They say love never dies. Carl Tanzler took that to heart — maybe too literally. When his beloved patient, Elena Milagro de Hoyos, died in 1931, he couldn’t bear it. After two years of visiting her in her tomb, he stole her decaying body and brought it home, where he did his best for seven years to preserve it.
Carl was an odd bird even before he became a grave robber. First, there’s the issue of his name. When he immigrated from Germany with his wife and his two children, he was plain old Carl Tanzler. But in the New World he became an aristocrat, calling himself Count Carl Tanzler von Cassel. He wasn’t a count. He also wasn’t a doctor, but that didn’t stop him from taking Elena Milagro as a patient. When he met the young woman who would become his life (and death) obsession, he was in his 50s and living in Key West, Florida. His wife had left him. He was working as a radiology technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital.
Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos was a 21-year-old Cuban American beauty. She had come to the Marine Hospital for treatment of tuberculosis. Tanzler had had visions since childhood of a dark-haired woman who was destined to be his true love. He believed he had finally found her in Elena. In 1930, tuberculosis was an often fatal disease. Bypassing all hospital rules, Tanzler set about saving her life. He invented a bizarre regimen of homemade tonics and x-ray treatments using equipment he smuggled from the hospital to her parents’ home.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. Elena died on October 25, 1931. Tanzler used his own money to build an elaborate stone mausoleum for her — with her family’s approval. But he kept the key. For two years, he visited her nightly in her above-ground tomb. Then he decided the next step was to bring her back to life.
He built a laboratory for the purpose, and late one night he stole Elena’s body, bringing it to his lab in a toy wagon. Tanzler used mortician’s wax, plaster of Paris and wires to hold the rotting corpse together. He bought it perfume and clothing. He even put a wig made of Elena’s own hair on the corpse’s head.
He also shared a bed with it. It is not clear whether or not he had sex with his dead bride, but a paper tube was reportedly discovered in her vaginal cavity. Tanzer later revealed that his ultimate plan was to fly Elena high into the stratosphere where radiation from outer space would “restore life to her somnolent form.”
He never got the chance. After seven years of blissful life with his mummy, neighbors began to get suspicious. Why was he buying women’s clothes? Why wasn’t he visiting Elena’s tomb any more? When one local spotted him through the windows dancing with a giant doll, they came to investigate. Elena’s mummified corpse was put on display in a funeral home where more than 6,000 people viewed it before it was returned to the Key West Cemetery. It was put in an unmarked grave to prevent any more tampering.
Bermeja, a tiny uninhabited island to the northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula, seems to have done just that. One century, it's sitting pretty at 22°33' N, 91°22 E in the Gulf of Mexico; the next, it's vanished, confounding maritime investigations and aerial surveys alike. And the Mexican people want to know where it went.
Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, Bermeja was a common fixture on maps drawn by Spanish explorers. Its location sometimes varied slightly, its name occasionally appeared as Vermeja, but its existence seemed certain enough. But from the 18th century, the island's cartographic presence started faltering, before it eventually dropped off the horizon altogether. Its last mapped appearance dates back to the 1921 edition of the Geographic Atlas of the Mexican Republic. So what happened to it?
Theories abound regarding Bermeja's mysterious fate. Was it a casualty of global warming and rising sea levels? Did an underwater earthquake shake it clean off the radar? Or did the CIA blow it up, as conspiracy theorists suggest, with a view to expanding US sovereignty in the oil-rich Gulf? Far-fetched, perhaps, but not entirely far out.
In 1997 the Mexican and US governments negotiated a treaty to divide Hoyos de Dona, a stretch of international waters taking in the area where Bermeja was once believed to be located. Seized by a renewed interest in the long-lost island's existence, the Mexican government sent an expedition out to find it. After all, if Bermeja did exist, it would significantly extend Mexico's maritime limits – and, more importantly, its right to the oil deposits within these limits.
The search yielded nothing and the treaty was signed. But with the authorized period of delay on oil exploration and exploitation in Hoyos de Dona set to expire this year, Mexico is on the hunt once more. The implications for the country's economy are just too appealing to ignore.Three official investigations took place in 2009. All three used the most whizz-bang technologies at their disposal, leaving no wave unturned and no depth unplunged. Yet Bermeja remained elusive. Could it be time to admit that the island never existed? That it was invented by early explorers to mislead their rivals? Julio Zamora, president of the Mexican Society of Geography believes so: 'Countries making maps in the 16th and 17th centuries published them with inaccuracies to prevent their enemies from using them.' One strategically placed fake island, and aspiring usurpers would be dissuaded from venturing that way, thus allowing the map-makers free run of the area.
Irasema Alcántara, from the Geography Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), disagrees. 'We've encountered documents containing very precise descriptions of Bermeja's existence…On this basis we firmly believe that the island did exist, but in another location.'
In the annals of history, there exist tales that capture the imagination and curiosity of generations. One such enigma is the baffling case of D.B. Cooper, also known as Dan Cooper, the elusive hijacker who vanished into thin air with a fortune and left behind a trail of intrigue. His audacious act of air piracy, known as the Cooper Case, unfolded over the rugged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. This captivating narrative continues to bewitch both amateur sleuths and seasoned investigators alike, as the mystery surrounding Cooper’s true identity and ultimate fate persists. Join us on a journey through the shadowy corridors of the Cooper investigation, where fact and speculation intermingle, and the truth remains tantalizingly out of reach.
Oregon, in particular, holds a significant place in the Cooper legend. The ruggedly majestic Columbia River Gorge served as a potential location for Cooper’s disappearance. The vast expanses of Oregon’s wilderness continue to inspire speculation and exploration, as individuals search for clues or stumble upon remnants that may shed light on the enigma surrounding Cooper’s fate.
On a chilly November evening on November 24, 1971, an unassuming man known as Dan Cooper approached the ticket counter at Portland International Airport. The nondescript gentleman appeared to be in his mid-40s. He was reserved and quiet; the kind of person who would draw little attention, and rather simply blend unassumingly into the airport crowd. Clad in a business suit, black tie, loafers, and a trench coat, Cooper purchased a $20, one-way ticket to Seattle-Tacoma Airport aboard Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. Little did the unsuspecting crew and passengers realize that this unremarkable passenger would soon orchestrate one of the most audacious acts of air piracy in history.Aboard the plane, nothing seemed amiss. Cooper ordered a bourbon and soda from his 18-E aisle seat, comfortably settling in for the 2:50 pm takeoff. U of O student Bill Mitchell was sitting directly across from Cooper, while another nearby passenger, Robert Gregory, was seated nearby. Later, they would both give nearly identical physical descriptions of the nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper. Gregory would attest that the man in question was likely of Mexican or Native descent, due to a somewhat darker facial complexion, while two flight attendants put his height at around 5’10”. His only luggage was a briefcase and a brown paper bag.
In Australian law, death is generally defined as either irreversible cessation of circulation of blood in the body of the person or irreversible cessation of all function of the brain of the person. National Health and Medical Research Council. This definition applies to all states except Western Australia, which has no statutory definition of death.
Brain death (irreversible cessation of all function of the brain) means death of both the upper brain and brain stem. A person who is brain dead has lost both the capacity to think and perceive, as well as the control of basic body functions. Court challenges to consider upper brain death alone have so far failed, but history suggests that our current definition of death is far from permanent.
In the future it may be possible for individuals to define death for themselves by specifying under what circumstances they want to be considered dead. There is already provision for this in some countries. For the Roman Catholic Church death is the 'complete and final separation of the soul from the body'. However the Vatican has conceded that diagnosing death is a subject for medicine, not the Church. In 1957 Pope Pius XII raised the concerns over whether doctors might be 'continuing the resuscitation process, despite the fact that the soul may already have left the body.' He even asked one of the central questions confronting modern medicine, namely whether 'death had already occurred after grave trauma to the brain, which has provoked deep unconsciousness and central breathing paralysis, the fatal consequences of which have been retarded by artificial respiration.' The answer, he said, 'did not fall within the competence of the Church.'
It remains for the doctor and especially the anesthesiologist, to give a clear and precise definition of 'death' and the 'moment of death' of a patient who passes away in a state of unconsciousness. Pope Pius XII Followers of religions like Zen Buddhism, and Shintoism believe that the mind and body are integrated and have trouble accepting the brain death criteria to determine death. Some Orthodox Jews, Native Americans, Muslims and fundamentalist Christians believe that as long as a heart is beating--even artificially, you are still alive.
In Fayette County, George and Jennie Sodder gathered for a Christmas Eve Celebration with 9 of their 10 children in 1945. But that holiday would end in heartache.
On that Christmas Eve, Maurice and four of his siblings, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty, asked to be allowed to stay up and play with their Christmas toys after the rest of the family went to bed. They promised they would do their chores before they went to sleep, so their parents agreed to let them stay up.
Shortly after midnight, the children's mother, Jenny Sodder, was awakened by the ringing phone. When she answered, the female caller on the other end asked to speak to someone Jenny did not know, then laughed and hung up. Jenny believed this was a prank call. Before she went back to sleep, she noticed that her home's lights were on, the shades were up and the doors were unlocked.
Jenny was woken up again that night by a noise on the roof. At 1:30 a.m., she realized the house was on fire. She called for her husband and children to get out. Two of the Sodders' sons and their daughter, who was carrying the baby, made it outside, but Jenny and her husband, George, realized Maurice, Martha, Louise, Jennie and Betty were missing. George tried to find a ladder which was kept near the house so he could climb up to the children's bedrooms, but the ladder had disappeared. It was later found down an embankment away from the house.
The Sodder house burned to the ground less than forty-five minutes after the fire started. The fire department initially blamed the blaze on faulty wiring. Some reports stated that officials could not find any trace of the missing children's remains in the ashes, but other reports maintain that some bone fragments and possible human organs were located. One was analyzed and turned out to be beef liver. A coroner's jury ruled that the missing Sodder children had died in the fire. Afterwards, and against the advice of the fire Marshall, George plowed over the remains of his home and planted flowers in memory of his lost children.
Within months of their children's presumed deaths, George and Jenny decided they had not been killed by the flames but had been kidnapped, and the fire deliberately set to cover the crime. The house's telephone line had been cut sometime before or after the fire. Witnesses reported sightings of the Sodder children in the area shortly after they supposedly died. The Sodders attempted to get the case reopened, but for many years the police refused to investigate because they believed no crime had been committed.
In 1949, George and some others excavated the site of his former home to search for the missing children's remains. Only four pieces of vertebrae and two small bones that were possibly from a child's hand were located. A pathologist who assisted with the search remarked that it was unusual that so little was found, as the fire was quick-burning and should not have so completely destroyed the children's remains. The pathologist believed the bones that were located were from a 14- to 15-year-old, which would match Maurice's age, but due to the location that the bones were found in the floor plan of the house, George did not believe they were from his son. Another analysis conducted years later determined that the bones were from a 16- to 22-year-old person. Curiously, the bones did not have any signs of fire damage. It was suggested that they were planted at the site from a nearby cemetery, but there is no evidence to support this theory.
In 1968, George and Jenny received a photograph in the mail of a young man in his mid-twenties. An image of the photograph is posted below this case summary. On the back of the photograph were these words: "Louis Sodder" "I love brother Frankie." "ilil Boys" "A90132" or possibly "A90135." The Sodders believed it was a photo of their son Louis as an adult. They were unable to verify their theory, however. The man in the photo remains unidentified and it is unclear who sent the picture to the Sodders and why.
Jenny and George searched for their children for the rest of their lives, posting a billboard advertising a reward for their safe return. George died in 1969 and Jenny in 1989. Many people theorize that the missing children were killed in the fire and their parents were simply unable to accept the loss, but others believe the children were indeed abducted and were possibly taken to Italy. The youngest Sodder child, who was an infant at the time of the fire, is still trying to determine what really happened to her brothers and sisters.
Everything seems to be normal in the small town of Taos in New Mexico. Well, almost everything. In this town of about 4,700 residents, a strange phenomenon affects the population. It is called the Taos Hum — a strange humming noise like one that would come from an idle diesel engine left running.
Investigation into this low humming noise has not lead to any tangible proof of where this noise might be coming from. The whole thing gets weirder as people who hear it cannot get rid of the irritating persistent hum even by putting on earplugs! The noise is louder inside the house or contained environment than outside. Some people hear it all the time and some hear it at intervals. For some its gets so disturbing that it keeps them up at night. It is said that the humming sound began in 20 years ago but the exact time varies. However, when the reason or location of the noise could not be found, it gained so much importance that the people suffering from it contacted the United States Congress in 1993 and asked for help.
A serious investigation of the mystery began in 1997 with several science and science institutions getting involved to get to the root cause of the noise. They interviewed people who were affected by the sound and were surprised to find that the effects of the mysterious humming resulted in nosebleeds, feeling dizzy, vibrations, irritability and, of course, sleep disorders. The residents were of the opinion that it was due to some secret government project or military installations, which were based near the area.
Investigators and researchers came to no exact explanation to the cause of the hum but some of them attributed it to the possibility of electromagnetic waves which are caused by meteors. Another strange thing about the mysterious humming sounds is that more men can hear it than women. Also some people cannot hear it at all. What could generate this noise? And why is it in this specific location? Whatever the reason, do the people who hear it possess some kind of advanced and evolved hearing, which is yet to be discovered by science?
Also why has this phenomenon just started 20 years ago? If the rise of industry is the cause, then that happened much earlier. The answer to that could be the more advanced technology of today. But some are certain that the occurrence is due to supernatural phenomenon or even some sort of conspiracy to keep the real reason from the general public. To name a few interesting suppositions, the famous or infamous town of Roswell, which is supposed to have had a flying saucer crash in 1947, is pretty close to Taos. Furthermore, there was much strange flying aircraft activity reported in the region even after the initial alleged crash which was covered up by the United States military, stating that it was a weather balloon that had crashed. Then one also wonders if the “Trinity” atom bomb test in 1945 could have had triggered the phenomenon.
Just like the persistent humming, the story too does not end here. The noise has also been reported in other places in the world giving these “Hums” their local titles, like the “Bristol Hum” and the “Bondi Hum”. Interestingly, the Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, tried to record the hum and reported that its power spectral density has a frequency peak of 56 hertz. The Bristol Hum was reported in the late 1970s in Britain. In some locations, volcanic activity nearby was the cause. Experts say that in the human body, the auditory nervous system too can create a humming sound called tinnitus. But why do people hear this sound in a particular location cannot be explained.
Interestingly, people with tinnitus can also hear and distinguish the Hum from their disorder. Then there is another scientific theory in which it is possible that hot gasses moving beneath the Earth can cause the vibrations and sounds. But all this is mere speculation. So far no one has come up with the proper or precise explanation of the Taos Hum or the same phenomenon in other areas. Some even attribute it to an advanced civilization below the surface, one that uses advanced technology. But for now it seems that the mystery endures and will for many years till its source is discovered. And last but not least, like all eerie stuff that goes ‘bump’ in the night, the Hum too increases as darkness falls.
For nearly 30 years the killing of Tupac Shakur remained one of the music industry’s most enduring unsolved crimes. His 1996 murder near the Las Vegas strip sparked countless reports, books and documentaries seeking to determine who exactly was responsible for the death of the hip-hop legend.
But on Friday, authorities in Nevada announced they had finally made an arrest in the case. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former gang leader and one of the last surviving witnesses to the crime, was indicted for murder for allegedly orchestrating the drive-by shooting. Davis, prosecutors allege, admitted to serving as the “on the ground, on-site commander of the effort to kill Tupac”, after the rapper was involved in a fight with his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who was a longtime suspect in the killing.
“It has often been said that justice delayed is justice denied,” said Steve Wolfson, the Clark county district attorney, to the Associated Press. “In this case, justice has been delayed, but justice won’t be denied.”
The development, officials said, was made possible in part by Davis himself, who described his involvement in the drive-by shooting in a 2019 memoir. The killing of Tupac Shakur, the iconic and beloved artist who sold more than 75m records, drew intense public interest and a fascination that persisted for decades. Questions and conspiracy theories have long swirled around the case as has criticism that Las Vegas police bungled the investigation.
Shakur was gunned down just off the Las Vegas strip on 7 September 1996, while he was on his way to an afterparty with the Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight. Earlier in the evening the rapper had attended a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand Hotel and afterward was involved in a physical confrontation with Anderson and several others, in which Shakur attacked Anderson over a previous conflict.
Later that evening, Shakur and Knight were riding in a BMW headed to a party in a convoy of about 10 cars. While they waited at a red light, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside them and fired eight shots. Shakur, who had been leaning out of the window to flirt with women in a nearby car, was hit four times and died less than a week later at age 25.
The rapper’s death came as he was feuding with rival Biggie Smalls, which fueled speculation about the role the east coast-west coast rivalry had played. But the case remained unsolved with police failing to pursue crucial leads – and ruling out Anderson as a suspect despite a tip from Los Angeles police that he had been the shooter. Anderson was shot and killed in a separate incident in 1998.
The rapper Yaki Kadafi, who was in the car just behind Shakur at the time of the shooting, told police in the immediate aftermath that he had seen the assailants driving a white Cadillac and could identify the killer. Las Vegas police did not follow up on the tip, and Kadafi was fatally shot in an unrelated incident months later.
One September day, New York City suffered a devastating act of domestic terrorism, but that day was not the 11th, and the attack took place over 80 years before the most notorious terrorist attack on America. In 1920, an explosion in the Financial District of New York City killed 38 people, injured hundreds more, and caused damage that is still visible on some of Wall Street’s most famous buildings today. Although the attack has largely been forgotten, in terms of casualties, it was the worst act of terrorism in the United States until the bombing in Oklahoma City conducted by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.
The investigation into the bombing involved 10 government agencies and extended across the world, yet after three years of intensive work, investigators were finally forced to admit that they had no idea who had planted the bomb. Subsequent investigations have uncovered many suspects, but no one was ever charged with offenses related to the explosion, even as suspicions have always fallen on anarchists, political activists who sought revolutionary change.
In America, which had large immigrant communities, these movements gained increasing numbers of followers, so when a bomb exploded on Wall Street, the heart of the American financial system, it was perhaps natural that suspicions immediately fell on anarchist movements. Was this an attempt to destabilize capitalism in America or even to assassinate leading figures in the financial world? Finding clear answers to those questions proved beyond the capacity of the agencies tasked with investigating the bombing. Even now, there is no certain answer as to who planted the Wall Street bomb, but it has long been attributed to anarchists.
In 1976, residents of Circleville, Ohio, began receiving threatening mail that has haunted them ever since. The letters were from Columbus but had no return address. They accused school bus driver, Mary Gillespie and the school superintendent of having an extramarital affair. One of the letters was even addressed to Mary’s husband Ron that threatened his life if he didn’t put a stop to the affair. In 1977, Ron died in a suspicious one-car crash that involved gunshots. However, when the Sheriff ruled the death an accident, other residents of Circleville began receiving letters accusing the Sheriff of covering up the so-called “accident.”
Ron’s sister’s husband, Paul Freshour, was convicted of writing the letters after there was an attempt to murder Mary via a booby-trap-rigged pistol. Even after he was thrown behind bars, the Circleville Letters continued throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s. Freshour even received one in prison. In 1994, Freshour was released, and he claimed his innocence until his death in 2012. The true identity of the Circleville Letter Writer remains unknown.
