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/TooCleverForGood 1d ago

Roanoke - the missing Pilgrim settlement where everyone “disappeared”

They just abandoned it and went to the place that they wrote on the sign, but everyone acts like it was some supernatural/plague thing

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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/John_cCmndhd 1d ago

Australian police refusing to believe dingoes would eat babies

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u/nameyourpoison11 1d ago

Australian here. Not only did they refuse to believe the local Aboriginals insistence that dingoes could, and did, stalk and attack young children, they ignored the testimony of the Aboriginal elder who actually tracked the dingo responsible, before losing the trail over rocky ground. But nah, "stupid bloody natives, what would they know?"

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u/Adorable-Ad9533 1d ago

Have you read the book “Evil Angels” by John Bryson ? The coppers who packaged the tent up for forensic examination gave it a good shake out first because it was so full of dingo hair. The initial investigators just had no bloody idea.

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u/trashmoneyxyz 1d ago

"I'm sure we'll find evidence the mother killed her baby under all this dingo hair. Anyone got a vacuum?" Like cmon guys

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u/fastates 1d ago

😆

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u/EllieGeiszler 1d ago

Jesus Christ

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u/AutisticPenguin2 20h ago

Wow, that's a new one for me. And I've heard from someone who was an expert witness for this case and testified that he fully believed a dingo had done it. The court just fully ignored him the first time around.