Mysteries with video clues can be some of the most disturbing, as it makes it easier
to imagine being in the terrifying situation.
However, that doesn’t always mean the mystery is easier to solve, as not even videos reveal
the whole truth.
Number 5
London is one of the most surveillance camera covered cities in the world, and it was a
CCTV camera on the back of a London bus that captured the moment an unknown man pushed
a woman into traffic without a second thought.
The footage quickly went viral after being released by police, as people marvelled at
how close the woman came to losing her life.
Thankfully, nobody was harmed, but police still don’t know who the man in the video
was.
It was about 7:40am on May 5th, 2017, the beginning of the morning rush to work.
A few people could be seen walking along Putney Bridge, which crosses the Thames in west London.
One of the pedestrians was a jogger, running in the same direction the bus was going.
Behind him was a second double decker bus.
As the man ran, he passed another man walking in the opposite direction without an incident.
Then a woman came into frame.
The woman got a little too close to the jogger for his liking, it seemed, as he changed direction
slightly in order to push her out of his way.
The woman stumbled and fell into the path of the bus, which had to swerve to avoid hitting
her.
The bus driver was a 45-year-old man named Oliver Salbris, who believes he would have
definitely have struck the woman had he not swerved at the last moment.
Oliver stopped the bus to make sure the woman was ok.
The jogger did not stop, and continued on his route without even looking back.
15 minutes later, while the woman was still being checked over, the jogger came back,
running in the opposite direction.
He hadn’t come to help.
It seemed as if he was simply heading back the way he had come after his morning exercise.
Police were notified immediately, but it wasn’t until three months later that the CCTV pictures
of the man were made public.
A handful of people were arrested, including one man who had been in the US at the time
of the incident, but none were the culprit and nobody was ever charged.
Police followed hundreds of leads generated by the footage being released, but none brought
them any closer to finding the culprit, who was describes as a white male in his 30s with
brown hair and eyes.
The case has now been closed, and there is little chance the mysterious man will ever
be identified.
Number 4 There have been many bank robbers dubbed “Cowboy
bandit” over the years.
Police or the media give them the nickname based on the hats they wear while conducting
the robbery, or occasionally the boots.
Usually, the culprit is identified pretty quickly.
10-gallon hats aren’t as good at obscuring the face as the criminals would like, or else
they were caught for some other reason.
But the original Cowboy bandit of the late 1980s remains unidentified to this day.
The story started in September 1987.
A well-dressed man walked into a bank in Spokane, Washington.
Contrary to what you might imagine by the name Cowboy bandit, he wasn’t wearing a
hat of any kind, but his cowboy boots were noticed by staff members and other witnesses.
The robbery went off without a hitch.
He showed bank employees a police scanner he had managed to get hold of.
Any call to the police, even a silent alarm, he would hear it, and he warned them not to
cross him.
Everyone in the bank was shepherded into the bank vault, where he forced the employees
to empty cash drawers.
He left no finger prints and wasn’t even caught on any of the bank cameras.
From the time he entered the bank to the time he left with more than $100,000, less than
five minutes had passed.
Nobody saw his get-away and, by the time the police were contacted, he was long gone.
$100,000 wasn’t enough for the Bandit, though, and a year later he robbed another bank in
the same area.
This one didn’t go quite to plan, though.
He took $14,000 from the bank, but among the money was a dye pack.
Dye packs are remote controlled devices which are usually set off after they pass a trigger
in the door.
When set off, a permanent dye covers the money, marking it as stolen and drawing attention
to the incident.
Sure enough the pack was set off seconds after the robber left the bank, and witnesses outside
were able to give police a description of the criminal and the robber.
Another robbery in the same area a few months later gave police more of a description and
they released a sketch, but in all three cases he had avoided the cameras.
Finally, in June 1988, police managed to get an image of the Bandit on camera.
He tried to rob Spokane’s Horizon Federal Credit Union, which was housed in the same
building as one of the banks he had previously targeted.
While the tellers were putting money into the bag, one took money from a bill trap,
which activated a silent alarm and, importantly, turned on the security cameras.
Surveillance footage showed the man, who was white, between 35 and 45-years-old at the
time, and somewhere between 6ft and 6ft2.
Again, he managed to escape before the police arrived, but with the video evidence they
were able to go to the public for help cracking the case.
He was also connected to three unsolved robberies in Arizona.
The Cowboy Bandit was featured in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in 1990, but it wasn’t
enough to deter the criminal.
Two years later, he returned to the same bank where he had been caught on camera and held
it up again.
So far, that appears to be the last of the criminal, as no other crimes have been tied
to him.
Number 3
Usually, traffic cameras are simply used to monitor congestion.
At most, the biggest thing that’s recorded is an accident.
But in February 2021, a traffic camera in Ohio captured the moment someone fired into
a car driven by Robert Fentress.
Robert was a 33-year-old father of three who was born and raised in Cleveland.
He worked as a nursing assistant, with aspirations of someday becoming a nurse.
He was on his way to work on the evening of February 1st, driving along the I-480 westbound.
It was a trip he had done countless times before.
As he was driving, another car pulled out into the inside lane.
The driver even used his turn signal.
Shortly after the car pulled alongside Robert’s, Robert began to veer to the left, through
two lanes of traffic before coming to a stop at the side of the road.
The second car drove off as if nothing had happened.
A traffic camera on a bridge over the motorway filmed the incident.
What isn’t clearly shown in the grainy footage is what caused Robert to veer off.
14 shots were fired into the car.
At least one met their mark and Robert passed away at the scene.
According to police, the incident took place at just before 7pm, and other drivers rang
911 to report the incident.
More than an hour later, the local police department called for assistance.
So far, the only real clue police have to go on is the camera footage, which was only
released a month after the incident.
They called on the public to help identify the vehicle.
Police believe Robert was targeted, though why is another matter.
It’s not known if he had any enemies.
He had a respectable job and no known criminal connections.
It’s possible this was a case of mistaken identity, and Robert wasn’t the intended
victim.
Whatever the case, there’s been little progress since the incident.
Sources: https://fox8.com/news/i-team/i-team-new-video-reveals-clues-in-unsolved-murder-mystery-on-i-480/ https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/crime/i-480-shooting-crash/95-ceba69b4-c653-42f6-9afb-6a91e2737c5b
https://www.watsonsfuneralhome.com/obituary/Robert-Fentress Number 2
The disturbing murder of fitness instructor Terri Missy Bevers remains unsolved five years
after her body was found by her students.
Missy was 45-years-old and a married mother of three living in Red Oak, Texas, in 2016.
She was an active member of the community and taught a morning fitness class at the
local church.
It was as she prepared for this class that someone took Missy’s life.
Usually, the class took place outside but the weather forecast for April 18th predicted
rain.
Missy posted on her Facebook page that the session would go on rain or shine.
Missy arrived at the church an hour before her 5am class was due to start to get ready.
However, she wasn’t alone.
Shortly before Missy arrived, a motion activated camera picked up a disturbing individual walking
through the church hallways.
The person was dressed in head-to-toe SWAT gear, which police believe was make shift
and not official gear.
They carried a hammer at their side as they walked through the halls, opening doors without
any apparent reason, seeming to look for something or someone.
At one point, the person uses the hammer to smash a window, which police believe was an
attempt to make it look like that was how they broke in.
The camera didn’t pick up the unknown intruder meeting Missy.
If it did, the footage hasn’t been acknowledged or made public.
It also didn’t show the individual leaving, but they were gone by the time Missy’s students
arrived for their 5am class.
The students found Missy unresponsive and she had head wounds believed to have been
caused by the hammer.
She would succumb to her injuries and police launched an investigation.
The only real clue police have is the CCTV from inside the church, though they did also
release footage from a nearby sporting goods store.
It showed a single car driving through the parking lot two hours before the attack.
The police believe the car may have been connected, but the driver has never been identified.
Of course, the figure in the church kept their face hidden, and police aren’t even sure
if it was a male or female.
They estimated the figure was between 5ft2 and 5ft7 and pointed out their distinctive
walking gait, which they hoped might lead to the figure’s identification.
Police are pretty sure this wasn’t a case of a robbery gone wrong, as nothing was taken
and it seems Missy was specifically targeted, though by who is still being speculated.
Missy’s husband Brandon came under scrutiny after the attack.
The couple had apparently been going through financial and marital problems.
However, he was on his annual fishing trip on the day of the incident and was hundreds
of miles away.
Brandon’s father has also been accused, as he matched the height of the intruder and
had the same walking style.
He also had an alibi, though, and was out of state, and Brandon believes the culprit
was a woman.
Police have received thousands of tips, but the case remains unsolved.
Number 1
Georgina Gharsallah was a 30-year-old mother of two living in Worthing, England, when she
disappeared on March 7th, 2018.
There have been numerous sightings of her in the years since, though police have never
been able to confirm any and what happened to her remains a mystery.
Georgina was living with her mother at the time of the disappearance as she had recently
broken up with her boyfriend and the father of her children.
The morning she was last seen, she told her mother her phone was acting up and she was
going to stop in a store to get it fixed on her way to the job centre.
Her mother lent her an old mobile to use in the meantime.
Georgina also asked to borrow some money and, at first, her mother hadn’t wanted to give
it to her, but she eventually did.
Georgina left the house at around 9am, and stopped into a small off license to ask about
getting her phone fixed.
They talked for a short while before Georgina left, presumably to go to the job centre.
Georgina never made it to the job centre.
It was a while before anybody realised Georgina was missing.
She had had plans to go see her father that evening, but he never questioned it when she
never showed up.
Her mother figured she was probably staying at a friend’s house, and thought Georgina
was upset with her because she had been reluctant to lend her money.
A few days later, Georgina’s ex-boyfriend contacted her mother to ask if she had heard
from her, as he hadn’t been able to get through.
After ringing round and discovering nobody knew where Georgina was, her family contacted
police.
Police were slow to get involved.
They discovered her phone hadn’t been used since the morning of her disappearance, and
eventually CCTV footage from the store was made public in the hopes someone might know
what had happened.
It wasn’t until weeks after the disappearance that police checked her bank account, realising
there had been no change since that day.
Strangely, years later, Georgina’s mother noticed an account linked to a handheld games
console Georgina had with her when she disappeared had been billed £7.99.
It’s not known if this was an automatic renewal of some kind, or if this was new activity.
If it was an automatic renewal, Georgina’s family have questioned how police never noticed
the billing before.
One of the main criticisms of the police was how long it took to gather CCTV evidence,
and some evidence was even lost before it could be reviewed.
For a long time, the CCTV image from the store was the last images of Georgina, and it was
assumed something must have happened to her on her way to the job centre.
But earlier this year, police revealed new CCTV images recorded in the city centre.
At around 4pm that afternoon, Georgina was seen talking to a woman.
The new footage turned the investigation on its head and lead to more questions.
Was the reason she didn’t show up for the meeting the same thing that led to her disappearance?
Did she say anything to the woman that might have explained her mindset?