Monday, June 4, 2018

Unsolved Murder Mysteries

By definition, murder is the unlawful calculated killing of one human being by another.

In reality, most murders are not committed with premeditation, but the product of one manic moment. They are often the result of pent-up emotions waiting to erupt like a volcano when one's restraint finally snaps.

The murders that horrify the public the most are the ones caused by greed, hatred, sadistic urges, or those which are the result of a twisted mind that seemed to be caused by nothing but bloodlust.

Murderers have been known to pick out their victims by specific characteristics like the color of their hair, their sexual orientation, or even their resemblance with how they look with someone in their past that did them wrong.

Serial killers on the other hand, they carry out a series of murders, usually with no apparent reason, but they always follow a predictable behavioral pattern.



Today, I'm going to type about two of the most infamous unsolved murder mysteries of all time. I'm going to touch lightly on them as they are very lengthy.


Lizzie Borden

Poor Lizzie Borden was portrayed as the fiendish axe-murderer who 'gave her mother 40 whacks, her father 41'.

Although Hollywood labelled her a killer and gossips insisted that she was a cruel murderess, she was acquitted by a jury and lived to a ripe old age. But till her passing in 1937, she was insulted by one of the most cruel jingles in history,

"Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41."

On the morning of 4 August 1892, Lizzie found her father, Andrew Borden, pounded in to 'an unrecognizable pulp'. He was laying on a blood-soaked sofa, where he was apparently having a short nap when the murderer struck.

Meanwhile, Lizzie's stepmother had supposedly been called from the house to the sickbed of her friend, but in the end she hadn't gone after all. She was found on the floor of a guest room upstairs. Her skull, a mass of blood and flesh, and splintered of bone.

Inescapably, Lizzie Borden was the main suspect of the murders that happened in The Borden House. Lizzie told the police that she had been in their barn looking for line-sinkers when the murders took place.

Bridget Sullivan, the Borden's hired girl had been upstairs sleeping through the heat of the day. Lizzie's older sister, Emma Border had been out of town, and a visiting uncle of Lizzie's had been put that time, making business calls. 

This left Lizzie to herself, to be the main suspect.

She was brought up to trial in June 1983, as the evidence began to stack up against her. There was no bad blood between the family members, so there had not been a specific reason as to why she did it. 

A suggestion came up that Lizzie had butchered her parents in an epileptic seizure and had no recollections of the crime that she had supposedly committed. But in the end, the police could not unearth a murder weapon, no witnesses, no shreds of bloody clothing, and even the circumstantial evidence provided was just too flimsy and vague.

Surrounded by rousing cheers, Lizzie Borden was declared innocent to the murders of her father and step-mother was free.

They were suspicions of the three people who testified against her, but for reasons unknown, the police failed to crack the case open again.

As the years passed, the old jingle haunted her life and wax museums around the world continued to portray her as an ax-wielding fiend. 

Gentle in life and forgiving in death, she had said nothing about the agonies and torments that she had once suffered.


Lizzie Borden

Death of The Black Dahlia

A savagely mutilated corpse had been found on an underdeveloped building site in Los Angeles suburb on the 15th of January 1947. 

It was the body of a young female, cut in half at the waist with the initials 'B.D.' carved unto her thigh.




It was these initials that gave this it's popularity. They stood for 'Black Dahlia' which was the nickname that was given to an actress named, Elizabeth Short, which the body of the corpse was identified to be hers through the help science.

Her life was a short but unhappy one. Elizabeth had been a juvenile delinquent, but found love and a chance of a new life when she met a young servicemen who proposed. But they parted ways when he was posted overseas for World War 2.

His eventual death led Elizabeth on a downhill path. She turned to drinking, working as a waitress at sleazy bars and clubs, and she also tried her luck as a small-time actress in Hollywood. 

She eventually became known for her black apparel - especially her black silk underwear.

Elizabeth had one further chance in love when a second lover proposed, but grimly, he too died.

When the discovery of her butchered body was splayed across newspapers, a strange reaction set in. It incited an extremely surprising amount of false reports and confessions.

The first came from a waitress who said she had heard two killers discussing the murder at a table. She gave the police a description which then led to the arrest of a pair. Detectives took them in for questioning, which eventually led to the discovery of their innocence.

One piece of evidence that the police took more seriously was a package sent to a newspaper company in Los Angeles. It was enclosed with a message cut from press headlines. 


Sure enough, the package contained her social security card, birth certificate and an address book - with one page torn out. 

Police said that they believed that the personal belongings of Elizabeth was taken form her body, as there was no clothing was found at the scene. Fingerprints were also taken from the social security card but none of them matched anyone from the police files. 

Later, a small underworld figure gave himself up to the police, saying that he killed the Black Dahlia. The detectives working on the case thought that they finally cracked it because in Elizabeth's address book had been the name of the firm that the suspect worked for, but eventually a lie-detector test proved him to be a liar.

Years later, an army corporal was held on suspicion as he knew many details of the killing. But in the end, he was finally released as being mentally unstable.

All in all, about 50 men have came up to confessed that they have committed the notorious murder of the Elizabeth Short - but till this day, the case of the Black Dahlia would remain unsolved.


Elizabeth 'The Black Dahlia' Short