May MysteryKit- True Unsolved Mysteries

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May MysteryKit- True Unsolved Mysteries

1mstrust
Abr 17, 2023, 10:54 pm



May is about the unsolved mystery, so here's your chance to play detective. Choose a non-fiction about a crime, a disaster, a mysterious place...anything that has no answer at the end, or at least, no concrete answer.
Here are just a few titles to start you out. Many of these subjects have dozens of choices.

Unsolved Crimes
Jack the Ripper: Portrait of a Killer or The Complete Jack the Ripper
Lizzie Borden: The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century
Kitty Genovese: The Murder, The Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America
The Murder of Marilyn Monroe The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe
The Donnellys Massacre

Other mysteries to consider:
The Roanoke Colony
The Bermuda Triangle
The Edmund Fitzgerald
Aokigahara, the "suicide forest" of Japan
UFO abductions

Tell us what unsolved mystery you're choosing. Who knows, you may solve it.

2dreamweaver529
Abr 18, 2023, 11:48 am

If you're interested in Jack the Ripper - I highly recommend

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
I read it earlier this year. It's very good and has a different perspective.

3MissBrangwen
Abr 18, 2023, 12:56 pm

I plan to read Little Deaths by Emma Flint, which was a BB from Judy last year. It is a novel, but based on a real case.

4LadyoftheLodge
Abr 18, 2023, 3:10 pm

I might read a book about Padre Pio, who is a Roman Catholic saint and bore the stigmata (wounds) of Jesus. Although he was examined by doctors, they could not find any reasons for the wounds nor did they heal. I have several books about Padre Pio.

There are other unsolved sacred/spiritual mysteries that are interesting to read about. The Miracle Detective by Randall Sullivan is a book that deals with investigation of miracles.

5DeltaQueen50
Abr 18, 2023, 7:04 pm

I am going to read Without A Trace by John Harris in which he examines the last voyage of eight ships. Although the ships Erebus and Terror from Sir John Franklin's Arctic trip have been discovered recently, that still leave 6 ships that disappeared without a trace.

6JayneCM
Editado: Abr 18, 2023, 10:22 pm

I will be reading Murders, Mysteries and Hauntings, about unsolved Australian crimes and mystery disappearances.

7mstrust
Abr 19, 2023, 10:28 am

>2 dreamweaver529: That came up when I was looking for Ripper books but I couldn't tell if it was fiction or non. I might see if my library has it, and I'm deciding between others too.

8fuzzi
Abr 19, 2023, 1:02 pm

Starred. Not sure what I'll be reading, yet.

9beebeereads
Abr 20, 2023, 9:16 am

>2 dreamweaver529: I enthusiastically second your recommendation. I really appreciated the research the author did to the victims to the fore.

10Tess_W
Editado: Abr 20, 2023, 12:01 pm

I have SUICIDE FOREST: The Mystery of Aokigahara: True Crime Stories on my shelf so will go with that. Great topic!

ETA:
A couple of good true mysteries I've read previously: The Donner Party, the ship "Mary Celeste", the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the escape from Alcatraz, and I think that the drowning of Natalie Wood would fit this category.

11mstrust
Abr 20, 2023, 2:37 pm

>8 fuzzi: Let us know when you decide.

>9 beebeereads: It does sound good, and I haven't read a new Ripper book in years.

>10 Tess_W: Perfect fit. I saw an episode of William Shatner's show The Unexplained a few nights ago about spooky locations, and of course, the forest was featured.
Wood, Hoffa and the Alcatraz escapes are all good ideas! I don't think The Donners is such a mystery, but I would always be interested in someone's review of a Donner book anyway, so I wouldn't discourage it, ha!

12Tess_W
Abr 20, 2023, 7:36 pm

>11 mstrust: I guess I was thinking that the mystery is did they really cannibalize each other? Some say yes, some say no!

13LibraryCin
Editado: Abr 22, 2023, 3:07 pm

I haven't figure out yet what I read, but my head went first to the "princes in the tower". I might just see if I've got any Ripper books on the tbr, though.

ETA: Oh, good choice to suggest the Donnellys, though! I've read a few things, but I probably have more about them on the tbr, as well.

14mstrust
Abr 23, 2023, 1:18 pm

I had actually never heard of the Donnellys, but I searched for Canadian unsolved mysteries and that seems to be a big one. I need to look into it myself.

15Crypto-Willobie
Abr 23, 2023, 6:58 pm

16mstrust
Abr 25, 2023, 7:53 pm

I accidentally read a book that fits here, not knowing it would end the way it did. The Library Book by Susan Orlean is about the 1986 fire at the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. It covers the fire, investigation and arrest, but there are plenty of questions left unanswered. It's officially unsolved.

17Tess_W
Abr 25, 2023, 9:00 pm

>16 mstrust: Sound like a good one....on my list it goes!

18Berly
Abr 25, 2023, 9:12 pm

The Library Book is indeed a good one! Have fun with it.

19sallylou61
Abr 25, 2023, 10:30 pm

I will probably read Little Lindy is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century by Thomas Doherty. There is some questioning about whether Hauptmann was really guilty.

20fuzzi
Abr 26, 2023, 7:54 am

>11 mstrust: I can't find anything on my shelves to fit this challenge, I might have to sit out a month. I'm determined to read only from my shelves this year.

21mstrust
Abr 26, 2023, 10:10 am

>17 Tess_W: >18 Berly: Great book! And I liked the delve into the head librarians of the past.
>20 fuzzi: Well, if you don't have anything, then I guess that's it. But I'd expand the search of true unsolved mysteries and look for things like cryptids (got anything on Nessie or Bigfoot or Mothman?), hauntings, mass hysteria, like the witch trials, or abnormal psychology. And any missing person case counts, so if you have bios on Amelia Earhardt, or Ambrose Bierce, or the Lindburgh baby, like Sally's reading. Hope you find something!

22fuzzi
Abr 26, 2023, 12:19 pm

>21 mstrust: thanks for the encouragement!

23mstrust
Abr 26, 2023, 12:33 pm

I hope you find something, but if not, there's always next month. Good luck!

24VivienneR
Abr 26, 2023, 1:50 pm

Found two on my shelves that would fit this challenge. I'm going with Richard III and the Princes in the Tower by A.J. Pollard. It must be the heaviest book I own, so no reading in bed!

25soelo
Abr 30, 2023, 10:46 am

>16 mstrust: Thanks for pointing this one out! I have it on my shelves and am not really feeling like reading about a real murder right now. This one is perfect!

26dudes22
Editado: Abr 30, 2023, 12:36 pm

There are also a few about unsolved art heists - The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser comes to mind.

ETA: Actually I suppose there are a few books about the Isabella Gardner Museum theft.

27mstrust
Maio 1, 2023, 12:21 pm

>24 VivienneR: Good one! That's a very interesting mystery.

>25 soelo: Glad I could help!

>26 dudes22: Another good mystery. Amazing that it's still unsolved.

28LadyoftheLodge
Maio 1, 2023, 4:45 pm

I read The Life and Prayers of Padre Pio by Wyatt North. The book was well-documented and concise. Although the mystery of Padre Pio's stigmata was never solved, the book focused on a lot of other aspects of his life that I did not know about.

29DeltaQueen50
Maio 3, 2023, 3:32 pm

I switched to a different book, but I wasn't all that taken with Darkest Unsolved Mysteries by Edward Collins. It was mostly a rehash of murders and disappearances that have been featured on the Nexflix version of "Unsolved Mysteries".

31mstrust
Editado: Maio 9, 2023, 3:04 pm



I read The Five and here's my review:
The author's focus is firmly on the lives of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper, not their deaths and not the unknown man who killed them. The amount of research done and the skill with with the author was able to show that these women had families who loved them, had struggles to survive, relationships and hopes, and most of all, that not all of them were prostitutes but simply poor, often homeless women who were lumped in as prostitutes simply because the police saw nearly all the women they dealt with in the East End as "fallen" women.
If you're looking for information about the actual murders, you'll find very little here, except for the aftermath on the families.

32LibraryCin
Maio 14, 2023, 12:20 am

Seven Fallen Feathers / Tanya Talaga
4.5 stars

There are all kinds of issues on indigenous reservations in Canada. Education is just one of them. In 2000(?), a group of indigenous people built and started running a high school in Thunder Bay, Ontario for those students living north who didn’t have a high school to go to. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before some of those kids – many who were away from home for the first time, who had never been in a city before, a new culture, a new language, no (or not many) family or friends to help – started disappearing. And dying. Over 11 years, seven teenagers died.

The Thunder Bay police did very little to help, often not even contacting the families on the reserves to let them know their kids had disappeared. In some cases, they went too long before starting to look for the kids. Five of the kids were found in the river, and in most cases, just written off as “no foul play suspected”. But the indigenous people running the school, the families and friends question this. It was so unlike these kids to just get drunk and drown in the river. It has never really been figured out what exactly happened to these kids.

Wow, this is so sad. And aggravating that not enough is being done to help the indigenous kids and their communities. It’s an eye-opener and definitely worth reading. There are some repetitive bits and the author kind of went all over the place sometimes – between telling the kids’ stories, then working in other information about other people or communities. But really worth the read.

33soelo
Maio 14, 2023, 12:32 am

I have finished The Library Book and Susan Orlean did a great job weaving the story of the fire in with a lot of other mini biographies of people involved in the LA system and other episodes from the system's history. I listened to this on a road trip that included two different library book sales.

34DeltaQueen50
Maio 14, 2023, 2:30 pm

June's thread is up and can be found here:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/350842#

35sallylou61
Maio 14, 2023, 6:15 pm

I just finished reading Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders by Kathryn Miles, of particular interest to me since the book is primarily about the 1996 murders of the lesbian couple, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, in the Shenandoah National Park near the Appalachian Trail. I remember reading about these murders around the time they occurred, and was amazed to find that they happened over 25 years ago. These murders were never solved; Ms. Miles describes how the case was mishandled from the beginning with officials originally treating the case as a murder/suicide instead of two murder case. When officials finally arrested a man, Ms. Miles shows how it was probably the wrong man. Ms. Miles also mentions other unsolved murder cases which occurred in 1996 and 1997 in central Virginia. Officials did not seriously try to connect any of the murders together. Ms. Miles also names who she thinks is the murderer. She is very concerned with making national parks safe for women and girls.

36mstrust
Maio 15, 2023, 1:03 pm

>33 soelo: Sounds like you liked it as much as I did.
>35 sallylou61: That's going on my WL. I heard about these murders both from A Walk in the Woods and the podcast "My Favorite Murders" did a segment on it.

37antqueen
Maio 18, 2023, 10:51 am

I read Ghost Ship, about the Mary Celeste. Interesting. I'd heard of the ship, but didn't really know anything about it. I think Hicks' proposed solution to the mystery sounds a lot more plausible than a lot of others people have come up with.

Also, the last part of the book touches on other mysterious happenings in the sea, such as the training flight lost in the Bermuda Triangle. And what did I see in my email right after I finished the book? An article from National Geographic about said training flight. Coincidence? We may never know...

38lowelibrary
Maio 24, 2023, 12:36 am

I read Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries by John Austin, more conspiracy theories about suicides and overdoses, than true unsolved crimes.

39staci426
Maio 26, 2023, 7:32 pm

I read Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. This was about the victims of a serial killer in the Long Island, NY area who preyed on escorts from Craigslist. It was an interesting case, but I found the book confusing and hard to follow. It was written 10 years ago and the case is still unsolved.

40sallylou61
Maio 28, 2023, 10:53 am

I read Little Lindy is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century by Thomas Doherty. As the subtitle states, this book is primarily about the news coverage of the case rather than solving the case. Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh were a very popular couple, and the public followed the news closely. The different media, newspaper, radio, and news reels at theaters raced to cover the case. It's amazing to think that in the 1930s, only around 90 years ago, radio was the new technology.

41VivienneR
Editado: Maio 30, 2023, 9:10 pm

Richard III & the Princes in the Tower by A.J. Pollard
The most famous unsolved mystery. As an early victim of misinformation it is hardly surprising that this story survived. Richard had absolutely no reason to kill the young princes, whereas Henry VI needed to create the mystery of their deaths to validate his position.

There is no contemporary description of Richard that suggests any physical deformity. One mild comment that "one shoulder was higher than the other" escalated with each mention until eventually Thomas More's history of Richard claimed that he was "little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than the right" and he continued with atrocious stories about his mother and his birth intended to create ominous portent. As Richard was killed at Bosworth in 1495 when More was a small child he had no personal knowledge of the king but his biography of Richard shows the extent of his toadying to the Tudors. His account influenced Shakespeare's play written 100 years after Richard III's death, when it was still acceptable to write unflattering accounts of the last Plantagenet king.

Written in 1997, well before the discovery of Richard's body in a parking lot in Leicester. Biographers take one side or the other but Pollard goes along with the traditional claim that he was a villain who murdered his two young nephews. Nothing I have read convinces me of his guilt.