Your favourite unsolved mystery?

jonon9

check_six wrote: »

Good documentary about the Kennedy assassination a few years back debunked the theory that Oswald couldn't have fired three accurate shots in the time frame available. They demonstrated how a trained marksman (Oswald had been trained while in the army) could comfortably complete the task with time to spare. They also looked at the trees that now obscure part of the road from the point of view of the book depository building. Fifty years ago the trees were a lot smaller and allowed a good view of the road the motorcade was on.

Their conclusion, it was definitely possible for Oswald to be the only assassin. No grassy knoll people were required for events to pan out the way they did. Doesn't mean there wasn't a shadowy cabal pulling his strings in the background and obscuring things afterwards!

I still believe it was The Cigarette Smoking Man that shot him.

duploelabs

jonon9 wrote: »

I still believe it was The Cigarette Smoking Man that shot him.

Nah Magneto

Custardpi

I've always found the whole "grassy knoll" focus of JFK conspiracy theories to be something of a red herring. It's been shown pretty conclusively that Oswald was a good enough shot to be able to commit the actual murder by himself, even if there were other conspirators there in Dealy Plaza that day. The wider question of whether he acted completely alone or whether he had material help or was at least prodded & encouraged to act by others is far more interesting in my view.

somefeen

Why someone would have no use for a pair of headphones

Cork boy 55

The Travis Walton incident, 1975, Arizona.

Travis Walton (born February 10, 1953) is an American logger who was allegedly abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working with a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton could not be found, but reappeared after a five-day search.
The Walton case received mainstream publicity and remains one of the best-known instances of alleged alien abduction. UFO historian Jerome Clark writes that "Few abduction reports have generated as much controversy" as the Walton case. It is furthermore one of the very few alleged alien abduction cases with some corroborative eyewitnesses, and one of few alleged abduction cases where the time allegedly spent in the custody of aliens plays a rather minor role in the overall account.
UFO researchers Jenny Randles and Peter Houghe write that "Neither before or since has an abduction story begun in the manner related by Walton and his coworkers. Furthermore, the Walton case is singular in that the victim vanished for days on end with police squads out searching … it is an atypical 'Close Encounter: Fourth Kind' (CE4) … which bucks the trend so much that it worried some investigators; others defend it staunchly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Walton

Maximus Alexander

somefeen wrote: »

Why someone would have no use for a pair of headphones

Now that's a good callback.

Gongoozler

Wtf is a grassy knoll

Sheep Lover

Gongoozler wrote: »

Wtf is a grassy knoll

Like a grassy troll but different

Maximus Alexander

Gongoozler wrote: »

Wtf is a grassy knoll

It's just people misspelling Grassy Noel.

UCDVet

Possibly already mentioned, but I think this one has captivated many of us. I was only 3 or 4 when my Mother told me the tale; she asked me, 'Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?'

Not me, I replied.

Then who?

Indeed.

Decades later and I still do not know. Who. Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

Cianmcliam

Custardpi wrote: »

I've always found the whole "grassy knoll" focus of JFK conspiracy theories to be something of a red herring. It's been shown pretty conclusively that Oswald was a good enough shot to be able to commit the actual murder by himself, even if there were other conspirators there in Dealy Plaza that day. The wider question of whether he acted completely alone or whether he had material help or was at least prodded & encouraged to act by others is far more interesting in my view.

Well I think the fact that the guy that hired him, Roy Truly I think his name was, managed two different buildings for the School Book depository and just randomly assigned Oswald to one building and another guy to the other a couple of weeks before the assassination and before the route was announced shows just how unplanned the assassination was. If Roy had assigned Oswald to the other building away from the centre of the city or if the route that was later announced was different, it may never have happened.

As Vincent Bugliosi points out, what kind of serious plot hinged on the assassins wife's friend knowing a guy who needed casual workers for one of two possible buildings just over two weeks before the attempt, and before the route was even settled? It's crazy stuff.

Custardpi

But surely your average world leader's plans tend to change for logistical/security reasons all the time. No serious conspirator (s) would expect to operate on the basis of being able to plan or predict movements more than a couple of weeks in advance. Did Oswald get lucky? Sure, but that in & of itself doesn't mean there wasn't a wider group waiting for just the right opportunity.

Cianmcliam

Custardpi wrote: »

But surely your average world leader's plans tend to change for logistical/security reasons all the time. No serious conspirator (s) would expect to operate on the basis of being able to plan or predict movements more than a couple of weeks in advance. Did Oswald get lucky? Sure, but that in & of itself doesn't mean there wasn't a wider group waiting for just the right opportunity.

I guess the point I am making is if there was any plot then Oswald was not part of it, sure only a few weeks before he was in Mexico trying to move to Cuba. If he was being used by a sinister gang of conspirators then he wouldn't be wandering around the city aimlessly afterwards, hopping on and off buses and into cinemas without paying. He would have been whisked off either out of the country or into a deep hole in the ground immediately after leaving the building.

Into The Blue

Cianmcliam wrote: »

If he was being used by a sinister gang of conspirators then he wouldn't be wandering around the city aimlessly afterwards, hopping on and off buses and into cinemas without paying. He would have been whisked off either out of the country or into a deep hole in the ground immediately after leaving the building.

Or he quite likely was left high and dry as a scape goat and killed before he had a chance to be turned..

bjork

^^^^^^or he was under the influence of the MK Ultra programme

Custardpi

The fact that a conspiracy (if indeed such existed) did not come off 100% perfectly is not in & of itself an argument against it. The CIA tried to kill Fidel Castro hundreds of times & failed, due to a combination of bad luck & incompetence. It's quite possible that they could still have got lucky once in spite of this. To expect a smaller organisation to get everything right in the JFK case is probably a bit much in that context.

Jinonatron

Anybody see the short movie called "The last days of Peter Bergmann". An intruging case in Slgo. I cannot post a link but go to google.ie and type "the last days of peter bergmann aeon video". It will be the first link.Video is 19 minutes.

Basically a random foreigner shows up in Sligo, acts weird for 3 days and kills himself on Rosses Point beach. Would love to know who he sent his letters to, why he had no treatment for his illness and what was in the paper bag. Presumably a logical explanation but strange that nobody has come looking for him I guess.

Capt'n Midnight

What's striking about the JFK assassination is not who killed him , but how many suspect groups there were.

Who killed JFK ?

Whoever got there first. It doesn't make the others innocent.

Custardpi

Yes it's fascinating to think of the political climate of the time from that angle. There would have been groups from across the full width of the political spectrum who had the motive. Everyone from Southern white supremacists to supporters of the Castro régime wanted JFK dead.

Cianmcliam

Well Oswald was a supporter of Castro, he even tried to set up a 'Fair Play for Cuba' committee in New Orleans but ended up its sole member. He didn't do it on behalf of Castro though, Castro explained that this would have been just the excuse needed to wipe his regime off the face of the planet. He wasn't stupid.

Likewise, the Mafia had no history or motive for targeting national politicians.

Johnson was in total panic afterwards that it would turn out to have been the Russians and he would have stark decisions to make, part of the reason the investigation was so secretive was so they could deal with the possibility before it could become public knowledge.

Hoover liked to remind JFK that he had thick files on him and his indiscretions, his STD's and crippling back condition that he tried to hide so well. Enough to discredit him totally. No need for the CIA to resort to insanely risky plots.

The fact is that political leaders can be destroyed by much easier means.

Oswald defected to Russia really believing he would become a celebrated revolutionary intellectual. Instead they put him to work in a radio factory in a crappy, grey minor city under 24 hour surveillance.

Then he came back to the U.S. and realised Cuba was where the revolution was and their embassy laughed at him, the Russians told them he really was a nutcase who attempted suicide when refused residency. He then tried to persuade his pregnant wife to hijack a plane to Cuba with him.

With nowhere to go he decided to make a political impact by becoming an assassin, but he makes a mess of that too. Sick of his beatings and rants his wife leaves him. He's stuck in a dead end job and living alone in nothing more than a large wardrobe. Unfortunately for JFK, Oswald couldn't bear being just a nobody.

Custardpi

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Well Oswald was a supporter of Castro, he even tried to set up a 'Fair Play for Cuba' committee in New Orleans but ended up its sole member. He didn't do it on behalf of Castro though, Castro explained that this would have been just the excuse needed to wipe his regime off the face of the planet. He wasn't stupid.

Likewise, the Mafia had no history or motive for targeting national politicians.

Johnson was in total panic afterwards that it would turn out to have been the Russians and he would have stark decisions to make, part of the reason the investigation was so secretive was so they could deal with the possibility before it could become public knowledge.

Just on these few points. While I don't believe that the KGB itself was involved the reality is that the world had already come to the brink over Cuba & there was no way that Johnson would have wanted to get into that situation again, even over something so serious as a Presidential assassination. The risk of all out nuclear war resulting would have been just too high. For this reason Castro would have been quite able to kill Kennedy & get away with it more or less scot free, provided the involvement could be covered up by the US authorities. Not saying he did of course.

As regards the mafia while it's true they didn't have a history of killing national politicians there's a first time for everything. Many have speculated that AG Bobby Kennedy's crack down on organised crime angered many high ranking mobsters, particularly given their connections to the Kennedy electoral machine. There was certainly a motive there & probably the capability of carrying it out.

sashafierce

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check_six

sashafierce wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

That's not a particularly well known one. Care to flesh it out a bit?

Mesrine65

http://mostlymystery.com/missing-in-panama-a-mystery-deepens-2/

bjork

Mesrine65 wrote: »

http://mostlymystery.com/missing-in-panama-a-mystery-deepens-2/

That's a strange one all right! The pictures found of the camera are fair creepy and the backpack found so far away?!?

chrysagon

the biggest mystery to me?

why were no bankers jailed after the recession?

Lingua Franca

That link re: Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers is fairly old. They did find some skeletal remains in around November or December. It's still unknown whether the girls were killed by bandits, by animals or just by getting hopelessly lost in the jungle, but they are confirmed dead.

sashafierce

This post has been deleted.

Two from South Kerry.

Leidy Kaspersma, Dutch woman missing since the late 1970s from the mountains south of Kenmare after being left out of a car.

http://www.missing.ws/_missingpersons/missingPerson.asp?id=966

Charles Brook Picard, abducted near Castlecove in 1991.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/sons-fresh-appeal-for-information-on-abduction-238945.html

Two from South Kerry.

Leidy Kaspersma, Dutch woman missing since the late 1970s from the mountains south of Kenmare after being left out of a car.

http://www.missing.ws/_missingpersons/missingPerson.asp?id=966

Charles Brook Picard, abducted near Castlecove in 1991.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/sons-fresh-appeal-for-information-on-abduction-238945.html