Most deaths are pretty self explanatory.
But ever so occasionally a case comes along that baffles even the savviest of detectives.
These are the deaths that have no explanation and no motive.
We could just put these cases to bed and be done with it, but where's the fun in that.
There's something about a good murder mystery case that makes people obsessed with finding
out what actually happened.
These are the five most unexplainable deaths the world has ever known.
Morgan Dana Harrington
First up is the mysterious disappearance of Morgan Dana Harrington.
She was a 20 year old student at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia.
On the 17th October 2009 Morgan attended a Metallica concert in Virginia with a few friends.
Whilst the support act were still performing, Morgan went off on her own to use the bathroom,
since she didn't want to have to go after Metallica had come on stage.
After an unusually long time Morgan had still not returned from the bathroom, Metallica
then came on stage and Morgan was still nowhere to be seen.
Her friends grew very worried.
They rang Morgan and she picked up, she told them she had not been allowed back into the
venue because of a "no re-entry" policy.
But this was very strange because there were toilets inside the venue.
Yet Morgan had mysteriously gone outside, for no good reason at all.
Morgan told her friends not to worry and enjoy the concert without her.
She told them she would make her own way home.
Having trust in Morgan, her friends stayed to enjoy the rest of the concert, unbeknown
to the fact that their friend was in grave danger.
Witnesses later said that they saw Morgan outside the arena, on her own.
She was never spotted with anyone but her friends throughout the entire night.
Which leaves no explanation as to why she exited the venue.
Someone or something must had made her act so strangely, but what was it?
She was spotted by a witness hiking along the side of the road later that night, still
on her own.
She was not seen again for several weeks until a farmer several miles from the venue of the
Metallica concert, found the skeletal remains of a young woman on the outskirts of his property.
The remains were confirmed to be that of Morgan.
There were signs that her death had been extremely violent and she had been raped.
There was extremely little evidence to go on and what had led Morgan out of that arena
that night and caused her to end up, dead, at a farm several miles away, is still a mystery
to this day.
Elisa Lam
In 2013 at the Cecil Hotel in the notorious Skid Row neighbourhood in Los Angeles, one
of the creepiest and most unexplainable deaths of the 21st century, took place.
In the days leading up to February 19th 2013, hotel guests had been complaining of low water
pressure and oddly-coloured, foul smelling and tasting water.
Some even said the water coming out the taps was black in colour.
When the hotel staff went up to the roof to investigate the cause, they were shocked to
find a body in the water tank.
For a whole 19 days hundreds of guests at the hotel, were bathing in, brushing their
teeth with and even drinking the water from a tank on the rooftop that contained the decomposing
corpse of a college student.
The body turned out to be that of 21-year-old Canadian student, Elisa Lam.
Lam's death is shrouded in mystery.
19 days before being found dead in the water tank, Lam had gone missing whilst staying
at the hotel.
On the day of her disappearance this disturbing CCTV footage was released from inside the
hotel elevator.
The video went viral on the internet.
Lam appears to be hiding from someone, she starts behaving erratically and at one point
she waves her arms around in an odd fashion, before finally, disappearing.
She was not seen again.
Until 19 days later, when her body was found inside the water tank on the roof.
But apart from the fire escape, the roof is only accessible via a set of stairs and locked
doors which only hotel employees have the keys and passcodes to.
The doors would set off an alarm if anyone else tried to open them.
Yet Elisa Lam managed to somehow get through the doors and onto the roof, without setting
the alarm off.
Not only that, but she managed to get inside one of the water tanks which is 2.4 metres
tall and has no fixed access, the hotel staff had to put a ladder up to check inside it.
So how on Earth did Elisa Lam get in there?
Even more bizarrely, Lam also managed to somehow close the extremely heavy lid on herself,
once inside the tank.
Which would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do by herself.
In fact the water tank was so tightly sealed that authorities had to drill a hole into
it to get her body out.
This has led many people to believe that her death was suspicious.
Which probably goes without saying, considering it would be nearly impossible for Lam to end
up in that water tank all by herself.
But with insufficient evidence her death was marked as accidental and to this day nobody
truly knows what happened to Elisa Lam.
Laetitia Toureaux
A "locked room mystery" is a unique sub-genre of murder-mystery fiction, in which a murder
takes place in a seemingly locked room with only one person inside, the victim.
In these stories the murder seems to take place under impossible circumstances.
It's extremely rare that these so called "locked room mysteries" actual happen in real life.
But one such case did happen, in 1937 in Paris, to Laetitia Toureaux.
At 6:27pm Laetitia Toureaux boarded a metro train at the Porte de Charenton.
When she got onto the train she was the only person in the first-class carriage.
However, when the train pulled into the next station, only one minute and twenty seconds
later at 6:28pm, Laetitia Toureaux slumped forwards in her seat with a dagger in her
neck.
She had somehow been stabbed in the neck and killed, in seemingly impossible circumstances.
Witnesses at both stations swore that they saw no one getting onto or leaving Toureaux's
train compartment at either stop.
And witnesses in both adjacent compartments, said that nobody had tried to enter the one
where Toureaux's body was found.
Police tried their best to solve the mystery.
But even Paris' best detective's had no idea how Toureaux could have been stabbed in the
neck, in a time span of 1 minute, in a seemingly empty train carriage.
World War II came and Toureaux's case was forgotten about.
Despite crime writers the world over giving it their best.
Nobody has since been able to solve this infamous, real-life, locked room mystery.
Ottavio Bottecchia
Italian man, Ottavio Bottecchia was one of the most talented cyclists the world has ever
seen.
In 1924 he became the first Italian to win the world renowned Tour de France race.
He was also the first person in history to maintain the lead in the Tour de France all
the way from start, to finish.
But the fame and glory was short-lived for Bottecchia, because in June 1927, two years
after his second Tour de France victory.
Bottecchia was found dead at the side of the road in the village of Poenis, Italy, just
a few miles from his home.
So what's so strange about this, it just sounds like a bicycle crash.
Well Bottecchia's bike was a few metres from his body, completely undamaged, with not a
single mark or scratch upon it.
No skid marks were found on the road and there were no signs that he had been forced from
the road or that he was in a collision at all.
Yet Bottecchia's body lay in the road with his skull smashed in, a snapped collarbone
and numerous other broken bones.
If that wasn't suspicious enough.
The authorities came to the conclusion that he had died of a sun stroke.
Skull smashed in?
20 broken bones?
Looks like a bad case of sunstroke chief!
This ridiculous cause of death led many conspiracy theorists to come to the conclusion that Bottecchia
was killed in a government assassination.
For speaking out against authoritarian prime minister Benito Mussolini and his murder was
covered up by the police.
To this day we still have no further clue as to what happened to legendary Italian cyclist
Ottavio Bottecchia.
Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm
Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?
That's was the question on everyone's lips in 1943.
It all started on 18th April 1943 when four boys were poaching in the Hagley Woods near
Wychbury Hill in Stourbridge, England.
The boys stumbled across a large Wych elm tree.
Believing it would be a good place to find bird's nests, one of the boys climbed up the
tree.
To his horror, when the boy looked down, inside the tree's hollowed-out trunk he saw a human
skull with hair and teeth.
One of the boys reported it to the police and when they investigated they found, almost,
an entire skeleton inside the trunk of the Wych elm.
They also found a shoe, a gold wedding ring, some fragments of clothing and a severed hand
which was buried in the ground near the tree.
After forensic examination it was determined that the body was a female's and she had been
dead for at least 18 months.
Taffeta was found in her mouth, suggesting she died from asphyxiation.
But then things got weirder.
A year after the body was discovered strange graffiti started to appear in random locations
in the surrounding area.
First on a wall in Upper Dean Street, Birmingham and then in several more places over the next
few decades, until the last graffito was sprayed onto the side of a 200 year-old obelisk known
as Wychbury Obelisk, in August 1999.
The obelisk is located on Wychbury Hill, Hagley, near where the body was found.
Every single one of the graffiti said the exact same thing "WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WITCH
ELM".
The identity of the killer and that of the graffiti artist, were never discovered.