Patricia Abbott (pattinase): What Mystery Would You Most Like to See Solved?

Sunday, September 23, 2012

What Mystery Would You Most Like to See Solved?

And for me it is the death of Natalie Wood in 1981. I never believed the story that she stepped out into a dingy drunk, fell in the water and drowned because it is widely known she was scared to death of drowning and never went near the ship's edge. Now some new information is coming to light.

What about you? What mystery, death, puzzle most fascinates you?

33 comments:

Anonymous said...: Jack the Ripper (pace Patsy Cornwell)
Judge Crater
D. B. Cooper

Jeff M.; 9:44 AM
Thomas Pluck said...: Well, the first case that intrigued me was Jack the Ripper, but that tale's colder than a witch's you know what in a brass bra. The Black Dahlia still has a chance to be solved, but I'd like the Zodiac to be definitively solved, because I want it to be the horn-rimmed military geek I think it is. That sort of man is very dangerous and we have so many of them. Violence geeks, Marc MacYoung calls them. I was one for a while. Angry, fearful young men who cling to weapons to assuage their fears.
On a more personal note, a distant cousin's wife was murdered while showing their house to an unknown buyer, back in the '80s. They know a serial killer operating in the area was imprisoned, but they never got closure on her horrific murder. She was the inspiration for "The Uncleared" and I still lay awake some nights wondering how it must feel. So if I had a magic crime solving wand, it would be for her family to have peace.; 9:48 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...: We have a few local cases that are puzzling too. Like the Oakland Child Murders of the 1970s. Four kids killed and they never found him.; 10:25 AM
le0pard13 said...: Yeah, Natalie's demise stunk of cover up. For me, I'd pick Bruce Lee's untimely and still suspicious death.; 10:54 AM
Charles Gramlich said...: probably the Black Dahlia. Or no, what happened to Amelia Earhart. I wish they'd find her plane.; 11:13 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...: I think they recently found artifacts of her life on some island. Bruce Lee is a good one.
I would like to know if Jeffrey MacDonald is innocent.; 11:32 AM
Prashant C. Trikannad said...: The mysterious (death) disappearance of Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose who founded the Indian National Army in 1939 with the help of the Japanese to liberate the country from British rule. This was probably the most sensitive political issue in the 20th century in light of Bose's perceived allegiance with the Japanese. Though under the British yoke at the time, India was largely on the side of the West in its battle against Hitler and Japan's invasion of Indochina.; 12:29 PM
Rick Robinson said...: I think leave Natalie's death alone. Accidental drowning is okay with me.

D.B. Cooper would be the most interesting to me to see solved.; 12:32 PM
Anonymous said...: What is said in the "Khalidi tapes" that The Los Angeles Times refuses to release.

JTG in Detroit; 1:27 PM
Deb said...: I'd like to know where Jimmy Hoffa's remains are. There have been so many theories and "certainties" over the years, but none have panned out.

What actually happened during the Lindberg baby kidnapping and how many people were involved is another mystery I'd like to be solved.; 1:53 PM
Todd Mason said...: Horror fiction pioneers Poe and Ambrose Bierce both died mysterious deaths...too aptly.

The circus-fire girl whom Stewart O'Nan deals with in his book (I first came across accounts of her case in the 1970s)...

Quite a few, really...; 2:42 PM
Anonymous said...: Deb, my wife agrees with you about Jimmy Hoffa . Is he really buried in the Meadowlands ?

I thought of Amelia Earhart too but I thought I read that they think they may have found the remains of her plane.; 2:44 PM
Anonymous said...: I thought Bierce disappeared in Mexico and no one knows for sure when and where he died. Not true ?; 2:47 PM
Cap'n Bob said...: Was Custer shot at the ford of the Little Big Horn or later in the fight?

What started the fire on the Hindenburg?

Where did the Roanoke Colony go?

Plus the ones the people above asked.; 3:23 PM
Anonymous said...: What happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste?

What about Lord Lucan? Dead or alive?

Jeff M.; 3:42 PM
Todd Mason said...: Jeff, assuming that that was you, Jeff...

in re: the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce: Exactly.

Arthur Jean Cox had an amusing suggestion in his short story "A Collector of Ambroses"...; 4:06 PM
Naomi Johnson said...: Not a mystery perhaps, but I'd like for Glenn Miller's plane to be found.; 4:28 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Great questions here. What happened to Jean Spangler? Did Lizzie Borden kill her parents?; 5:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Amelia Earheart's demise. We may know more about it soon.; 6:07 PM
Cap'n Bob said...: How about all those friends and associates of the Clintons that died mysteriously over the years?

The Zodiac Killer.

Is there more to the Kennedy assassination than is contained in the official report?

Was Marilyn Monroe murdered?; 7:06 PM
Mike Dennis said...: The JFK Assassination.; 7:11 PM
Jerry House said...: Supposedly Ambrose Bierce was killed by (or by the order of) Pancho Villa. Bierce could really piss people off.

As far as the Kennedys go, it's the RFK assassination that leaves me with the most unanswered questions.; 7:22 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Lots of mysteries in the Kennedy family. Hopefully Amelia's story is coming to an end.; 7:34 PM
Paul D Brazill said...: Some good ones there. I'll add Robert Maxwell, His death was well dodgy.

More info, here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

Also, where to guitar picks go when you drop them?; 6:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Patti - I've always wondered about the truth in the Elizabeth Short case...; 7:44 AM
J F Norris said...: More JFK related stuff and one that really disturbs me:

Dorothy Kilgallen, opinionated newspaper columnist and "What's My Line?" panelist, was most likely murdered. It was never fully investigated. People still believe it was a cover-up related to her reporting of discrepancies in evidence related to the JFK assassination.; 8:51 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Wow, I never heard about this one before. I can remember her well. Must look into it.; 10:31 AM
Ben said...: great prompt, Patti. The Black Dahlia has been more or less solved. We'll never fully know because the guy who allegedly did her died two years later. It's a demented L.A surgeon named Walter Bayley - http://www.bethshort.com/bd/2006/09/16/walter-bayley/

In James Ellroy's Feast of Death, he talks about how Bayley used to dine with a glass of wine, watching surgery films in his clinic. Dude was a sex nut and off his rocker.

D.B Cooper has been fascinating to me since I've looked into it. I'd love to see that one explained.; 10:58 AM
Gerard said...: What happened at Chappaquiddick and afterwards?

Who poisoned Robert Johnson?

What happened to the one bomber in 1970 in Madison, WI who got away?; 12:56 PM
Anonymous said...: The New York Times had an article today about the discovery of bones that might be Richard III. Did he really kill the princes in the tower? Or was he framed as in Tey's THE DAUGHTER OF TIME?; 1:12 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Good ones all.
I think Josephine Tey read that face incorrectly, Jeff, but you never know.; 1:45 PM
Todd Mason said...: Sadly, though, there were so many ways Bierce could've been killed.

I definitely lean toward Occam's razor (and Oswald as good marksman and unbalanced quasi-Leninist) in Kennedy shooting matters...it still strikes me that the Cuban Missile "Crisis", where all the breastbeating was apparently for show while quiet negotiation kept missiles out of Cuba in exchange for pulling them out of Turkey, was the ultimate downfall of both Kennedy and Kruschev, and the result of both removals worsened things notably for the world since, even though I don't find either man particularly admirable (even if it isn't too tough to be better than a number who've followed them)...in part because of the very breast-beating and similar nonsense muddying up whatever good they achieved (in Kruschev's case, rather more than in JFK's...but he had longer to work at it and an Even Worse situation to improve upon).; 8:46 AM
Todd Mason said...: The time-travel fantasy series JOURNEYMAN, on dvd and Hulu after its NBC run, dealt amusingly with D. B. Cooper.; 8:47 AM