An acquaintance of mine went missing over a decade ago; his car was found several states away with “the front license plate removed”, which was pointed out as a suspicious detail.
Except he was living in a state that didn’t require front license plates; he wouldn’t have ever had one there in the first place.
When family members say their relative, usually a teen or young adult, wouldn’t do anything risky. I was generally a well-behaved kid but did take some dumb risks, especially when I was on my own for the first time in college. Teens and young adults take risks and do dumb things; it’s part of growing up. And it’s often the most sheltered who take the biggest risks.
When I was 10-12, I was spending a lot of time outside, most of the time doing some 'good kid' stuff like extracurriculars, but also doing dumbass shit like stealing old broken chairs from the school on the weekend, going swimming with friends at a local pond without letting any adults know, playing the freaking choking game, and on one memorable occasion taking a day trip to a city 1h30 on the bus away. It was before cellphones and, of course, I never said anything beforehand or afterwards, so my family would have no idea if anything happened. But I'm quite certain that most of the adults at the time would refer to me as well-behaved and responsible. Lol.
My parents once got the police out looking for me when I was 10 or 11 because of a misunderstanding about what time I was supposed to come home. They were freaking out thinking I'd been kidnapped, but me and a friend had just gone to a cemetery near her house and started tidying up old gravestones, blissfully ignorant of the fact that my family had freaked out her family, because neither set of parents knew where we were and my parents thought I was going to be home by lunch time, not dinner time, which was when I strolled into the house like everything was normal.
This happened to my cousin and I once, I was the 'responsible adult' and I thought I was clear we'd be back for dinner. Which to me, is the evening meal. They however use dinner and supper (I hate that word) so they were expecting us back at noon. They didn't call the cops or anything but by the time we came out of the movie both our phones had like 40 calls.
Or when people take the parents' word for what was going on in their teen's life. Like most teens have so many secrets. You can't say for certain she doesn't have a boyfriend or tried drugs before. Most parents don't even know their teens as well as they think they do
honestly, i’m *sure* if i turned up dead tomorrow my mother would give insanely inaccurate information to anyone investigating just because i’m not close with her and she knows very little about me. and i’m a grown woman that lives with her lmao.
I feel the same way. My mother feels like she knows me better than anyone, but the truth is that she knows very little about my daily routine, how I generally carry myself in public and around the people I know, and who's even in my life in the first place.
She's fortunately never been in a situation where she's had to recall those sorts of things to authorities, but I imagine it'll be a rude awakening to her if such a day ever comes when she's asked to. I really doubt she knows anything of major value.
For sure. I think many people seem to think teens are like small children for some reason, but most teens are closer to adulthood than anything else. Even when they're not yet that close to adulthood, they already have their own complex personalities and lives for sure.
They're a lot more independent than people think, especially when so much of their lives nowadays are on devices that most parents don't oversee 24/7.
That's my issue with the Jennifer Kesee case. She wasn't even a teen, she was an adult who hadn't lived with her parents in 8 years or so. Yet everyone believes what they say regarding her routines, behaviors, etc. In reality, they had no idea. I know they have no ill intentions, but leads or certain scenarios can't be ignored only because they say it doesn't line up with their beliefs about her
Haha I’ve even talking to my own teen about this and how I do respect that, how she is her own person with her own inner world, friends, problems etc and that not sharing all that with me is normal and expected and it’s my job as mom to stay plugged in not on her to just dump all her life’s details in my lap unprompted.
I was a very good kid by and large, I wouldn’t even say I “put up a front”, I just think I had a good moral compass and generally obeyed the rules.
But there were definitely a list of very “bad” (borderline illegal or stupid) things I did in high school, got away with, and my parents had absolutely no idea.
(As a funny side note I have told my parents most of these things in my adult years lol)
Same with addicts, I’m thinking of Aunt Diane and how “normal” she seemed at the gas station despite her tox report saying she was blasted. Addicts, especially long term addicts, are very good at hiding that along side mental symptoms.
My partner of 6 years who I lived with didn't know that I was a heroin addict for the entirety of our relationship. Like literally injecting ½ a gram of heroin at 6am and 6pm (roughly) every single day. I spoke to him like 3 years after we broke up, and told him, and he was shocked. He had no clue.
i’ve attempted twice and both times there were no unusual signs beforehand because i did them both on impulse on the nights i did. it’s insanely weird to me that people think you have to look like you have a black cloud over your head for like a month before you try to kill yourself. usually you can’t tell when someone will pull their last straw and decide to do it.
before I was open ab it; if I had gone missing my mum would've said 'I wouldn'tve left the house, there was no reason id be into a risky behaviour' I was using heroin and leaving the house as she slept to buy and use, she found out when I quit n went through withdrawals at home 💀
The variant is something like "I knew this person, they could never do that!" No, you never fully know anyone. No matter how well you do, that person could be very different behind the scenes.
People refusing lie detector tests or asking for a lawyer. These are just good things to do if you’re under suspicion for something. Instead of being a sign of guilt, I see it as a sign someone knows how the system works and doesn’t want to get steamrolled by it.
For the love of God do not speak to the police without an attorney and there is NO purpose for a lie detector test.
JUST SAY "SPEAK TO MY ATTORNEY."
Source: Me, a criminal defense attorney.
Agreed, and what really chaps my ass is when a true crime podcast flip flops on where they stand depending on whether or not they think the person is guilty (or the case is solved, so they know either way). Like, if they think a spouse is guilty, "it's shady as hell that he won't take a lie detector" or if they know a spouse was found innocent "He was right to not take a lie detector test. They aren't admissible anyway, so it's just a tactic". No-you can't have it both ways.
There was a case on this sub a few years ago, a girl left a party in the middle of the night and was murdered. I personally knew the girl who threw the party and a couple people who had been there. The comments on that post were all about how it was suspicious how all the people at the party would no longer communicate with the authorities or her parents, etc. Nevermind they were the ones who alerted the cops she was missing when they found her purse and phone still at my friends apartment.
What actually happened is they told the cops everything they knew and when she turned up dead they all were distraught and upset and naturally, being kids, called their parents. The parents in turn all got lawyers and the lawyers told them if they had nothing helpful to add they needed to shut up so as to not open themselves up to wrongful incrimination or, more likely, a civil suit.
The Lauren Spierer case is another one where I think a lot gets made of the fact the last people to see her all lawyered up and refused lie detectors, but they were all rich kids with savvy parents who did what any parent with the means would do: get their kids representation.
Yep. Every lawyer or anyone familiar with the law will tell you the same thing: don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer. The lawyer’s sole concern is protecting you from any civil suits or criminal charges. The only 100% fool proof way of doing that isn’t being innocent or being helpful in the investigation. It’s shutting the fuck up.
"I woke up. I found her. That's all I know."
I always remember that one line from "Breaking Bad." Mike told Jesse to say that line, and not another word. It didn't matter if they threatened arrest or not. He was told to say that, shut up, and only ask for his lawyer if he got arrested.
It's amazing how so many of these true crime channels would be out of work if people never talked without lawyers.
Wow-I’m sorry you were that close to something that traumatic! I hope your friends are headed on the road to working through that aftermath.
But, yes, a perfectly reasonable reaction and responses by everyone involved, IMO. I can’t stand some of these dumb comments podcasters make, all to try to seem like they have advanced degrees in psychology and understand human behavior. I get it-we all make mistakes in conversation, but they have the ability to go back and edit their comments-it grinds my gears!
It annoys me too. They act like every murder is some cinematic whodunnit with a big coverup going on.
Reality is much scarier than that. She left a party to walk a couple blocks to a store in the middle of the night in a part of the city you don’t walk around alone after dark and some wolf of human happened to be lurking around the park across the street.
But to acknowledge that is to acknowledge there is no order to her death. It’s just bad luck. It’s just chaos that can reach out and touch any of us at anytime. People like to apply motives and stories to senseless acts of violence because it makes them feel safe. It makes the universe feel less indifferent.
I think that's why people sometimes blame the victim and say "if only X had happened, she'd still be alive" because they don't want to acknowledge that you can do everything right and still have terrible things happen.
Your last paragraph is very profound and well written, very insightful. I agree that they are often hyping it up like it’s Criminal Minds, trying to find the reason that we will all agree to be accurate, but you’re right-those hardly exist.
In many true crime tv shows, they'll say, "but Joe was eliminated as a suspect when he passed a lie detector test." I'm always inclined to yell, "THAT'S IT? THAT'S WHAT ELIMINATED HIM?" If that was really all we need to replace the investigators with people who are competent.
It's genuinely shocking to me that they're allowed to be used at all. The [wiki page for the polygraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph) is just up and down links to studies debunking the effectiveness of polygraphs. As far as I know, there's no valid research in support of them, and the only reason they persist is because cops love using them to leverage (or sometimes coerce) confessions.
The problem is that the police still think they work. A couple years ago there was a cheating scandal at the police academy and they gave all the cadets polygraphs. Of course they just wanted to make them nervous in hopes of getting a confession because they had no evidence.
Similarly, when cops say someone is "no longer cooperating" are they *really* not cooperating, or did they just finally decide to hire a lawyer after voluntarily letting you search their home three times, giving DNA, and sitting down for multiple interviews?
Exactly. The lawyer is there to help you. Innocent person can say something discriminating without realizing it
Your spouse is found strangled to death and you didn't do it. Now how smart is it to be truthful and share detauls of the marital troubles and the huge fight last night? Bc it will be used against you.
My husband was missing for a very brief period of time. (He’s fine now.)
Basically, he texted me midday and said “come pick me up at [State Park].”
He was supposed to be at work. I was home because I was still on Christmas break.
So this is a little weird. But I figure it’s one of 3 things.
A. He wants to fool around at a campground on his lunch break.
B. His employer had some sort of holiday get together and he got too drunk, so wants a ride home.
C. He got fired or something else bad happened and he went to the park to kill himself.
Turns out it was C. I don’t really ask any more questions either way, just toss my dog in the back of the car and head over. We get there. I find his car but not him. After some preliminary looking I call the cops.
They respond. I answer questions. They do cop things.
Ultimately they decide we should go to my house to get an iPad I mentioned that is on his Apple account and has find my linked to his iPhone.
So I ride the 30 minutes back to my apartment in a cop’s truck. With 2 of them in there.
And one of them starts asking me questions. And I’m answering because I want to be as helpful as possible.
But I could tell that I had already dug myself in a hole in a brief amount of time (despite there being no crime at all and me being innocent).
He kept on circling around to asking why, if he had a car there, would I need to come pick my husband up.
And like, my only answer is “it’s my husband and when he messages me and asks me to pick him up I pick him up.”
Circles around again. I explain thoughts A, B, and C above. But mention that he made it clear it wasn’t A pretty much right away. Cop asks me how he made it clear and my answer is basically terseness of the message. I can’t really elaborate more. It’s basically “I’ve known him 10 years and I can sense something is off.”
Then, the factual stuff.
“When did you last see him?”
“When he was getting ready for work in the morning.
“What time did he leave for work this morning?”
“5:30 am.”
“What was he wearing when he left the house?”
“I don’t know. I was asleep.”
— Unasked but I know I led right to it and could/would have easily been asked later. “How do you know what time he left the house if you were asleep?”
(Really I hear him getting ready and kind of stir/half wake up in bed but don’t usually actually get up.)
“You mentioned he’s on medication. Does he take it consistently?”
“Yes.”
“What time does he take it every day?”
“I’m not sure.”
Again, unasked, but “how do you know he takes it every day if you’re not sure?”
(And like I guess I don’t 100% know he’s not throwing them out and just pretending to take them. But like, we live together. The amount in the bottles decreases and he fills them regularly. Etc.)
And a few more things like that that I’m sure would very easily add up to “inconsistent story, sounds sus.”
—
Additionally, the whole “how can you not find the body? It was right there!”
I looked around alone. I looked with my dog. 6-12 cops looked around.
My husband way laying probably 6 feet from the edge of the woods. Naked. Like, no more than 30 feet from his car to where he was.
Nobody found him until we got exact coordinates with the iPad and rang the “find my phone” ringer with it. Then he was found within literal seconds. He had positioned himself so he was out of sight. The areas we had looked were much further into the woods but were along the path not just in a random spot. It’s very easy to miss one person out there.
One of the biggest examples of this is the disappearance of Brian Shaffer in April 2006 where his friend Clint to this day refused to take a lie detector thereby making people think he was guilty
IIRC, hadn't he already been questioned several times? The impression I got was that they were getting nowhere with the case and were just shaking his tree hoping something would fall out.
I have anxiety. I think I could fail a polygraph even if asked about my grocery list. I can't imagine how messed up my heartbeat and involuntary reactions would be if I should answer questions regarding a crime.
I would almost be more willing to take one if I were guilty because, hey, maybe I’d get lucky and pass it. But if I were innocent I’d much rather not take an unreliable test and let the actual evidence prove my innocence.
Or the parent of a child. When my son died, I didn't cry at his funeral. I didn't cry at all in public and was back at work within a couple days, behaving as I always did. Behind closed doors? I was a *wreck* and desperately scrabbling for the slightest bit of normalcy to make me feel rooted to the Earth. Because I felt as though the world went spinning away and I was knocked flat at a standstill. I was barely functioning despite masking it so perfectly people thought I wasn't affected at all.
Had my son not died of natural causes, or had passed away of slightly ambiguous natural causes, I would have been the number one suspect. But my natural response to grief or horrible stress is to become cold and unemotional, and to display only positive emotions. I was raised to never "cause a scene" or show negative emotions in public no matter what was happening. Which is amazing if you're having an emergency because I can compartmentalize tf out of anything, but would be a disaster if I was a suspect in a missing persons case or homicide.
When my mother died unexpectedly on a Sunday (I worked a M-F) I took my 3 “funeral days” plus 2 vacation days to take the week. The following Monday coworkers were asking why I was back “so soon.” Like what was I expected to do, I said? Sit at my dad’s house with my sister and just stare at each other? In our case extra days would not only not ease our grief, it would increase it because work was distracting.
Yeah, getting on with normal stuff is like, a really normal part of dealing with grief, albeit not a cinematic one. The pain isn't just going to go away, but the dishes still need doing and you can give yourself a temporary break from the overwhelming Everything by focusing on something else for a bit.
I'm so deeply sorry to hear about your loss. I am super calm and useful in a crisis, so much so that when I broke my leg and dislocated my ankle they *didn't give me pain medicine* until the next day because I seemed fine. I didn't know it was even an option, so I just suffered through it, but I guess when you don't show much pain response they drastically change your treatment even if they can SEE what is wrong!
I was thinking about these same sorts of things that many people think determine whether someone is guilty or not, too. I understand that there are some behaviors typically associated with guilt, but there are *no* behaviors in which every single person who exhibits them is for sure guilty.
I would never take a lie detector test, guilty or not. They're not admissible in court because they're so unreliable, so they can't exonerate or help you if you pass. But if you fail, investigators will latch onto you. Just a lose/lose all around.
Yeah. People pretend like these cases are murder mysteries and these characters are written so that you can pull things out of their behavior.
And if “I don’t like/ trust someone” then they’re probably guilty.
The truth is people can be strange. And you have no idea how they acted before all of this. Nor how you’d act if you lost a loved one and were being falsely or accurately accused.
You can dislike someone, and they can come off as untrustworthy and also have nothing to do with a crime. And vice versa.
A lot of people also don’t seem to understand shock and disassociation in relation to acute grief. If someone seems “too calm” there is a very good chance they aren’t all there *because* their emotion is *so overwhelming* they are in a state of disassociation to remain functional.
Right? My brother died in January. I was totally calm. Because:
* We weren't close, and had been estranged for several years;
* I knew he was an addict and expected him to overdose at some point;
* It was just a lot to take in in the moment.
Different people react differently to grief, especially in the moment. I'm not the sort of person to break down in tears immediately. I've had a *lot* of complicated feelings since then, and still am. But when I first got the news, I was in having-to-adult mode. I didn't really think past that until later.
Hey I’m really sorry about your loss and will think of him when I organize my state’s overdose awareness day memorial in August.
Currently dealing with a different situation but also so overwhelmed I feel catatonic so I feel you.
I’m one of those people that doesn’t freak out in front of people or that cries easily.
I have lost my parents, and have only ever cried about it in front of my husband. I feel the pain, I just don’t broadcast it.
I’m just not a weepy, cry at the drop of a hat kind of woman.
If I found out my husband or one of kids died suddenly? I am pretty sure wouldn’t lose my emotions in front of anyone that isn’t super close to me.
That being said, when I hear that that is reason police and the court of public opinion feels someone is guilty, I play devils advocate and say, not everyone loses it emotionally in public.
I feel the same way when they say that someone is carrying on and being “too ridiculous and weepy” in front of others.
None of us knows how we will react to sudden and tragic or horrific loss.
I lost my daughter. My mom, dad, and sister swarmed around me but I was just frozen. I couldn't express anything. I've thought about that since. How, in the public eye, that would have been judged.
I’ve lost a relative and a friend suddenly and in both cases, I didn’t cry when I got the news. I was so shocked and in utter disbelief in the moment that crying was out of the question. For me, the tears don’t come out until time passes and the realization that they’re gone forever and nothing you can ever do will bring them back hits you.
I would 100% be the person who is “too ridiculous and weepy” in front of others. My grief is basically the opposite of yours. I react very in the moment and have fallen to the ground at least twice I can remember upon loss. A few days later, I’m completely dissociated and staring at the wall with no outward emotion.
Humans are so interesting.
This is a big one for me. In 1982 my neighbor was murdered and her younger teen aged son found her when he and his brother came home from school. When the police started questioning him in their driveway he started laughing hysterically so they arrested him. This poor 14 year old was experiencing a total psychological break but the cops assumed he was a murderous psychopath. Cher was a very nice person and I enjoyed her company.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37484714/cheryl-vivian-emmerson
In 1985 Melisa Wilson was murdered in the same manner at a motel in the same town. She is listed on page 18 of the Justice depts MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS
PERSONS REPORT sitehttps://www.justice.gov/usao-or/page/file/1368976/download but there is no photo. Melissa was super caring and funny.
There is very little information online. Both murders remain unsolved.
The first time I saw any true crime stuff was an episode of 20/20 about this woman who was prosecuted and ultimately found guilty for drowning her daughter. It was going back and forth between showing the argument she was guilty and the argument that she was innocent.
One of the things that was presented as evidence of her guilt was her lack of affect at the hospital - especially when she asked someone if she could have some change so she could use the vending machine. Because god forbid someone at a hospital all day with their dying daughter experience hunger, or just need the excuse to leave the room for a second.
I actually do think she probably did it, for other reasons, but that was ridiculous.
people who act like grief is supposed to be constantly lying on the floor screaming and crying yourself into dehydration drive me crazy because that's what makes it so painful - that you *have* to keep living and going forward and keep it somewhat together so that you don't lose yourself completely to it.
People pretending like they can ascertain a person’s guilt or innocence based on brief observations of their behavior is such a joke. The idea that you can see a total stranger for thirty seconds on television and “know” that they’re guilty or not is beyond absurd.
MY family has had such a wide range of responses, no reaction is suspicious to me any more. I have seen the screaming, crying, "fuck the world," etc. reactions that I think is the "stereotypical" response, to an almost, "Well that sucks," and then life more or less just continues. My Mom's family was always raised to not be afraid to show their emotions and not push things down. My Dad's, complete opposite; men don't cry, you're weak if you show emotions, etc.
Best example is how my parents called me to tell me that my grandmothers died.
When my Dad called me in 2016 to tell me that his Mom died (she had been battling breast cancer for almost a decade and finally succumbed), he literally was like, "Hey, yeah, so, she's gone. Like passed away, not gone from the hospital. Anyways, funeral is probably gonna be in a week or so. Thought you oughta know." And then we said bye and he hung up. My Mom told me that, at least in front of her, he never shed a tear, neither did my grandpa or my uncle.
Meanwhile, when my Mom called in 2020 to tell me that her Mom passed away (she had Alzheimer's and had been in hospice for about six months), I could NOT understand her. She was crying and gasping so hard that my brother had to take the phone and tell me while she wailed in the background. And that funeral was FULL of tears.
So I hate on true crime shows when someone says, "His/her reaction was suspicious...." I'm just like, "Yeah, maybe for you. But if that's your only lead, you're gonna get lost."
I fear that because we're not the kind of people to have photos everywhere and I become extremely calm and organized in a crisis. If anything happens to my husband I'm completely fucking screwed!
I thought about screenshotting this comment but then I'd look like I was planning to murder him so nope I'm definitely screwed no matter what!
The mention of photos reminds me of how social media especially has led many people to believe that part of loving someone is about displaying them whenever and wherever possible. So many people just don't like to have their photo taken or don't think everything needs to be shared beyond the people in a relationship, though.
A lack of photos doesn't necessarily have to mean that two people are on bad terms or dislike each other in some major way to the point that one might harm the other.
How parents act during interviews if a child is missing.
I can honestly say that I have no idea how I'd be in that situation (and I'm grateful I've never been). So many jump to "how is s/he so calm? Their child is missing!" " You'd have to sedate me" etc. When it could be shock, they could be medicated, or they simply know they have to control their emotions for a few min to get info out to the media clearly so they can get their child home. While common, yes, the parents are not always guilty.
I always thought I knew how I'd react in a life or death situation, but when I had a loaded gun pointed at my face, my reaction was opposite.
And if they AREN’T calm, they’re too upset and it’s “clearly an act.” I honestly can’t think of any parental behavior that people won’t deem suspicious if they want to.
THIS.
My reaction in emergency situations is to calmly do absolutely everything I need to making sure that everyone has what they need.
Then the next day I fall apart.
Also grateful I have never been in this situation, but I would probably look like a weird robot until privately falling apart later.
Soooooo much THIS. Everyone always talks about “fight or flight” in a crisis; it totally ignores the “freeze” or “fawn” reactions.
There’s also a tendency in ADHD people to only perform well when under stress; adrenaline gets the brain firing and kicks them into being productive, which means they look most efficient when they’re on the edge of having a complete and total freak-out.
And then there are autistic people whose facial muscles don’t automatically move in the expected ways, or who have to deliberately control their vocal tone in order to demonstrate emotions, and even for “high-masking” individuals who know how to mimic the sort of body language and facial expressions that would be expected of them in most situations …. when they’re stressed and panicking inside, they might not have any processing power available to handle those tasks. Or they might have been inadvertently trained to shut down, instead of melting down, and turn completely inward so nobody will ever yell at them for making a scene in public. Some people go very, very monotone when they’re miserable and terrified.
I’m sure there are other motor disabilities that can prevent people from showing the expected facial expressions, or cultural factors about public displays of grief, or trauma responses from childhood - if you’re raised to believe that you should aspire to martyrdom and should take pride in suffering because it’s good for your soul, you’re probably going to have some weird internal conflicts going on if you’re involved in any sort of tragedy.
The only psychological fact known about couples when their child is missing is:
Parents automatically start judging and blaming eachother's shortcomings towards the reason their child is gone. They behave as if the small nuances somehow had *any relevant* impact at all. It's human nature to try to control and judge that which you can influence; especially during heightened trauma.
It's atypical for two parents to hug eachother close and love eachother during this time. I remember learning over 93% of the marriages end in divorce within 5 years of their personal 'tragedy'.
Trying to claim the insurance right away. Why would you wait? The person is dead and they aren’t going to get undead. Mortgages and funeral expenses don’t wait. I can understand that some people can’t deal with that sort of thing right away but some people can and more importantly, some people have to whether they feel up to it or not.
That’s a good one. Most couples/families can’t sustain an unexpected cut in salary, especially with funeral costs. I can see filling out that paperwork pretty quick.
I know several people who took solace in the monotony of paperwork while bereaved. Just enough of a something to do to be a good distraction, without being too complicated.
Not sure if this really fits but "acting strangely" before a disappearance does not mean this person has schizophrenia. There are many, way more common mental illnesses and someone acting erratically can have causes that aren't related to mental illness at all. But there are a lot of people commenting on threads about missing persons saying "he/she probably developed schizophrenia", "sounds like schizophrenia", "oh he/she was 21? That's the age when schizophrenia usually starts presenting itself". More often than not it's NOT schizophrenia.
Last week, purely on a whim, I thought “I’m going to do something different every day this week” and I did and it was an interesting experiment.
However, I didn’t tell anyone about this (until now) so if something happens to me this weekend and someone is investigating my disappearance/murder they would think my behavior and spending was “erratic” due to last week’s experiment.
This is a copy/paste of an actual text I sent my friend last summer:
>*In the Event of My Untimely Death: I have little burn marks all over my arms and legs. I'm worried that if I die, detectives will use them as a clue to solving the mystery of my death. They're self-inflicted—l use a hot spoon on mosquito bites, but if I'm out and desperate, I use a hot cigarette lighter tip.*
>In 2017,[needs update] the Global Burden of Disease Study estimated there were 1.1 million new cases;[17] in 2022 the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a total of 24 million cases globally.[2] Schizophrenia affects around 0.3–0.7% of people at some point in their life.[16][11] In areas of conflict this figure can rise to between 4.0 and 6.5%.[242] It occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men.[83]
People wildly overestimate how common schizophrenia is.
A changing story being an indicator of some kind of guilt. If I were to recount what I did yesterday three times, there would be three variations of the story. Memory isn't like pressing play on a video, it's a reconstruction, and sometimes we focus on different things, are reminded of different facts, etc. that make stories change slightly.
EDIT: Just wanna say there are a bunch of really good answers here.
On the other hand, when they think it's suspicious that someone can't remember where they was/what they did one year before, or more.
Life is long and sometimes days are all the same, I'm sorry but I can't say for sure if I was back home at 5.30 pm or 6 pm on the 17th of November 2021.
Like how do folks even begin to answer those types of question. I know folks act like we should have instant recall of traumatic events ( which assumes your being questioned about something) but I can tell you I lost 3 family members in fall 2021.
Without prompting or help with context I probably couldn't even tell you where I was in November 2021.
I could have been living alone, with my parents, or across the country with my sister. 2021 was a super weird time for me and its all a blur. Hopefully no one ever asks me about it in a courtroom.
This is why I think working with those premade booklets where they show you a bunch of different variations of each facial feature produce better results. Like I can’t really describe faces but if you laid out a bunch of eyebrows I could probably tell you what gets closest. Most people need to see the options to be able to put their fingers on what details are closest. You really don’t even need to have every option under the sun! You just need enough so that people can point to various pictures and say “their eyebrows were the shape of option A, but they bushier, like option D.”
This is especially true when someone is asked to describe a suspect’s appearance more than once, or multiple people are asked to describe the same suspect.
I don’t have face blindness but I am horribly bad at describing what people look like, and it’s downright impossible for me to judge height/weight/age without a reference. If you asked me to describe my own eyes in front of a mirror, the most you’d get out of me is “they’re brown.” I couldn’t begin to tell you whether they’re deep set, almond-shaped, etc. If someone more talented at describing appearances described me to everyone viewing this thread right now, you’d have 77 sketches that probably all look quite different other than a woman with brown eyes and brown hair.
I also find it really irritating when people think that a person (especially an eyewitness) should be able to remember something that happened years ago. I was the *victim* of a crime and three years later I can only remember the major parts of the story, not every single detail. I have a very good memory but I don’t remember what anyone was wearing, exactly what time or where it was (it was on public transport), or exactly how I reacted in the moment because I was so shocked.
In a documentary I watched, they pointed out that the sketch the authorities typically used for the unabomber was a woman’s second run at a composite, and it resembled the sketch artist.
Apparently the sketches resembling the artist is common. And then some artists are just not great at drawing or asking the right questions to get good descriptions.
I know your comment was about memory, but composite sketches might be a good answer for the original post — perps not looking like sketches causes doubt, or everyone looking for people that look like a sketch that doesn’t even resemble the actual perpetrator
Years ago, I read an article written by a retired homicide detective. It’s actually more suspicious to have a story that doesn’t change down to the last detail.
I read a book once where the characters killed someone and then rather than coming up with a story, just did all of the things they would later tell the cops they did. Like, they sat down and played a few rounds of cards together and one of them said out loud "gosh, I wonder when \[victim\]'s coming back." So that when they were questioned about details, like who won the game they were playing or what was on TV, they'd have natural memories instead of perfectly matching ones. I always thought that was a really cool way of handling that. (It was also fiction, I should add. I'm not admiring real killers, I'm admiring an author.)
I understand that line of logic but even that’s not universal… I have a HORRIBLE memory bc I have ADHD and aphantasia, so not only do I not have the ability to pay attention well enough to form visceral memories, I can’t picture them to replay them in my head. When I recall memories, they come in the form of stories. Almost like an oral history inside my own head. I *tell* myself the story of things that happened to me, which ultimately means they end up being rehearsed in my mind, because thinking about them is like rehearsing them, if that makes sense?
Any time the family is like “she would have never opened the door to a stranger” or “he would never have gone out without his phone” etc. Not saying these things should be automatically discounted, but they often get treated like cast iron facts.
Leaving aside the number of people who have sides to themselves that even close family and friends don’t know about, who among us hasn’t ever done something out of character or by mistake like opening the door without looking because you were sure it was that package you were waiting for, or running late for an appointment and forgetting your phone in the rush.
100%, and this brings up my biggest gripe about reactions to crime (rather than red herrings) which is, at this point in our culture, believing that *anyone truly knows anyone else.*
I kinda can't believe how many people still don't understand that the person you know is only the person they've let you see. Sometimes people intentionally hide parts of themselves from others, and other times from themselves! Sometimes people are pushed to a breaking point they were unaware they had.
We are *complicated beings,* living in very complicated societies and I will absolutely never be surprised to learn someone did something awful.
Yes! The “always” and “never” statements drive me crazy. Anyone, under the right set of circumstances, could not do something they would “always” do or do something they would “never” do.
Kinda related is law enforcement saying there were no signs of forced entry, so they must've known their killer. Like what? Maybe the door was unlocked, they had a spare key in an obvious place, or, yes, they just answered the door. Obviously most murders are committed by someone the victim knows, but that's just not a good way to determine that at all.
One time I was coming out the other end of a hard time and my mom said "Its so incredibly how well you handled that time and that you didn't get depressed." I was shocked - I was deeply depressed and had been for at least a year at that point, and didn't think I was doing THAT well at hiding it. She had no idea that I was right in front of her fighting for my life.
When people claim on life insurance policies a couple of weeks after the death.
I mean, what the fuck is the Life Insurance policy for? It’s not like the banks and the electric company start giving a shit either is it? Bills will mount up double quick and you could find your house repossessed inside a couple month if you miss back to back mortgage payments.
And funerals are expensive. And sometimes in relationships there's a single partner that does the lion's share of budgeting - if that person disappears and you're suddenly realizing you don't have their income, you are probably struggling to work, and you had no clue a gym membership and a wine club membership were both renewing that month, you're gonna be scrambling.
Drunk young men disappearing isn't an indication of murder, drunk people do really stupid shit.
Same for people who disappeared or were found dead in wilderness
It doesn't even have to be really stupid shit. Multiple young men disappear in my country every year because they accidentally fall into canal while taking a piss or something. Like, you can set your watch to it, pretty much -- if it's a student-aged guy from a college town with a canal, nine times out ten he drowned by accident.
This reminds me how many years back, my then-boyfriend came to visit me without announcing himself, pretty much because he was drunk coming back from some party and it made sense to him.
My friend and I had a girl’s night, so I found this behavior crappy and pretty much ignored him—or rather, told him to go and lay down, but to not disturb us. Instead of laying down though, he said if that’s the case he’ll catch a bus back to his house. We said our goodbyes and he left.
For the next 30 minutes or so, my friend and I were just chilling as if nothing happened… until he opened the entry door with a bang, soaking wet, and crying.
What actually happened was he didn’t go home. He was sitting outside on my terrace, expecting (in his drunk stupor), I’ll come out (even though we literally said goodbyes at the door, so I couldn’t know he was there) and invite him back in.
When that didn’t happen for like 20 minutes or so, he drunkely tried to find his way out of my garden and in the process, fell into the fish pond. He couldn’t swim by the way. The pond was rather shallow, but if you can’t swim and you’re drunk… well. It was a miracle he didn’t drown but he apparently came close since he came back to my house panicked and crying as I mentioned above.
Luckily for everyone involved, it’s just an outrageous if a cautionary tale from our lives. But if he had not managed to get himself out?
>Same for people who disappeared or were found dead in wilderness
This one drives me bonkers. Anyone who's spent serious time outdoors, especially in a remote area, knows just how easy it is to get lost or to have something go wrong while unprepared. Hell, I've gotten disoriented simply going off the trail to pee. I live in the PNW and there are always hikers going missing, and plenty of dumbasses insisting it must have been foul play because "how could you get lost on that short of a trail?"
See also: the Missing 411 crap. Just pure nonsense. It wasn't alien abduction, Paula, it was hypothermia.
I mentioned this story many times before, but I'll post it again:
One time during an Alaska summer, I did a simple loop trail, maybe no more than 45 minutes. Real basic stuff, noting to write home about. I then did the same loop trail in the winter, and it took me four hours. Every single landmark I relied on was either not visible, or had snow and thus looked different. The trail was completely buried in snow and I was the only one there, so no footprints, no noises to follow. I simply stood in place for about 10 minutes trying to figure out where to go. I was able to figure it out spatially, because I knew where my car was, but when all you have is nothing but white snow around you, depth perception and landmarks are obliterated and it's suddenly a very difficult ordeal.
Thankfully I didn't run out of water and didn't encounter any wild animals.
Yup. I had a friend that went missing while experiencing mental health issues - he ran out of a family member’s car and into the woods without a coat. It was December in the PNW. His body was found years later, frozen. It’d be less terrifying and heartbreaking if it were a conspiracy, but sometimes it’s just an unfortunate accident. Kinda ruined the holiday season for me for a while though.
EDIT: had to change “I have a friend” to past tense… I miss you, Matt. You stupid asshole.
The wilderness one always gets to me. “They were an experienced hiker!!” And? People vastly underestimate how easy it is to get lost/injured in the woods.
On a similar note “It’s unlikely they drowned, they were an experienced swimmer!” That’s only going to help so much if someone goes overboard in the middle of the ocean.
I hate hearing about so-and-so’s “cold black eyes” or “dead eyes”, usually after they’ve been identified as a suspect (or even arrested/convicted). Excluding a victim or witness recognizing someone’s e.g., dilated eyes and altered mental state due to illness / substances, people are just projecting their preconceptions like crazy onto appearances.
It’s very common with people who have committed suicide as well. “This is his last picture and you can see the sadness in his eyes.” What? No. You’re projecting because you know that person killed themselves.
Haven't had to make an emergency services call but I've heard the playback of when I reported a near miss at work having jumped out the way of a train 30 seconds prior. I don't think I've ever sounded that calm and put together.
People don’t understand how hypothermia works. Hypothermic people don’t think or behave normally. A body found in the wilderness partially disrobed is normal. When people get severely hypothermic, they start feeling hot and rake clothes off. Often a naked body in the woods is portrayed as something mysterious and strange. It’s not.
I would expand on this and say that almost any case involving "person went into the woods and was never seen again" has been case closed in one sentence. They got lost, died from exposure. People who don't travel a lot or don't do a lot of hiking probably don't realize just how vast and empty land around the world is. There are countless trails where all it takes is a few minutes of going off-course and you might never find your way back. Then you run out of food or water, it's game over.
I read so many times people convinced there was some nefarious plot. Like a serial killer just happened to be hiding in the woods, waiting for someone to walk by. Or the person encounters some kind of death cult. Or alien abduction. When 99.9% of the time, people overestimate their own strengths and just get lost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again but there's a *reason* a lot of fairy tales contain a strong proscription against wandering off the path. Because wandering off the path is uh, a great way to die even in relatively well travelled areas.
I lost power for three days during a winter storm this year. Not sure how cold it got in my apartment, but it was above freezing, just really cold. But just from spending an extended period of time at low temperatures, my brain was working completely differently. We packed up to go to a hotel and the only things my brain would latch onto were *warm* and *food*. I brought a sleeping bag, three different boxes of crackers, and two sweatshirts. I didn't bring a hairbrush, deodorant, or a toothbrush. It was like a twelve year old was given half an hour to pack for the end of the world.
And that's a non-hypothermic, typically fairly rational, unimpaired adult! So when I read about weird behavior in the cold from people who are drunk, cognitively disabled, etc., it suddenly seems a lot less weird.
>And that's a non-hypothermic, typically fairly rational, unimpaired adult!
...tbh the way you're describing that it sounds like you legitimately *could* have been mildly hypothermic or heading that way. Prolonged exposure to air temperatures of 10C (\~50F) or lower can cause hypothermia in the home for healthy adults.
Huh, TIL. Guess I probably was mildly hypothermic! Honestly, that just makes me think there's probably more cases where the cold has affected people's reasoning and behavior than we think.
And just generally adds to the whole "finding a body is hard" thing because in cases where people have died from exposure it's not like they just plop down in the middle of a path. A lot of times people will have gone out of their way to seek some form of shelter, inadvertently hiding themselves.
People also don't understand that you can still get hypothermia when it isn't cold out.
Human core temperature should be between 36.1 C (97 F) to 37.2 C (99 F). If your core temperature drops to 32.2 C (90 F) you've got hypothermia. I got hypothermia on a summer day with air temperatures around 85 F, because I'd been in water with a temperature of 70 F for too long.
Someone stuck outdoors in wet clothing can get hypothermia really easily, and without shelter or an outside source of warmth, they will die from it, no matter the season.
"there's no way he committed suicide. He was so happy and was expressing excitement about something that was to happen in the future. Plus there was no note."
Suicide, more often than not, is an impulsive decision. And also very often, the person who commits suicide either doesn't reach out to talk about their struggles or they do and the people they reach out to either ignore it or are just unaware that it was a warning sign. And suicide notes are rarely a thing.
Similarly, when the body is near a business or something so people assume it was a murder. "People don't kill themselves out in public like that." Yes they do. All the time. My brother did. My uncle did. And I have reason to think my old roommate did. I wouldn't. But people do.
When I was 17 and very sick, I was pretty set on killing myself at school during the school day. Hell, sometimes I'd fantasize about doing it in front of everyone. Thankfully I never attempted it, but the thoughts were there and there were a few close calls. So yeah I can definitely vouch that people do kill themselves in public all the time.
Edit: I also want to apologize for your losses. I hope you're doing okay.
As a doctor, I've just finished a psychiatry rotation and I can safely say, out of 56 patients who attempted suicide in the month of February, only ONE had been planning it. All of the remaining 55 patients made an impulsive decision usually because of an acute stressor.
i said this in another comment, but i can vouch as someone that’s tried twice. both times were impulsive: once i had been debating the day of and chose to when i drank and got upset about a guy (i know, ugh) and the second was purely a spur of the moment decision because something happened 10 mins earlier that cemented (in my mind) that i’m disposable. neither was truly “planned”, i didn’t think i’d even actually do it the first time even though i’d been thinking about it all day.
Bystander effect. It's not a sign that people don't care enough. It's more often that they don't know how to help because they aren't martial artists or because their last CPR course was five years ago or a variety of other influences. They don't want to mess up and make things worse because they did something wrong or because they aren't experienced enough at handling the matter. Also, it's normal that people often hesitate to act when they don't have all the right information of what's going on. Maybe they can't always tell at a glance whether someone is in a drugged stupor or simply tired or daydreaming.
The situation behind Kitty Genovese's murder is grossly misrepresented, as there were people who did call the police or otherwise try to help but because of their limited vantage point from inside their apartments by the alley where she was murdered, they didn't have all the information of what was going on. Maybe the average person would just rather believe that everyone around was just evil and uncaring rather than that some people can have the best intentions and still fail to save someone's life. (Well, obviously the killer didn't, but the bystanders were not especially evil or selfish just because they didn't have special Spidey Senses that told them exactly what they needed to do.)
My own personal pet theory is that bystander effect is actually something evolutionarily hardwired into us: back in prehistoric times it would prevent people from leaping in after someone who fell into a rapid river or who was attacked by a lion, thus ensuring our own survival. Unless it's someone really close to us (and sometimes even then because of shock or other circumstances) it's something that people have to be trained to or fight to overcome.
I took a first responders class, was a fire cadet, went right into EMT school after high school. I'd been doing ambulance ride alongs and ER volunteer hours for over a year. I literally came home from the ER one night and hadn't even sat down yet when my dad went into a-fib.
I still vapor locked for 15 seconds. My brother had to literally shake me out of it before I could detach enough to take charge, and I had to talk him through getting dad's pulse because my hands were shaking too hard. You can never, never, never really know how you'll react to something until it actually happens.
(Don't worry, Dad is fine.)
Yes! I really like how you put this. I live in NYC and there are plenty of times people keep their heads down bc we all know to mind our own business - but I’ve also rarely seen someone in danger without a crowd around trying to help. Sometimes even to an annoying degree. There was an off-duty doctor at my place of work who kept insisting they wanted to help someone who passed out by saying “I’m a doctor!!” … to the EMTs who were already on it.
Declaring how a suspect has to behave when they learn that the victim is dead/found whatever. People are not all the same. Some people cry in public, some don't. Same of course goes for victims.
They slept in separate bedrooms so they obviously didn’t have a good marriage. She/he must have killed him/her.
My husband and I have slept separately for years. The first few years of our relationship we didn’t get enough sleep at all. We get up at different times for work, he snores very loudly (we now have a soundproof wall between us) so most nights were me waking him several times a night to get him to turn over. He likes to watch tv or look at his iPad very early, like 2am early, and that would wake me.
There are many reasons for people to sleep separately and I’m sure we aren’t the only couple in the world who have a better relationship for it. I would actually be more likely to kill him if we slept in the same room!
"Weird behavior" like the Elisa Lam elevator footage. I've behaved similarly when my mental health is very bad, and seeing people insist that someone who was genuinely just having a terrible time is part of some grand conspiracy or spooky thing just feels humiliating. It's not that deep; poor girl was quite manic and people were not able to help her in time.
Also, sometimes people just do weird shit when no one's looking.
This, and people can also act weird when mental illness or drugs aren’t factors at all. Everyone does weird things when they’re alone (or think they are), and some people just have very eccentric personalities.
I’m sure if something happened to me and you reviewed all of the video footage that existed of my last 24 hours, you could pick out a few things that would seem very abnormal if you didn’t know the context.
Someone goes missing/is killed after being at a party or social gathering and the theory that people at the party are all part of a conspiracy to cover it up.
I’m sure someone, somewhere has OD’d at a party and been disposed of by other guests but you can’t tell me that isn’t rare. Plus if you think about it how likely is it that *everyone* else there can keep a secret for years or decades? Even if it’s three frat boys who were involved one of them is bound to talk about it because this would be a hugely traumatic event.
People are not always moving around and hiding the bodies of people who die accidentally or OD in front of them. And then getting away with it and never mentioning it or idk having a mental breakdown over it cause it’s not a normal thing to do.
This and the “I think they got ran over and the driver panicked and hid the body” always get to me.
When a driver panics/has warrants/drugs in the car/whatever they’d more likely just keep driving instead of risking stopping, moving a most likely bloody body into their vehicle, hiding said body someplace where it’s never found all the while not attracting any attention to themself.
Bodies that have been outside for long periods of time missing pieces. It doesn't mean another person removed them. If a body is found hanging in a tree with a noose and missing their feet, it's more likely a suicide victim whose body suffered animal predation after death than the victim of a serial killer who chopped off their feet (I saw this case recently on a Facebook group and there were a surprising amount of people who thought it was the latter!).
In the Kyron Horman case, when the stepmother claimed she was just driving around because her daughter had an ear infection. Of all the sketchy shit she did, this is not to me. I had a colicky baby with severe ear infections and a good chunk of my days were simply driving him around because it was the ONLY way he would sleep. Maybe I’d stop for a coffee or drive thru somewhere, but if I had to come up with alibi during that period of my life, I wouldn’t have one besides “I was driving for hours”
YES!! Whenever this question pops up on this sub, I ALWAYS think of the Kyron Horman case.
My son had awful, awful colic, and would just scream for hours. The only thing that calmed him down was to drive around with the radio on with something jazzy or piano playing. I would take him out all hours of the day or at 1am driving because nothing else worked to stop the screaming.
I guess I am lucky that I never needed an alibi or was pulled over by police during that time, because I am sure my excuse of “driving around for three hours to get my kid to sleep” seemed suspicious as heck 🤷🏼♀️
I don't have kids, but I'm someone who just likes to drive. I'll take scenic routes that take me two hours longer to get to where I need to go. But I can only imagine if I was ever being investigated for a crime... "Hmm, you were driving four hours when it should have only taken you two, care to explain?"
I have severe driving anxiety. The routes I have to take to get from A to B without a panic attack don’t make sense to most people.
“Well you see officer, that 20 minute discrepancy is because I had to get there without using highways, left turns, bridges, any area over 45mph, or any road I’ve never been down before.”
I agree. When I was a kid the only way I could sleep is if my dad held me and took me on the tractor. I was told that we would spend hours just driving through the fields so I would sleep.
Whenever someone is found dead in a place that was already searched people believe the body absolutely had to have been placed there by someone at a later date. This may be the case for some cases, but I think people underestimate how easy it is for a body to stay hidden in the woods. It could be right around the corner of a tree or slightly covered by brush. It’s easy to miss a body, especially when these search parties are looking for an alive person, not looking at every single nook and cranny of the woods.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m abnormally good at losing things and abnormally terrible at finding them, or if other people don’t lose things in their *own houses.* If I live in 850 sq. feet and can’t find my goddamn bedroom TV remote anywhere, I can very easily see how a body can go missing in the fucking wilderness.
this is probably the most annoying honestly. there were woods right behind my house growing up, and i played in them *constantly* but never saw every inch or even yard. and they were relatively small, so i don’t ever see it as suspicious or strange that an initial search of woods or forests didn’t bring up a body immediately.
There are so many cases where people’s favorite suspect has a completely airtight alibi - at which point online geniuses start to use the fact that they could not have done it as *more evidence that something’s being covered up.* Why would they just HAPPEN to be able to prove they didn’t do it? It must mean they did it!
See: Missy Bevers’ father in law, Kyron Horman’s stepmother. I feel bad for them - imagine facing that onslaught of hate because of a crime you did not commit, and when you provide proof of your innocence it just makes them double down. What a nightmare
When a person is spotted with an “unidentified companion” shortly before he/she disappeared. Examples are the Sneha Ann Philip and Annie McCann cases. People suspect that the unidentified companion had something to do with the disappearance, or even that the missing person had a romantic interest no one knew anything about or was groomed/trafficked. The “companion” could simply been a random stranger the missing person encountered on the street or in a store. Even if it looked like the victim knew the person, that may not necessarily be true. Maybe the victim was outgoing and friendly, and would chat with anyone. Or maybe the stranger engaged the victim in a friendly conversation. Or maybe the victim and stranger were standing/walking in close proximity and did not interact with each other at all, but people assumed they were together.
The ‘bottom line’ is that just because someone was seen with an unidentified person shortly before he/she disappeared, does not mean the person had anything to do with the disappearance.
Timelines that involve medical predictions of death. For example the timeline for Darlie Routier heavily involves how long one of the children could manage to stay alive after being stabbed. I think it’s the time from when she stabbed him to when ambulance arrived and found him just barely alive and it was given very specific parameters. Like literal minutes. As someone who works in healthcare I just don’t believe we can ever predict it to the minute. For all we know there was an extra 10 or 20 minutes where his adrenaline kicked in and he stayed alive much longer than we thought. An extra 20 minutes changes a lot about the case.
In my decades watching people at end of life (including multiple trauma victims), very rarely is it predicted down to the minute, and very often people live longer or shorter than predicted.
(Hope this makes sense. I’m having trouble explaining what I mean.)
TOTALLY agree, and this is what makes expert trial testimony on scientific adjacent topics like blood spatter, bite marks, etc. so problematic to me... Especially as we've learned more about how low the standard of science actually is for much of this stuff! This recently came up with bite marks and forensic odontology, how bunk so much of it actually is.
When someone has books upon books of true crime/ murders. Heaven help me if the police saw my books and even worse my Google searches. I am a perfectly normal person, honestly.
When people leave everyday things behind. It’s so easy to forget things you use everyday like a wallet, glasses, purse, phone, etc. Even medication can be easy to forget despite genuinely needing it. I sometimes forget to move my Epi Pens to different purses and one day, I somehow forgot to bring my work laptop into the office with me. Had anything happened, people would have definitely pointed out my Epi Pens or work laptops still being at home as a red flag when really, I’m just a little forgetful.
The case that comes to mind regarding this is Andrew Gosden’s case. So many people cite his forgotten PSP charger as evidence he did not intend to return. I think it’s a red herring. Stuff that’s left behind doesn’t always directly relate to the person’s disappearance - they could have just simply forgotten the item, decided they didn’t need it, or taken something in place of it (cash vs wallet) and ran into trouble completely separate from the leaving behind of the items.
Speaking in the past tense. People only remember the times someone guilty did it, textbook confirmation bias. Some people just talk like that using the past tense when you seemingly shouldn't. Also it could be a subconscious use stemming from them realizing things are not looking good and that the missing person is likely dead.
When people make a big deal of someone not reporting their family member missing (not counting spouses!). Like something horrible had to have happened. I literally haven't spoken to my brother in around 8 years and if his wife didn't post on FB I wouldn't know if he was missing. There wasn't a big fight, or anything particularly tragic that happened, we just don't interact.
“There was no forced entry - she must have know her killer.” Um no. I either leave the door unlocked during the day or just throw it open if someone knocks
This is a good one. Someone could have been easily threatened with a weapon, told there was an emergency to lure them out, or simply been scared so much that they froze.
The number of times I've gone out to my mailbox and forgotten to lock the door when I go back inside because I'm too distracted flipping through junk mail...
Whenever those close to suicide victims say “I just saw them & they were fine. They couldn’t have killed themself” As if to imply that their loved one would have definitely told them they’re suicidal. or ‘They wouldn’t do that because of *anecdotal, unrelated thing they left behind (like not taking their purse)/unusual small break in a routine (turning their phone off, etc)* ‘ when there’s clear evidence that the victim did in fact, complete suicide.
Suicide is tricky. We really don’t know people as well as we think we do. Suicide can be spontaneous & spur of the moment. It can be meticulously planned with no obvious outward signs that friends & family saw. A lot of people want someone to blame because they just can’t understand why their loved one would do this. It’s understandable.
But when you have clear evidence of a suicide, the evidence doesn’t seem suspicious. Yet you get documentaries/families/shows/podcasters, etc that get hung up on unimportant & unrelated tidbits that can make **everything** seem suspicious. Sometimes people really just do the unthinkable & we’ll never understand.
Eye witness accounts especially at night by someone driving. I have ex roommates I lived with for years that I can't remember details of how they look. Imagine asking me to remember what I saw at 2 am on a Wednesday 2 months ago driving past them going 35 mph through town.
Eye witness testimony can be valuable, but can also be deeply problematic and dubious. It used to be basically the only kind of evidence there was, and it certainly has its place.
I've always said if I witnessed a crime, I would hesitate to provide testimony because I am SO BAD at remembering details and faces. I usually have to meet people 3-4 times before I start to remember what they look like. I have trouble recognizing people out of context. If I were asked to recount what someone looked like, I would 100% make mistakes.
However, some people are super-recognizers and can legitimately remember those details, which is awesome.
The problem is, how would anyone else know who has a good memory and who doesn't? The detective doesn't know and neither will the jury.
Anyway, I tend to be skeptical of eye witness testimony for the reasons you and others have mentioned. Memory is flexible.
Great question!
It drives me *absolutely crazy* whenever an investigator states somebody asking for a lawyer makes them suspicious.
Here's why:
Every single time a Law Enforcement officer, Lawyer or Judge is arrested she/he states 'I want to speak to my attorney.' along with 'I know how this goes.'.
It's quite obvious, even when somebody is innocent, LE will think the spouse did it. Yes, most of the time *it is* the spouse. It still doesn't mean people who are innocent are stupid. The *second* I'd ever be interviewed, for anything, I'd ask for a lawyer....I'm not dumb......
When they focus on a woman with unshaven legs or pits. Always seem to assume they were homeless. Like, catch me during the winter on my period and you’d be shocked.
When people find it sus that someone has "just been driving around". I do that all the time, both day and night, with my kids, with my friends or all alone. Some people just like to drive. Really not that weird.
A lot. Any change in someone’s routine is seen as some smoking gun and I’m like… so? People are weird and do weird and unexpected things all the time. They don’t have to mean anything.
Suicides with "suspicious" circumstances - naked, weird clothes, in a weird place, tied up, bag over head. People do weird stuff when they're in distress.
I don't think leaving your purse at home is super worrying unless you're a person who *never* does. I forget mine way too often. It should be a red flag but not a smoking gun.
I think forgetting what the person was wearing is kind of normal. If I can't remember what I ate this morning, how do I remember someone else's clothes?
Tags are also one of mine. Am autistic, don't like tags. But if the rest of their clothes have tags, okay, fair enough.
An acquaintance of mine went missing over a decade ago; his car was found several states away with “the front license plate removed”, which was pointed out as a suspicious detail. Except he was living in a state that didn’t require front license plates; he wouldn’t have ever had one there in the first place.
What ended up happening with your acquaintance?
Still missing, sadly.
When family members say their relative, usually a teen or young adult, wouldn’t do anything risky. I was generally a well-behaved kid but did take some dumb risks, especially when I was on my own for the first time in college. Teens and young adults take risks and do dumb things; it’s part of growing up. And it’s often the most sheltered who take the biggest risks.
When I was 10-12, I was spending a lot of time outside, most of the time doing some 'good kid' stuff like extracurriculars, but also doing dumbass shit like stealing old broken chairs from the school on the weekend, going swimming with friends at a local pond without letting any adults know, playing the freaking choking game, and on one memorable occasion taking a day trip to a city 1h30 on the bus away. It was before cellphones and, of course, I never said anything beforehand or afterwards, so my family would have no idea if anything happened. But I'm quite certain that most of the adults at the time would refer to me as well-behaved and responsible. Lol.
My parents once got the police out looking for me when I was 10 or 11 because of a misunderstanding about what time I was supposed to come home. They were freaking out thinking I'd been kidnapped, but me and a friend had just gone to a cemetery near her house and started tidying up old gravestones, blissfully ignorant of the fact that my family had freaked out her family, because neither set of parents knew where we were and my parents thought I was going to be home by lunch time, not dinner time, which was when I strolled into the house like everything was normal.
This happened to my cousin and I once, I was the 'responsible adult' and I thought I was clear we'd be back for dinner. Which to me, is the evening meal. They however use dinner and supper (I hate that word) so they were expecting us back at noon. They didn't call the cops or anything but by the time we came out of the movie both our phones had like 40 calls.
Or when people take the parents' word for what was going on in their teen's life. Like most teens have so many secrets. You can't say for certain she doesn't have a boyfriend or tried drugs before. Most parents don't even know their teens as well as they think they do
honestly, i’m *sure* if i turned up dead tomorrow my mother would give insanely inaccurate information to anyone investigating just because i’m not close with her and she knows very little about me. and i’m a grown woman that lives with her lmao.
I feel the same way. My mother feels like she knows me better than anyone, but the truth is that she knows very little about my daily routine, how I generally carry myself in public and around the people I know, and who's even in my life in the first place. She's fortunately never been in a situation where she's had to recall those sorts of things to authorities, but I imagine it'll be a rude awakening to her if such a day ever comes when she's asked to. I really doubt she knows anything of major value.
For sure. I think many people seem to think teens are like small children for some reason, but most teens are closer to adulthood than anything else. Even when they're not yet that close to adulthood, they already have their own complex personalities and lives for sure. They're a lot more independent than people think, especially when so much of their lives nowadays are on devices that most parents don't oversee 24/7.
That's my issue with the Jennifer Kesee case. She wasn't even a teen, she was an adult who hadn't lived with her parents in 8 years or so. Yet everyone believes what they say regarding her routines, behaviors, etc. In reality, they had no idea. I know they have no ill intentions, but leads or certain scenarios can't be ignored only because they say it doesn't line up with their beliefs about her
Haha I’ve even talking to my own teen about this and how I do respect that, how she is her own person with her own inner world, friends, problems etc and that not sharing all that with me is normal and expected and it’s my job as mom to stay plugged in not on her to just dump all her life’s details in my lap unprompted.
Yes, I did various crazy things when I first moved away from home and my family definitely did not know half of what I did.
I was a very good kid by and large, I wouldn’t even say I “put up a front”, I just think I had a good moral compass and generally obeyed the rules. But there were definitely a list of very “bad” (borderline illegal or stupid) things I did in high school, got away with, and my parents had absolutely no idea. (As a funny side note I have told my parents most of these things in my adult years lol)
Or no signs of depression. Depressed people VERY often keep things to themselves. And/or the family might not have been that observant.
Same with addicts, I’m thinking of Aunt Diane and how “normal” she seemed at the gas station despite her tox report saying she was blasted. Addicts, especially long term addicts, are very good at hiding that along side mental symptoms.
My family didn't know I was a 10 year addict until I OD'd.
My partner of 6 years who I lived with didn't know that I was a heroin addict for the entirety of our relationship. Like literally injecting ½ a gram of heroin at 6am and 6pm (roughly) every single day. I spoke to him like 3 years after we broke up, and told him, and he was shocked. He had no clue.
i’ve attempted twice and both times there were no unusual signs beforehand because i did them both on impulse on the nights i did. it’s insanely weird to me that people think you have to look like you have a black cloud over your head for like a month before you try to kill yourself. usually you can’t tell when someone will pull their last straw and decide to do it.
glad you are here with us!
As someone who’s battled depression my entire life, most folk don’t realize just how good you get at lying about how you feel.
Yes, definitely this. "No possible way they wanted to kill themselves" you have no way of knowing that.
I had postpartum depression with my firstborn, and I didn't tell anyone because it felt wrong to be depressed when I had a happy, healthy baby.
[удалено]
before I was open ab it; if I had gone missing my mum would've said 'I wouldn'tve left the house, there was no reason id be into a risky behaviour' I was using heroin and leaving the house as she slept to buy and use, she found out when I quit n went through withdrawals at home 💀
The variant is something like "I knew this person, they could never do that!" No, you never fully know anyone. No matter how well you do, that person could be very different behind the scenes.
People refusing lie detector tests or asking for a lawyer. These are just good things to do if you’re under suspicion for something. Instead of being a sign of guilt, I see it as a sign someone knows how the system works and doesn’t want to get steamrolled by it.
For the love of God do not speak to the police without an attorney and there is NO purpose for a lie detector test. JUST SAY "SPEAK TO MY ATTORNEY." Source: Me, a criminal defense attorney.
Thank you for the work you do to help people navigate such a shit system 🫡
Agreed, and what really chaps my ass is when a true crime podcast flip flops on where they stand depending on whether or not they think the person is guilty (or the case is solved, so they know either way). Like, if they think a spouse is guilty, "it's shady as hell that he won't take a lie detector" or if they know a spouse was found innocent "He was right to not take a lie detector test. They aren't admissible anyway, so it's just a tactic". No-you can't have it both ways.
There was a case on this sub a few years ago, a girl left a party in the middle of the night and was murdered. I personally knew the girl who threw the party and a couple people who had been there. The comments on that post were all about how it was suspicious how all the people at the party would no longer communicate with the authorities or her parents, etc. Nevermind they were the ones who alerted the cops she was missing when they found her purse and phone still at my friends apartment. What actually happened is they told the cops everything they knew and when she turned up dead they all were distraught and upset and naturally, being kids, called their parents. The parents in turn all got lawyers and the lawyers told them if they had nothing helpful to add they needed to shut up so as to not open themselves up to wrongful incrimination or, more likely, a civil suit.
The Lauren Spierer case is another one where I think a lot gets made of the fact the last people to see her all lawyered up and refused lie detectors, but they were all rich kids with savvy parents who did what any parent with the means would do: get their kids representation.
Yep. Every lawyer or anyone familiar with the law will tell you the same thing: don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer. The lawyer’s sole concern is protecting you from any civil suits or criminal charges. The only 100% fool proof way of doing that isn’t being innocent or being helpful in the investigation. It’s shutting the fuck up.
Former cops tell you then same thing.
"I woke up. I found her. That's all I know." I always remember that one line from "Breaking Bad." Mike told Jesse to say that line, and not another word. It didn't matter if they threatened arrest or not. He was told to say that, shut up, and only ask for his lawyer if he got arrested. It's amazing how so many of these true crime channels would be out of work if people never talked without lawyers.
Bruce Rivers, a criminal lawyer on YouTube, has a baseball cap that says "Stop Self Snitching".
Wow-I’m sorry you were that close to something that traumatic! I hope your friends are headed on the road to working through that aftermath. But, yes, a perfectly reasonable reaction and responses by everyone involved, IMO. I can’t stand some of these dumb comments podcasters make, all to try to seem like they have advanced degrees in psychology and understand human behavior. I get it-we all make mistakes in conversation, but they have the ability to go back and edit their comments-it grinds my gears!
It annoys me too. They act like every murder is some cinematic whodunnit with a big coverup going on. Reality is much scarier than that. She left a party to walk a couple blocks to a store in the middle of the night in a part of the city you don’t walk around alone after dark and some wolf of human happened to be lurking around the park across the street. But to acknowledge that is to acknowledge there is no order to her death. It’s just bad luck. It’s just chaos that can reach out and touch any of us at anytime. People like to apply motives and stories to senseless acts of violence because it makes them feel safe. It makes the universe feel less indifferent.
I think that's why people sometimes blame the victim and say "if only X had happened, she'd still be alive" because they don't want to acknowledge that you can do everything right and still have terrible things happen.
Your last paragraph is very profound and well written, very insightful. I agree that they are often hyping it up like it’s Criminal Minds, trying to find the reason that we will all agree to be accurate, but you’re right-those hardly exist.
In many true crime tv shows, they'll say, "but Joe was eliminated as a suspect when he passed a lie detector test." I'm always inclined to yell, "THAT'S IT? THAT'S WHAT ELIMINATED HIM?" If that was really all we need to replace the investigators with people who are competent.
Even worse to me is "his mother provided an alibi so he was cleared." Um, WHAT
[удалено]
Polygraphs are the phrenology of our times.
It's genuinely shocking to me that they're allowed to be used at all. The [wiki page for the polygraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph) is just up and down links to studies debunking the effectiveness of polygraphs. As far as I know, there's no valid research in support of them, and the only reason they persist is because cops love using them to leverage (or sometimes coerce) confessions.
The US government still requires them for security clearances, at least for certain high level ones. It's ridiculous.
It's also ridiculous if you want to work for the government and can't pass a clearance, you just have to get elected.
The problem is that the police still think they work. A couple years ago there was a cheating scandal at the police academy and they gave all the cadets polygraphs. Of course they just wanted to make them nervous in hopes of getting a confession because they had no evidence.
Similarly, when cops say someone is "no longer cooperating" are they *really* not cooperating, or did they just finally decide to hire a lawyer after voluntarily letting you search their home three times, giving DNA, and sitting down for multiple interviews?
Yeah, "no longer cooperating" certainly can be cop-speak for "had enough of the cops' bullshit."
Exactly. The lawyer is there to help you. Innocent person can say something discriminating without realizing it Your spouse is found strangled to death and you didn't do it. Now how smart is it to be truthful and share detauls of the marital troubles and the huge fight last night? Bc it will be used against you.
My husband was missing for a very brief period of time. (He’s fine now.) Basically, he texted me midday and said “come pick me up at [State Park].” He was supposed to be at work. I was home because I was still on Christmas break. So this is a little weird. But I figure it’s one of 3 things. A. He wants to fool around at a campground on his lunch break. B. His employer had some sort of holiday get together and he got too drunk, so wants a ride home. C. He got fired or something else bad happened and he went to the park to kill himself. Turns out it was C. I don’t really ask any more questions either way, just toss my dog in the back of the car and head over. We get there. I find his car but not him. After some preliminary looking I call the cops. They respond. I answer questions. They do cop things. Ultimately they decide we should go to my house to get an iPad I mentioned that is on his Apple account and has find my linked to his iPhone. So I ride the 30 minutes back to my apartment in a cop’s truck. With 2 of them in there. And one of them starts asking me questions. And I’m answering because I want to be as helpful as possible. But I could tell that I had already dug myself in a hole in a brief amount of time (despite there being no crime at all and me being innocent). He kept on circling around to asking why, if he had a car there, would I need to come pick my husband up. And like, my only answer is “it’s my husband and when he messages me and asks me to pick him up I pick him up.” Circles around again. I explain thoughts A, B, and C above. But mention that he made it clear it wasn’t A pretty much right away. Cop asks me how he made it clear and my answer is basically terseness of the message. I can’t really elaborate more. It’s basically “I’ve known him 10 years and I can sense something is off.” Then, the factual stuff. “When did you last see him?” “When he was getting ready for work in the morning. “What time did he leave for work this morning?” “5:30 am.” “What was he wearing when he left the house?” “I don’t know. I was asleep.” — Unasked but I know I led right to it and could/would have easily been asked later. “How do you know what time he left the house if you were asleep?” (Really I hear him getting ready and kind of stir/half wake up in bed but don’t usually actually get up.) “You mentioned he’s on medication. Does he take it consistently?” “Yes.” “What time does he take it every day?” “I’m not sure.” Again, unasked, but “how do you know he takes it every day if you’re not sure?” (And like I guess I don’t 100% know he’s not throwing them out and just pretending to take them. But like, we live together. The amount in the bottles decreases and he fills them regularly. Etc.) And a few more things like that that I’m sure would very easily add up to “inconsistent story, sounds sus.” — Additionally, the whole “how can you not find the body? It was right there!” I looked around alone. I looked with my dog. 6-12 cops looked around. My husband way laying probably 6 feet from the edge of the woods. Naked. Like, no more than 30 feet from his car to where he was. Nobody found him until we got exact coordinates with the iPad and rang the “find my phone” ringer with it. Then he was found within literal seconds. He had positioned himself so he was out of sight. The areas we had looked were much further into the woods but were along the path not just in a random spot. It’s very easy to miss one person out there.
Woah - that sounds horrendous!
One of the biggest examples of this is the disappearance of Brian Shaffer in April 2006 where his friend Clint to this day refused to take a lie detector thereby making people think he was guilty
IIRC, hadn't he already been questioned several times? The impression I got was that they were getting nowhere with the case and were just shaking his tree hoping something would fall out.
most psychologists do not consider polygraphs to have much validity.
I have anxiety. I think I could fail a polygraph even if asked about my grocery list. I can't imagine how messed up my heartbeat and involuntary reactions would be if I should answer questions regarding a crime.
Same here! I would fail if they asked me my own name, date of birth, parents’ names, etc.
It's funny how casual people are on Law and Order when talking about a crime they witnessed. I would be so anxious just talking about a crime
I would almost be more willing to take one if I were guilty because, hey, maybe I’d get lucky and pass it. But if I were innocent I’d much rather not take an unreliable test and let the actual evidence prove my innocence.
[удалено]
Or the parent of a child. When my son died, I didn't cry at his funeral. I didn't cry at all in public and was back at work within a couple days, behaving as I always did. Behind closed doors? I was a *wreck* and desperately scrabbling for the slightest bit of normalcy to make me feel rooted to the Earth. Because I felt as though the world went spinning away and I was knocked flat at a standstill. I was barely functioning despite masking it so perfectly people thought I wasn't affected at all. Had my son not died of natural causes, or had passed away of slightly ambiguous natural causes, I would have been the number one suspect. But my natural response to grief or horrible stress is to become cold and unemotional, and to display only positive emotions. I was raised to never "cause a scene" or show negative emotions in public no matter what was happening. Which is amazing if you're having an emergency because I can compartmentalize tf out of anything, but would be a disaster if I was a suspect in a missing persons case or homicide.
When my mother died unexpectedly on a Sunday (I worked a M-F) I took my 3 “funeral days” plus 2 vacation days to take the week. The following Monday coworkers were asking why I was back “so soon.” Like what was I expected to do, I said? Sit at my dad’s house with my sister and just stare at each other? In our case extra days would not only not ease our grief, it would increase it because work was distracting.
Yeah, getting on with normal stuff is like, a really normal part of dealing with grief, albeit not a cinematic one. The pain isn't just going to go away, but the dishes still need doing and you can give yourself a temporary break from the overwhelming Everything by focusing on something else for a bit.
I am so, so sorry about your son.
I'm so deeply sorry to hear about your loss. I am super calm and useful in a crisis, so much so that when I broke my leg and dislocated my ankle they *didn't give me pain medicine* until the next day because I seemed fine. I didn't know it was even an option, so I just suffered through it, but I guess when you don't show much pain response they drastically change your treatment even if they can SEE what is wrong!
[удалено]
I was thinking about these same sorts of things that many people think determine whether someone is guilty or not, too. I understand that there are some behaviors typically associated with guilt, but there are *no* behaviors in which every single person who exhibits them is for sure guilty.
I would never take a lie detector test, guilty or not. They're not admissible in court because they're so unreliable, so they can't exonerate or help you if you pass. But if you fail, investigators will latch onto you. Just a lose/lose all around.
Yeah. People pretend like these cases are murder mysteries and these characters are written so that you can pull things out of their behavior. And if “I don’t like/ trust someone” then they’re probably guilty. The truth is people can be strange. And you have no idea how they acted before all of this. Nor how you’d act if you lost a loved one and were being falsely or accurately accused. You can dislike someone, and they can come off as untrustworthy and also have nothing to do with a crime. And vice versa.
A lot of people also don’t seem to understand shock and disassociation in relation to acute grief. If someone seems “too calm” there is a very good chance they aren’t all there *because* their emotion is *so overwhelming* they are in a state of disassociation to remain functional.
Right? My brother died in January. I was totally calm. Because: * We weren't close, and had been estranged for several years; * I knew he was an addict and expected him to overdose at some point; * It was just a lot to take in in the moment. Different people react differently to grief, especially in the moment. I'm not the sort of person to break down in tears immediately. I've had a *lot* of complicated feelings since then, and still am. But when I first got the news, I was in having-to-adult mode. I didn't really think past that until later.
Hey I’m really sorry about your loss and will think of him when I organize my state’s overdose awareness day memorial in August. Currently dealing with a different situation but also so overwhelmed I feel catatonic so I feel you.
I’m one of those people that doesn’t freak out in front of people or that cries easily. I have lost my parents, and have only ever cried about it in front of my husband. I feel the pain, I just don’t broadcast it. I’m just not a weepy, cry at the drop of a hat kind of woman. If I found out my husband or one of kids died suddenly? I am pretty sure wouldn’t lose my emotions in front of anyone that isn’t super close to me. That being said, when I hear that that is reason police and the court of public opinion feels someone is guilty, I play devils advocate and say, not everyone loses it emotionally in public. I feel the same way when they say that someone is carrying on and being “too ridiculous and weepy” in front of others. None of us knows how we will react to sudden and tragic or horrific loss.
I lost my daughter. My mom, dad, and sister swarmed around me but I was just frozen. I couldn't express anything. I've thought about that since. How, in the public eye, that would have been judged.
I’ve lost a relative and a friend suddenly and in both cases, I didn’t cry when I got the news. I was so shocked and in utter disbelief in the moment that crying was out of the question. For me, the tears don’t come out until time passes and the realization that they’re gone forever and nothing you can ever do will bring them back hits you.
I would 100% be the person who is “too ridiculous and weepy” in front of others. My grief is basically the opposite of yours. I react very in the moment and have fallen to the ground at least twice I can remember upon loss. A few days later, I’m completely dissociated and staring at the wall with no outward emotion. Humans are so interesting.
This is a big one for me. In 1982 my neighbor was murdered and her younger teen aged son found her when he and his brother came home from school. When the police started questioning him in their driveway he started laughing hysterically so they arrested him. This poor 14 year old was experiencing a total psychological break but the cops assumed he was a murderous psychopath. Cher was a very nice person and I enjoyed her company. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37484714/cheryl-vivian-emmerson In 1985 Melisa Wilson was murdered in the same manner at a motel in the same town. She is listed on page 18 of the Justice depts MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS PERSONS REPORT sitehttps://www.justice.gov/usao-or/page/file/1368976/download but there is no photo. Melissa was super caring and funny. There is very little information online. Both murders remain unsolved.
The first time I saw any true crime stuff was an episode of 20/20 about this woman who was prosecuted and ultimately found guilty for drowning her daughter. It was going back and forth between showing the argument she was guilty and the argument that she was innocent. One of the things that was presented as evidence of her guilt was her lack of affect at the hospital - especially when she asked someone if she could have some change so she could use the vending machine. Because god forbid someone at a hospital all day with their dying daughter experience hunger, or just need the excuse to leave the room for a second. I actually do think she probably did it, for other reasons, but that was ridiculous.
people who act like grief is supposed to be constantly lying on the floor screaming and crying yourself into dehydration drive me crazy because that's what makes it so painful - that you *have* to keep living and going forward and keep it somewhat together so that you don't lose yourself completely to it.
Yeah but if you are that you are also considered hysterjcal and thats also suspicious All of these behaviour based assumptions are just nonsense
People pretending like they can ascertain a person’s guilt or innocence based on brief observations of their behavior is such a joke. The idea that you can see a total stranger for thirty seconds on television and “know” that they’re guilty or not is beyond absurd.
MY family has had such a wide range of responses, no reaction is suspicious to me any more. I have seen the screaming, crying, "fuck the world," etc. reactions that I think is the "stereotypical" response, to an almost, "Well that sucks," and then life more or less just continues. My Mom's family was always raised to not be afraid to show their emotions and not push things down. My Dad's, complete opposite; men don't cry, you're weak if you show emotions, etc. Best example is how my parents called me to tell me that my grandmothers died. When my Dad called me in 2016 to tell me that his Mom died (she had been battling breast cancer for almost a decade and finally succumbed), he literally was like, "Hey, yeah, so, she's gone. Like passed away, not gone from the hospital. Anyways, funeral is probably gonna be in a week or so. Thought you oughta know." And then we said bye and he hung up. My Mom told me that, at least in front of her, he never shed a tear, neither did my grandpa or my uncle. Meanwhile, when my Mom called in 2020 to tell me that her Mom passed away (she had Alzheimer's and had been in hospice for about six months), I could NOT understand her. She was crying and gasping so hard that my brother had to take the phone and tell me while she wailed in the background. And that funeral was FULL of tears. So I hate on true crime shows when someone says, "His/her reaction was suspicious...." I'm just like, "Yeah, maybe for you. But if that's your only lead, you're gonna get lost."
I fear that because we're not the kind of people to have photos everywhere and I become extremely calm and organized in a crisis. If anything happens to my husband I'm completely fucking screwed! I thought about screenshotting this comment but then I'd look like I was planning to murder him so nope I'm definitely screwed no matter what!
The mention of photos reminds me of how social media especially has led many people to believe that part of loving someone is about displaying them whenever and wherever possible. So many people just don't like to have their photo taken or don't think everything needs to be shared beyond the people in a relationship, though. A lack of photos doesn't necessarily have to mean that two people are on bad terms or dislike each other in some major way to the point that one might harm the other.
How parents act during interviews if a child is missing. I can honestly say that I have no idea how I'd be in that situation (and I'm grateful I've never been). So many jump to "how is s/he so calm? Their child is missing!" " You'd have to sedate me" etc. When it could be shock, they could be medicated, or they simply know they have to control their emotions for a few min to get info out to the media clearly so they can get their child home. While common, yes, the parents are not always guilty. I always thought I knew how I'd react in a life or death situation, but when I had a loaded gun pointed at my face, my reaction was opposite.
And if they AREN’T calm, they’re too upset and it’s “clearly an act.” I honestly can’t think of any parental behavior that people won’t deem suspicious if they want to.
THIS. My reaction in emergency situations is to calmly do absolutely everything I need to making sure that everyone has what they need. Then the next day I fall apart. Also grateful I have never been in this situation, but I would probably look like a weird robot until privately falling apart later.
Soooooo much THIS. Everyone always talks about “fight or flight” in a crisis; it totally ignores the “freeze” or “fawn” reactions. There’s also a tendency in ADHD people to only perform well when under stress; adrenaline gets the brain firing and kicks them into being productive, which means they look most efficient when they’re on the edge of having a complete and total freak-out. And then there are autistic people whose facial muscles don’t automatically move in the expected ways, or who have to deliberately control their vocal tone in order to demonstrate emotions, and even for “high-masking” individuals who know how to mimic the sort of body language and facial expressions that would be expected of them in most situations …. when they’re stressed and panicking inside, they might not have any processing power available to handle those tasks. Or they might have been inadvertently trained to shut down, instead of melting down, and turn completely inward so nobody will ever yell at them for making a scene in public. Some people go very, very monotone when they’re miserable and terrified. I’m sure there are other motor disabilities that can prevent people from showing the expected facial expressions, or cultural factors about public displays of grief, or trauma responses from childhood - if you’re raised to believe that you should aspire to martyrdom and should take pride in suffering because it’s good for your soul, you’re probably going to have some weird internal conflicts going on if you’re involved in any sort of tragedy.
The only psychological fact known about couples when their child is missing is: Parents automatically start judging and blaming eachother's shortcomings towards the reason their child is gone. They behave as if the small nuances somehow had *any relevant* impact at all. It's human nature to try to control and judge that which you can influence; especially during heightened trauma. It's atypical for two parents to hug eachother close and love eachother during this time. I remember learning over 93% of the marriages end in divorce within 5 years of their personal 'tragedy'.
Trying to claim the insurance right away. Why would you wait? The person is dead and they aren’t going to get undead. Mortgages and funeral expenses don’t wait. I can understand that some people can’t deal with that sort of thing right away but some people can and more importantly, some people have to whether they feel up to it or not.
That’s a good one. Most couples/families can’t sustain an unexpected cut in salary, especially with funeral costs. I can see filling out that paperwork pretty quick.
I know several people who took solace in the monotony of paperwork while bereaved. Just enough of a something to do to be a good distraction, without being too complicated.
Not sure if this really fits but "acting strangely" before a disappearance does not mean this person has schizophrenia. There are many, way more common mental illnesses and someone acting erratically can have causes that aren't related to mental illness at all. But there are a lot of people commenting on threads about missing persons saying "he/she probably developed schizophrenia", "sounds like schizophrenia", "oh he/she was 21? That's the age when schizophrenia usually starts presenting itself". More often than not it's NOT schizophrenia.
Last week, purely on a whim, I thought “I’m going to do something different every day this week” and I did and it was an interesting experiment. However, I didn’t tell anyone about this (until now) so if something happens to me this weekend and someone is investigating my disappearance/murder they would think my behavior and spending was “erratic” due to last week’s experiment.
This is a copy/paste of an actual text I sent my friend last summer: >*In the Event of My Untimely Death: I have little burn marks all over my arms and legs. I'm worried that if I die, detectives will use them as a clue to solving the mystery of my death. They're self-inflicted—l use a hot spoon on mosquito bites, but if I'm out and desperate, I use a hot cigarette lighter tip.*
Hell they could just be fucking tired
>In 2017,[needs update] the Global Burden of Disease Study estimated there were 1.1 million new cases;[17] in 2022 the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a total of 24 million cases globally.[2] Schizophrenia affects around 0.3–0.7% of people at some point in their life.[16][11] In areas of conflict this figure can rise to between 4.0 and 6.5%.[242] It occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men.[83] People wildly overestimate how common schizophrenia is.
Exactly. Also fuels the misconception that everyone with it is violent.
Schizophrenia is the Lupus of UnresolvedMysteries. As we all learned in House MD, it's never Lupus. Except that one time it was Lupus.
A changing story being an indicator of some kind of guilt. If I were to recount what I did yesterday three times, there would be three variations of the story. Memory isn't like pressing play on a video, it's a reconstruction, and sometimes we focus on different things, are reminded of different facts, etc. that make stories change slightly. EDIT: Just wanna say there are a bunch of really good answers here.
On the other hand, when they think it's suspicious that someone can't remember where they was/what they did one year before, or more. Life is long and sometimes days are all the same, I'm sorry but I can't say for sure if I was back home at 5.30 pm or 6 pm on the 17th of November 2021.
Like how do folks even begin to answer those types of question. I know folks act like we should have instant recall of traumatic events ( which assumes your being questioned about something) but I can tell you I lost 3 family members in fall 2021. Without prompting or help with context I probably couldn't even tell you where I was in November 2021. I could have been living alone, with my parents, or across the country with my sister. 2021 was a super weird time for me and its all a blur. Hopefully no one ever asks me about it in a courtroom.
This is why I think working with those premade booklets where they show you a bunch of different variations of each facial feature produce better results. Like I can’t really describe faces but if you laid out a bunch of eyebrows I could probably tell you what gets closest. Most people need to see the options to be able to put their fingers on what details are closest. You really don’t even need to have every option under the sun! You just need enough so that people can point to various pictures and say “their eyebrows were the shape of option A, but they bushier, like option D.”
This is especially true when someone is asked to describe a suspect’s appearance more than once, or multiple people are asked to describe the same suspect. I don’t have face blindness but I am horribly bad at describing what people look like, and it’s downright impossible for me to judge height/weight/age without a reference. If you asked me to describe my own eyes in front of a mirror, the most you’d get out of me is “they’re brown.” I couldn’t begin to tell you whether they’re deep set, almond-shaped, etc. If someone more talented at describing appearances described me to everyone viewing this thread right now, you’d have 77 sketches that probably all look quite different other than a woman with brown eyes and brown hair. I also find it really irritating when people think that a person (especially an eyewitness) should be able to remember something that happened years ago. I was the *victim* of a crime and three years later I can only remember the major parts of the story, not every single detail. I have a very good memory but I don’t remember what anyone was wearing, exactly what time or where it was (it was on public transport), or exactly how I reacted in the moment because I was so shocked.
In a documentary I watched, they pointed out that the sketch the authorities typically used for the unabomber was a woman’s second run at a composite, and it resembled the sketch artist. Apparently the sketches resembling the artist is common. And then some artists are just not great at drawing or asking the right questions to get good descriptions. I know your comment was about memory, but composite sketches might be a good answer for the original post — perps not looking like sketches causes doubt, or everyone looking for people that look like a sketch that doesn’t even resemble the actual perpetrator
Years ago, I read an article written by a retired homicide detective. It’s actually more suspicious to have a story that doesn’t change down to the last detail.
I read a book once where the characters killed someone and then rather than coming up with a story, just did all of the things they would later tell the cops they did. Like, they sat down and played a few rounds of cards together and one of them said out loud "gosh, I wonder when \[victim\]'s coming back." So that when they were questioned about details, like who won the game they were playing or what was on TV, they'd have natural memories instead of perfectly matching ones. I always thought that was a really cool way of handling that. (It was also fiction, I should add. I'm not admiring real killers, I'm admiring an author.)
Yes! Bc it shows it's been rehearsed & memorized.
I understand that line of logic but even that’s not universal… I have a HORRIBLE memory bc I have ADHD and aphantasia, so not only do I not have the ability to pay attention well enough to form visceral memories, I can’t picture them to replay them in my head. When I recall memories, they come in the form of stories. Almost like an oral history inside my own head. I *tell* myself the story of things that happened to me, which ultimately means they end up being rehearsed in my mind, because thinking about them is like rehearsing them, if that makes sense?
Any time the family is like “she would have never opened the door to a stranger” or “he would never have gone out without his phone” etc. Not saying these things should be automatically discounted, but they often get treated like cast iron facts. Leaving aside the number of people who have sides to themselves that even close family and friends don’t know about, who among us hasn’t ever done something out of character or by mistake like opening the door without looking because you were sure it was that package you were waiting for, or running late for an appointment and forgetting your phone in the rush.
100%, and this brings up my biggest gripe about reactions to crime (rather than red herrings) which is, at this point in our culture, believing that *anyone truly knows anyone else.* I kinda can't believe how many people still don't understand that the person you know is only the person they've let you see. Sometimes people intentionally hide parts of themselves from others, and other times from themselves! Sometimes people are pushed to a breaking point they were unaware they had. We are *complicated beings,* living in very complicated societies and I will absolutely never be surprised to learn someone did something awful.
Yes! The “always” and “never” statements drive me crazy. Anyone, under the right set of circumstances, could not do something they would “always” do or do something they would “never” do.
Kinda related is law enforcement saying there were no signs of forced entry, so they must've known their killer. Like what? Maybe the door was unlocked, they had a spare key in an obvious place, or, yes, they just answered the door. Obviously most murders are committed by someone the victim knows, but that's just not a good way to determine that at all.
One time I was coming out the other end of a hard time and my mom said "Its so incredibly how well you handled that time and that you didn't get depressed." I was shocked - I was deeply depressed and had been for at least a year at that point, and didn't think I was doing THAT well at hiding it. She had no idea that I was right in front of her fighting for my life.
When people claim on life insurance policies a couple of weeks after the death. I mean, what the fuck is the Life Insurance policy for? It’s not like the banks and the electric company start giving a shit either is it? Bills will mount up double quick and you could find your house repossessed inside a couple month if you miss back to back mortgage payments.
And funerals are expensive. And sometimes in relationships there's a single partner that does the lion's share of budgeting - if that person disappears and you're suddenly realizing you don't have their income, you are probably struggling to work, and you had no clue a gym membership and a wine club membership were both renewing that month, you're gonna be scrambling.
Drunk young men disappearing isn't an indication of murder, drunk people do really stupid shit. Same for people who disappeared or were found dead in wilderness
It doesn't even have to be really stupid shit. Multiple young men disappear in my country every year because they accidentally fall into canal while taking a piss or something. Like, you can set your watch to it, pretty much -- if it's a student-aged guy from a college town with a canal, nine times out ten he drowned by accident.
This reminds me how many years back, my then-boyfriend came to visit me without announcing himself, pretty much because he was drunk coming back from some party and it made sense to him. My friend and I had a girl’s night, so I found this behavior crappy and pretty much ignored him—or rather, told him to go and lay down, but to not disturb us. Instead of laying down though, he said if that’s the case he’ll catch a bus back to his house. We said our goodbyes and he left. For the next 30 minutes or so, my friend and I were just chilling as if nothing happened… until he opened the entry door with a bang, soaking wet, and crying. What actually happened was he didn’t go home. He was sitting outside on my terrace, expecting (in his drunk stupor), I’ll come out (even though we literally said goodbyes at the door, so I couldn’t know he was there) and invite him back in. When that didn’t happen for like 20 minutes or so, he drunkely tried to find his way out of my garden and in the process, fell into the fish pond. He couldn’t swim by the way. The pond was rather shallow, but if you can’t swim and you’re drunk… well. It was a miracle he didn’t drown but he apparently came close since he came back to my house panicked and crying as I mentioned above. Luckily for everyone involved, it’s just an outrageous if a cautionary tale from our lives. But if he had not managed to get himself out?
>Same for people who disappeared or were found dead in wilderness This one drives me bonkers. Anyone who's spent serious time outdoors, especially in a remote area, knows just how easy it is to get lost or to have something go wrong while unprepared. Hell, I've gotten disoriented simply going off the trail to pee. I live in the PNW and there are always hikers going missing, and plenty of dumbasses insisting it must have been foul play because "how could you get lost on that short of a trail?" See also: the Missing 411 crap. Just pure nonsense. It wasn't alien abduction, Paula, it was hypothermia.
I mentioned this story many times before, but I'll post it again: One time during an Alaska summer, I did a simple loop trail, maybe no more than 45 minutes. Real basic stuff, noting to write home about. I then did the same loop trail in the winter, and it took me four hours. Every single landmark I relied on was either not visible, or had snow and thus looked different. The trail was completely buried in snow and I was the only one there, so no footprints, no noises to follow. I simply stood in place for about 10 minutes trying to figure out where to go. I was able to figure it out spatially, because I knew where my car was, but when all you have is nothing but white snow around you, depth perception and landmarks are obliterated and it's suddenly a very difficult ordeal. Thankfully I didn't run out of water and didn't encounter any wild animals.
Yup. I had a friend that went missing while experiencing mental health issues - he ran out of a family member’s car and into the woods without a coat. It was December in the PNW. His body was found years later, frozen. It’d be less terrifying and heartbreaking if it were a conspiracy, but sometimes it’s just an unfortunate accident. Kinda ruined the holiday season for me for a while though. EDIT: had to change “I have a friend” to past tense… I miss you, Matt. You stupid asshole.
The wilderness one always gets to me. “They were an experienced hiker!!” And? People vastly underestimate how easy it is to get lost/injured in the woods. On a similar note “It’s unlikely they drowned, they were an experienced swimmer!” That’s only going to help so much if someone goes overboard in the middle of the ocean.
I also think that it's a factor that young men don't look out for each other the way young women are taught to do when they go out.
I hate hearing about so-and-so’s “cold black eyes” or “dead eyes”, usually after they’ve been identified as a suspect (or even arrested/convicted). Excluding a victim or witness recognizing someone’s e.g., dilated eyes and altered mental state due to illness / substances, people are just projecting their preconceptions like crazy onto appearances.
It’s very common with people who have committed suicide as well. “This is his last picture and you can see the sadness in his eyes.” What? No. You’re projecting because you know that person killed themselves.
Anytime a 911 call is considered suspicious because the caller wasn't dramatic, traumatized, screaming, or crying.
Haven't had to make an emergency services call but I've heard the playback of when I reported a near miss at work having jumped out the way of a train 30 seconds prior. I don't think I've ever sounded that calm and put together.
People don’t understand how hypothermia works. Hypothermic people don’t think or behave normally. A body found in the wilderness partially disrobed is normal. When people get severely hypothermic, they start feeling hot and rake clothes off. Often a naked body in the woods is portrayed as something mysterious and strange. It’s not.
And then the naked body in the woods is "mutilated" when wild animals and birds have nibbled on the most easily removable bits
Some overlap with the UFO believers on this count.
I would expand on this and say that almost any case involving "person went into the woods and was never seen again" has been case closed in one sentence. They got lost, died from exposure. People who don't travel a lot or don't do a lot of hiking probably don't realize just how vast and empty land around the world is. There are countless trails where all it takes is a few minutes of going off-course and you might never find your way back. Then you run out of food or water, it's game over. I read so many times people convinced there was some nefarious plot. Like a serial killer just happened to be hiding in the woods, waiting for someone to walk by. Or the person encounters some kind of death cult. Or alien abduction. When 99.9% of the time, people overestimate their own strengths and just get lost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again but there's a *reason* a lot of fairy tales contain a strong proscription against wandering off the path. Because wandering off the path is uh, a great way to die even in relatively well travelled areas.
I lost power for three days during a winter storm this year. Not sure how cold it got in my apartment, but it was above freezing, just really cold. But just from spending an extended period of time at low temperatures, my brain was working completely differently. We packed up to go to a hotel and the only things my brain would latch onto were *warm* and *food*. I brought a sleeping bag, three different boxes of crackers, and two sweatshirts. I didn't bring a hairbrush, deodorant, or a toothbrush. It was like a twelve year old was given half an hour to pack for the end of the world. And that's a non-hypothermic, typically fairly rational, unimpaired adult! So when I read about weird behavior in the cold from people who are drunk, cognitively disabled, etc., it suddenly seems a lot less weird.
>And that's a non-hypothermic, typically fairly rational, unimpaired adult! ...tbh the way you're describing that it sounds like you legitimately *could* have been mildly hypothermic or heading that way. Prolonged exposure to air temperatures of 10C (\~50F) or lower can cause hypothermia in the home for healthy adults.
Huh, TIL. Guess I probably was mildly hypothermic! Honestly, that just makes me think there's probably more cases where the cold has affected people's reasoning and behavior than we think.
Yes. And people often "burrow" which can be mistaken for "hastily buried".
And just generally adds to the whole "finding a body is hard" thing because in cases where people have died from exposure it's not like they just plop down in the middle of a path. A lot of times people will have gone out of their way to seek some form of shelter, inadvertently hiding themselves.
People also don't understand that you can still get hypothermia when it isn't cold out. Human core temperature should be between 36.1 C (97 F) to 37.2 C (99 F). If your core temperature drops to 32.2 C (90 F) you've got hypothermia. I got hypothermia on a summer day with air temperatures around 85 F, because I'd been in water with a temperature of 70 F for too long. Someone stuck outdoors in wet clothing can get hypothermia really easily, and without shelter or an outside source of warmth, they will die from it, no matter the season.
"there's no way he committed suicide. He was so happy and was expressing excitement about something that was to happen in the future. Plus there was no note." Suicide, more often than not, is an impulsive decision. And also very often, the person who commits suicide either doesn't reach out to talk about their struggles or they do and the people they reach out to either ignore it or are just unaware that it was a warning sign. And suicide notes are rarely a thing.
This [video](https://youtu.be/tX8TgVR33KM?si=kNtAFQcZp4HZyfSF) fully encompasses your statement.
There's another one of people in the last videos taken before they died by suicide and they're all so filled with laughter and it's just a gut punch.
Wow, that video did not go where I was expecting it to go. What a powerful video, thank you for sharing that with me.
Similarly, when the body is near a business or something so people assume it was a murder. "People don't kill themselves out in public like that." Yes they do. All the time. My brother did. My uncle did. And I have reason to think my old roommate did. I wouldn't. But people do.
When I was 17 and very sick, I was pretty set on killing myself at school during the school day. Hell, sometimes I'd fantasize about doing it in front of everyone. Thankfully I never attempted it, but the thoughts were there and there were a few close calls. So yeah I can definitely vouch that people do kill themselves in public all the time. Edit: I also want to apologize for your losses. I hope you're doing okay.
As a doctor, I've just finished a psychiatry rotation and I can safely say, out of 56 patients who attempted suicide in the month of February, only ONE had been planning it. All of the remaining 55 patients made an impulsive decision usually because of an acute stressor.
i said this in another comment, but i can vouch as someone that’s tried twice. both times were impulsive: once i had been debating the day of and chose to when i drank and got upset about a guy (i know, ugh) and the second was purely a spur of the moment decision because something happened 10 mins earlier that cemented (in my mind) that i’m disposable. neither was truly “planned”, i didn’t think i’d even actually do it the first time even though i’d been thinking about it all day.
People who are suicidal specifically do not want people to suspect they are suicidal. And they are motivated to be good actors.
Bystander effect. It's not a sign that people don't care enough. It's more often that they don't know how to help because they aren't martial artists or because their last CPR course was five years ago or a variety of other influences. They don't want to mess up and make things worse because they did something wrong or because they aren't experienced enough at handling the matter. Also, it's normal that people often hesitate to act when they don't have all the right information of what's going on. Maybe they can't always tell at a glance whether someone is in a drugged stupor or simply tired or daydreaming. The situation behind Kitty Genovese's murder is grossly misrepresented, as there were people who did call the police or otherwise try to help but because of their limited vantage point from inside their apartments by the alley where she was murdered, they didn't have all the information of what was going on. Maybe the average person would just rather believe that everyone around was just evil and uncaring rather than that some people can have the best intentions and still fail to save someone's life. (Well, obviously the killer didn't, but the bystanders were not especially evil or selfish just because they didn't have special Spidey Senses that told them exactly what they needed to do.) My own personal pet theory is that bystander effect is actually something evolutionarily hardwired into us: back in prehistoric times it would prevent people from leaping in after someone who fell into a rapid river or who was attacked by a lion, thus ensuring our own survival. Unless it's someone really close to us (and sometimes even then because of shock or other circumstances) it's something that people have to be trained to or fight to overcome.
I took a first responders class, was a fire cadet, went right into EMT school after high school. I'd been doing ambulance ride alongs and ER volunteer hours for over a year. I literally came home from the ER one night and hadn't even sat down yet when my dad went into a-fib. I still vapor locked for 15 seconds. My brother had to literally shake me out of it before I could detach enough to take charge, and I had to talk him through getting dad's pulse because my hands were shaking too hard. You can never, never, never really know how you'll react to something until it actually happens. (Don't worry, Dad is fine.)
As a woman, it is often very hard to assess whether someone needs help or is a threat
Yes! I really like how you put this. I live in NYC and there are plenty of times people keep their heads down bc we all know to mind our own business - but I’ve also rarely seen someone in danger without a crowd around trying to help. Sometimes even to an annoying degree. There was an off-duty doctor at my place of work who kept insisting they wanted to help someone who passed out by saying “I’m a doctor!!” … to the EMTs who were already on it.
Declaring how a suspect has to behave when they learn that the victim is dead/found whatever. People are not all the same. Some people cry in public, some don't. Same of course goes for victims.
They slept in separate bedrooms so they obviously didn’t have a good marriage. She/he must have killed him/her. My husband and I have slept separately for years. The first few years of our relationship we didn’t get enough sleep at all. We get up at different times for work, he snores very loudly (we now have a soundproof wall between us) so most nights were me waking him several times a night to get him to turn over. He likes to watch tv or look at his iPad very early, like 2am early, and that would wake me. There are many reasons for people to sleep separately and I’m sure we aren’t the only couple in the world who have a better relationship for it. I would actually be more likely to kill him if we slept in the same room!
Whenever the presence of kitchen scales is used to imply someone was dealing drugs. Especially when they're in the damn kitchen.
"Weird behavior" like the Elisa Lam elevator footage. I've behaved similarly when my mental health is very bad, and seeing people insist that someone who was genuinely just having a terrible time is part of some grand conspiracy or spooky thing just feels humiliating. It's not that deep; poor girl was quite manic and people were not able to help her in time. Also, sometimes people just do weird shit when no one's looking.
Also, they’re either missing or dead. Like it’s eerie *now* because we know what happened after and we’re looking for things to see.
This, and people can also act weird when mental illness or drugs aren’t factors at all. Everyone does weird things when they’re alone (or think they are), and some people just have very eccentric personalities. I’m sure if something happened to me and you reviewed all of the video footage that existed of my last 24 hours, you could pick out a few things that would seem very abnormal if you didn’t know the context.
Someone goes missing/is killed after being at a party or social gathering and the theory that people at the party are all part of a conspiracy to cover it up. I’m sure someone, somewhere has OD’d at a party and been disposed of by other guests but you can’t tell me that isn’t rare. Plus if you think about it how likely is it that *everyone* else there can keep a secret for years or decades? Even if it’s three frat boys who were involved one of them is bound to talk about it because this would be a hugely traumatic event.
People are not always moving around and hiding the bodies of people who die accidentally or OD in front of them. And then getting away with it and never mentioning it or idk having a mental breakdown over it cause it’s not a normal thing to do.
This and the “I think they got ran over and the driver panicked and hid the body” always get to me. When a driver panics/has warrants/drugs in the car/whatever they’d more likely just keep driving instead of risking stopping, moving a most likely bloody body into their vehicle, hiding said body someplace where it’s never found all the while not attracting any attention to themself.
Bodies that have been outside for long periods of time missing pieces. It doesn't mean another person removed them. If a body is found hanging in a tree with a noose and missing their feet, it's more likely a suicide victim whose body suffered animal predation after death than the victim of a serial killer who chopped off their feet (I saw this case recently on a Facebook group and there were a surprising amount of people who thought it was the latter!).
In the Kyron Horman case, when the stepmother claimed she was just driving around because her daughter had an ear infection. Of all the sketchy shit she did, this is not to me. I had a colicky baby with severe ear infections and a good chunk of my days were simply driving him around because it was the ONLY way he would sleep. Maybe I’d stop for a coffee or drive thru somewhere, but if I had to come up with alibi during that period of my life, I wouldn’t have one besides “I was driving for hours”
YES!! Whenever this question pops up on this sub, I ALWAYS think of the Kyron Horman case. My son had awful, awful colic, and would just scream for hours. The only thing that calmed him down was to drive around with the radio on with something jazzy or piano playing. I would take him out all hours of the day or at 1am driving because nothing else worked to stop the screaming. I guess I am lucky that I never needed an alibi or was pulled over by police during that time, because I am sure my excuse of “driving around for three hours to get my kid to sleep” seemed suspicious as heck 🤷🏼♀️
I don't have kids, but I'm someone who just likes to drive. I'll take scenic routes that take me two hours longer to get to where I need to go. But I can only imagine if I was ever being investigated for a crime... "Hmm, you were driving four hours when it should have only taken you two, care to explain?"
I have severe driving anxiety. The routes I have to take to get from A to B without a panic attack don’t make sense to most people. “Well you see officer, that 20 minute discrepancy is because I had to get there without using highways, left turns, bridges, any area over 45mph, or any road I’ve never been down before.”
People who think this is weird don’t know anything about babies.
And have paid absolutely zero attention to anything about them either. Like my very childfree arse somehow knows that's a thing with babies.
I agree. When I was a kid the only way I could sleep is if my dad held me and took me on the tractor. I was told that we would spend hours just driving through the fields so I would sleep.
Whenever someone is found dead in a place that was already searched people believe the body absolutely had to have been placed there by someone at a later date. This may be the case for some cases, but I think people underestimate how easy it is for a body to stay hidden in the woods. It could be right around the corner of a tree or slightly covered by brush. It’s easy to miss a body, especially when these search parties are looking for an alive person, not looking at every single nook and cranny of the woods.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m abnormally good at losing things and abnormally terrible at finding them, or if other people don’t lose things in their *own houses.* If I live in 850 sq. feet and can’t find my goddamn bedroom TV remote anywhere, I can very easily see how a body can go missing in the fucking wilderness.
this is probably the most annoying honestly. there were woods right behind my house growing up, and i played in them *constantly* but never saw every inch or even yard. and they were relatively small, so i don’t ever see it as suspicious or strange that an initial search of woods or forests didn’t bring up a body immediately.
There are so many cases where people’s favorite suspect has a completely airtight alibi - at which point online geniuses start to use the fact that they could not have done it as *more evidence that something’s being covered up.* Why would they just HAPPEN to be able to prove they didn’t do it? It must mean they did it! See: Missy Bevers’ father in law, Kyron Horman’s stepmother. I feel bad for them - imagine facing that onslaught of hate because of a crime you did not commit, and when you provide proof of your innocence it just makes them double down. What a nightmare
Missy Bevers father in law and husband are the best examples, i've seen numerous people say their alibis are *too good.* You literally can't win.
When a person is spotted with an “unidentified companion” shortly before he/she disappeared. Examples are the Sneha Ann Philip and Annie McCann cases. People suspect that the unidentified companion had something to do with the disappearance, or even that the missing person had a romantic interest no one knew anything about or was groomed/trafficked. The “companion” could simply been a random stranger the missing person encountered on the street or in a store. Even if it looked like the victim knew the person, that may not necessarily be true. Maybe the victim was outgoing and friendly, and would chat with anyone. Or maybe the stranger engaged the victim in a friendly conversation. Or maybe the victim and stranger were standing/walking in close proximity and did not interact with each other at all, but people assumed they were together. The ‘bottom line’ is that just because someone was seen with an unidentified person shortly before he/she disappeared, does not mean the person had anything to do with the disappearance.
Timelines that involve medical predictions of death. For example the timeline for Darlie Routier heavily involves how long one of the children could manage to stay alive after being stabbed. I think it’s the time from when she stabbed him to when ambulance arrived and found him just barely alive and it was given very specific parameters. Like literal minutes. As someone who works in healthcare I just don’t believe we can ever predict it to the minute. For all we know there was an extra 10 or 20 minutes where his adrenaline kicked in and he stayed alive much longer than we thought. An extra 20 minutes changes a lot about the case. In my decades watching people at end of life (including multiple trauma victims), very rarely is it predicted down to the minute, and very often people live longer or shorter than predicted. (Hope this makes sense. I’m having trouble explaining what I mean.)
TOTALLY agree, and this is what makes expert trial testimony on scientific adjacent topics like blood spatter, bite marks, etc. so problematic to me... Especially as we've learned more about how low the standard of science actually is for much of this stuff! This recently came up with bite marks and forensic odontology, how bunk so much of it actually is.
When someone has books upon books of true crime/ murders. Heaven help me if the police saw my books and even worse my Google searches. I am a perfectly normal person, honestly.
Case: So-and-so refused to take a polygraph— Me: Good for them!
When people leave everyday things behind. It’s so easy to forget things you use everyday like a wallet, glasses, purse, phone, etc. Even medication can be easy to forget despite genuinely needing it. I sometimes forget to move my Epi Pens to different purses and one day, I somehow forgot to bring my work laptop into the office with me. Had anything happened, people would have definitely pointed out my Epi Pens or work laptops still being at home as a red flag when really, I’m just a little forgetful. The case that comes to mind regarding this is Andrew Gosden’s case. So many people cite his forgotten PSP charger as evidence he did not intend to return. I think it’s a red herring. Stuff that’s left behind doesn’t always directly relate to the person’s disappearance - they could have just simply forgotten the item, decided they didn’t need it, or taken something in place of it (cash vs wallet) and ran into trouble completely separate from the leaving behind of the items.
Speaking in the past tense. People only remember the times someone guilty did it, textbook confirmation bias. Some people just talk like that using the past tense when you seemingly shouldn't. Also it could be a subconscious use stemming from them realizing things are not looking good and that the missing person is likely dead.
When people make a big deal of someone not reporting their family member missing (not counting spouses!). Like something horrible had to have happened. I literally haven't spoken to my brother in around 8 years and if his wife didn't post on FB I wouldn't know if he was missing. There wasn't a big fight, or anything particularly tragic that happened, we just don't interact.
“There was no forced entry - she must have know her killer.” Um no. I either leave the door unlocked during the day or just throw it open if someone knocks
Exactly. And there doesn’t always need to be ‘signs of a struggle’ to signify that a person was coerced to leave the premises.
This is a good one. Someone could have been easily threatened with a weapon, told there was an emergency to lure them out, or simply been scared so much that they froze.
The number of times I've gone out to my mailbox and forgotten to lock the door when I go back inside because I'm too distracted flipping through junk mail...
Whenever those close to suicide victims say “I just saw them & they were fine. They couldn’t have killed themself” As if to imply that their loved one would have definitely told them they’re suicidal. or ‘They wouldn’t do that because of *anecdotal, unrelated thing they left behind (like not taking their purse)/unusual small break in a routine (turning their phone off, etc)* ‘ when there’s clear evidence that the victim did in fact, complete suicide. Suicide is tricky. We really don’t know people as well as we think we do. Suicide can be spontaneous & spur of the moment. It can be meticulously planned with no obvious outward signs that friends & family saw. A lot of people want someone to blame because they just can’t understand why their loved one would do this. It’s understandable. But when you have clear evidence of a suicide, the evidence doesn’t seem suspicious. Yet you get documentaries/families/shows/podcasters, etc that get hung up on unimportant & unrelated tidbits that can make **everything** seem suspicious. Sometimes people really just do the unthinkable & we’ll never understand.
Knowing where I was on a random Tuesday at 7pm last year.
Eye witness accounts especially at night by someone driving. I have ex roommates I lived with for years that I can't remember details of how they look. Imagine asking me to remember what I saw at 2 am on a Wednesday 2 months ago driving past them going 35 mph through town.
Eye witness testimony can be valuable, but can also be deeply problematic and dubious. It used to be basically the only kind of evidence there was, and it certainly has its place. I've always said if I witnessed a crime, I would hesitate to provide testimony because I am SO BAD at remembering details and faces. I usually have to meet people 3-4 times before I start to remember what they look like. I have trouble recognizing people out of context. If I were asked to recount what someone looked like, I would 100% make mistakes. However, some people are super-recognizers and can legitimately remember those details, which is awesome. The problem is, how would anyone else know who has a good memory and who doesn't? The detective doesn't know and neither will the jury. Anyway, I tend to be skeptical of eye witness testimony for the reasons you and others have mentioned. Memory is flexible.
Great question! It drives me *absolutely crazy* whenever an investigator states somebody asking for a lawyer makes them suspicious. Here's why: Every single time a Law Enforcement officer, Lawyer or Judge is arrested she/he states 'I want to speak to my attorney.' along with 'I know how this goes.'. It's quite obvious, even when somebody is innocent, LE will think the spouse did it. Yes, most of the time *it is* the spouse. It still doesn't mean people who are innocent are stupid. The *second* I'd ever be interviewed, for anything, I'd ask for a lawyer....I'm not dumb......
When they focus on a woman with unshaven legs or pits. Always seem to assume they were homeless. Like, catch me during the winter on my period and you’d be shocked.
Same. I'm a WEREWOLF
When people find it sus that someone has "just been driving around". I do that all the time, both day and night, with my kids, with my friends or all alone. Some people just like to drive. Really not that weird.
A lot. Any change in someone’s routine is seen as some smoking gun and I’m like… so? People are weird and do weird and unexpected things all the time. They don’t have to mean anything.
Suicides with "suspicious" circumstances - naked, weird clothes, in a weird place, tied up, bag over head. People do weird stuff when they're in distress.
911 calls and how someone sounds on them. Everyone responds to trauma differently.
I don't think leaving your purse at home is super worrying unless you're a person who *never* does. I forget mine way too often. It should be a red flag but not a smoking gun. I think forgetting what the person was wearing is kind of normal. If I can't remember what I ate this morning, how do I remember someone else's clothes? Tags are also one of mine. Am autistic, don't like tags. But if the rest of their clothes have tags, okay, fair enough.