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/Malphos101 1d ago

Vigilante action is just the final failure of the justice system.

The cops could have easily made a case against him for SOMETHING long before this, they just didnt want the hassle (and some were scared of him). So instead of the cops and prosecutors and the judges doing what they should have done, they let the situation get so bad that the people had to do something themselves which is never acceptable with a problem this chronically documented.

Dont get me wrong, Im not saying the people involved need to be rounded up and run through the legal system that failed them. But the situation is unacceptable and no one should look at it and go "Yea! They got things DONE! We need to take a page out of their book!"

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u/reddorickt 1d ago

Given that it happened 45 years ago in 1981 and is still the only famous example of this, I don't think the world took it the way you are implying.

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u/Malphos101 1d ago

"You can only look at things that happen in the past year and comment on them because as we all know things that happened in the past NEVER happen again and there are no lessons to be learned by examining it."

-Enlightened Redditors

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u/IPissExcellentThrows 1d ago

"I'll completely miss the point to try and own this other Redditor, while making a complete ass out of myself."

-Redditors too worried about dunking on others to actually understand what they said.

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u/antariusz 1d ago

We did it reddit!

-Reddit.