Between 1987 and 2002, a popular television program called Unsolved Mysteries marked a milestone in productions charged with explaining evil and bringing it to the small screen with great interest from the public.
In those 15 years, acting veteran Robert Stack presided over more than 230 episodes involving at least 1,300 cold cases. From captured murderers to reuniting missing children with their parents and even supernatural occurrences; Of those cases, 260 can be resolved through the program.
In 2008, Spike TV—now the Paramount Network—aired a new season of these events, hosted by late star Dennis Farina; But it wasn’t until 2020, when Netflix did just that and announced the launch of Unsolved Mysteries on its on-demand content platform.
From unsolved murders, hoaxes, to horrifying situations, here are some of the cases that, thanks to said production, managed to end, albeit sometimes not so happily.
The Case of the Stolen Children: Before it became popular in digital media, the Georgia Tan case was featured in Unsolved Mysteries, which resolved many questions about the children abandoned in her care, many of whom were adopted into the illegal market I went.
Tan became director of the Mississippi Children’s Home Society, and adopted her daughter. He had a romantic relationship with a worker at the same center named Ann Atwood; and managed to rob over 5,000 kids – including WWE legend Ric Flair – and make off with over a million dollars.
The alleged murder of Angela Cummings: Due to its low audience, a radio station in Los Angeles, California, called KROQ-FM, decided to start a segment titled “Accept Your Guilt” or “Accept Your Guilt”. Did; People were calling in by the hundreds, pouring out their tales of harmless debauchery.
However, on June 13, 1990, an anonymous man called and told of the brutal beating his girlfriend had received after he caught her with another man, “to the extent of beating her,” the man suggested. When hosts Kevin Ryder and Jean Baxter asked the caller for information, he hung up. The data matches the murder of a girl named Angela Cummings; Weeks later, authorities learned that the confession had been made by the station’s DJ, known as Doug Roberts, who had to pay a fine of thousands of dollars.
A Genetic Mystery: In July 1989, Patricia Stallings went to the hospital with her young son, Ryan, who had been falling violently ill for no apparent reason. After various tests, it was found that the minor had ‘ethylene glycol’ in his blood; It was the main ingredient in antifreeze. Authorities suspected that Stallings had poisoned her son, and he was placed in foster care.
Patricia visited her son sporadically and in August 1989, she went to see him and gave him a bottle. A few days later, the minor was shifted to the emergency room of a hospital and died of alleged ‘ethylene glycol’ poisoning. In January 1991, Stallings was convicted of her child’s murder, but thanks to the dissemination of her case in Unsolved Mysteries, an expert at Saint Louis University studied the facts and determined that the child suffered from a rare genetic disease. Is. MMA (methylmalonic acidemia). Stallings was released and million-dollar lawsuits were filed against the hospitals and laboratories.
The Strange Case of Belinda “Gigi” Lynn: Sometimes the events presented in Unsolved Mysteries don’t end with a happy ending. In February 1985, a woman walking in a New Orleans park said she did not remember how she got there and insisted that they only call her “Gigi”. It was a strange case of amnesia, because despite the fact that the doctors gave him “sodium amytal”, he did not succeed in restoring his memory.
When the affair broke out on television, a friend of hers, identified as Nancy Lawrence, identified “Gigi” as Belinda Lynn, a 31-year-old medical secretary from Delaware. According to Lawrence, Lynn had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but had not taken her medication. When production found his parents, they didn’t want to take the responsibility.
Craig Williamson’s disappearance: It could be a case of amnesia that never happened. In October 1990, 46-year-old Craig Williamson married 41-year-old Christine Reinhardt at Lake Tahoe. Just three years into their married life and after purchasing land to raise tilapia, Williamson traveled to Colorado Springs and that was the last he was heard from.
The first time his case aired on Unsolved Mysteries, nothing happened, as it wasn’t until the episode was repeated that anyone learned the man lived in Key West and was working as a diver. used to work. According to his story, he was robbed in Colorado Springs and left with amnesia from the blows inflicted by the assailants. Some believe that he simply ran away from all the promises he had made to his wife and decided to start a new life.
“Liz” Carmichael scandal: Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, better known as “Liz” Carmichael, was a transgender woman who caused the biggest scandal in America with her alleged invention of a three-wheeled vehicle known as “The Dell”. One of the scams was planned. and two seats, which saves more gasoline than conventional vehicle in the market. It was an innovative proposal, as long as the car never existed, it was only a prototype.
When authorities investigated the matter in 1973, they realized that his company had won three million dollars in advance purchases of cars that did not exist; Their hangars were empty and the vehicles had to be built from substandard materials. The woman managed to escape, but in April 1989, when the case was published on the television series, citizen reports helped identify “Liz”, who worked in Austin, Texas, under the alias Katherine Elizabeth Johnson.
The Trunk of Death: In the show’s fifth season, the case of a man known as “Gabby” (John David Morris) and his liberal neighbor known as Newell Sessions was revealed. When “Gabby” moved in with Sessions in Wyoming City in 1986, she put her friend’s belongings in a shed. Six years later, a trunk attracted the attention of the home’s owner, who, after lighting it with a blowtorch, broke open the lock and found a decomposing corpse inside.
An autopsy determined that it was a man between the ages of 50 and 60. The subject was a homicide victim who had been shot in the head with a .25-caliber weapon manufactured in the early 1900s. In February 1993, when the case was highlighted in Unsolved Mysteries, among the clues was a grocery bag from Iowa mentioned in the trunk. A girl named Shelley Statler approached the production and remarked that her grandfather had disappeared in that town in 1963. After DNA tests, it was determined that it was the body. Crime.
