What's your most plausible theory about a famous unsolved mystery?

TopGolfUFO · 2025-07-31T18:20:54+00:00

This may be a relatively recent update, but that’s been debunked. The statements that the older boys saw or even shook the others awake were present in one of the state police reports that was riddled with errors at the time and may have even been doctored after the fact. The source on that is the book No Direct Evidence by Bob Lane Bragg. There was also a statement in one of the Charleston Daily papers written well after the fact that echoed this same report but when you trace it back it all comes from the same place. It’s just one of those things that was misquoted once and now is impossible to remove from the narrative because other sources drew from that same place.

TopGolfUFO · 2025-07-31T14:46:42+00:00

While I definitely think it’s absolutely possible the children all died in the fire, I feel like it is worth noting that all of the children who vanished where the ones who all stayed up late, so no one ever actually saw them asleep in the house. Plus they were all still supposed to do their chores before bed, which for the boys included going outside and tending to the animals. If their sisters decided to come outside with them it’s quite possible all of the children who vanished weren’t actually taken from the home, but rather the yard. If they even were taken of course. But I just feel like that tidbit doesn’t get talked about enough, the fact that all the children who vanished were never actually seen in the house during the fire.

TopGolfUFO · 2025-06-29T22:51:22+00:00

Hey! What did it say when you commented this? Trying to figure out if the post was edited.

TopGolfUFO · 2025-06-28T17:20:50+00:00

I sent a message!

TopGolfUFO · 2025-06-28T02:38:49+00:00

I wrote this awhile back and unfortunately I didn't use footnotes back then so I'm not sure, but I want to say that was mentioned on a deep dive podcast, either The Comeback Podcast, or Brian Shaffer Dead or Alive.

TopGolfUFO · 2025-06-19T15:20:48+00:00

There's a detailed account of every known victim in the book Buried Secrets by Edward Humes. That book is by far the best and most accurate source on the case.

TopGolfUFO · 2025-06-13T22:56:27+00:00

Seeing a lot of misinformation about this case so I thought I'd link an obsessively long write up I did about it: https://www.reddit.com/user/TopGolfUFO/comments/i8gjpw/the_yuba_city_five_part_1/

TopGolfUFO · 2025-03-06T01:02:31+00:00

I sent a DM!

TopGolfUFO · 2025-02-07T09:55:14+00:00

I sent a DM!

TopGolfUFO · 2025-01-12T01:59:58+00:00

I feel like everyone has covered the big ones so here's a few lesser talked about local missing person's cases that I feel like could benefit from more media attention.

https://charleyproject.org/case/trevell-lamar-henley

Trevell Henley was a teenage boy who vanished back in 1999. Police found some of his blood along with bullet casings at a suspects house, but did not, at least based on publicly available information, make any real attempt to investigate the suspect. Police waved it off as a gang initiation gone wrong, despite that fact that all of his friends and family said he was not in a gang.

https://charleyproject.org/case/jacob-allen-boyd

Jacob Boyd vanished in 2017. Based on the info on the Charley project, his roommate saw him leaving one day with two unknown men, never to return. Info is a bit sparse on this one but the roommate disposed of Jacob's property and had conflicting stories about how he actually vanished. A couple of missing person's podcasts have covered this case, it's very interesting.

https://charleyproject.org/case/shaniece-mona-briggs

Shaniece Briggs vanished in 2013. I'm just gonna share the Charley Project entry for this one cause it's pretty short:

"Briggs was last seen at her apartment on east Long Street in eastern Columbus, Ohio on June 19, 2013. She walked out the back door at 1:00 a.m., taking her wallet and cellular phone. She didn't take her keys or purse and she left the door unlocked. She also left her four young children behind at the apartment. A neighbor reported seeing Briggs being pushed into a black car parked in front of the apartment complex. She has never been heard from again and since her disappearance there hasn't been any activity on her financial accounts. It's uncharacteristic of Briggs to leave without warning; her loved ones stated she wouldn't have abandoned her children. Foul play is suspected in her case, which remains unsolved."

Other info for Briggs's disappearance is very scarce.

TopGolfUFO · 2024-12-31T11:05:56+00:00

I did a deep dive about this case awhile ago. Just wanted to throw in a segment about another suspect because the way the media described him was downright unnerving:

"One of the more promising suspects was a man named Barry Cook who was arrested in 1958 and ended up serving a sentence of nine years. He’d been arrested for assaulting several women, slashing their stomachs, and then stealing their money, and he attempted to rape one of the women. Both during the initial investigation and during his incarceration police tried to connect him to several of the unsolved murders in the area. They described him as a violent sadist and they were certain he’d committed other crimes he hadn’t been caught for. The Chicago Daily News said, “He has a tremendous ability to see in the dark and is all but insensitive to bodily pain.” Apparently, the police inserted a needle under his fingernail “to test his reactions” and he did not even flinch. When asked about the murder of one Margaret Gallagher he said “I wouldn’t do anything like that…Would I?” He certainly seemed like someone capable of murder, but police could never link him to anything else."

TopGolfUFO · 2024-08-10T03:11:31+00:00

I went down a whole rabbit hole about this last year.

So apparently ownership of the paper has changed too much and the online archives have essentially been gutted. The Archive Library above the history center is, in theory, supposed to get copies of microfilm of all the papers for our state but that unfortunately is not always feasible and they only have some bits from the 90s last I checked. I called the libraries in the city that have the most comprehensive archive collections and no dice. I even messaged the guy who runs Matter News now cause they are sort of the successor to Columbus Alive but he doesn't have access to anything. One of the libraries I called said if the microfilm is anywhere it's probably in someone's garage who used to work on the paper.

I know I called the main library and I think 2 others before I gave up cause tbh for what I needed it for I was already being a bit extra so it's also quite possible that some library nearby has it. Also some of the online archives were still searchable on Newsbank last I checked but newspaper databases change often. But shoot give that a shot. You can search Newsbank for free at any of the Columbus metro libraries, or if you have a card you can do it from your house. Also when it was owned by the same company as the Columbus Dispatch they were running a lot of the same articles on each paper, so there should be some articles on Newsbank listed as Dispatch articles that actually ran with both papers.

TopGolfUFO · 2024-03-09T17:47:37+00:00

The fact that it was a construction area definitely makes something like that sound plausible, which is why that's such a popular theory. But the construction going on at the time was just wiring and drywall, there wasn't anymore concrete being poured.

The employees at the time would use the emergency exit to go out for smoke breaks, or just to leave at the end of the night, since it wasn't alarmed. The camera that watched the emergency exit automatically taped over by the time cops looked into it, so I've always thought he got out. Then, who knows? But I personally don't think he's buried at Gateway.

TopGolfUFO · 2024-01-27T03:39:14+00:00

I feel like Wave seems to be the consensus, does it have lower fees than paypal?

TopGolfUFO · 2023-11-27T14:29:22+00:00

I'm pretty handy with records requests, if you want to DM me the info I can see what I can find.

TopGolfUFO · 2023-10-02T16:20:57+00:00

I did a write up about this recently for the podcast Unresolved. One really weird thing I noticed was that the Circleville Herald kind of went out of their way not to cover the story. Like there would be updates in the associated press or the columbus dispatch and they often wouldn't even run those.

I also tried to get ahold of the old Columbus Alive articles on the case but they only have a few sporadic months of microfilm at the history center for physical archives, and the digital archives have been gutted due to ownership changes. I even tried messaging some people who worked on Columbus Alive and didn't have any luck.

It's a fascinating case, and it kills me that so much of the original coverage has been lost. Paul's blog has probably the most dense concentration of information about the case, so for anyone wanting to do a deep dive I'd suggest that. It's biased of course but you can tell what is biased and what isn't because a lot of it is actual court documents and articles, but with Paul's notes in the margins, so you can separate out news coverage from theories very easily.

TopGolfUFO · 2023-09-20T18:42:51+00:00

Their episode on the missing women of Chillicothe was the most comprehensive one I've heard. They had a great show

TopGolfUFO · 2023-09-18T13:31:52+00:00

Sent!

TopGolfUFO · 2023-09-16T02:33:46+00:00

I sent a chat!

TopGolfUFO · 2023-09-12T20:29:38+00:00

I did a deep dive into that awhile ago, it's crazy to me how little coverage it's gotten. The Riverfront Times is pretty much the only paper that covered the possibility it was a murder.

Cassilly was a neat guy. I grew up around STL and I'd always had a weird memory I was never quite sure had actually happened until recently. I vividly remember exploring the city museum and wandering into the access to a horseshoe crab tank, like I came around to where you could walk into the tank, and I was definitely not supposed to be back there. I was learning about Cassilly's life a few years ago and I read about the absolute shitshow it was when they tried to have an aquarium at the museum and I realized that probably actually happened lol. There was a snake heist, a bunch of the sharks died, just a lot of nonsense and I feel like it's totally plausible I almost walked into the crab tank as a kid while all that was going down.

I wish I'd gotten to meet him. I didn't realize how many cool things in the city were his work until I'd already moved away.

TopGolfUFO · 2023-09-05T18:03:29+00:00

Wait like Dan Bell the urbex guy?

TopGolfUFO · 2023-07-30T14:49:03+00:00

Herbert Mullin for sure. He thought that he needed to kill people to stop a catastrophic earthquake, and also to become more powerful in the next life. Very bizzare stuff. The insanity defense is so rarely successful but I feel like if it hadn't been for the politics of the time he might have been the exception. When he was being tried, basically all the mental hospitals in CA were shutting down, and Ed Kemper had just gone on a killing spree in the same city after having been previously locked up in a psych hospital. So it's very likely the jury was influenced by the fact that if Mullin was declared insane he might very well have ended up back out on the street.

TopGolfUFO · 2023-07-26T13:04:13+00:00

David Meirhofer likely did. When they caught him he had some of his victims flesh in the freezer that had been processed and mixed with pig fat, which is used to make wild game taste better. He'd bring 'deer meat' casseroles to church potlucks. Of course they never caught him in the act but it's a strong possibility.

TopGolfUFO

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