True crime cases rarely end well for the victims. Sometimes, they might not even end at all. As of 2019, 6,544 homicides in the United States remain unsolved. That doesn’t seem like a lot for a population of over 325,000,000. But the clearance rate for homicide cases has been hovering around an abysmal 58% to 59% since 2015. That’s little more than a coin toss. The worst part? It’s been on a steady decline from earlier decades that had roughly 70% solve rates.
Chew on that fun fact next time you hear something go bump in the night.
That said, it’s not exactly fair to say law enforcement doesn’t try at all. Some cases out there are inherently so bizarre that they’ll leave you scratching your head at how it was possible to commit them at all and still get away with it. From cases with strange gaps in evidence and details to the downright bizarre, these traumatizing unsolved crimes from all over the world will have you thinking in circles about how, why, and, most importantly, who?
1. The Setagaya Family Murders
This traumatizing unsolved murder is set in the quiet suburb of Setagaya, a special ward located in Tokyo, Japan. It’s a scenic city with a history stretching back to the Edo period but most people outside Japan know it for one thing: the murder of a family of four.
It’s 1991 and the Miyazawa family just moved into a typical Japanese suburban home located on Kamisoshigaya street. When Mikio Miyazawa, a salaryman working for Interbrand, a London-based company, and Yasuko Miyazawa first arrived, the area was a rather heavily populated neighborhood filled with young families just getting started on their domestic lives. The couple would later have a daughter, Niina, and a son, Rei.
But by 2000, the lively neighborhood started losing its inhabitants thanks to plans by Tokyo’s local government to expand the nearby Soshigaya Park. Soon enough, there were only four houses left, one of which belonged to An, Yasuko’s older sister, where the women’s mother often stayed whenever An was in England. While the sisters were likely thrilled by this setup, Mikio had his doubts. He was afraid their proximity to his mother-in-law would cause tensions in their marriage. The families compromised with an agreement to soundproof both of the houses.
This would prove to be a fatal decision on December 30, 2000.
Let’s take a look at the house. It was a modest 2LDK with two floors and an attic. The main entrance is located on the first floor of the house with the two bedrooms located on the second and third. The couple slept upstairs in the attic while their two children kept the room on the second floor.
The killer went through the second floor of the Miyazawa house after finding a point of entry in the form of a small window in the bathroom. The rear of the Miyazawa house faced Soshigaya Park and had several small trees growing alongside it. It wasn’t just accessible from a public, unfenced area but it practically had a ladder growing right next to it.
The family had no idea someone had already entered their house. The Miyazawa’s had decided to call it a night early and with no adults sleeping on the second floor, the less alert Rei, who was only six years old at the time, was left at the mercy of the killer. Any regular thief would have snuck in to take valuables and go without trying to confront the family members. But the unknown offender had gone into Rei’s room and strangled him to death.
The sound of the boy’s death throes alerted Mikio who was sleeping downstairs. The 44-year-old ran up the narrow stairs but was intercepted by the killer who then repeatedly stabbed him in the head with a sashimi knife. The force of it was so brutal that the blade broke off inside his skull, leaving Mikio dead at the foot of the stairs.
He later attacked Yasuko and Niina who were sleeping in the attic with the broken knife. Unable to actually kill them without a full blade, he went back down to the kitchen to pick up one of the Miyazawas’ knives. During this time, Yasuko tried to escape with Niina but the killer stopped them as she was carrying her daughter down the stairs. They were later found by Yasuo’s mother at the top of the stairs.
As if that wasn’t traumatizing enough of discovery for the grandmother, the police discovered that the killer decided to stay and relax a bit after the murder. He had eaten ice cream from the fridge, drank barley tea, and dumped their documents into the bathtub. He took Mikio’s wallet, items in Yasuko’s purse, the house keys, and a towel smeared with his own blood before dumping the items in the toilet.
You would think having the perpetrator’s DNA would help but it didn’t match any sample on the police database. It’s been nearly 21 years and the Setagaya family murder remains unsolved.
2. The Disappearance of the Yuba Country Five
Dubbed the “Yuba County Five“, the strange circumstances of the disappearance of Gary Mathias, Bill Sterling, Jack Huett, Ted Weiher, and Jack Madruga have earned the case another name: the American Dyatlov Pass.
Before we go any further, there’s something else you need to know about the details of this traumatizing case. All of the men had some form of intellectual disability or mental disorder. Gary was a former U.S Army soldier who had developed schizophrenia following severe drug problems and was arrested twice for assault prior to the incident.
The group of friends was known to each other’s families who all fondly called them “the boys”. The boys bonded over sports, particularly basketball, and would even play together as the Gateway Gators, a team under the Gateway Center, a facility that helped them learn life skills and trades.
On February 24, 1978, they drove out in Jack’s car to watch UC Davis’ away game against Chico State. This is where this traumatizing disappearance case starts to get eerie.
Instead of heading straight home from Chico, the boys stopped at a local convenience store to buy snacks. It was nothing substantial. Just a few Hostess pies and some milk, an amount that definitely wasn’t enough for what was to come.
After the stop, they took a detour off of Highway 70 onto the Oroville-Quincey Highway which they followed until they reached Plumas National Forest. They continued even after the road ended until Jack’s 1969 Mercury Montego got stuck in the snow and mud, forcing them to continue on foot. Even stranger, the car showed not a single scratch or dent from driving off-road during heavy snows.
By morning, their parents began to call law enforcement after discovering that none of the other parents’ sons made their way home that night. Disappearing without a word wasn’t something the boys would do, especially not when they were expecting to play in a tournament sponsored by the Special Olympics on February 25th.
One man by the name of Joseph Schons later stepped forward to tell police that he had seen the car. He was headed towards his cabin to prepare for a weekend ski trip. On the way back, he wound up stuck in the snow and began to suffer from a heart attack.
Seeing headlights in the distance, he tried to call for help but whoever was in the car turned off their headlights. He then saw a group of small lights, likely the boys’ having turned on their flashlights after getting out of the car, and tried to follow them for help. This time, they turned off their flashlights after he called to them.
Joseph later reached a lodge eight miles down the road where he was able to get help from a manager. On their way home, he saw the abandoned Montego which he believed to be the car that the group drove. Ted’s mother found this strange since he and Bill Sterling had helped strangers with medical emergencies before, particularly a person who had overdosed on Valium.
Is Joseph’s testimony completely trustworthy? There’s a chance he may have been hallucinating parts of it. Police noted discrepancies in his retellings regarding his actual physical state at the time which would be retold as either better or worse for seemingly no reason.
So imagine this: You have five mentally impaired men driving on a dark, unlit road on a cold winter night wearing clothes not fit for the weather. They act in ways that are completely incompatible with their previous actions and habits. Plus, they actively avoid talking to anyone else on the road. There’s only one conclusion: foul play.
Or is it? Another theory is that the boys began to suffer from their mental disabilities. Gary had schizophrenia but was the only one within the group who had no intellectual disability. The boys may have chosen to follow him, not realizing that he was slowly losing his grip on reality.
About 19.4 miles from the Montego was a trailer that sheltered the decaying body of Ted Weiher who appeared to have starved to death despite the large supply of food available inside the trailer. Jack and Bill were found on opposite sides of the road about 11.4 miles from the Montego. Their cause of death was hypothermia. Jack’s remains were found scattered two miles away from the trailer with only his shoes and jeans allowing for his identification.
Okay, what about Gary Mathias? While police found three forest service blankets and a rusty flashlight a quarter-mile from the trailer, there was no trace of him to be found.
To this day, no one knows for sure what happened to the five men but one thing is for sure: the trauma and distress from the incident follow their families to this day.
3. Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
Here’s a question for you: who put Bella in the Wych elm?
Strict rationing during World War II gave four young boys no choice but to venture into the mysterious Hagley Woods, a forest in Stourbridge, United Kingdom, to look for bird’s eggs.
After reaching a massive elm tree, the boys spotted a white round object peeping out from inside. One of the boys tried picking it out with a stick only to find that it was a skull. Talk about traumatizing.
Word soon reached the police who brought the skeleton out of the tree. Autopsies showed that the woman had been dead for about 18 months and attempts to identify her using dental records produced no results.
After her discovery, strange graffiti began appearing in Birmingham and areas of the West Midlands all asking the same question: who put Bella in the Wych elm? Variations of the phrase cropped up but they all kept asking for the person who placed her skeleton inside the tree.
Some speculated that “Bella” was a German spy who was killed by her confederates hence the lack of people stepping forward to look claim her body. One anthropologist, Professor Margaret Murray, proposed that the strange location of the skeleton was due to her death being linked to a human sacrifice. Murray claimed that the murder was committed by a coven of witches that operated in Hagley Woods.
Graffiti related to the death of “Bella” kept appearing as late as 1999 but the case is still unsolved.
A facial reconstruction made in 2017 by forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson shows what the victim’s face may have looked like. It could have come in handy in investigating the case decades ago but at this point, there’s little to be gained from knowing what “Bella” looked like.