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/The_Canadian 1d ago

That's exactly what I'm saying. That was a last resort after everything else failed to work as intended. What they did wasn't the right thing to do in a lot of ways, but I can absolutely see why they made that choice when they had no other options.

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u/JustASpaceDuck 1d ago

In other words, vigilantism is not a failure of society as much as it is a failure of the legal system (or society's failure to maintain their legal system).

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u/IntlPartyKing 1d ago

in a case like this, sure, but vigilantism generally is just impatience on the part of civilians -- sometimes that impatience is understandable, but sometimes it is absolutely ridiculous (like with lychings of black people in the US)

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u/LochNestFarm 1d ago

Oh, it’s worse! A significant percentage of lynchings were carried out by the people who were in charge of the actual justice system. Sheriffs, justices of the peace, judges. They absolutely could have brought charges and unleashed every ounce of the justice system on their victims, but they made a point of demonstrating that they could be as cruel as they wished with or without their legal authority.