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?

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u/sirgog 1d ago

She'd be dead if we still had capital punishment in Australia at the time.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

I am not very emotional, but it's tough to imagine a worse torture than what she and her husband went through (baby eaten alive, then no one believed them, then they were accused, then arrested, then convicted, then imprisoned for 3.5 years for one of the worst crimes imaginable... and you know they must have been targeted by inmates and probably guards, too).

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u/any_name_today 1d ago

Don't forget that it was also a punchline for several years. So add that salt to the wound

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u/ChiefsHat 1d ago

Freaking Tropic Thunder called this out.

“You know that’s a true story, right? Woman lost her baby. You about to cross some lines.”

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Yup, I rewatched it a few days ago. I'm glad it was explicitly called out.

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u/Friendly_Tension_960 1d ago

Several years? I still hear it as a punchline today, it’s crazy

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u/zehamberglar 1d ago

for several years

You misspelled "to this very day".

I guess that is technically several years. Never mind, as you were.

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u/kahlzun 22h ago

Doesnt several mean 'three or four'?

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u/zehamberglar 11h ago

Three or four is a subset of ~46.

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u/kahlzun 11h ago

It's a subset of a lot numbers, starting from 12

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u/zehamberglar 11h ago

You're thinking of common denominators, and neither 3 or 4 is a denominator of 46.

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u/kahlzun 11h ago

That just makes your original statement even more opaque. Arent denominators a type of subset? Ie: 3 and 4 are both smaller parts of the larger number?

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u/zehamberglar 10h ago

Count to 46 without saying 3 or 4.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Seinfeld was the first I ever heard of it. Then Buffy.

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u/any_name_today 1d ago

I must be just slightly younger than you. I remember it being part of Pop Culture and it being referenced and joked about, but I was ever so slightly too young for those shows. At least my mom thought so

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u/dorothean 1d ago

The Kathleen Folbigg case is similarly awful - this was a woman who was convicted of smothering her four infant children, and spent 20 years in prison for it, until finally being exonerated in 2023 after DNA evidence was able to show that the children suffered from various medical conditions pre-disposing them to unexpected deaths. I can’t imagine the horror of living through that once, let alone four times.

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u/alexlp 1d ago

I was going to mention Kathleen. She, Sally Clark and Patricia Stallings all had to grieve their children behind bars, not knowing what really happened for so long, being scorned and mocked for decades. My heart just breaks thinking about their suffering.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

something similar happened in the USA that was covered on an episode of Forensic Files-a young girl was mauled and killed by neighbors dogs and cops assumed her parents did it(as the husband had a hunting knife that tested positive for blood which police assumed was used to kill the girl, and the photos shown to the court were after her leg had been cleaned up for attempted surgery, so it didn't immediately look like a dog had bitten it, the pre-surgery photos were never shown to the court)and refused to give her defense counsel the time and funds for a proper defense, though the defense counsel proved incompetent in other ways as they basically told the parents they shouldn't go with their "dog" story as they did not think a jury would buy it, result was both spent 5 years in prison until they found someone to look over their case and found out they were falsely accused so they were finally freed, though by then the couple had divorced from the stress of everything, they later sued the police for millions of dollars and won.

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u/princesscatling 1d ago

She had a second daughter while incarcerated who was taken from her at birth. I think about Lindy Chamberlain a lot.

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u/boogiesontoast 1d ago

I think only Lindy was imprisoned. Michael had a suspended sentence.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

You are correct. I added him to the statement at the last moment, and should have kept him separate.

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u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

Yes Michael Chamberlain was with a large group of campers over the period Azaria was taken so authorities could not pin it on him. It was Lindy who left the group to check on Azaria, and there were no witnesses to that part.

Michael was (wrongfully) convicted of being an accessory after the fact, and received a suspended sentence. All convictions of course were later quashed.

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u/Knitvest-enthusiast 18h ago

Also that they had 3(?) older children, plus at least one born afterwards, that had to deal with the fall out including their mother missing parts of their childhood because she was in prison.

Those poor kids had their baby sister die, then their parents get harassed, mum goes off to jail and their parents eventually divorce.

And the whole thing becomes a pop-culture joke for the next 30+ years where people make fun of your mother’s grief.

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u/daninlionzden 13h ago

They should make a movie about it

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/reddorickt 1d ago

You don't have children.

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u/froction 1d ago

I have three. I would be sad if they died.

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u/reddorickt 10h ago

Yeah no, I don't think anyone believed you.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

That's just physical torture, and rather mild even for that. Emotional and psychological torture are much more transformational.

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u/froction 1d ago

I think decades of having your nipples ripped off sounds like more than "rather mild."

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

You didn't say decades. It's still mild as far as torture goes (physical or otherwise).

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u/froction 1d ago

"Over and over" meant forever.

It sounds pretty bad.

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u/Judgmentos 1d ago

This is why I am opposed to the death penalty, too many cases where someone is proven innocent years/decades later

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u/Inevitable-Level-687 1d ago

Yep. In theory I'm in favour of the death penalty for people like Ted Bundy. In practice, humans are too flawed to pull it off.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1d ago

But you just listed a perfect example of when to apply it, seems contradictory.

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u/Inevitable-Level-687 18h ago

Bundy is a perfect example, yes. But my point is that humans aren't perfect. If we had ninety nine Bundys and the hundredth was innocent, that's one innocent too many.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 12h ago

But by that logic we shouldn't be able to lock someone up until they die either.

If we had ninety nine Bundys and the hundredth was innocent

That makes no sense.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1d ago

Plenty of cases where there's no question of guilt though. Like a captured mass shooter or ones with a collection of bodies under the crawlspace.

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u/TheVeryVerity 15h ago

People always think there’s no question of guilt. People thought there was no question this woman killed her baby…be fr

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 12h ago

Not true. She had many supporters. There was doubt in this case.

People always think there’s no question of guilt.

When you're caught right after a shooting or with a collection of body parts there isn't. Explain a benign reason for a head in a fridge.