Serial Killer Mysteries That Are Still Unsolved
Serial killers have a hold on the human imagination. Yet, for all of that public interest, there are lingering mysteries, from the identities and numbers of victims to, in some cases, the identities of the killers themselves.
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00:00Serial killers have a hold on the human imagination. For all of that public interest,
00:05there are lingering mysteries, from the identities and numbers of victims to,
00:09in some cases, the identities of the killers themselves.
00:13Though he certainly wasn't the first known serial killer in history,
00:16Jack the Ripper is one of the most notorious.
00:18He holds our fascination more than a century after the deaths of five canonical victims in 1888
00:23London — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary
00:29Jane Kelly. The reason why we say canonical is that there is speculation that there were earlier
00:34and later crimes committed by the Ripper, even as late as 1892. Yet we still don't know who he was,
00:40despite well over a century of media attention.
00:43If he attacks prostitutes, he's attacking women who automatically go off to dark
00:46corners with half a dozen strange men every day. How on earth are you going
00:49to find out which one is doing the killing?
00:51Speculation has run so rampant that more casual onlookers might be forgiven for thinking that
00:55everyone in 1888 London was a suspect, from a local midwife to Queen Victoria — or at
01:01least her wayward grandson, Eddie. More recently, genetic analysis of samples from a shawl found
01:06with Eddowes pointed to a barber named Aaron Kosminski. Yet not everyone is convinced,
01:11saying the mitochondrial DNA retrieved is only good for excluding people,
01:15not identifying a long-dead killer. Others say it's hard to confirm that the shawl was
01:20really at the crime scene or that it wasn't contaminated.
01:23More than 300 people were placed under investigation,
01:27and 80 of them were brought in for questioning.
01:29The other problem is that in 19th century London, Kosminski was also used as a John Doe type of
01:34last name for any Eastern European Jew in the area. In other words, Aaron Kosminski may not
01:39be the person's real name. More recent evidence is just as questionable, including a cane owned
01:44by Detective Frederick Abberline that supposedly features an image of the killer created from
01:48eyewitness accounts. But that's hardly a smoking gun, and as far as many are concerned,
01:53we're no closer to definitively identifying Jack the Ripper than they were in the 19th century.
01:58In fact, we might be even further away, as more unlikely suspects get added to the pool.
02:04Though Ted Bundy confessed to killing 30 women right before his 1989 execution,
02:08the exact number of his victims remains in doubt. There are some investigators that believe the
02:12actual number is over 100, pointing to the oddly efficient brutality of his crimes as evidence that
02:17he may have started earlier than many once thought.
02:20I thought that he was going to kiss me. Instead, he said very quietly,
02:24do you know what? I'm going to kill you.
02:26It's likely that there are still unrecovered remains of Bundy's victims out there.
02:31In March 2024, Utah private investigator Jason Jensen told Cowboy State Daily that he intended
02:36to search for four of those women during the summer of 2024, assisted by his human remains
02:41detection dog. Jensen is focusing on four missing women, Deborah Kent, Nancy Wilcox,
02:47Susan Curtis, and Julie Cunningham, because Bundy directly confessed to their murders
02:51shortly before his death. Kent's kneecap, confirmed to be hers via genetic testing,
02:56was recovered in the remote area of Utah where Jensen plans to search first,
03:00and Cunningham is reportedly buried in western Colorado. And if the speculation
03:04is right, they may uncover some unknown victims in the same vicinity.
03:08Between 1968 and 1985, a serial killer dubbed the Monster of Florence took the
03:13lives of at least 16 victims. Some investigators believed the monster was actually a group of
03:18serial killers. And by group, we mean an actual group. Whoever it was had a fairly consistent
03:24modus operandi, killing eight couples in the hills outside of town while reserving particular
03:28brutality for female victims. In 1994, Pietro Paciani was convicted of 14 of the murders.
03:35Then his conviction was overturned. He was set for a new trial, but died in 1998 before proceedings
03:40could begin. Shortly before Paciani's death, two of his associates were also convicted of
03:45participating in the murders. There's no doubt that some aspects of Paciani's case didn't make
03:50sense — like the fact that an illiterate laborer had managed to buy two houses and had a lot more
03:55money in the bank than he had any business having, at least legitimate business. And was one of
04:00Paciani's convicted associates, Giancarlo Latti, telling the truth when he said that a doctor had
04:04directed them to kill? Or was he spinning a wild tale to shift some of the blame off his shoulders?
04:10Some detectives then spun their own story of a shadowy occult group made up of high-ranking
04:14citizens of Florence or maybe a top-secret Italian government agency — although little came of those
04:19suspicions over the years. There's even a suspect that has ties to the Zodiac Killer all the way
04:24back in the States. You knew we'd get to Zodiac. Keep watching, and we'll break that down in a bit.
04:30Dennis Rader spent nearly 20 years terrorizing the area of Wichita, Kansas,
04:34killing 10 people between 1974 and 1991. In 2004, after a lawyer got some publicity
04:40about a book he was writing on the long-forgotten crimes, BTK returned.
04:44After some back-and-forth with media and police, Rader's own sloppiness and lack of computer
04:48knowledge did him in. He sent an easily traceable floppy disk to authorities and
04:53was arrested shortly after — all because he was desperate to tell his own story.
04:58BTK began today's letter with a question.
05:00How many do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?"
05:05Though Rader pleaded guilty to 10 counts of murder at his 2005 trial,
05:09from the moment of his capture, there has been thought that this isn't a full accounting of his
05:13crimes. Law enforcement claims that there's credible evidence connecting him to other
05:17missing persons and potential murders. Specifically, there's one in Oklahoma
05:21that is the focus of investigators — the 1976 disappearance of Cynthia Kinney.
05:26Investigators can put Rader in the area around the same time as her disappearance,
05:30and she generally fits Rader's type and matches some creepy things he said about abducting someone
05:34from a laundromat — which is exactly what happened to Kinney. Investigators were assisted
05:39by Rader's daughter, Carrie Rawson, who interviewed her father in prison and used
05:43her own memories to pinpoint key details and sites that warrant further investigation.
05:47One minute, you had a loving father. The next minute, he's a serial killer."
05:52A 2023 search conducted by an Oklahoma sheriff's office at Rader's former Kansas property
05:58uncovered unspecified items of interest, according to a press release issued by the office.
06:03In the early 1970s, a shocking number of young men went missing in and around Houston, Texas.
06:09It only stopped in August 1973, when a man named Dean Corll was shot to death in his home by
06:1417-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley. A search of Corll's home and property found the remains of
06:1927 missing boys and men, some as young as 13. Henley, along with 18-year-old David Brooks,
06:24had been Corll's accomplices, helping to kidnap, torture, and kill the older man's victims.
06:29Brooks was out of the picture by summer 1973, leaving only Henley to find the victims.
06:34One night, Corll, later known as the Candyman Killer, became enraged when Henley brought a
06:39girl along with an intended male victim. After threatening to kill Henley along with his friends,
06:43Henley executed Corll when he wasn't looking. Nearly all the victims have been identified,
06:48with the exception of one 15- to 18-year-old boy who died around 1972 and is currently referred to
06:54as John Houston Doe. In 1983, a 28th victim was discovered and later identified in 2009.
07:00When interviewed, Henley maintained that there were perhaps 20 or more victims still out there,
07:05but searches have turned up little evidence to date. Many decades later,
07:08families are left wondering if their missing loved ones may have been a victim of Corll.
07:14In popular imagination, serial killers are often depicted as singular figures
07:17committing heinous acts in isolation. But that may not always be the case.
07:22Dean Corll had accomplices. That's long been the speculation about John Wayne Gacy,
07:26a serial killer who murdered an estimated 33 boys and young men around suburban Chicago in the 1970s.
07:32One time he looked at me and he said, you know, clowns can get away with murder."
07:37After Gacy was arrested in the late 1970s, police found that his home in Norwood Park,
07:41Illinois contained the remains of 29 victims, with at least four more found in the nearby
07:46Des Plaines River. But here's the thing. The timelines of when some victims went missing and
07:50when Gacy was in town don't always line up, leading to the theory that Gacy must have had
07:55at least one accomplice who was never apprehended. Gacy has said as much himself, yet serial killers
08:01aren't known to be reliable, especially when they're attempting to avoid the death penalty.
08:05However, if that was Gacy's motivation, the tactic didn't work, as he was executed in 1994.
08:10Not everyone is convinced of the accomplice theory.
08:13Retired Des Plaines police officer Michael Albrecht, who witnessed Gacy's confession,
08:17told Esquire that he believed Gacy was a meticulous killer who worked alone.
08:22He wanted to be in charge. It was John Gacy. He wanted to be in control,
08:26and he wanted to do it his way.
08:28Jeffrey Rignall, who survived the Gacy attack, stated that there was another person present
08:32during his abuse. Gacy did have roommates, but there's no solid proof that Gacy had any
08:36assistance in his crimes. The Zodiac Killer was active around San Francisco in the late 1960s,
08:43there were five confirmed victims spread across four separate attacks.
08:46The most common image of Zodiac is him in that black executioner's hood with that crazy symbol
08:51on his chest, but there are other non-hooded sketches from eyewitnesses. Zodiac liked to
08:56talk about his crimes. He made a phone call to the Vallejo Police Department and wrote letters
09:01in cipher and sent them to local papers. Despite all that communication and a pretty solid sketch,
09:06no one has definitively identified the Zodiac Killer.
09:09Even when cryptographers cracked the cipher in 2020,
09:12the contents revealed little about the killer's identity.
09:15"...six foot two, 200 pounds, stocky build, ghost."
09:20Probably the best-known subject was Arthur Lee Allen, as featured in the 2007 David Fincher
09:25film Zodiac. Look, it was a good movie, but Allen was eliminated as a suspect via DNA evidence,
09:31but he still remains a person of interest to researchers. More notorious figures,
09:35including the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, cult leader Charles Manson, and yes,
09:39the aforementioned Monster of Florence, have all been mentioned along the way Zodiac.
09:44It's not even clear how many people were harmed by the Zodiac Killer.
09:47Earlier and later deaths have been linked to Zodiac, based on similar patterns in geographic
09:51proximity, such as the shooting deaths of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards in 1963 near Santa
09:57Barbara. The 1966 murder of Sherry Jo Bates has long been linked to Zodiac, with Zodiac himself
10:03alluding to her in later letters. Despite DNA evidence from the crime and other confirmed
10:08Zodiac cases, authorities are no closer today to finding out who he was than they were 50 years ago.
10:14From February 1968 until Halloween 1969, three women — Patricia Docker,
10:19Jemima MacDonald, and Helen Puddock — were killed in Glasgow, Scotland.
10:23These were working-class people living in difficult circumstances,
10:27out for one night of fun.
10:28All had visited the Beryl Lynde Ballroom the nights of their deaths,
10:31were killed in a similar manner, left near their homes, and had been menstruating at the time they
10:35died. Puddock's sister Jean was with her the night of her murder, and the two shared a taxi
10:39with an unidentified man leaving the Beryl Lynde. Jean was dropped off, and Helen continued on with
10:44the man. Jean told police he called himself John and quoted from the Bible, giving a physical
10:48description. Though she quite possibly shared a cab with the killer, little came of Jean's
10:53testimony. One theory claims that the police actually knew who Bible John was all along,
10:58but covered it up because he was related to police detective Jimmy McInnes.
11:01That suspect, John McInnes, took his own life in 1980. His remains were exhumed in the 1990s
11:07for DNA testing, but he wasn't a match for samples found on Helen Puddock's tights.
11:11Another theory posits that serial killer Peter Tobin was the culprit. He murdered people as
11:16late as 2006 and died in 2022 while serving three life sentences. Yet the lack of evidence
11:22for the Tobin theory or any others means Bible John's identity remains a mystery.
11:28It's hard to find a story with more unanswered questions than that of the Bloody Bender family.
11:32Though there's little question they really operated in the hinterlands of 1870s Kansas,
11:37preying on travelers on the nearby Osage Trail, little else is known about them.
11:41The group consisted of Pa and Ma Bender, an unfriendly pair who spoke little English.
11:45Their children were the adult John, who was reported to be a friendly,
11:49odd man who giggled at strange times, and Kate. Not long after they set up their homestead near
11:54Cherryville, Kansas, travelers began to go missing. Interest didn't really circle around
11:58the Benders until the disappearance of William York, whose politically ambitious brother Alexander
12:03put together a search party. After the party questioned the Benders, the family — if they
12:07ever were a family in the first place — skipped town. The search of the property found a small
12:12graveyard of sorts that contained William's body, as well as those of 10 other people.
12:17Here's how little we actually know about the Benders. Their name probably wasn't really
12:21Bender. No one is sure if they were German, Norwegian, or Dutch. And the kids, John and Kate,
12:26might have actually been husband and wife. It's no wonder they seemed to just disappear after 1873.
12:32But where did the Benders go? Various accounts say that they were apprehended and killed by
12:36local vigilantes, split up, or boarded a train to Texas and traveled further into Indian territory.
12:42In the late 19th century accounts, two women were arrested and accused of being Ma and Kate.
12:47The case was dropped for lack of evidence.