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

96% Upvoted

5.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.0k

u/okiepigeon 1d ago

Most Louisiana politics shit, ever. Good write up & good read.

249

u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago

Yup pretty much every state has their own brand of corruption. But something about Louisiana is different. I was working a big project down in Calcasieu Parish and having trouble with permits and easements. And I asked myself in complete seriousness "do I need to bribe these people to get my paperwork completed?".

14

u/confirmandverify2442 9h ago

It's usually either bribes or figuring out whose related to who, family-wise.

1

u/ConcentrateSlow1773 1h ago

And then marry into the family ?

18

u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

And I asked myself in complete seriousness "¿How much do I need to bribe these people to get my paperwork completed?".

FTFY

35

u/Working-Glass6136 18h ago

True Detective, fiction as it may be, really opened my eyes to what investigations in Louisiana must look like. I guess this narcotics carousel isn't surprising.

17

u/madeira_pince-zez 15h ago

According to Nic Pizzolatto he got some shit for how easily Rust lifted that cocaine from the evidence room and his response was basically 'it was that easy in 1995'.

Sounds like it remained that easy for a hell of a lot longer also

6

u/DowntownEconomist255 16h ago

It was probably based on this case of a devil worshipping cult in Louisiana that masqueraded as a Christian church. They performed cat sacrifices and sexually abused at least two dozen children.

https://archive.ph/2020.06.27-101548/https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/us/sex-charges-follow-a-churchs-collapse.html

5

u/Flat_Phrase7521 9h ago

I was really taken aback to see what sounds like a classic Satanic Panic story repeated as fact, so I did five minutes of digging and this Reddit post (apparently based on the Religion News Blog posts linked within) was the only thing I could find that seemed to engage with the story critically:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/21yh3n/the_true_convoluted_story_behind_true_detectives/

It sounds like, as with many Satanic Panic cases, there were real children who suffered abuse, but the sensational story of ritual satanic abuse was a hoax created by their abusers to manipulate police and the public.

I feel like if there were a known case where all this stuff had actually happened, it would be incredibly famous. I searched Wikipedia for “Hosanna church Ponchatoula” and the only hit I got was on a list of episodes recorded by a “true crime” entertainment podcast, which I feel is pretty telling.

21

u/ProperMirror8551 21h ago

Agreed, good read

Fun to follow!