Murders alone are enough to send shivers down anybody’s spine, but when a murder goes unsolved and the suspect is still out there somewhere, it will leave you wanting to sleep with the lights on. Despite advances in technology, there are still a number of cases that police have simply been unable to solve for one reason of another. Here is a list of the top 10 terrifying unsolved murders.
1. Jamie Santos
On October 28, 1991, a Wheeling, Illinois emergency line operator took a strange call. A mysterious man reported that there was an unconscious woman but after giving the address, he hung up the phone.When paramedics arrived, they found Jamie Santos barely alive. She died later, and the cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation by pillow, although evidence suggested that she had struggled with her murderer.
What makes this case especially odd is the fact that on the previous day, Jamie had cancelled some of her appointments, as though she knew that she wasn’t going to make them. She was an exotic dancer, and the police suspected that one of her previous customers had committed the crime, but they weren’t able to get enough evidence to narrow down the suspects.
2. Dick Hansen
Dick Hansen, a football player, was sitting in his car and talking with a woman named Jean one night. A third car joined them, but at first they didn’t pay any attention to it. Then, as Jean, who was unfamiliar with the area, began following Dick, the third car also followed them. At first, they attempted to lose the stranger by driving sporadically on the highway, but Dick finally decided to stop and confront them.
As he approached the car, he was shot and mortally wounded. Although Jean saw the licence plate which read “49R HUGS” and believed that the murderer was from a rival team, the crime was never solved.
3. Jack Davis Jr.
In 1987, the body of Jack Davis Jr. was found in a stairwell of his Indiana University of Pennsylvania stairwell. The police determined the death accidental, claiming that he had passed out and then choked on his own vomit. However, several years later the family hired a pathologist who discovered a lack of food in his lungs which meant he had not choked. He also discovered three skull fractures.
The case was re-opened, but without any further information being discovered, it was closed again and remains a mystery to this day. Some people suspect that he had gotten into a fight and after realizing how badly they had wounded him, his attacker panicked and left him in the stairwell.
4. Blair Adams
Shortly before his death, the young construction worker from Canada displayed obvious signs that he was in fear of his life. He first withdrew all of the money from his savings account and then tried diligently to cross into America. He was initially denied because of the large amount of cash on him, so he then bought a plane ticket to Germany. However, he then returned the ticket and was able to cross into America through Seattle by using a rental car.
From there, he took a one-way plane trip to Washington D.C. and picked up another rental car to drive to Kentucky. When he reached Knoxville, a gas station attendant reported that he had trouble starting his car due to the fact that he apparently had the wrong key. He then hitchhiked to a hotel, checked in, and then left, seemingly on his own volition. 12 hours later, his body was discovered in a parking lot, half-naked and surrounded by Canadian, American, and German currencies.
5. Wil Hendrick
In 1999, this University of Idaho student was at a friend’s party when he suddenly disappeared. Initially, people suspected that he was murdered after a confrontation he had about his sexuality with people from a different party. However, the next evening his car was seen parked outside a friend’s house. The next day, it was found downtown, unlocked and without any signs of tampering or theft.
Jerry, Wil’s partner, suspected that his disappearance had something to do with a man in a refrigerated truck who had yelled homosexual slurs at Wil. The suspect was never found, but Wil’s body turned up three years later in an open field not too far from the college town.
6. Aileen Conway
In 1986, a woman by the name of Aileen Conway was found dead in her car which had been engulfed in flames. Her death was declared an accident initially, but her husband Pat discovered pieces of evidence that suggested it was murder. First of all, the car had been smothered in gasoline before the fire had started. Secondly, he found several things in the house that did not make sense: the iron had been left on, the hose was also on and filling the pool, and her purse had been left behind.
It is believed that she interrupted burglars who kidnapped her, murdered her, and made her death appear like an accident, but there are still no definite answers as to what happened to Aileen Conway on that day.
7. Angie Housman
In the midst of a cold St. Louis, Missouri winter, the little fourth-grader was last seen just eight houses from her own as she waited for the bus to arrive in the morning. It was from there that she vanished. Nine days later, her body was found, duct-taped to a tree. The discoveries that the medical examiner uncovered were gruesome and shocking. Not only had the girl died from exposure to the elements after having been duct-taped to a tree while still alive, but during the week that she was missing, her kidnapper had both tortured and raped her.
Police were able to find both fingerprint and DNA evidence on her body, but the owner of them has never been found, leaving the case unsolved.
