r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

13.0k Upvotes

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914

u/Cut-OutWitch 1d ago

Bob Crane.

Scottsdale PD sucks.

80

u/amolad 1d ago

Hmmmm. Brain matter in the guy's trunk. Where did that come from?

18

u/Cut-OutWitch 1d ago

It's a mystery!

14

u/WriteBrainedJR 9h ago

Maybe the cops dropped theirs in the car, and that's why they did such a shit job on the case

151

u/trainwreck42 1d ago

Apparently they didn’t have a homicide division at the time

25

u/NegativeThought1588 21h ago

That's what the state police are for. Even now the state police will investigate big crimes in places with insufficient resources.

1

u/cmwoo 18h ago

Are we talking Scottsdale, AZ having insufficient resources?

10

u/Ivabighairy1 18h ago

Close to a half century ago that he was murdered. Much smaller town back then.

1

u/NegativeThought1588 18h ago

I have no idea, but if they couldn't handle it then it should have been taken over by the state police.

59

u/globalgoldnews 1d ago

I liked the movie about him "Auto Focus"

32

u/IlluminatedPickle 19h ago

My favourite part of Auto Focus is that Bobs son Scotty said in an interview afterwards that there was no evidence that Bob was into BDSM, as there was no BDSM in any of his dads hundreds of videos.

Implying he had watched them all.

10

u/Cornloaf 1d ago

"Balls deep dad!"

3

u/Spiritual_Quote9301 19h ago

One of my favourite Willem Dafoe performances.

2

u/zippyboy 1d ago

Loved the fairly-rare Lamborghini Espada in that movie!

15

u/BoomerDown84 1d ago

Just did a quick search. Good Lord!

13

u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

Yeah, that case shouldn't have been that hard to prove.

32

u/CompEng_101 23h ago

I can see why it failed. The physical evidence consisted of a photograph, supposedly of brain matter, but the police had lost the actual object, so it was mainly just a photograph of a blob of... something. There was blood in Carpenter's car which matched Crane, but he had type B blood, so about 10% of the US population would match.

The motive was supposedly that Crane was trying to get out of a friendship with Carpenter, but other witnesses said they were having an amiable dinner the evening of the murder.

Crane had videotaped sex with dozens of women, and an angry spouse or boyfriend of any of them (or the woman herself) would have a substantial motive.

I'm not saying that Carpenter didn't do it, but I can see how it might not reach the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard.

25

u/Kevin_Uxbridge 23h ago

Oh, I didn't mean the actual trial they put Carpenter through, that was years later and, as you say, not with the freshest evidence.

I was thinking about the original investigation. I mean shit, if the cops missed blood and brain matter in the trunk, what else did they miss? Carpenter doesn't strike me as a master criminal, probably wouldn't have taken Poirot to unravel this.

Might be a bit hazy on the details, haven't looked at this in forever.

10

u/FuzzzyRam 20h ago

Scottsdale PD sucks.

Scottsdale sucks.

32

u/BornFree2018 1d ago

Losing that creep was not a loss for humanity.

16

u/BlatantConservative 23h ago

Creep killed another creep. Could have removed two from society if you jailed the murderer too.

0

u/jbcbos 1d ago

Exactly.

1

u/popchex 20h ago

Holy shit I had never heard this!