World’s Strangest Unsolved Mysteries
1. The Strange Disappearance of D.B. Cooper
On Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1971, a man identified as Daniel Cooper bought a $20 one-way ticket on Northwest Airlines, Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. Cooper was described as being in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit, an overcoat, brown shoes, a white shirt and a black tie. He also carried a briefcase and a brown paper bag.
Before the flight took off, he ordered a bourbon and soda from a flight attendant. After the plane was airborne, Cooper handed the flight attendant a note. At first, she just put it in her pocket without looking at it, but then Cooper told her, “Miss, you better look at that note. I have a bomb.” Cooper then told her the bomb was in his briefcase and asked her to sit next to him. He opened the briefcase to reveal red-colored sticks, surrounded by an array of wires.
Cooper told the flight attendant to write down everything he said and then take it to the Captain. The note said, “I want $200,000 by 5 p.m. in cash exclusively in $20 bills, put in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I’ll do the job.”
FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle-area banks, and Seattle police obtained the parachutes from a local skydiving school.
When Cooper claimed his demands were met, he allowed all passengers and some of the crew to exit the airplane. Cooper told the remaining crew to refuel and chart a course for Mexico City while staying below 10,000 feet.
During the flight, Cooper put on a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses, which would make it into the official sketch and become famous to anyone investigating the case. A little after 8 p.m., and somewhere in between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, Cooper jumped out of the rear door of the plane with two of the parachutes and the money. He was never seen again.
Despite an expansive manhunt and decades of searching, no conclusions have been made as to the man’s identity or his fate after he jumped. It is called one of the greatest cold cases in FBI and U.S. history.
Before the flight took off, he ordered a bourbon and soda from a flight attendant. After the plane was airborne, Cooper handed the flight attendant a note. At first, she just put it in her pocket without looking at it, but then Cooper told her, “Miss, you better look at that note. I have a bomb.” Cooper then told her the bomb was in his briefcase and asked her to sit next to him. He opened the briefcase to reveal red-colored sticks, surrounded by an array of wires.
Cooper told the flight attendant to write down everything he said and then take it to the Captain. The note said, “I want $200,000 by 5 p.m. in cash exclusively in $20 bills, put in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I’ll do the job.”
FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle-area banks, and Seattle police obtained the parachutes from a local skydiving school.
When Cooper claimed his demands were met, he allowed all passengers and some of the crew to exit the airplane. Cooper told the remaining crew to refuel and chart a course for Mexico City while staying below 10,000 feet.
During the flight, Cooper put on a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses, which would make it into the official sketch and become famous to anyone investigating the case. A little after 8 p.m., and somewhere in between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, Cooper jumped out of the rear door of the plane with two of the parachutes and the money. He was never seen again.
Despite an expansive manhunt and decades of searching, no conclusions have been made as to the man’s identity or his fate after he jumped. It is called one of the greatest cold cases in FBI and U.S. history.
2. The Body on Somerton Beach
In December 1948, a body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. The body was a man who was dressed impeccably in a suit with polished shoes, and his head was slumped against a wall. Authorities thought the cause of death was heart failure or more likely poisoning, but no trace of poison was found in the autopsy.
There wasn’t a wallet or any type of identification on the man, and all the tags from his clothing were cut out. The fingerprints that the authorities took of him were also unidentifiable. They even put a photo of the body in the newspapers, and still, no one could identify who the man was.
Four months later, after the body was found, detectives found a hidden pocket that was sewn on the inside of his trousers. Inside was a rolled-up piece of paper from a rare book called the Rubáiyát. The piece of paper had the words “Tamám Shud” on it, which means “it has ended.”
After months of looking for the exact book, the authorities decided to bury the Somerton Man without identification. However, a cast was taken of the bust, and he was embalmed for preservation purposes.
Eight months later, a man walked into the police station. He claimed that just after the body was found, he discovered a copy of the Rubáiyát in the back of his car that he kept parked near Somerton Beach. He thought nothing of it until he read about the search in a newspaper article. Sure enough, the book had a part of the final page that was torn, and it matched the piece of paper that was found in the Somerton Man’s trousers. Inside the book was a phone number and some sort of strange code.
The phone number led the authorities to a woman named Jessica Thompson who lived nearby. During her interview, she was very evasive and even claimed she was going to faint when she saw the bust of the Somerton Man but denied knowing him. However, she said she did sell the book to a man named Alfred Boxall.
Unfortunately, Alfred Boxall was still very much alive at the time and still had the copy of the Rubáiyát that Jessica had sold him. The code that was found ended up being even more unhelpful, and as of today, it has yet to be cracked.
While the man on Somerton Beach was later identified as Carl “Charles” Webb (via DNA testing), an electrical engineer born in 1905, the circumstances surrounding his death remain a complete mystery.
3. Wall Street Bombing of 1920
During the lunch rush on Wall Street, in September 1920, a nondescript man driving a cart pressed an old horse forward in front of the U.S. Assay Office, across from the J. P. Morgan building. He stopped his cart, got down and immediately disappeared into the crowd.
Minutes later, the cart exploded into a hail of metal fragments, immediately killing more than 30 people and injuring 300. The aftermath was horrific, and the death toll rose as the day wore on and more victims succumbed to their injuries.
In the beginning, it wasn’t obvious that the explosion was an intentional act of terrorism; it was viewed as simply an accident. Maintenance crews cleaned up the damage overnight and discarded any physical evidence that would have been crucial to identifying the perpetrator. By the next morning, Wall Street was back in business.
Conspiracy theories were abundant, but the New York Police and Fire Departments, the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor) and the U.S. Secret Service were on the job to find out the truth. Each lead was actively pursued, and the Bureau interviewed hundreds of people who had been around that area before, during and after the attack, but collected very little information.
The few recollections of the driver and wagon were vague and useless. The NYPD was able to reconstruct the bomb and its fuse mechanism, but there was much debate about the nature of the explosive.
However, the most promising lead had actually come prior to the explosion. A mailman had found four crudely spelled and printed flyers in the Wall Street area from a group calling itself the “American Anarchist Fighters” that demanded the release of political prisoners.
The letters seemed similar to those used the previous year in two bombing campaigns, which were led by Italian Anarchists. The Bureau investigated up and down the East Coast to trace the printing of these flyers, but they were unsuccessful.
Based on bomb attacks over the previous decade, the Bureau initially suspected followers of the Italian Anarchist Luigi Galleani had committed the crime. But the case couldn’t be proved, and Galleani had already fled the country. Over the next three years, hot leads turned cold and promising trails turned into dead ends. In the end, the bombers were never identified.
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