The 1950s saw UFO sightings, unsolved murders, and secret government experiments. It was
practically a golden age of conspiracies. Here are some of the most fascinating
One of the most notorious and tragic mysteries of the 1950s was the case of
the so-called "Boy in the Box," which unfolded in Philadelphia in 1957 with
a shocking discovery. As outlined by David Stout in his 2008 book "The Boy in the Box:
The Unsolved Case of America's Unknown Child," in February of that year, the body was discovered
in an area of the city called Fox Chase, when a college student came across a large cardboard box.
According to Stout, discarded objects were not uncommon in Fox Chase,
an area where some locals used to dump garbage and unwanted possessions. The
student was curious and peered inside the box after feeling its weight. Inside was
the naked body of a young boy, who had seemingly been beaten to death.
For decades, the boy in the box remained nameless, with even the grave where his
remains were interred describing him simply as "America's unknown child." For years, the case has
attracted the attention of both professional and amateur investigators, all determined to uncover
the boy's identity and how his body came to be abandoned. They had to wait until 2022, 65 years
after the body's discovery, for a name to arrive thanks to DNA testing: Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
He was from West Philadelphia and was only four years old when he died. More recently, Zarelli's
parents have also been identified, but who was responsible for his tragic death remains unknown.
The 1970s saw a rise of serial killers with horrifying and
memorable nicknames that still shiver spines today. But back in the 1950s,
before this reported peak of serial killer cases, there were sensational cases that
buoyed newspaper sales for years on end. One such villain was "The Bouncing Ball Killer,"
who terrorized Los Angeles with a spate of brutal killings beginning in May 1959.
The killer, who targeted vulnerable older women, was encountered by the roommate of
his fifth victim at the scene of the crime, who told police officers and the press that
he was bouncing a ball in his hand. He was so transfixed by it that at first
he didn't notice the presence of the victim's roommate, but fled the scene soon afterward.
The Bouncing Ball Killer struck two more times in the Los Angeles area,
before vanishing without a trace in the summer of 1960. Though one prisoner reportedly confessed
to being the Bouncing Ball Killer in July 1960, the man in question was never formally charged,
and the real killer has never been positively identified.
The Great Brink's Robbery was one of the most famous crimes of the 1950s,
involving an audacious movie-worthy crime, a high-profile trial, and sums of money
that were unimaginable to most people at the time.
As retold in detail by the FBI, which was instrumental in solving the case,
on January 17, 1950, a five-strong gang of armed men robbed Boston's Brink's building and absconded
with a grand total of $2.7 million, which is around $34 million as of 2023, when adjusted
for inflation. Through a large-scale investigation following hundreds of leads, the FBI eventually
tracked down the 11 men they believed were responsible for planning and executing the crime.
But while many of those involved were identified, faced justice, and received fitting punishments,
a huge mystery remains: What happened to the majority of the $2.7 million? Reportedly,
only around $58,000 of the score was ever recovered,
meaning the vast majority of it has been lost to the winds of time.
America's love affair with UFOs has barely wavered since the Roswell Incident of 1947. That Event
brought to the mainstream the idea that creatures from other planets may have visited Earth, as well
as the compelling subtext that the U.S. government was attempting to cover up their presence. And in
the 1950s, there was no shortage of sensational news stories about extraterrestrial encounters.
"Jack, what is that thing?"
"How the hell should I know?"
One of these incidents occurred on the evening of August 25, 1951, in Lubbock,
Texas. In this unassuming small town, a group of astronomers observing meteors
claimed to have seen a large collection of slow-moving blue and green lights in the sky,
which flew overhead in two waves before disappearing. Other people in the town
later confirmed that they too had witnessed strange-moving objects in the sky the same night,
while photographs of the lights also emerged in the days that followed.
Ex-Air Force personnel and Project Bluebook co-ordinator Edward J. Ruppelt investigated
the events of that night. In his "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" he theorized that
the lights in the sky were in fact birds, whose plumage reflected the streetlights below. However,
witnesses have claimed that the objects they saw were far larger than any bird,
meaning that many still consider the incident of the Lubbock Lights to be an open case.
Not all potential UFO activity in the 1950s was based on eyewitness accounts.
Alongside incidents such as the Lubbock Lights, specialist equipment helped to
uncover strange astronomical findings that have baffled experts in the field.
As described in a 2021 study published in Scientific Reports, in April 1950,
the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, was taking photographic plates
of the night sky as part of a project known as the Palomar Sky Survey. In just thirty minutes,
it was reported that nine "transients" — unexplained objects in the photographs — appeared
and then vanished. The objects were said to resemble modern satellites. However,
the photographs in question were taken seven years before the first man-made satellite was launched.
There have been many theories concerning what made the nine California transients,
such as the presence of dirt on the lens to unidentified natural satellites. Nevertheless,
the exact reason for the transients is still unknown even today.
While the 1950s was awash with sightings of strange aerial phenomena, it was also the
decade in which the first close encounters with extraterrestrial life were reported,
making for some bone-chilling news stories that would shape
how aliens were portrayed in popular culture ever after.
As reported in the "Kentucky New Era" in August 1955, a farming family in the town of Kelly left
their home for a nearby police station, where they claimed they had been battling a band of
"little men" who emerged from a spaceship and began attacking their farmhouse. The story
has gone down as one of the most famous alien encounter stories of the period,
with the family's recollections of the supposed space creatures as being short,
large-headed, and big-eared becoming especially influential in the public's imagination.
Some skeptics have more recently argued that the
family may in fact have encountered a band of aggressive great horned owls,
which are large-headed and round-faced, but the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter remains one
of the 1950s' most famous stories of humankind coming face-to-face with extraterrestrials.
Americans today may look back on the O.J. Simpson trial of the mid-90s as the "trial of the decade,"
but before that, there was only one other trial sensational enough to be worthy of the title. That
was the trial of a 30-year-old doctor named Sam Sheppard, which became headline news for months
in 1954, and again in 1966 as the saga took on a twist that no one could have predicted.
As outlined by Professor Douglas O. Linder, in 1954 Sheppard went to trial
accused of murdering his wife, Marilyn, in their home on the shore of Lake Eyrie,
Ohio. Sheppard claimed that he was innocent: He described hearing his wife call his name
and then being hit in the head by a "bushy-haired intruder" who murdered his wife, which led to his
wearing a neck brace in the courtroom. Sheppard was found guilty despite his injury, which was
deemed to be self-inflicted. The prosecution convinced a jury that he had killed his wife
during an argument over an extra-marital affair. He was sentenced to life in prison. However,
in 1966, after a long spell in prison, he was released following a second trial.
"Doctor, could you briefly describe what your
recent experience in the Ohio penitentiary was like for you?"
"It was hell."
Despite his release, the truth of the Sam Sheppard case has
never been conclusively established. However, strong arguments on both sides
continue to captivate audiences hungry for tales of true crime.
One of the most legendary American outlaws of the 19th century, William H. Bonney — more commonly
known as Billy the Kid — became notorious thanks to an adolescence spent committing countless
crimes. Before he was killed in a shoot-out with New Mexico sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881,
Kid was estimated to have killed 21 people, by the time he was 21 years old. However,
there are those who believe that the Billy the Kid story doesn't end there.
As outlined in an investigation published in "The Salt Lake Tribune," while the outlaw certainly has
one grave in New Mexico, there is another approximately 500 miles away in Hamilton,
Texas. The reason? Decades after Billy's supposed death, a man by the name of
"Brushy" Bill Roberts made himself famous by claiming that he was really Billy the Kid,
and had survived the shootout only to escape to Texas and live under an assumed name.
Many have derided Roberts' claim to be Billy the Kid as nothing more than a hoax, but some believe
the Billy the Kid legend actually runs right up until 1950, the year that Roberts traveled to
New Mexico to try to convince state officials of his true identity. He died months later,
and whether Brushy and Billy were, in fact, the same person remains a matter for debate.
People go missing frequently in America's vast and dangerous national parks. Many of
these cases end up going cold before they are solved, and some involve homicide. In 1958,
the body of a young girl known in the early paperwork as "Little Miss X," was discovered.
The name was given to a body discovered on October 31 that year, on a dirt road near
the Grand Canyon National Park. The body was mummified, having laid in place for around a
year. While the body was checked against contemporaneous missing persons reports,
her identity has never been ascertained. However, investigators have concluded from her dental
records that she had been well-cared for before death. They hope that one day DNA testing may
help uncover her birth name, the circumstances in which she was murdered, and who was responsible.
Scheduled airline passenger services were still a relative novelty in the 1950s, filling Americans
at the time with awe and reverence for this luxurious new mode of transport.
So it was a terrible shock for the American people when news broke on June 25, 1950,
that Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501 from New York had vanished over Lake Michigan
two days prior. The 58 people on board, mostly families from the New York metropolitan area who
were heading off on vacation, were presumed dead. Search parties traveled Lake Michigan,
with no results. At the time, it was the deadliest air catastrophe in history.
More than 70 years on, the wreckage of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501
has yet to be recovered, despite the efforts of committed investigators, both professional and
amateur. As a result, no definitive explanation of what befell the aircraft has ever been determined.
Paul Trent was a farmer in McMinnville, Oregon, who on May 11, 1950, took two photographs that he
claimed showed a flying saucer he had witnessed in the sky above his farm. The following month, the
photographs were published in the local newspaper, after which they became big news around the world.
In the decades since Trent's unnerving photographs shocked the world, they have remained among the
most compelling pieces of evidence for the possible existence of UFOs. However,
their veracity has also been hotly debated. While some UFO researchers have concluded
that there is no reason to believe they are the result of a concerted hoax, other investigators
have concluded that they are the result of photo trickery: What appears to be a distant
UFO is in fact a smaller object close to Trent's camera lens. Nonetheless, the debate continues.
Today, the CIA is widely known as a shady and shadowy organization that supposedly gets up to
all kinds of legally dubious behavior. This view of the CIA emerged during the 1950s,
along with details of some of their projects, which proved just how far they were willing
to go for the sake of American security. This includes projects like the notorious MK-ULTRA.
"Politics and science make the worst of friends."
MK-ULTRA was the codename of a CIA program that involved the development and experimental use of
drugs such as LSD, which the CIA originally hoped could be used as an effective truth
serum. Frank Olson was a scientist and bioweapons expert involved in the project,
who died by falling from a Manhattan building in November 1953. Seemingly a suicide,
the case has been complicated by the fact that days earlier,
Olson had been unknowingly dosed with LSD by his colleagues as part of a secret drug trial. When
this fact came to light in 1975, it was assumed that Olson died as a result of taking the drug.
More recently, Olson's children have exhumed his body and argued that their father was
murdered for knowing too much about the CIA's biological warfare capabilities. However,
the resulting autopsy performed on Olson's remains in 1994 proved to be inconclusive.