True Crime

From Agatha Christie to Clue, everybody loves a good &quot;whodunit&quot; mystery&nbsp;with a surprise&nbsp;ending. But sometimes, <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/little-known-mysteries-with-answers/jason-f-collins" target="_blank">truth is even stranger than fiction</a>. Many of these true crime stories seemed like open-and-shut cases. Too often, though,&nbsp;the public can jump to conclusions, ignoring all other possibilities. When investigators do the same, they set themselves up for major plot twists and sometimes even wrongful convictions.&nbsp;

True crime junkies may have heard of some of these <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/unexplained-mysteries-that-were-solved/setareh-janda" target="_blank">mind-boggling&nbsp;mysteries</a> in the many rabbit holes of the internet, but others have flown completely under the radar. From the disturbing cases, to the ones with happy endings, to the&nbsp;multiple cases&nbsp;involving bubble gum, all of these unbelievable true crime plot twists will leave your head spinning.&nbsp;

12 True Crime Cases With Unexpected Plot Twists

General

True Crime Cases With Unexpected Plot Twists

Chrissy Rose

Mysteries

California has the infamous escape from Alcatraz&nbsp;and the unidentified Zodiac Killer of&nbsp;the late &#39;60s. Ted Bundy terrorized women in the Pacific Northwest in the &#39;70s.&nbsp;Florida even boasts a tale of spontaneous human combustion in the &#39;50s. Just like all of the other states in the US, Oklahoma, too, has its own unsavory secrets.&nbsp;

The Sooner State is known for many things - its football teams, its famous residents like Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton,&nbsp;tornadoes, and the Great Plains. What many people don&#39;t realize is just how many disturbing <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/cases-solved-by-unsolved-mysteries/patrick-thornton?ref=profile_pub" target="_blank">unsolved crimes</a>&nbsp;have taken place&nbsp;in Oklahoma. If you&#39;re in the mood to be mildly disturbed, tuck into this list and vote up the most mysterious stories.

Haunting Unsolved Crimes From Oklahoma

For the true crime community, 2021 was full of twists, surprises, and tragedy. The Gabby Petito case rocked the US in the fall, and even years-old cases, such as those of Kristin Smart, Elisa Lam, and D.B. Cooper, were revived through limited series&nbsp;and fresh evidence.

Here are the true crime cases that we couldn&#39;t stop thinking about in 2021.

13 True Crime Cases We Couldn't Stop Thinking About In 2021

Sarah Blumert

Pop Culture

There are few things more terrifying than having a loved one or friend go missing. Sometimes there is closure months later when a body is found;&nbsp;other times, people seem to vanish without a trace. On Reddit, people are sharing their difficult stories about friends and loved ones who went missing.

People Share Stories Of Friends Who Went Missing

Amanda Ashley

Local history is often weird history, and it&#39;s almost inevitable that if you dig deep enough, you&#39;ll learn about a creepy, disturbing, or just downright bizarre story that happened near you. Whether it&#39;s the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-the-haunted-winchester-mystery-house/natalie-hazen" target="_blank">eccentric, superstitious heiress</a> who kept building onto her house for decades to appease spirits, or&nbsp;the European tourists who disappeared into thin air, history is full of mystery. More chilling is the fact that humans have continued to display what <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/worst-experiments/will-morgan-1" target="_blank">evil they&#39;re capable of</a> throughout the centuries.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Not only are some of these&nbsp;mysteries upsetting,&nbsp;they all have a curious element as well. And just because these mysteries were solved doesn&#39;t mean they won&#39;t still creep you out. Just a tip: You probably don&#39;t want to read this before bedtime.

Local Mysteries That Still Creep Us Out Even Though They're Solved

Entertainment

Modern true-crime documentaries tend to have a&nbsp;specific look and feel, but 1992&#39;s&nbsp;Brother&rsquo;s Keeper&nbsp;- a&nbsp;harrowing, empathetic look at the death of a rural cow farmer in Upstate New York and the firestorm of the resulting trial&nbsp;- remains one of the most distinctive entries in the popular genre. Rather than relying on twists or last-minute evidence, Brother&#39;s Keeper simply introduces the audience to its cast and lets the story tell itself.&nbsp;

After the film&#39;s release,&nbsp;the directors continued to make intense <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/true-crime-documentaries/lisa-waugh" target="_blank">documentaries</a> about intense subjects. In 2019, co-director Joe Berlinger used his true-crime roots as a springboard into dramatic filmmaking with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/ted-bundy-actors-vs-real-people/maggie-clancy" target="_blank">Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile</a>, a&nbsp;film about Ted Bundy told from the point of view of his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall. But the director&#39;s interest in dark subject matter all began with his first film.

Brother&#39;s Keeper&nbsp;tells the story of the Ward brothers - Delbert, Roscoe, and Lyman - whose modest life together on their family farm erupts into controversy following the death of the fourth brother, William. Delbert, the youngest of the four, is put on trial for William&#39;s murder.

'Brother's Keeper' Is A Haunting Documentary About A Rural Murder Mystery

Sad And Shocking Details From The Documentary 'Brother's Keeper'

Jacob Shelton

What was going on the year you were born? A look at the most popular things happening in entertainment, music, and even real world news while you were busy cycling through naps.

The Year You Were Born

Timeline

Sometimes, one news story completely overtakes the airwaves. These high-profile incidents&nbsp;can be worldwide events, political struggles, or natural disasters,&nbsp;but sometimes, they're fascinating crimes. The last several decades have been full of prominent true crime stories, and a look&nbsp;back through history reveals which of these tales was on everyone's lips the year you were born.&nbsp;While most of these events spanned multiple years - thanks to lengthy investigations and court proceedings - each seemingly overtook the news cycle for a specific period of time.

The Biggest True Crime Story From The Year You Were Born

Jodi Smith

Nicknamed &quot;Shelby&#39;s Sweetheart&quot;&nbsp;by her community, Asha Jaquilla Degree was last seen walking down a foggy highway in the early hours of Valentine&#39;s Day&nbsp;2000. She was only 9 years old. Over the past two decades, there have been multiple theories explaining why Asha left her Shelby, NC, home in the middle of the night, and as of 2016,&nbsp;there were&nbsp;350 leads on the case.

Despite these leads, one fact remains clear: No one has seen, heard from, or been able to find Asha Degree in over 20 years. Even after two decades of searching, Asha&#39;s family still believes she is alive; while this may strike some as wishful thinking, there are numerous <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/missing-people-who-were-found-alive/rydavis" target="_blank">missing persons</a> who have been found, sometimes years after they disappeared.

The Asha Degree case is still considered an open investigation; here&#39;s everything we know.

Everything We Know About The Mysterious Disappearance Of Asha Degree

Patrick Thornton

What happened to Alissa Turney? She went missing from her Phoenix, AZ, high school in 2001 at the age of 17, and nobody has seen her since. The Alissa Turney <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/unsolved-mysteries-of-missing-or-murdered-families/mike-bedard" target="_blank">disappearance</a> has remained a mystery since the early 2000s, and&nbsp;law enforcement has failed to crack the case. Investigators&#39; jobs&nbsp;were made exponentially more difficult by the fact that the case wasn&#39;t actively investigated until five years after Turney&#39;s disappearance.

What originally appeared to be a runaway teen scenario is now widely considered a case of foul play, with multiple suspects considered over the years. Interviews with those close to Turney reveal a portrait of a complicated young woman who was intelligent and social, but whose personal life was much darker than many would guess. While no charges have been filed, her sister Sarah&#39;s&nbsp;theories point&nbsp;to their allegedly abusive stepfather, Mike Turney, as the likely culprit. Here are all of the details that have been released about Alissa Turney&#39;s confounding missing person&nbsp;case.

Everything About Alissa Turney’s Case That Has Been Released To The Public

All The Alissa Turney Case Details That Have Been Made Public

Eric Luis

For true crime enthusiasts and armchair detectives, few things are&nbsp;more fascinating than a gruesome demise with no trace of the culprit. These&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/people-never-identified/lyra-radford" target="_blank">unsolved cases</a>&nbsp;present&nbsp;endless possibilities, and&nbsp;one such mystery&nbsp;is no closer to being solved now than it was decades ago. In 1943, the skeleton of a woman was found inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm. The case of &quot;Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?&quot; is a story that starts out as a seemingly straightforward slaying, until it&nbsp;diverges into theories of occult rituals, spy rings, and espionage.

The case remains a mystery, in part because the police files are still sealed - the authorities consider the case open, even after the better part of a century. Why hasn&#39;t Bella undergone DNA testing? Why can&#39;t her&nbsp;remains be examined to bring closure? The answer to these questions and others are every bit as surreal as the initial discovery, which&nbsp;makes solving the case nearly impossible.

Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm? The Story Behind The Mystery That Has Stumped England Since 1943

Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm? A Mystery That Has Stumped England Since 1943

Trending on Ranker

When the documentary <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/netflix-jan-broberg-documentary/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">Abducted in Plain Sight</a>&nbsp;hit Netflix&nbsp;in January 2019, it quickly became a hot topic of conversation on the internet, news programs, and anywhere people congregated. The fact that Jan Broberg was taken twice as a child by the same man, Robert Berchtold, in the 1970s, and that her parents, Bob and Mary Ann, also had extramarital relationships with her abductor, was only the beginning of the twists and turns this story would take.&nbsp;&nbsp;

While some may think&nbsp;there is nothing else left to tell about&nbsp;the Broberg or Berchtold families, a&nbsp;four-episode podcast deep dive called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.obsessedwithpod.com/" target="_blank">Obsessed With: Abducted in Plain Sight</a>&nbsp;hosted by director Skye Borgman and True Crime Obsessed&#39;s Patrick Hinds was&nbsp;released on March 2, 2020, and proved that assumption wrong. Borgman reinterviews Jan a year after the documentary premiered, and Hinds questions the director about scenes she left out of the film. The pair introduces and discusses never-before-told facts about Abducted in Plain Sight.&nbsp;

Everything We Learned From ‘Obsessed With: Abducted In Plain Sight’

Everything We Learned From ‘Obsessed With Abducted In Plain Sight’ 

Brittanee Drexel told her parents she was staying with a friend for spring break before she went <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/lost-children-who-were-found/anabel-conner" target="_blank">missing</a> in 2009. Leading up to her disappearance, the 17-year-old high school senior from Rochester, NY,&nbsp;was under an immense amount of stress from&nbsp;her parents&#39; separation. While her vanishing&nbsp;may at first sound like the case of a runaway teen, Brittanee Drexel&#39;s disappearance quickly turned ominous.

The Brittanee Drexel case has remained unsolved since she was last seen on April 25, 2009, though the investigation fluctuated between hot and cold throughout the 2010s. While murder and human trafficking are the two leading theories in Brittanee&#39;s disappearance, the events of April 25&nbsp;remain just as perplexing now as they were in 2009.

Here are the facts of the case and a general timeline of events. We&#39;ll also explore plausible theories and suspects in Brittanee Drexel&#39;s confounding disappearance.

Brittanee Drexel Was On Spring Break When She Vanished In 2009, And Her Case Is Still Unsolved

Strange True Stories

Bryce Laspisa was supposed to be driving to his parents&#39; home in Southern California when he vanished without a trace. The Bryce Laspisa case remains one of the most perplexing <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/people-who-disappeared-mysteriously/alby-thompson" target="_blank">missing person</a> cases in modern true crime, with no viable leads since the teen&#39;s disappearance in 2013.

Laspisa had spent the summer at his parents&#39; home&nbsp;and had only returned to school two weeks before the events of August 28-30. His parents, who have repeatedly stated&nbsp;that nothing seemed wrong when he left to go back to school, have described the 19-year-old college student as&nbsp;an &quot;open book&quot; who could talk to them about anything.

However, somewhere between Laspisa returning to school and police finding his car in a ravine, something seems to have gone horribly wrong. Despite years of theorizing, the question still remains: What happened to Bryce Laspisa?

Bryce Laspisa's Car Was Found Overturned In A California Ravine, But He Had Completely Vanished

The Strange Disappearance Of Bryce Laspisa

Although all&nbsp;true crime stories are&nbsp;tinged with sadness and tragedy, there are some&nbsp;that you just can&#39;t forget. Maybe it happened in your hometown&nbsp;or maybe it&#39;s still unsolved so it constantly runs through your mind as you try to piece the facts together. On Reddit, people are sharing the unforgettable true crime stories that continue to haunt them.

People Reveal Unforgettable True Crime Stories That Still Haunt Them

Documentaries

Netflix&#39;s three-part&nbsp;Luka Magnotta documentary, Don&#39;t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, takes a deep dive into how a group of internet sleuths tracked down the culprit behind a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-fk-with-cats-how-two-online-sleuths-helped-track-down-a-hollywood-obsessed-internet-killer?ref=scroll" target="_blank">series of viral videos</a>&nbsp;depicting animal torture that eventually escalated to an innocent man&#39;s death. From 2010 to 2012, Montreal native&nbsp;Luka Rocco Magnotta,&nbsp;born&nbsp;Eric Newman,&nbsp;posted several videos on the internet that showed him violently killing cats. In what would become his final video, he murdered a young man named Jun Lin, sparking an international manhunt and Magnotta&#39;s eventual arrest.

Magnotta was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder in December 2014, but consumers of true crime remain fascinated by the case and its many bizarre twists. In fact, these same fans, including the web detectives who dedicated 18 months to searching for Magnotta, are a source of controversy in the Mark Lewis-directed&nbsp;Don&#39;t F**k with Cats series. In watching the Luka Magnotta&nbsp;2019 documentary and seeing how he fed off the notoriety of his videos, viewers are forced to reflect on whether the genre of true crime glorifies the very people it seeks to condemn.

'Don't F**k With Cats' Is A Disturbing Chronicle Of An Online Manhunt

Netflix Documentary 'Don't F**k With Cats' Hunts Luka Magnotta

Natalee Holloway had just graduated high school when she went on a five-day trip to Aruba with a group of fellow seniors in 2005. She was described as a gifted student who planned on studying to become a doctor at the University of Alabama, where she had already been accepted with a scholarship. Holloway&#39;s bright future came to a halt in the early hours of May 30, 2005, when friends saw her get into a car and drive off, never to be seen again.

<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/natalee-holloways-disappearance-remains-unsolved-15-years-timeline/story?id=67135012" target="_blank">The disappearance of Natalee Holloway</a> quickly became the best-known <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/missing-people-who-were-found-alive/rydavis" target="_blank">missing person case</a> of the 21st century, and it&#39;s still being scrutinized after years of investigations, documentaries, and dramatizations of her life. While it remains to be seen if Holloway&#39;s complex and tragic case will ever be solved, the facts laid out below show there&#39;s still a great deal left to be uncovered.

Natalee Holloway Vanished While On Vacation In 2005, And She's Still Missing To This Day

Facts About The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway

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