. To date, no formal charges have been brought against this individual, and the arrest seems to have simply muddied the waters in what was already a complicated case. On the 10th anniversary of their disappearance, the boys were the subject of a BBC crime watch special, one which appealed for fresh information from potential eyewitnesses. Almost a quarter of a million Brits tuned into the broadcast, but the appeal failed to generate a single new lead. Only after a second Crimewatch special did leads start to trickle in,

but it seems to have been a case of quality as opposed to quantity, because shortly afterward, the police declared that they were closer than ever to learning the truth of David and Patrick's fate. Although this lead was not revealed to the public for some time, it seems their suspect was a convicted murderer named Brian Field. Brian had also been convicted of possessing indecent images of minors and, given the boy's ages, this obviously made him a prime suspect. Yet despite a number of interviews and dozens of

man hours of investigation, no confession could be secured. Nor could any tangible link be established between Field and the two boys, meaning any attempt at a conviction would be ultimately fruitless. In contrast to their inability to create a case against him, the circumstantial evidence supporting Brian Field's guilt was almost overwhelming. His previous conviction was for the murder of 14-year-old schoolboy Roy Toodle in 2001. The murder had occurred way back in 1968, but new DNA evidence had secured a guilty verdict, and at the time of Patrick and David's disappearance, Brian had been living barely a block away from the gas station they were last spotted at. Field had worked as a self-employed gardener for a number of local families,

meaning there's a good chance that the boys were not only familiar with him, but they might have actually trusted him as a prominent figure in their community. This means that if Brian had pulled over to offer them a lift, just as he'd done with little Roy Toodle, there's no reason that they'd have been wary of entering his vehicle. Field also had been convicted of attacking two teenage boys after offering them a lift. Once they had climbed into his car, Brian threatened them with a wheel brace and told them to remove their clothes. But thankfully, they were both able to escape after jumping from the moving car.

Brian remains the only person in British criminal history to have been convicted for such a thing, as, ostensibly, the police had to change the law just to punish him for such a bizarre and terrifying crime. In 2006, forensic examiners dug up a patch of land that Brian had once used as a dumping ground at Old Dampson Lane in Sully Hole. But unfortunately, they found nothing belonging to either David or Patrick. It was later established that Brian had been driving around the area the boys had been in on the same night they disappeared. He also admitted to having driven while drunk. It should be noted that Field was known to have turned violent when drunk and that he committed most of his crimes under the influence of alcohol,

and by his own admission, alcohol was a trigger for him wanting to commit his crimes. Evidence also existed which indicated that Field had been seen speaking to the boys in the days before their disappearance, suggesting that Field may have groomed the children in the time before they vanished. This could explain why no one heard screams or a struggle on the night of the boys' disappearance, as the boys may have already known Field and got into his vehicle willingly. Graham Hill, the detective who secured Brian's 2001 confession, has stated on numerous occasions that he believes Brian is responsible for the boy's disappearance. He has also professed his doubt that either of the boys survived that night

they were abducted. In 2016, a fresh appeal for information was launched, with West Midlands police promising that the force would never close the case until it discovered what had happened to David and Patrick. But here we are, almost six years later, and still we're no closer to knowing what happened to them. Yet it should be noted that this is not so much down to police incompetence, as despite their early reluctance to act, law enforcement has since poured time and resources into finding David and Patrick. At this point, it seems much more likely that the only reason the boys hadn't been found is that the monster who killed them refuses to reveal their final resting places. Lee Marina Oki was born in Hawaii on August 21st of 1979 as the daughter of U.S. Army

soldiers Donald Oki and Vicki Felton. The couple had met while stationed in California, dating briefly before tying the knot in 1977. However, their marriage was not to last and by the time Lee was just two years old, her parents had separated. Her father was posted to Germany shortly afterwards while Lee and her mother started life in Tupelo, Mississippi. By August of 1992, Lee was 13 years old and was still living in Mississippi with her mother, while her father had finished his posting in Germany and was residing in the state of Virginia. Then, on the morning of Thursday, August 27th, Vicki Felton arrived at her office only to be notified of the approaching Hurricane Andrew. Sometime around 9am, Vicky telephoned home to Lee to warn her of the severe weather, but no one picked up the phone.

Naturally, this concerned Vicky greatly, so she traveled back home to check on her daughter. According to her, she arrived back home to find her garage door slightly open with the light on. Then, after entering the house, she noticed blood smeared on one of the walls. I started calling for Lee and going through all the rooms, Vicky later said. Then when I went into her bedroom, I found her favorite blanket was crumpled up on the floor. That's when I started getting very scared. Not long after that, I called 911. Given how crucial it is to act within the first 48 hours of a disappearance, law enforcement rushed into action. They found additional pools

of blood in the upstairs bedroom belonging to Lee, as well as blood smeared in the hallway walls, in the bathroom, and on the bedroom door. The pattern of the blood smears suggested that someone had made rudimentary attempts to clean the crime scene. When prompted by police, Vicki Felton noticed that several articles of her daughter's clothing were missing from her room, and despite there being no signs of forced entry to the home, a nightgown belonging to her daughter was drenched in blood. The positioning of the blood led us to believe that some kind of above-the-neck injury had been inflicted, said Tupelo's chief of police, and for obvious reasons, this didn't bode well for Lee's safety.

Search and rescue efforts began immediately following the search of Vicky's home, but barely a single trace of Lee could be discovered, and while most people clung to the hope that Lee was still alive, Donald Oki was considerably less optimistic. I knew my daughter was dead the day my ex-wife called me and told me she was missing, Donald later said. My theory is that someone beat that child to death in that house, then took her body with them. September 9th of 1992 saw a package arrive at Vicky's home on Honey Locust Drive. It was addressed to her partner, the man accused of abusing Lee, and it contained the young girl's glasses. Naturally, this arose a great deal of suspicion and it wasn't long until the FBI stepped in to forensically analyze the package's contents.

One of their first tasks was to DNA test the stamps that had been stuck to the package, yet it was discovered that whoever had sent it used water to activate the adhesive, not their own saliva. Some believe this indicated a sophisticated and motivated kidnapper, whereas some believe the package was nothing but a distraction. There's no ransom letter or anything like that that came with those glasses, said police chief Bart Aguirre. It was just those glasses. You would think if it was an actual kidnapping, you would have expected a little more to come along with that. Following the successful polygraph examination

of Vicky Felton's partner, it was her turn to take a test. In the end, Vicky would undergo three separate polygraph tests, one with local police, two with the FBI, and on every single one, there were indications of deception on her part. As late as 2017, Chief Bart Aguirre insisted that Vicky was still considered a person of interest. You still can't eliminate her. There are still too many unanswered questions for Vicky and I don't know if that is unusual for somebody to go off to work and say, well, I just left Lee but I'm going to call and check on her. Why check on her that soon after she had just left? Vicki Felton vehemently denies that she had anything to do with her daughter's disappearance and has repeatedly stated that she believes a man named Oscar McKinley Kearns

was responsible for her daughter's kidnapping. Kearns was convicted of kidnapping and assault just nine months after Lee disappeared, and had also kidnapped and assaulted a ninth grade girl in Tupelo, the very same town that Lee had vanished from. This coward must have really felt like a tough man or woman to beat a little girl to death. Donald Oakey was quoted as saying, I can't help but think of how horrified Lee must have been while this piece of human garbage beat her to death and watch her bleed out in the hall. Yet despite the obvious similarities between the two cases, Oscar Kearns is yet to face any official charges. Although the fact he's still in prison for the Tupelo kidnapping of 1999 means that if he requires questioning, the police will know where to find him.

It's cases like this that remind us that a tiny fraction of the population commits most of of violent crime convictions in the Swedish population and to identify the criminal, academic, parental, and psychiatric factors responsible for the persistence of violent crime. It found that just 1% of the population was responsible for a whopping 63% of violent incidents. And it's almost like this is echoed in the case of Oscar Kearns. Here we have a single person, twice convicted of traumatizing assaults. And those are just the ones we know of. Just as the Tupelo chief of police stated we can't rule out certain figures in the investigation,

both Lee's mother and her stepfather have rightfully come under suspicion. But if I was a gambling man, I wouldn't bet against Oscar Kearns. Because a man like that, with a proven track record of malevolent deviance, probably has far more skeletons in his closet than we can possibly imagine. On On February 8th of 1917, on the outskirts of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a young lady by the name of Sarah Corson was sitting in her family's kitchen, brushing her hair, completely unaware of the horror she was about to endure. The 13-year-old was completely blind to the stranger that had crept into her home, a.38 revolver in one hand, a pair of sharpened scissors in the other.

When she finally heard the man's footsteps, she simply assumed it was one of her parents. But when he reached around her and tickled her under the chin, the smell of tobacco that rose from his fingers was horribly unfamiliar. When he spoke, she froze, muscles locked up with pure terror as his raspy, wheezing voice drifted down into her ears. You're a pretty little thing, he said, and that's awfully nice hair you have. Sarah whimpered with fear, her breath quickening as her survival instincts screamed at her to flee, to run, and never look back. Yet the stranger detected this, he smelled her fear, and in no razor-sharp scissors up to her hair, and with one swift snip, he stole a lock of her hair. Suddenly, the cold steel of the revolver's barrel departed her flesh as his hand unwrapped from her throat, and in the next instant, he was gone.

A minute went by and Sarah remained silent. Then five minutes, then ten. When it finally seemed like she was alone again, Sarah burst into tears. She cried and wailed and begged for her parents to come to her rescue. They had no idea what had just happened and even as their daughter tried to explain, she just couldn't seem to find the words. The police were called and when they arrived, Sarah had calmed down enough to talk to them, but the only useful details she could provide were scant.

He was average, very average, of medium build and dressed entirely in black. It was a truly harrowing ordeal, one that the responding officers prayed would be an isolated incident. But within just two weeks, three other young women filed reports of being preyed upon by a man wielding a pair of sharpened steel scissors. He held them in place, subjected them to a malevolent mockery of affection of praise, then cut a single lock of hair from

their heads before fleeing. Yet the reports contradicted one another's. One girl claimed he was over six feet tall, another claimed he was obscenely fat. The third girl mentioned that she felt the bristles of a long beard tickling the back of her neck, while the previous claimed that he was completely clean-shaven. It became obvious that none of the girls had actually seen the man, and that their reports were simply speculation. Their horror had caused them to plug the gaps in their experiences with details that were almost personal to them, a natural response of the victimized, but a burden to investigating officers. There was only one thing each of the officers could agree on,

and that was the nickname they were to give the girl's atrocious attacker. This is the story of the Pennsylvania Scissorman. The second girl to be attacked was a teenager by the name of Margaret McEwen, who'd been set upon around Valentine's Day. Just two days after the attack, her parents found a handwritten letter in the mailbox of their home, and it was from the scissorman. The scissorman stated that he had, in fact, attacked the wrong girl, and that he'd soon return to claim his intended prize. As you can imagine, this utterly terrified the family,

who suffered sleeplessness during the nights that followed. Yet this terror-induced insomnia wasn't entirely unwelcome, as it helped in keeping watch over their daughter, Anna, who was thought to be the scissorman's intended target. However, it appears that the scissorman was watching intently, and simply waited until exhaustion reduced the family's vigilance before he chose his time to strike. On February 22nd, Anna departed her home in the early morning, intent on traveling to school. Her mother and father were sound asleep, their energy reserves utterly depleted as a result of their almost constant watchfulness. As Anna crossed the street and reached the sidewalk on the other side,

she felt a large hand grab her by the arm before it dragged her into dense foliage at the roadside. It was the scissorman. The excitement was thick in his voice as he placed the.38 to her temple and warned her not to scream. But thankfully, much like his first victim, he didn't act on his threats of violence. He simply took out that same pair of sharpened steel scissors, clipped a lock of hair from Anna's head, and fled into the nearby woods. The scissorman didn't wait long before he once again indulged his terrifying compulsion, as just over 24 hours after he attacked Anna Corson, he turned his attentions to 14-year-old Nellie McAndrew.

According to police reports, she was found hysterical in her home just after 9am on February the 23rd. Only this time, instead of stealing just one lock of hair, the scissor man cut almost all of Nellie's hair off. She told police that a man had rang at her home and had at first simply begged for something to eat. Nellie said she couldn't make out the man's features at first due to the screen door that slightly obscured his face. She told the man to go away as her parents weren't home, yet this was the one piece of information she shouldn't have divulged, as once he realized his prey was home alone, the scissorman burst into the house, pinned her to the wooden floor, and proceeded to cut locks of her hair off over and

over and over again. The attack on Nellie McAndrew was a clear sign that the scissorman's attacks were increasing in violence and intensity. He was getting bolder, hungrier, and it seemed only a matter of time before he inflicted much more permanent damage. Once again, the scissorman couldn't wait a day before claiming another victim, but this time, managed to keep a lid on his horrifying inclinations. He stealthily cut 13-year-old Florence Irvin's hair as she slept next to her mother, and did so with such discretion that neither of them were stirred from their slumber. Florence's father later told police that nothing seemed amiss when he got up for his early morning work shift at around 2am, but just six hours later, Florence would wake up to find her hair a few inches shorter on one side of her head. Naturally, given that the news of the Scissorman had become widespread by that time, Florence was distraught in knowing she had been the madman's latest victim, and all while she had been completely unaware. And even more horrifying was the note the Scissorman

had left on her pillow. Tell the girl next door I'll be back for her next week. Thankfully, following the attack of Florence Irvin, the scissorman apparently took a break from attacking young girls and waited until the very end of February to strike again. On the 28th of February, the scissorman climbed through the bedroom window of 22-year-old Barbara Feist. She was sleeping in the time before the attack commenced, and when she awoke, the scissorman covered her nose with a chloroform-soaked handkerchief before taking his time and cutting off locks of her hair. Local journalists were quick to report that Barbara had actually received a note from the scissorman on the Monday before the attack. Burglar alarms were installed throughout the Feist home to alert the family in case anyone entered the house, yet the Scissorman seems to have been wise to these defenses, avoiding

them entirely in favor of scaling the side of the house. It was later reported that Barbara's brother arrived just as the Scissorman was fleeing the scene with a lock of his sister's hair. Given that he was forewarned of the attack, he was armed, and although he was reported to have fired five shots from a small caliber revolver, none of the bullets struck the scissorman, and he was able to escape uninjured and unimpeded. Even as a huge statewide manhunt commenced, the scissorman continued his bladed rampage, with scores of more reports coming in regarding midnight haircuttings and threatening notes. Yet curiously, the attack on Barbara Feist seems to have been the final

legitimate Scissorman attack. A 10-year-old girl confessed that despite reporting she was also attacked and had her hair cut on February 28th, she had faked the entire thing. Her braids were later found and handed into local police, and they knew well that the scissorman never discarded his victim's hair. She wasn't the only fraudulent claimant either, as when another girl was subject to intense police questioning, she too admitted she made the whole story up, cutting off her own hair before telling her parents she had an encounter with a Pennsylvania scissorman. It raised questions of just how many of these reported attacks had been faked and an even more pertinent question, why would anyone want to fake such an attack?

There are three dominant theories regarding the scissorman and the fraudulent claims and all have been explored and fleshed out by law enforcement and amateur sleuths alike. The first is that the police manufactured many of the stories of fake claims in order to detract from the fact that they had otherwise failed to catch the scissorman. If they could establish an appearance of mass hysteria among young women, it meant that they were not responsible for the failure to apprehend him. Yet others argue in a second theory that the reports were in fact nothing but mass hysteria. One girl cut her hair off, probably out of spite or because she didn't like her braids, and blamed a mysterious scissored attacker to avoid the ire of her conservative parents. This was then repeated over and over

by girls with similar motivations, and the Scissorman was nothing but a fabrication of angsty teenage girls who sought to rebel against society's expectations. However, the third and final theory, and by far the most terrifying, is that the Pennsylvania Scissorman was very, very real. And not only did he genuinely horrify and victimize a string of innocent teenage girls during the First World War era, but the man himself was never caught. That means, for decades after, the Scissorman was left to fawn over the

trophies he'd taken, reveling in the fact that he was never, ever caught. Perhaps he kept a small wooden box full of his prizes. Perhaps he took them out every so often, bringing them up to his nostrils before drawing a deep huff of their scent in, letting the strands dance between his crooked, gnarled fingers, as he fondly reminisced of the terror he had once wrought. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard

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19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It was a warm, balmy summer's day in 1995 when a Pennsylvania fisherman cast his line into the cool,

crystalline waters of Brandywine Creek. Brandywine is a tributary of the Christina River in southeastern Pennsylvania, just shy of 30 miles west of Philadelphia. It's a popular spot for local fishermen to indulge their favorite pastime, and as the fisherman, in request, settled in for a few hours of quiet and meditation, we can imagine he felt relaxed, blissful, and at one with nature. But after only a short while, the fisherman's serenity was shattered by a pungent and stomach-churning stench.

It was one he believed might pass in just a short while, but it soon became obvious that the reek wasn't about to disappear anytime soon. Eventually, the fisherman decided his best course of action was to locate the source of the stench in the hopes that he might be able to alleviate its olfactory assault. He steeled himself, trying not to retch as he walked, and when the scent grew stronger and more intense, he knew he was on the right track. Within minutes, the fisherman was faced with a large green garbage bag half submerged in a puddle of mud near the creek's edge. He took out a small fish knife and sliced open the bag's thick green plastic lining. He had hoped to find the discarded leftovers of some meat-based meal, something to

explain the festering, rotten stench that plagued his nostrils. But when he looked inside and examined the maroon suitcase it contained, what he saw horrified him beyond all comprehension. Inside of the suitcase was the dismembered torso of a deceased female, wearing nothing but a blood-soaked bra. Her face was beaten, bloody, and bruised, barely recognizable as her once-living self. Shoved into the suitcase were a variety of other pieces of evidence, a denim blouse, a headband, a quilt, and bloody sheets. As you can imagine, the fisherman quickly fled the scene and contacted emergency services as soon as he was able. When police officers arrived at the scene, they quickly closed the area off before forensic examiners began the delicate task of extracting DNA from the girl's

remains. They hoped it would be solved as quickly and diligently as possible, but what followed turned out to be one of Pennsylvania's most perplexing unsolved murders. While observing the scene and the terrain immediately surrounding it, the police officers were quick to note that Brandywine Creek was suspiciously close to what are referred to by locals as the Twin Tunnels. And as many a local Chester County may tell you, these tunnels have a very sinister reputation. It's said that back during the 1910s, a group of Irish workmen were buried alive after the tunnels collapsed on them during their construction. The area quickly became known

as the Murderous Mile, and many of the workers were said to have disappeared without a trace. Others tell stories of an unwed mother whose ghost haunts the tunnels after she hanged herself in the area. But unlike that obvious urban legend, the body the fishermen found on that warm July morning was very, very real. The pair of heavily graffitied gray brick tunnels had been abandoned for decades, and part of the reason they're so eerie is down to a sharp, curving bend. The effect is that when you enter at one end, the exit isn't visible. It's all just claustrophobic darkness, the same kind of anxiety-inducing creepiness that inspired Stephen King to make sewer tunnels the home of the mind-meltingly terrifying It. During the investigation that followed, forensic investigators worked to

establish the basic facts of the case. They subsequently concluded that the girl had been dead for between 3 and 7 days, was anywhere between 17 and 40 years old, and was either of European or Latin American extraction. In terms of height, she was around 5'3 and weighed roughly 130 pounds. The girl's legs appeared to have been chopped off after she was murdered, and her demise had most certainly taken place in a different location to the creek itself. Frustratingly, the girl bore no distinctive tattoos or visible scarring, and naturally, her killer had ensured that there were no forms of identification around the body or in the suitcase. Her fingerprints did not match any found in the databases around the country, meaning she had never been in trouble with the law and was unlikely to be any kind of escort.

But most disgustingly, the summer heat and the muddy moisture of the creek bed had horrifically exacerbated the rate of her decomposition, making her features almost impossibly difficult to identify. It didn't take long before police declared there to be nothing in the way of solid leads and within a week, some journalists were speculating that the case could remain cold for a long, long time. Then, just over seven months after the initial discovery of the body, hope of solving the case was rekindled after an extremely disturbing discovery was made. Almost 50 miles away from Brandywine Creek, an unexpecting jogger almost collapsed with fright when they suddenly were faced with the victim's severed legs.

They too had been wrapped in garbage bags, but unlike the first discovery, wild animals had taken the time to rip through the plastic lining before feasting on the rotten flesh underneath. Nearby, another trash bag was found to contain a plethora of female clothing, some that were obviously from different outfits, leading police to believe it could have been a different victim entirely. This was further supported by the fact that the level of decomposition made making a DNA match near impossible. However, when a coroner attempted a sick recreation of a jigsaw puzzle and tried to slot the legs and torsos together, the severed right leg bone fit perfectly into the hip of the torso. And this sparked a frenzy

of media interest, and reporters quickly began referring to the dismembered woman as the Suitcase Jane Doe. In the years that followed, homicide detectives admitted that the Suitcase Jane Doe case was among the most frustrating of their careers. In a 2011 interview with Daily Local News of Chester County, Police Corporal Patrick Quigley was quoted as saying, These are cases that bother us because we can't even begin to investigate why they're dead until we figure out who they are. Quigley later added, Adults have a right to disappear.

People walk away all the time without it being suspicious, and in some cases, people may not have close family or friends who would report them missing. The producer of the nationally renowned TV show America's Most Wanted told the Philadelphia Inquirer that these kind of slip through the cracks because you don't have that advocate, that family member to keep the case alive. And it is hard from a storytelling and crime-solving standpoint, because you have few clues. Investigators were so stumped that back in 1997, they hired a forensic sculptor to create a clay reconstruction of the murdered woman's face. The same forensic sculptor happened to be the same man responsible for recreating the likeness of John List,

and the sculpture just so happened to directly lead to his arrest almost 20 years after he murdered his own family. The Jane Doe bust led to police receiving hundreds of calls from all over the world, but sadly, none of the information produced any solid leads. That all looked like it was about to change around the turn of the millennium, when the victim's dental records seemed to be a possible match for a missing woman from Virginia. However, on closer analysis, the physical descriptions of the two women didn't match, and it was determined to be yet another false lead. Thankfully, despite many giving up on the case entirely, some investigators not only professed a grim determination to solve it, but they genuinely believe the mystery is just

a few clues away from being solved entirely. Many have cited the fact that cold cases can, and sometimes are, solved years, even decades after. For example, in September of 2018, a Jane Doe found in the state of Tennessee during the mid-80s was finally identified as Tina Farmer. The break in the case only occurred after detectives happened across a blog post detailing Farmer's murder. Police then contacted her family and followed up by running an in-depth DNA and fingerprint analysis. Although Tina's killer has yet to be identified, it just goes to show how online sleuthing can be far more than just a morbid form of entertainment. It can actually have a tangible effect on the world around us. Who knows, maybe a story featured on this channel might one day contribute to a

family's search for justice. We can only hope. However, back on the law enforcement side of things, there's a huge chance that forensic genealogy might provide the break the case so desperately needs. Forensic genealogy is actually the same process used to convict the Golden State Killer, and as those familiar with perhaps the most famous true crime case of the past 10 years will testify, this is no mean feat. But in the meantime, all we have to go on is the murdered woman's fingerprints, her DNA, and the partial dental records that have all been added to national as well as international databases. And there's always that slim chance that police officers will hit a match at another crime scene or from another arrested criminal. There's no doubt that there is still a plethora of unanswered questions remaining in regard to the suitcase Jane Doe.

Just who exactly was this poor dismembered woman, so cruelly snuffed out and disregarded in a shallow, muddy creek bed. And did her killer, or even killers, choose to dump her body near the notorious Twin Tunnels of Chester County? Perhaps they sought to take advantage of the place's frighteningly morbid reputation, assuming that such a cold case would soon pass into legend, with the local populace forgetting it was even a real event. Regardless of their boundlessly evil intentions, the case of the suitcase Jane Doe has most certainly contributed to the site's grim legacy. A legacy that will most likely linger long after the girl herself has been identified and her killer brought to justice. The Clifton Heights PD here in Pennsylvania.

Clifton Heights is a small town here in southeastern PA, about 12 miles outside of Philly. Some of the guys in our department like to listen to your stuff while we do paperwork, as it actually helps us keep calm and focused while we're writing up what can sometimes be some pretty boring stuff. Same works for the heavier stuff too. For some reason your stories can keep you from overthinking stuff you generally don't want to overthink. And this next thing I'm about to tell you definitely falls under the heavy column. So last week I was on all nights and when you come to the end of a shift you're sometimes praying for a quiet few hours. Anything major means you're stuck at the department, writing stuff up or dealing with

perps. So when we get a domestic disturbance call just before 5am it was like a real kick in the nuts for me and my partner. The incident in question had a bunch of calls coming in for it and since it was a domestic thing, we threw it right to the top of our list of priorities and drove out to the 400 block of South Springfield Road. We arrive, get out and everything seems quiet, but that can be pretty deceptive for a domestic dispute. Sometimes it means the fight is over, the couples have kissed and made up, and our intrusion is nothing but unwelcome to them. I'm serious. You'd be amazed how many times we just try to help and then suddenly we're the enemy trying to separate a couple who's literally been beating each other bloody for the better part

of an evening. But the silence could also mean that the fight's been ended along with someone's life and the surviving half of the couple is just trying to deal with the consequences as quiet as possible so as not to alert anyone. Turns out, that's exactly what was happening, but just how that would manifest we could never have imagined. So like I said, we rolled up to the front of the apartment, knocked a few times but got no answer. The curtains are drawn on the place's front room so we couldn't see in there, but there's this little tiny crack in the curtains that I figured I'd be able to look through just to see if anything was going on in there.

Usually speaking, and again this might sound a little nuts, but the vast majority of serious domestic violence occurs in the kitchen. I could give you all kinds of reasons why that might be, but from where I'm standing it's because that's the place with the sharp stuff. Knives, forks, you name it. It's all in the kitchen and people have a weird thing about stabbing. Like they don't think it'll do as much damage as a bullet will and in a way they're right. But anyways, as I was saying, I was more looking for clues and not any actual bodies or anything. I'm looking for blood splatter, bullet holes, empty casings, anything to give me probable cause to put the boot to the door and get the bad guys. But that night, I saw way, way more than just a little blood, and what I saw might well haunt me for the rest of my life.

I saw a man and a woman, the woman sitting on the carpeted floor, back up against the couch, with the guy kneeling next to her. In one hand he had a clump of the girl's hair. In the other, he has this huge machete-type knife, one with a little saw blade on the reverse, and he's just sawing into her neck with it. There's blood everywhere, and I mean everywhere. All over her, all over him, all over the floor. Like sometimes it's genuinely amazing how much of that stuff the human body can contain. He's about a third of the way into cutting her with this knife and the thing I'll never forget is the way her face and head were just jerking from side to side with

every pull and push of the knife. It looked like a bad prop from a horror film, you know. Like sometimes you see that kind of thing and it just doesn't even register that it's real. If the person is alive and screaming or crying, yeah, that hits you with reality and you feel it, like deep in your soul. But when they're dead, either in a car wreck or being decapitated like that, it's like you can't even register what's happening. It doesn't look real. Not at first, anyway. I remember it like my brain just switched off for a second. And the next thing I know, me and my partner are taking turns kicking the door's lock,

smashing our boots into it and turn like boom, boom, boom, until the lock finally smashed into splinters and we were in. My first thought was that the guy would just rush us with the knife and then pop pop it'd be over in a second. But he didn't. As soon as we burst in he must have just dropped the knife when we announced ourselves because when we rushed into the room he just stood up, hands in the air, knife on the floor, saying I'm not resisting, I'm not resisting. We put the cuffs on him, dragged him out to the car, then waited for the EMTs to arrive so they could at least try and revive her.

But as you can guess, it didn't work. She was long gone before we got there. She was dead before he even tried to take her head off. We think it was all part of the attempt to dispose of the body, as he'd smashed her over the head with something during an argument, but she wasn't unconscious and was definitely dead by the time he tried to cut. If you need verification for this, you're welcome to look it up. All the details in this will line up and you can just plug in Nicholas Scuria into Google to get all the other info. Guy was 32 and the girl was his ex.

They'd been living together despite being broken up, which was never a good idea, but good God, it tends not to end in murder or decapitation. It was definitely one of the heaviest calls I've ever attended to in my life. I mean, we tend not to get a lot of really bad stuff here in Clifton Heights. Sometimes just overflow from Philly, but that was unlike anything I'd ever seen. The department has us both on paid leave right now, and we've been offered free counseling on the state's dollar. Something I'm definitely going to take them up on. I tend not to have nightmares about stuff, like I have weird dreams, a lot from being overtired and going into deep REM sleep, but it's like actual daydreams when I see that image again. Sometimes I see stuff, like moving around

all weird, like last time it was a kid's balloon tied to a fence bobbing back and forth in the wind, and it just reminded me of the way that that girl to a fence bobbing back and forth in the wind and it just reminded me of the way that that girl's head was jiggling back and forth as the guy was trying to saw at it. Like I said, I'll definitely be taking the department up on its offer of free counseling sessions, but I just want to take a second to thank you all for the content you put up. You'd be surprised how much your videos have been helping me keep my mind off of stuff, and I'm eternally grateful to the guys I work with who introduce me to your stuff. Anyway, keep up the great work and stay safe. Mike To be continued... My name is Teresa and I'm from Philadelphia.

Philadelphia gets pretty crazy sometimes, but it's home, and I'll always have a deep love for the place. But at the end of last year, I was involved in something that's made me reconsider living here altogether. And for the past few months, myself and my boyfriend have been eyeing up more rural places to live. It was a Tuesday night in early December when my boyfriend and I decided to head over to a local bar to get some drinks. Since it was my birthday, we were in the mood to celebrate, and the cold weather had gotten us to the point where we were just dying for something to get us toasty. The bar I'm talking about is a place called Ralph's and it's on the corner of Tarsdale and Bly and Mayfair. You might not be too familiar with that area but

I can assure you lots of people from Philly have heard of Ralph's by now and it's not for good reasons. The bar is a pretty nice place, one of those places that used to be a house until it got converted into a bar, so it has this real homely feel to it that me and my boyfriend loved. I say loved, we still love it, but I don't think I'll ever be able to stop in there again after what happened. So, like I said, it was a Tuesday, my birthday, and it was insanely cold outside. So it took at least two Monongahela Rai's, PA represent, before we were able to feel human again. The place wasn't that busy, maybe a dozen or so people just hanging out and keeping warm, and for a while there was a good atmosphere to the place. But then, two guys at the bar started

having a discussion that started to get real heated. They're raising their voices, getting obviously aggressive with one another, but the bartender went over and told them they either chilled out or would be thrown out and cut off. That kind of calmed them down, but only for a while, and it wasn't long before they started getting confrontational again. Only by then,

it was at serious risk of turning into an actual fight, so my boyfriend asked if I wanted to get out of there and go somewhere else. I said sure, but at first I had to use the bathroom so I wouldn't be doing an Irish jig on the way to another bar. I get up, and as I'm walking into the bathroom, one of the guys like propels himself from his barool and starts getting right in the other guy's face. The other guy then does the same and soon they're standing up and facing off with some of the other customers walking over to try and defuse it. I remember looking back at my boyfriend and making a face at him as if to say, wow, good timing babe. And I honestly didn't think the fight would escalate much, especially not in the

time that it would take for me to pee. So as I'm sitting there doing my thing, I hear a bunch of commotion, as well as what sounded like glasses being banged on the bar top. Keep in mind, the bathroom was way in the back of the bar and round the corner so you couldn't really hear what was going on. I figured the fight had either actually jumped off or that the bartender had hit something on the bar top to get people's attention and get them to get out. It didn't sound like what it was, not at all. I know that might sound crazy, but it's true. Nothing about those noises made me too scared or nervous,

so I just wiped up and was about to walk back down the corridor to the main bar area when my boyfriend comes bursting through the door to the ladies room with this frantic look on his face. I knew something was really really wrong right away, not just because he literally slammed his way through the door of the girls bathroom but because he looked more scared than I'd ever seen him before. I didn't even get a chance to get a word out, he just said, we need to get the

F out of here, right now. When one of the bravest people you love most in the world is like pee your pants scared and says we need to leave, you don't ask questions. I just remember turning, looking up and seeing a small window we could prop open and climb out of. I went first, he followed, and we ran down the block together as I heard him saying, I need the cops at Ralphs and Mayfair, as he was obviously making a 911 call. When we finally got to a safe distance, I asked him what just happened, and what he described was like something out of a horror movie. People were lying on the floor, groaning or whimpering, and some had blood pooling underneath them. Then I looked up, and one of the guys who was at the center of the argument was just walking around, apparently much calmer, and he's saying

stuff like, I told you not to touch me, didn't I? I asked all politely not to put your hands on me, and now look, look at you, lying there whining. My boyfriend says it wasn't even what he was saying either, it was how he was saying it. Like in this tone you might use to talk to a child you're mad at. I suppose since he'd regained control of the situation in such an evil, violent way, it must make a psycho like him feel almost powerful, and power then brings about a sense of calm or whatever. That's what really messed with my head after the shooting. The guy must have, like, enjoyed what he'd done to those poor folks, who according to my boyfriend,

were only trying to break the fight up and not actually hurt the guy who turned out to have the gun. I don't know if the cops ever caught the guy, but I remember my boyfriend calling me into the TV room and pumping up the volume when the whole incident was featured on 6 ABC. We were super relieved to hear that no one had actually died afterwards, but as my boyfriend said, the gunshot wounds can be life-changing injuries sometimes. Like people end up dying years after they're shot due to various complications and stuff. I actually prayed that night for the first time since junior high that no one would suffer injuries like that. And that's about the time we started spitballing the idea of moving.

There's a lot of gun crime here in Philly, but when it finds a way to like reach out and touch you, it's a different kind of scary. Like I said, we're looking at a place outside of the city right now. The commute will be tough as I absolutely hate driving. My boyfriend loves it and I despise it. It's just too stressful. But it would be considerably less stressful than worrying about someone pulling a gun out in your favorite little bar on your birthday of all days. Anyways, if you picked this one for your channel, thank you so much for reading it. I feel like typing this whole thing up has been kind of like therapy for me, and I know how nice your community can be, so I'd definitely be looking in the comments for

everyone's kind words. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumho tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca. In late February of 1957, the corpse of a young boy was discovered in the woods near Susquehanna Road in Foxchase, Philadelphia.

The body had been wrapped in a plaid blanket before being stuffed inside a cardboard box, one which had apparently once contained a bassinet. The boy's hair had been cut post-mortem, evidenced by the fact that clumps of hair were stuck in the cadaver. There were signs of severe malnourishment, as well as surgical scars on the boy's chin, ankle, and groin. The body was first discovered by a man checking his muskrat traps, but scared that the police would confiscate them, he failed to report the grim discovery. A few days later, a college student claimed that, after spotting a rabbit running in the woods, he attempted to pursue it. All he found was the boy's dead body, stuffed into the bassinet box.

Unlike the trapper, the student reported the find to the police, who swiftly began an investigation. At the crime scene, police discovered a man's blue corduroy cap, a child's scarf, and a man's white handkerchief with the letter G in the corner. Naturally, the case attracted a huge amount of media attention, with the Philadelphia Inquirer printing almost half a million flyers depicting the boy's likeness in the hopes that someone would come forward with information. However, despite the huge publicity, the boy's likeness in the hopes that someone would come forward with information. However, despite the huge publicity, the boy's identity is still unknown and the case remains unsolved to this day. Many theories have been floated, but most have been dismissed.

Yet, two prevailing explanations have survived due to their plausibility, with one concerning a foster home almost a mile and a half away from the crime scene. Upon attending an estate sale at the foster home, an employee of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office named Remington Bristow discovered a bassinet similar to the one sold at JCPenney. This kind of bassinet happened to be shipped in a box identical to the one the boy's body was found in. Bristow also discovered blankets that were similar to the ones used to wrap the boy's body. He began to theorize that the boy belonged to the stepdaughter of the man who ran the foster home and that they disposed of his body so the stepdaughter would not be exposed as an unwed mother.

However, the police were not able to find many definite links between the boy in the box and the foster home. The second plausible theory was brought forward in February of 2002 by a woman known in police files only as Martha. The cops considered Martha's story to be a compelling one, but given her history of severe mental illness, she was deemed somewhat unreliable. Still, Martha claimed that her abusive mother had actually bought the child, whose name was Jonathan from his birth parents in the summer of 1954. Yet the adoption was far from a dream one, as Jonathan was subjected to extreme physical abuse for two and a half years.

One evening, Jonathan was so sick he vomited, and Martha claimed her mother was so angry that she beat the boy into unconsciousness before drowning him in a bathtub. And this is what the police found so compelling. The boy had bruising around his head, neck, and torso, showed signs of death by drowning, and in his stomach had traces of the very same meal Martha claimed to have been his last, baked beans. When asked for more details, Martha claimed her mother cut the boy's distinctively long hair in an attempt to disguise his identity, then dumped his body in the fox chase area after concealing it in the bassinet box.

Martha had accompanied her mother on this grim excursion, and at one point, the pair were confronted by a passing cyclist who asked if they needed any help. They were obviously struggling with the concealed corpse, and as Martha's mother pushed her discreetly in the way of her vehicle's license plate, she assured the cyclists that they wouldn't require any assistance. Unbelievably, this story was confirmed by a man who came forward in 1957, who was able to prove that he had been cycling through the area on that particular day. Infamous forensic artist Frank Bender developed a theory that the victim may have been raised as a girl, owing to the unusually long hair and eyebrows which appear to have been trimmed and shaped.

2008 saw Bender release his sketch of the unidentified child, including long hair which reflected the strands found in the body. Following this, two true crime writers announced they had discovered the boy's identity. They believed he was from Memphis, Tennessee, and requested that DNA be compared between the family members and the child. Local authorities confirmed that they would investigate the lead, but said more research was required regarding the circumstances before they could get a clearance to compare DNA samples. However, in December of 2017, Philadelphia

homicide detective Bob Kohlmeier confirmed that DNA taken from the Memphis man had no connection to the boy in the box. The boy's body was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Cedarbrook, Pennsylvania, which donated a large plot after hearing of the tragic story. The coffin, headstone, and funeral service were donated by the son of the man who had buried the boy in 1957, and whose family still felt an undelible link between themselves and the horrifying and heartbreaking case. There was significant public attendance and media coverage at the burial, with the grave's large headstone bearing the words, America's Unknown Child. To this day, Philadelphia residents keep the grave decorated with flowers and stuffed animals, and the story of the boy in the box is passed on from

generation to generation in hopes that his suffering will never be repeated. Hey friends, To be continued... I receive quite a few emails via the let's read submissions at gmail email and most of them are story submissions from good-hearted listeners such as yourselves. Some are kind-hearted messages about how I help you guys sleep at night or how these stories have helped you through hard times in your lives. Now I'm grateful and humbled by all of these but as as you can guess, there's quite a few trolls who decide to send me emails too. Trolls I can usually cope with, as I'd like to think I've developed thick enough skin for their comments not to bother me. But then there's emails like this one. Emails that actually kind of scare me quite a bit. I've changed some of the details as I'm not really in the business of doxing anyone and honestly I was still debating on whether or not to go down sort of a legal route to deal with

this even though I know there's not really much you can do sometimes because as you're about to hear if they're serious this person is kind of dangerously unhinged but in light of that I've had to edit out some of the more personal things that they've said in there, as I'm sure you all can understand why. And sure, it could just be another troll, but sometimes I think that not taking these things seriously might one day have potentially deadly consequences for me. But just listen to yourself. Hi Joel, I'm 19 and I'm from Pennsylvania, just like you. I noticed you mentioned on a stream

one time and when I heard it, my ears perked up like you'd expect they would. I was like, huh, my favorite storyteller, living and making content in the exact same state as me. Heck, you could be like just around the corner and I'd never know it. I know you've never done a face reveal. I know because I'm the one who asked you that one time, remember? I searched high and low on Google for a let's read face reveal, and especially after that corpse husband one leaked, but I couldn't find one. So I asked you, and you just said no. That only made me more excited though, because then you really could have been lurking anywhere around me, and I'd never even know it. I've tried to get more details about you from the streams Asking you what you did for work before YouTube

What you like to do in your spare time Sometimes you've answered, sometimes you didn't But every time you did, I made sure to make a little note So that I could build up a fairly detailed picture of your life I know this might sound a little weird And I honestly didn't want to freak you out or scare you off But it's clear you don't want to meet me or be friends in any way and... I'll be honest, that really hurt and upset me at first.

But I'm a big girl. I know how to take rejection. At least, I thought so. Because as the days and weeks and months have gone by, I've found myself feeling angrier and angrier towards you. You give so much to your audience, Joel. Why can't you give just a little bit more? You say this makes you happy, that reading stories and enriching people's lives makes you feel good about yourself. So, I think we both know you'd feel even better if you just gave yourself to someone.

That someone being me. If I've learned one thing in life, it's that a person is always happier once they've found a purpose. I know you've found yours, and it's your channel, your stories, and your community. But I think I've found mine too, and that purpose is you. But you don't see it that way, do you, Joel? And it's not that you can't see it, it's that you're not willing to allow yourself to see it. And I get that, I might come across as a little intense, but the vindicating thing is that I know I'm right. And with that in mind, I don't care what I have to do.

I don't care what it takes. I don't care how much work I have to I don't care what I have to do. I don't care what it takes. I don't care how much work I have to put in or how much I have to sacrifice, because in the end, I'm going to find you. And that's not an empty threat either. It's a fact. I don't care if I have to visit every kind of place you used to work at. I don't care if I have to steal to get the gas money to do it. I'll find one place that'll be willing to tell me if a Joel used to work there, who quit to focus on YouTube. I know what you're thinking too. There's procedures in place to protect information like that. But do you honestly think I can't find someone who will be willing to trade information for certain favors.

Exactly. You'll be much, much easier to find than you think. If you're not willing to give yourself completely to your fans, then honestly, I don't think you deserve to have them. Or no, scratch that. I know you don't deserve to have them. So, when I find you, then trust me. If it's the last thing I do on this earth, I will find you, I'm gonna make sure you're properly held accountable for your disgusting contempt for me

and us, your fans. I'm sure you know what that means. It'll be a very permanent solution to the problem that you are. And again I can promise you I'm gonna make you hurt. Your youtube name might be Let's Read, but trust me, after meeting me, Let's Bleed is going to be much more suitable. See you soon. I'm from a small town, the kind where you are in the same class with the same kids from preschool through graduation. I was never popular and had my fair share of bullies, but never as bad as one kid in my class, Max. He was on the shorter side and had these little round glasses with his hair slicked to the side like he was right out of a movie cast as the stereotypical nerd. He kept to himself and didn't really interact with others if he could avoid it.

Now fast forward to 8th grade when we were paired as lab partners and had to sit at the same table together every day for the entire year. I considered myself a nice person and always went out of my way to make sure I wasn't rude to people, especially people who hadn't done anything to deserve it. So, of course, I was friendly and happy to be his partners, long as he did his fair share of work. The year came and went, he was shy but polite and we got along fine being partners. Ninth grade started and I had a lot of troubles at home with my birth father so I chose to move in with my mother a few towns over. I was only about 30 minutes away but I had to start a completely new school a month into freshman year and it was scary. I may not have

been popular at my last school but I did have several friends whom I'd year and it was scary. I may not have been popular at my last school but I did have several friends whom I'd loved and missed dearly. My mom would often drive me to the other town to see my friends and hang out and I also started making new friends at my new school. It was a good setup and I continued this way until I was 16 and could drive myself. I never heard anything from Max and honestly I had kind of forgotten about him. That was until my junior year of high school. I started casually seeing this other guy Jack from my hometown and he asked me to go with him to prom. I was excited and happy to say yes as I would get to spend the night with him and my friends from childhood.

A couple of months before prom my mother told me that there was a new lady at her job, and she was asking about me because her grandson was seeing me, and she wanted a picture so that she could put a face to my name. My mother knew Jack and knew this wasn't his grandmother, so she asked his name, and wouldn't you know it, it was Max. My mother showed a picture to the lady that she had on her desk and the lady went on her way. A few weeks later, she asked for the color of my prom dress so that she knew what to get Max so that we matched. My mother was confused but told

her it was pink. About two weeks before prom, some of my friends from my hometown told me that Max had been telling some people that we were going to dance together and that he was so excited. I thought this was a bit creepy, but I didn't put too much thought into it. The night of prom, I picked Jack up and we headed over to the school, only to find Max and his grandmother waiting outside the entrance so that she could take pictures of us before we go in. I was not one to disappoint people so I politely took a couple of pictures with him as my actual date stood off to the side and waited. If Max's grandmother was confused that I had another date, she didn't show it. The rest of the night went smoothly and Jack and I had a great time. We didn't see Max anymore and assumed that he had

left. Other than his grandmother telling my mom that he had lost my number and trying to get it for him, which she thankfully didn't do, I didn't hear much from him until we graduated. I went to a state college and I had heard that he had gotten into a well-respected private university. Everything was fine for the first few weeks of college and then I ran into him. He caught me on the way to class one day. I was polite and asked him if he was a student here too, which he was, and I chatted with him for a minute before hurrying off to class. It was a relatively harmless interaction but still creeped me out a bit since I knew that he got into that other school and wondered why he

chose to go to a state college. For the next couple of months I ran into him almost daily. He always wanted to talk and never seemed to be with anyone else. I found out from some girls in my dorm that he had been hanging around asking about me and trying to figure out my class schedule and where I would be and when. He also told them that he was my boyfriend and he passed up a scholarship to another college to come here and be with me instead. They figured out that he was lying when they never saw us together for long periods, wore him up in the rooms with me and stopped answering his questions. I left at the end of the semester to move home and take classes at a nearby school,

and I did not tell him, obviously. The following year, I actually got married to my boyfriend from my senior year of high school. Kind of dumb, I know. Anyway, we were in his small town, which is in the same county as my hometown, for a fair shortly after the wedding. And while we were walking around and enjoying ourselves, I see Max staring at us at the end after the wedding. And while we were walking around and enjoying ourselves, I see Max staring at us at the end of the block. It was the first time I had been genuinely fearful of him as the look on his face was nothing short of hatred. I tried to ignore him and went about my night, seeing him a few more times, and always with that look on his face. The next few years passed with me hearing nothing

from him at all. I didn't even know if he was still living around that area or not. I found out a little while after that he did when I started working at a clothing store in town and he would stop in and sit in that sort of dad chair next to the door for all the guys to hang out in while their people shopped. I mentioned it to my manager because of our history and the fact that he would stare at me constantly while sitting there but he always came in with a girl and I later found out it was his sister so they didn't think too much of it. He never spoke to me, they just always stared. And when I was in my mid-twenties I moved to a city in my home state

but still several hours away from my small town. I'm now thirty and doing well in life and other than a random Facebook friend request which I reject I haven't heard from him. It's just crazy that he stalked me for all those years and I just hope

that he stays away. When my friend and I met the woman we now refer to as the Banshee, it was about 10 at night. We were walking back from a milk tea place and we were maybe at mile five of a six mile total round trip, almost home. We were walking on a long stretch of sidewalk next to a wide road that is busy during the day but almost empty at night. No little background, my hiking buddy and I sometimes go for long walks through town at night when we can't get out to the trails during the day. It's dark but our routes go through a fairly safe blend of residential and shopping areas. Usually we head to some sort of late night restaurant or food truck. We walk, stop for food and drink and then head back. We wear glowing vests that are

battery powered and reflective stuff to make sure traffic sees us because we've had some too close encounters with distracted drivers. We've also had a few encounters with some very strange people. She didn't start making strange noises at first. It was a long stretch of straight sidewalk and we had seen her coming for a long time before she started that. No one else was out walking along the road at this hour. There were plenty of streetlights. She appeared under the lights, then disappear in some shadow of bushes and trees and reappear under the lights again. We were glowing in our vests in addition to the streetlights, so she had to have seen us coming too. I figured she worked at one of the shops or restaurants nearby and was getting done with closing up.

I figured she was just trying to get home, just like we were. Until she started making these random noises. The first sounds were like an odd hacking noise, like she was attempting to clear her throat as noisily as possible. But this was just a warm up. The sound changed to something like a cross between a crow cawing and a small dog's bark. Rendering it in text is hard, but the closest thing might be like, Grawr, Grawr. So we kept walking towards her, watching and listening,

thinking perhaps she has some sort of disability or some other issue. She looked decently dressed and she walked steadily and deliberately, not like someone on drugs or something like that. And if not for her noises, she seemed completely normal. Then she made these loud but low-pitched groaning noises, something like, it had us briefly making zombie movie references, just joking a bit, but we speculated if she was maybe talking to someone on earbuds or making an attempt at singing something. But it got weirder as she added some higher-pitched screechy sounds, something like an angry cockatoo might make, like craw, craw. At this point, she's less than two blocks away and she's rotating through these bizarre sounds with short pauses of silence between. She looked like someone's cute little grandma.

She didn't look like anything you'd expect to see making these sounds. She's wearing an old-fashioned thick skirt, a cardigan, and clunky-looking shoes, carrying a single-cloth shopping bag. Her hair is a short, curly old lady perm. She looks adorable. She sounds insane. She's getting closer and her bizarre noises are getting more unsettling and I realize I can't see what she's clutching in her other hand, the one that doesn't have a shopping bag. She looks harmless, but the sounds are too weird. My buddy looked at me and asked, time to cross? Echoing my own thoughts. We didn't want a confrontation with this woman. I nodded, but just before we step out into the road, the lady seemed to have the same idea. She suddenly veered off the sidewalk and then went into the road,

making a steady diagonal line towards the other side. There was no traffic on the road at this point so I wasn't worried. I was relaxed a bit, continuing on. I figured she was avoiding us, just like we were about to avoid her. But just as we started to pass her, she suddenly screamed and rushed at us from the middle of the road. Her mouth was wide open as she charged us, just shrieking. We stepped quickly apart and her abrupt rush took her right between us, just shriek wailing that horrible sound. It sounded like it would hurt her throat. Banshee-like is the only word I have for it. We were several feet

apart and both braced for her to come back and do something, but instead she veered again and went down the sidewalk the way she had originally been going. As she walked away, she kept looking back at us and keeping up short bursts of the shrieking banshee noise, stopping to take breaths. As she got further away from us, she started caw-barking at us again. We stood there for a while, just silently watching until she was a good long ways off down the sidewalk, with her very strange crow barks fading into the distance. I still have no idea what was wrong with her. Did our lights somehow trigger an episode? I really do hope that she's okay. She seemed to know where she was going. To be continued... two-level apartment on the main floor of a building. Out front there were three stairs,

then a deck, then three more stairs to the front door, and another little narrow deck that ran the length of the front of my apartment, which besides the door was all windows. The main floor was a tiny kitchen, living room, and a door to the hallway for laundry and parking access, all of which was totally visible from the windows. It was fall in western Canada during daylight savings, pitch black early and surprisingly warm for the season. I had all my windows open and hadn't closed the blinds as to get a breeze in and was talking on the phone to my sister. I had my back to the windows when I turned around and I thought that I saw something weird at the window. It was really bright inside so I turned back to the windows when I turned around and I thought that I saw something weird at the window. It was really bright inside so I turned the main light off and see a man pressed against the window staring at me. I screamed and told my sister a man is on my deck looking at me. He seemed to take off into the darkness. I turned off all the lights inside, put the outside ones on, and I was babbling to my sister like, oh my god, a peeping tom. So scary, I can't believe it, and then he just walks back

up on the deck. I screamed again. He's back. I have to call 911. I hung up and did so, while his face was pressed against the window and it was still open. The windows were floor to ceiling with screened cranked open bottom sections that I had opened to the max and could for sure accommodate a determined person crawling in. He could hear me and the 911 call, but he didn't move. I had crouched down in the dark room and the main light was off so he couldn't see me but I had the lights on beside the doorway to the hallway and on the stairs to the bedroom. I didn't want to move and let him know where I was. I should have run into the hallway and banged on a neighbor's door but I was in shock and after all, the cops are coming from a station ten blocks away. We'll get here soon, right?

The 911 operator says, We can't find your address. I'm directly behind the rec center at X and Y, corner unit unmistakable area landmark in the only apartment building there. The man at the window starts banging on the glass. I was whispering but assume he heard me give panic directions repeatedly and we both can't hear sirens. It felt like this would go on forever when he finally just ran off. I couldn't see how far and there were plenty of places to

crouch and hide so I wasn't all that sure. I peek out to see a police car so I told the operator that they're here. And then the car starts to drive away and the operator told me to go outside and flag them down. I don't know why I actually did because I was scared out of my mind. But when I did, they rolled down their window. Ma'am, do you need help?

Oh, you're looking for me, I think. I called 911. We're just driving by, but what's the problem? They never found the man. That terrified me and made me feel so unsafe that I actually moved. But it was truly the cops not being able to find the only apartments behind a notable building that completely shook me. The frightening end note is that when I moved out, they tried to charge me because the downstairs screens are shredded from your cats. The screens were pristine the day the creeper showed up and that was the last time I opened the downstairs windows or blinds or used the front door. The property

manager laughed and mocked me, called BS when I said someone cut them until I showed her the police report. She lived there too, so suddenly things't had any really scary encounters, most just made me uncomfortable. But this one has really stayed with me over the years, because it scared me in a different way than the conventional evil spirits, monsters in the woods type of thing. So I was with my girlfriend at the time this went down, and we were hanging out with two mutual friends. We were in our late 20s walking around an outlet mall and I was about 10 feet behind the three of them talking to my mom on the phone so anyone else it probably didn't look like I was with them. As they walked past some random bench some guy sitting on it stood up then flashed them what looked like an awful lot like a police badge and I really do mean Flash because he must have showed them it for like a fraction of a second. All they saw was the guy's tough guy authoritarian act so they did as

they were told. But I'd seen the whole thing, how the guy had basically psyched himself up, as well as taking the badge out of his jacket pocket before sliding it onto the waistband of his jeans. Unless they're undercover, cops have their badges on show all the time, either on their uniform or on their person if they're in civilian clothes. I know this for a fact because I have an older cousin who works in homicides, so I just walked up behind the guy like, hey, what do you think you're doing? The guy turned around like, hey, move along kid, police business. To which I replied, but you're not a cop. In response, the guy actually laughed and shook his head,

as if to say like, get a load of this guy. But I persisted. I asked to see the guy's badge again, and he was suddenly in the position where he didn't want to show it. And I'm like, yeah, exactly exactly because you're imitating a cop. The only idiot breaking the law here is you. He gave me this big, oh you just wait here. I'll be back with my supervisor and you come with downtown kid. But as you can guess, the guy never reappeared. The girls thought I was pretty cool for having called the guy out like that and as dope as it was to soak up all that clout, I guess, the whole encounter left me with a really, really bad feeling. Like, yeah, I called the cops after, gave them a detailed description of the guy so they could stop him from doing that again.

But how long had he been imitating a cop for, and would he just move on and try the same thing somewhere else? I can definitely see someone less savvy falling for the act, in which case, if they followed him somewhere or got into his car, they'd be completely and utterly at the guy's mercy. And yeah, maybe he was just some dork, or maybe, just maybe, he was way, way more dangerous. I was working at my first ever job in retail. I was around 20 years old. It was a busy morning, 9am, somewhere mid-December and hence why I was so busy. I was working the checkouts as per usual, scanning items, ringing up customers and all that typical jazz. About an hour into my shift,

I was serving an elderly man who bought just a handful of items. After giving him his subtotal, another guy behind him, reeking of booze, stretched out, handing me cash. I kindly told him I wasn't serving him, I was serving the man in front of him. Then I looked down and saw that he was buying some cheap knockoff branded Baileys, some type of booze and of course I figured out that this guy was completely wasted. Just as I was taking payment from the elderly man, I was planning in my head how I was going to tell the next guy that I cannot sell alcohol to him as he's already drunk, as this is my first job and I never encountered this sort of thing before. So I finished serving and now on to the drunk guy.

I looked around in hopes to find another colleague or my manager, but not one was in sight or available to help. So I looked at the man and just before I opened my mouth, I felt what felt like someone grabbed a fistful of my hair and something sharp poking me in the back and, of course, a man whispered in my ear to which I also smelled alcohol on his breath. Serve my mate. He pushes, which I'm assuming was a knife, harder into my back. Now. He pushes, which I'm assuming was a knife, harder into my back. No.

In complete shock, I said nothing. Just scanned the bottle, took the cash, and they were gone. I quickly turned around to my colleague, working checkouts behind me, but all they did was look at me and asked if I was okay, completely unaware of what just happened. Then I went for my break. I see my manager pass by, so I rushed over to him and unaware of what just happened. Then I went for my break. I see my manager pass by so I rushed over to him and told him what just happened. All he did was laugh because he thought I was joking, but criticized me for selling alcohol to someone under the influence. Whatever that sharp object was that was in my back cut me and before my break I could feel blood running down my back and it was

incredibly sore. Of course I couldn't see the blood as my uniform is black. I screamed that it's true it did happen and I turned around and lifted my hair as I have very long hair and I said to lift up my shirt and I got a female colleague close by to do it. I told her that this guy sliced me but the manager just said, ew, no, I don't want to see you lift up your shirt, and just walked away staring into his phone. Well, I didn't return to finish my shift. I just snuck out of the store, took a taxi and went home, and my mom cleaned up my back and dressed it, and then the next morning she called the work to tell them I'll not be returning as the manager's incompetence to take action when I could have almost been stabbed over a bottle of booze. So I've been living alone in a foreign country for a year already.

The last months I've been taking a ferry to move because the metro is usually crowded, stressful, and in these times is kind of a nope for me, so the ferry is always the best option. At least this was my thought until this week. On Monday, a random guy, probably in his thirties, sat next to me in the ferry and tried to talk. I'm not good with the language yet, so I let him understand that I didn't know what he was saying. He kept talking and showed me his phone, that he had just taken a picture of me. I asked him to delete it, but he didn't understand, so I just ignored him to make him stop. It was irrelevant at the moment, and on Tuesday I noticed the guy was in the ferry again, but this time he greeted me and called me by my name.

How he knew was strange, which of course surprised me since I had no idea who he was. He sat next to me and kept talking non-stop, but this time he went a little over familiar and even tried to hug me. My luck, a woman noticed it and sat between him and me pretending to be my friend. On Wednesday I used the metro instead of the ferry, so it was normal. On Thursday I took the ferry and this guy was there again. This time he sat further away. When the ferry reached the other side, I noticed the guy was following me so I changed route and went to a bus stop which is just next to the ferry port. As it was late at night there weren't so many people around and I was pretty scared so I sat in the bus stop and

there were a couple waiting there so I started to feel safe. But the soccer came and sat next to me and suddenly held my arm while saying, come, come, come, and trying to take me with him. At this point, I just held his arm tight and asked for help. The couple next to me called police and I filed a report. And I mentioned that on Monday that he was taking pictures of me and that he might be doing the same with other girls. Police asked for his phone number and to my surprise he handed it to them with no problems, like he was sure nothing was going to happen to him.

When police checked his phone they found pictures of me, but not just from Monday. This guy had been taking pictures of me for months. Months. Not just in the ferry but also in the parking area and even outside my own home. Besides my pictures, they found pictures of different girls, which I believe that he'd been following for months as well. The worst thing about this whole situation is that I filed a report directly to the police, but they couldn't do anything because the guy hadn't hurt me. So right now I'm looking for a new place to move.

Either way, be careful all. There's creeps everywhere. I'm a 22-year-old female from Hawaii and live on the more country side of my island where not even google maps can tell you exactly where I live. To put it simple, I live in the boonies and people who don't live by me don't come into my neighborhood unless they're lost. I'm only saying this for context. About three days ago I was in my driveway on my way to catch the bus to work till a weird catering truck came towards my house and pulled into my driveway on my way to catch the bus to work till a weird catering truck came towards my house and pulled into my driveway. A middle-aged guy came out wearing a tacky aloha shirt only tourists

would be seen wearing and dirty khaki shorts with run-down sandals. He looked dirty to say the least. He looked like he hadn't scrubbed in days. He asked me if I wanted to buy meat or seafood and said no thanks then asked if anyone was home. I lied and said my uncle, hoping that he would go away. These kind of trucks don't come anywhere on my side of the island by the way. But he didn't. Then he proceeded to compliment my looks, saying how I have nice hair, then going on to how beautiful island girls are and how our curves are, just all this creepy stuff. It wasn't until my neighbor came outside

that he drove away. Yet once I turned the corner, there he was, then slowly drive behind me. I felt sketched out and called my mom who's a dispatcher and told her what happened and how he looked. She told me she'd handle it. and by that time more people started coming out of their houses and he left. Two hours later I was at work and she tells me that she got a couple of other calls about the same guy with the exact same description as me and I was asked to go to the station to say if I recognized anyone and pointed at his picture. They confirmed that he was a well-known trafficker in that area and that they haven't been able to track him for weeks. Since then, I've locked my house as soon as my mom leaves for work. I haven't really slept

since and have been throwing up or having panic attacks any time I leave time for myself to think. I'm scared out of my mind, and I honestly don't know what to do. He knows where I work, my house, my face, and it scares me to the point that I'm even covered up my windows just in case someone might try to look inside. I was a 26-year-old female. I needed gas and it was around 11pm on Saturday. I pulled into a busy gas station to fill my tank, except it was completely bare and not a car in sight. I also live in Alaska and it was very cold this night, maybe negative 10 Fahrenheit. Tired after work, just wanting to get home, usually I start my pump and sit in my car due to the freezing cold but this time I had a weird

feeling that I needed to stand by the pump so I did. I just started pumping my gas when a little golden sedan pulled up right next to me. A guy got out and I was feeling hypervigilant for some reason. He started cleaning his completely already clean windows. As he put back the squeegee, he started towards me. I felt like I wanted to run but stayed calm and continued pumping. He asked me if I would help him put windshield wiper fluid in his car because he ran out and he doesn't know how to open up the hood. I laughed it off and told him I don't know either, which was a lie. He kept getting closer and closer to me while trying to lure me into his car by saying there's something under his seat which he can't reach because he's too big. Now, I'm 5'2 and petite. This man was large and scruffy. Think Alaska wilderness dude.

At this point I'm kind of freaking out and hit the call button on the pump. He took a step back and started to go back to his car. I thought I was being smart. My gas was almost done. I looked in his car when I noticed the insides of the doors had no handles except for the driver door and that freaked me out even more. I was putting the pump back and opening my door and now he was right behind me. I slammed my door shut and he yelled at me, you're coming with me. Obviously I refused and I was petrified. He grabbed my arm and slammed me against my car. I elbowed him as hard as I could and I started to scream at the top of my lungs. Thank God for the gas attendant with his big gun that night because if not for him, I don't know what would have happened.

The attendant pulled the video and we made a police report and I called immediately after that guy took off. But I never heard anything else about it and I just hoped that he didn't get some other poor innocent other girl alone. This happened in Boston in 2013. I'm now a 30 year old female but I was 23 at the time and was looking for an apartment with a roommate, they were the same age. We had a pretty tight budget so rather than using a realtor we applied to ads on craigslist. It wasn't my first time using craigslist for this and having come across my fair share of creeps, I made it a point to never go to tours alone and to make sure someone who wasn't coming with me knew the address of where I was touring. So we scheduled an appointment to meet with someone to view a one bedroom that was open in a three bedroom house in Dorchester.

We get there, get inside the front door and he told us to wait in the foyer. I like to think that I have pretty good intuition and the place immediately felt very creepy. He said that the open bedroom is in the guest house in the backyard, but it looked more like a garage. Then he said that his neighbor has been asking to move into the open room and he doesn't want her to know that he's letting other people tour it. So when we go to the backyard to see the guest room, we should try to walk as quickly as possible so she doesn't notice in the event that she was looking outside. And all the red flags are going off in my head. Then he told us that he'd go back there first and tell us when it's okay to head over. He leaves. A minute or two goes by and through a window we can see a few other guys that we didn't see before head to the garage. More red flags.

Me and my roommate look at each other and without even having to say a word, immediately leave the foyer and walk out to our car. We get in the car, lock the doors, and drive away as quickly as possible. About five minutes later, he calls and asks us why we left. He sounded really upset, told us we wasted his time, blah blah blah. I know in my gut that he did not have good intentions and to this day, I wonder what would have happened if we went to that tour in that garage. First of all, I'm sorry for my English, but I hope you understand me anyways. When I was 14, we moved to another house in another city.

At first, everything was okay, but our landlord, who was about 70 years old, started to show up more and more often because of construction work, as he put it. But the house itself was totally fine. If my parents couldn't be there when he wanted to come, he asked them if he could pick me up from school and go to our house with him, which of course they didn't want. All of a sudden he started saying weird things about me, a 14 year old girl, about my looks and how beautiful I was and so on. I didn't tell my parents about it and I was always disgusted with him. Once my best friend was with me and my parents asked our landlord if he could drive her to the train station because he was standing in

front of our car. I was so afraid for her and didn't want her to go with him, but it was a long way to walk. I texted her the whole time, waiting until she was out of the car. I told her about him, but she dismissed it as me imagining things. When she answered me, she wrote that she now believes me and that he kept making strange comments and wanted to drive her through the forest to the station, which would have been a huge detour, which luckily she refused. One day my parents were gone and I was in bed with a fever. I was completely under my covers when I heard footsteps and a man's voice. I thought my parents had come back. Suddenly someone

came into my room. I heard my landlord talking to another man. I was completely in shock and didn't know what to do. I was home alone and they hadn't noticed me under my covers. I couldn't move. Suddenly the stranger noticed that I was moving under the covers and told our landlord and they both left immediately. When my parents came back I told them everything. And in Germany it's forbidden for landlords to enter the house without the tenants. It's even forbidden to have a spare key while it's rented. He was even a police officer. And we moved out a month later. To be continued... click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

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