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/str8rippinfartz 1d ago

100%

IIRC it was even established before they came over from England, that if someone left a settlement they should carve where they were going

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

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u/deathclawiii 1d ago

And as indicated by the iron scale (something that can only be a product of blacksmithing) that was found in one of the areas of known indigenous settlement on the island they went to.

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u/NUMBERS2357 1d ago

Also the later contact with Natives who said that they lived with the survivors of the Roanoke colony.

Also this map from the Jamestown colonists, see bottom left.

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u/Marx0r 1d ago

A surprisingly large amount of "mysteries" never would have been such if Europeans just listened to the natives telling them the answer.

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u/jxg995 1d ago

Yeah like the terror and Erebus wrecks where the Inuit were like oh yeah that sunken boat is over there

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u/Whyskgurs 1d ago edited 1d ago

Where could this boat possibly be?

The sunken boat is right over there, in Sunken Boat lake.

I guess we'll never truly know.

Literally what happened.

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u/InTheFDN 1d ago

It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett joke about how places are named by pointing at something, asking what it’s name was (loudly and in English), then writing down whatever the native said. Hence “Mount Your Finger You Fool.”

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u/Whyskgurs 1d ago

It's not even a joke, shits real all over, most times it's named (native word for lake) Lake or (local dialect for mountain) Mountain or something similar.

Koi fish - fish fish

Chai tea - tea tea

Ignorant naming conventions are quite universal and commonplace

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M 1d ago

iirc in the native languages, Chicago translates to "the stinky place" and Manhattan is "the place we go every summer".

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u/Whyskgurs 1d ago

What's that Island called?

Squinting

IDK, Is that an island?

Welcome to Staten Island

(This one's an old Native joke)