Mafia hits, vanishing criminals, devil worship, and extraterrestrial encounters! These unsolved
mysteries of the 1970s are enough to turn any amateur sleuths into obsessed detectives.
In the early days of the airline industry, hijackings were surprisingly common. In fact,
as noted by Vox, more than 130 American planes were hijacked between 1968 and 1972. The man
known as "D.B. Cooper" perpetrated a hijacking in 1971 that remains unsolved to this day. He
was in his mid-40s when he boarded a flight in Portland, Oregon that was headed to Seattle,
Washington. He handed a note to a flight attendant that said he was carrying a
bomb and sent her off to the pilot with his demands: $200,000 in cash and four parachutes.
The passengers were released in Seattle, and Cooper was given the ransom and parachutes.
While flying to Mexico City, he removed his tie and parachuted out of the aircraft with the ransom
money mid-flight and was never seen again. For nearly a decade, investigators searched for him.
Then in 1980, a boy discovered a disintegrating package containing nearly $6,000 of ransom money.
In 2011, the FBI found evidence of a new suspect when they compared
samples to DNA left on Cooper's tie. The problem was that this suspect had
been dead for nearly a decade by the time the FBI received the tip. Even if
Cooper did survive his jump from the plane, he had likely died of old age by this point.
"There are also those instances when we kinda have to grin and bear it and say,
'Well, not in this case.'"
In a quiet suburban town in 1970s New Jersey, residents were worried about Satan
worshippers practicing demonic witchcraft after a teenage girl went missing. In September 1972,
six weeks after 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma left home to hitchhike to a friend's house,
she was found severely decomposed in the woods on a cliff that local residents called
"the Devil's Teeth." There were also several logs arranged around the body like a coffin,
as well as multiple crosses nearby. There were no signs of drugs or substances in her system,
but there was evidence that she may have been strangled.
In 1997, editors from the magazine Weird NJ began looking into DePalma's death.
Police resisted giving them any information on the case,
explaining that in 1999 Hurricane Floyd had destroyed all files and evidence.
"People have always suspected a police cover-up."
The editors eventually gained access to the files from the Union County Prosecutor's Office in
2021 and determined that there was no occult activity. In 2022, an updated version of the
book Death on the Devil's Teeth revealed that incarcerated serial killer Richard Cottingham
made statements to co-author Jesse P. Pollack that heavily implied he was DePalma's killer.
Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance in 1975 is one of the most high-profile cold cases of all time. As
the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union for nearly 15 years,
Hoffa was a well-known public figure. But he was also known for his shady associations,
some of which linked him to organized crime. As reported by The New York Times on July 30,
1975, he went to meet with New Jersey Mafia boss Anthony Provenzano at a
restaurant in small-town Michigan. Soon afterwards, Hoffa vanished.
Many theories about what happened have since sprung up. Some claim that Hoffa was abducted
by federal agents and tossed from an airplane into Lake Michigan, while others suggest that
he was buried under a swimming pool. Still, others posit that his associate Frank Sheeran killed him,
which is the version of events that was presented in the 2019 film The Irishman.
"Let's get out of here. Come on."
The most plausible and recent theory being investigated by the FBI is that Hoffa was
executed by Provenzano and then had his body loaded into a steel drum
before being buried in a landfill in New Jersey. According to The New York Times,
in 2020 a former landfill worker told a friend that his father claimed he buried Hoffa there.
The FBI later began surveying the site in 2021, but they failed to find any significant evidence.
Back in 1977, an astronomer intercepted a message that seemed like it may have
originated from intelligent alien life. The "Wow!" signal was found
using the now-defunct Big Ear radio telescope that was built for SETI,
or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. One day while checking the printouts from
the telescope's computer, astronomer Jerry Ehman discovered a code that read "6EQUJ5."
This code meant that Big Ear had picked up a signal:
a loud narrowband originating from the general direction of the constellation
Sagittarius. Ehman was so shocked by what he saw that he wrote "Wow!" in the left
margin of the computer printout. The signal lasted 72 seconds and was never heard again.
Astronomers searched the region where the signal first came from but couldn't locate
the source. Many theories have since emerged. For example, Antonio Paris,
an astronomer at St. Petersburg College in Florida, thinks the signal was possibly
from a comet. It's also possible that the sound just came from a glitch with Big Ear.
And it could've also just been the result of radio bursts that generate irregular signals.
There was no name on the Circleville letters, just a postmark from Columbus,
Ohio. These letters contained handwritten details with accusations and threats to
people's lives. The author claimed to know his target's every move and
planned to expose their dirty secrets if they failed to comply with his demands.
One particular letter in 1977 accused school bus driver Mary Gillispie [like "gill-ES-pee"] and
school superintendent Gordon Massie of having an extramarital affair. Gillispie's husband Ron was
threatened with death if he did nothing to end the affair. Ron eventually grew tired of the
harassment and took matters into his own hands. One day he left home armed with a gun. Police
found him later that same day, dead inside his car, which was smashed into a tree and a
single shot fired from his revolver. Authorities ruled his death an alcohol-related car accident.
Then in 1983, Mary was nearly killed by a booby trap. A sign along her bus route was rigged to a
box with twine, and inside the box was a loaded gun. Her former brother-in-law, Paul Freshour,
was convicted and given a sentence of 25 years in prison, even though he had an alibi. In 1994,
the letters randomly stopped, after Freshour was released. Authorities
closed the case without ever discovering who was the hand behind the pen strokes.
"And Circleville carried on like nothing had ever happened."
Charles C. Morgan was a successful escrow agent and doting father and husband when he was killed
in Tucson, Arizona in 1977. However, there were hints of trouble when he disappeared on
March 22nd of that year. Three days later, he turned up back at his family home drugged and
bruised. He later told his wife Ruth that he'd been working undercover for the United States
Treasury for about two years on a case and was allegedly involved with at least one mafia member.
Two months later, Morgan vanished again. But this time, he was discovered dead near his
vehicle 40 miles from Tucson clad in a ballistic vest. He'd been shot in the back of the head
with his own revolver, though investigators found no incriminating fingerprints on the
weapon. About two days earlier, a mysterious woman called the Morgan residence and said,
"Chuck is all right. Ecclesiastics 12, 1 through 8."
"And then she hung up."
The mystery woman also told police that Morgan planned to pay off a hitman hired by the mob to
spare his life. Among all the items collected for evidence, there was a two-dollar bill attached to
Morgan's underwear. There was a rudimentary map of the Arizona-Mexico border drawn on the back,
along with several names in Spanish and the words "Ecclesiastes 12" and "1 through 8."
Despite the strange circumstances, Morgan's death was ruled a suicide.
In 1978, 20-year-old Australian Frederick Valentich rented a single-engine Cessna plane
to fly to King Island for a dinner date. He was flying over the Bass Strait when he reported to
air traffic controllers that he was being followed by an unidentified flying object.
About an hour into the flight, Valentich reported engine roughness. That was his
last transmission. A search was conducted, but it turned up no body and no plane. As
reported by the Herald Sun, the investigation by the Department of Transportation offered
several possible explanations: a "UFO intervention," spatial disorientation,
a hoax planned by Valentich, or a crash where the aircraft simply couldn't be recovered.
"'It's hovering, and it's not an aircraft.' These are Frederick Valentich's final, haunting words."
It's worth noting that Valentich believed in alien sightings. A week before his fateful flight,
he told his girlfriend that he'd been abducted by a UFO, and months earlier he gained access
to information from the Royal Australian Air Force about UFOs. The more logical explanation
is that Valentich, a novice pilot, simply became disoriented. He also could've become
inadvertently inverted, thereby causing the gravity-fed fuel engine to cut out.
Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson of Minnesota claimed to have had an encounter with a
UFO in 1979. According to Johnson, he was driving down a country road
at night when he encountered a beam of light that encapsulated his squad car.
He remembers waking up about 40 minutes later with welder burns to the face and
a bruise on his forehead. His squad car was wrecked with a shattered windshield,
bent-up antennas, a small dent in the hood, and a hole through one of the flashers. Curiously,
according to Johnson, his watch and squad car clock had both stopped for about 14 minutes.
The investigation that followed discovered that no aircraft had been scheduled to fly
or were reported near the road during the incident. Experts from the Center
for UFO Studies and Honeywell tested Johnson's vehicle and
concluded that the damage was caused by an electrical force. Ultimately, the Marshall
County Sheriff's Office failed to reach any conclusions and shut down the investigation.
"There's gotta be something more than us around."
The Vela was a series of 12 unmanned reconnaissance satellites whose primary
purpose was monitoring radiation levels in Earth's atmosphere. On September 22, 1979,
satellites detected a double flash somewhere in the South Atlantic. This incident was shrouded
in mystery because the truth could have had major geopolitical implications at the time
Authorities suspected that Israel and South Africa may have been the culprits. If true,
that would mean Israel had violated the peace treaty that American President
Jimmy Carter had brokered between Egypt and Israel. It's widely believed that the U.S.
government covered up the incident. Teams of scientists collected data conveniently
supporting the idea that the mystery flashes were common, and not from a nuclear explosion.
In November 1979, a panel of experts was unable to determine any particular cause.
They suggested it was an equipment issue and possibly the result of a reflection
of sunlight from a meteoroid or space debris. But the government
has since released declassified information indicating evidence of a secret nuclear test,
though without conclusively pointing to a specific country as being responsible.
The Zodiac Killer murders rocked the nation between 1968 and 1969, thanks in part to a
series of cryptic letters that the killer sent to the media with details about his
crimes. The letters contained rants, threats, and information about the murders. Some even
contained the killer's name concealed by encrypted characters along with portions of a cipher that
could be used to reveal his identity. This is how the Zodiac Killer cemented his legacy and
inspired a following of amateur sleuths determined to discover the words hidden in his letters.
The killer continued to taunt law enforcement and the general public with numerous cryptic
letters well into the early 70s. That is, until May 1978, when – allegedly – the last letter was
mailed to Channel 9 in Los Angeles. The Zodiac Killer threatened to kill four celebrities,
including one member of the Black Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver. But then the killer went silent.
In 2020, a trie of amateur sleuths decoded the 340
cipher – the FBI confirmed that they were indeed correct. The message read in part,
"I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me [...] I am not
afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to [paradise] all
the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me."
The identity of the Zodiac Killer has never been confirmed,
though the FBI continues to investigate.