Posted :
February 2015
Author :
Robin Warder
A
coincidence is defined as a series of events and circumstances which seemingly
have no apparent connection to each other, but wind up being related by pure
chance. Whenever a mysterious crime takes place, investigators will attempt to
solve it by piecing together the events and circumstances surrounding the case.
However, complications can ensue when a coincidence enters the picture. An investigation
can be seriously hampered when one is forced to look into events which, at
first glance, appear to be connected to the crime but turn out to be nothing
more than a bizarre coincidence. In many of these cases, the coincidence had no
direct connection to the crime but made for an interesting
“story-within-a-story.”
On September 5, 2012, a shocking mass murder took place near Chevaline, France.
A British tourist named Saad al-Hilli was traveling on a mountainside road with
his wife, Iqbal, their two young daughters, Zainab and Zeena, and Iqbal’s
elderly mother, Suhalia al-Allaf. Sometime that afternoon, their vehicle was
ambushed near Lake Annency and riddled with bullets. Saad, Iqbal, and Suhalia
were all shot to death. Zeena survived the attack by staying hidden, and Zainab
was wounded but managed to pull through. A French
cyclist named Sylvain Mollier was also found dead at the scene, presumably at
the wrong place at the wrong time. To this day, investigators have been unable
to determine who was responsible, or what their motive might have been, and the
shooting has been described as “the perfect crime.” If that wasn’t enough, the
murders were also followed by an astonishing coincidence. None of
Iqbal’s family or friends knew this wasn’t her first marriage. In February
1999, Iqbal was working in the US and, in order to get a green card and remain
in the country, she agreed to marry an oil worker named Jim Thompson. The
marriage did not work out, and the couple split up the following year. When Iqbal
left the country, she eventually got remarried and started a family with Saad
al-Hilli, but never told anybody about her previous marriage to Thompson.
However, the marriage ceased to be a secret after a stunning turn of events.
Mere hours after Iqbal al-Hilli’s murder, Jim Thompson suffered a fatal heart
attack while driving through his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. Naturally,
there was some suspicion of foul play, but it appears that Thompson’s death had
no connection to his ex-wife and was nothing more than an unfortunate
coincidence.
9 The
Disappearances Of Stacy Peterson And Her Mother
One of the most sensational crime stories of recent years was the disappearance
of 23-year-old Stacy Peterson. In 2007, Stacy lived in Bollingbrook, Illinois
with her police officer husband, Drew Peterson, who was 30 years older and on
his fourth marriage. On October 28, Stacy went missing, and since her marriage
to Drew was troubled at the time, suspicion immediately turned to him. Three years
earlier, Drew’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in her bathtub in
what was initially believed to be an accidental drowning. Drew collected a
substantial life insurance policy, but Stacy’s disappearance prompted another
investigation into Kathleen’s death. In 2009, Drew was charged with his
ex-wife’s murder and eventually sentenced to 38 years in prison. He remains the
prime suspect in Stacy’s disappearance, but her body has never been found. Stacy’s
disappearance was just the latest in a long line of tragedies for her family.
In an eerie confidence, Stacy’s 40-year-old mother, Christie Cales, had also
vanished under suspicious circumstances nine years earlier. Christie had a
total of six children but lost two of them during the 1980s when they were
infants. Christie abused drugs and alcohol, was often in trouble with the law,
and had a turbulent relationship with her husband. The couple
often neglected their children, but when they divorced in 1990, Christie’s
husband got sole custody. In 1998, Christie was living with her boyfriend in
Blue Island, Illinois. On March 11, she apparently walked out of her home and
never returned, and that was the last anyone ever saw of her. Much like with
Stacy, Christie’s family has always suspected that her spouse was responsible
for her disappearance, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.
Officially, both Christie Cales and her daughter remain missing.
8 The Murder
Victim Who Succumbed To A Rare Blood Disease
In 1964, 33-year-old Calvin Jones was involved in a relationship with
23-year-old Sara Tolbert. On June 13, the Philadelphia couple got into a heated
argument inside Jones’s vehicle and he responded by viciously beating his
girlfriend with a rubber hose 15 times. Jones then spent the next several hours
driving around with Tolbert’s body inside his car and, at some unspecified
point, she died. Jones finally decided to drive to a police station and confess
to murder. He had
previously spent time in prison for trying to poison his wife, so it seemed
like his punishment would be severe. However, Jones would not face a murder
charge when he went to court, as a remarkable set of circumstances would allow
him to plead guilty to the lesser charge of aggravated assault and battery. In a
stunning coincidence, it turned out that even if she was not beaten by her
boyfriend, Sara Tolbert still would have died the following morning. After a
medical examination was done on Tolbert’s body, it was discovered that she was
suffering from a very rare blood disease called sickle-cell anemia. At the time
Jones assaulted her, Tolbert only had hours to live before the disease became
fatal. Two different medical examiners officially concluded that Tolbert died
of natural causes, so it was impossible to prove that Jones’s beating played
any role in her death. In the end, the judge agreed to accept Jones’s guilty
plea to assault and battery but stated that the defendant would have been
indicted for murder were it not for the unlikely coincidence.
7 The
Wrongful Conviction Of Dennis Maher
On the evening of November 16, 1983, a woman walking through Lowell,
Massachusetts was attacked by a male assailant and raped. The following night,
another woman was attacked by a man in the exact same area, but she managed to
escape and provide a description to police. Later that evening, a resident
named Dennis Maher was detained, and both victims positively identified him as
their attacker. Maher would
be charged with the attacks and, after an unsolved rape from the previous
summer was also pinned on him, he was sentenced to life in prison. Years later,
he got in touch with The Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to
helping wrongfully convicted people. They successfully lobbied for DNA testing on
the evidence, and it excluded Maher as the perpetrator of the rapes. In 2003,
he was released after serving 19 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. Unfortunately
for Maher, he had been railroaded because of an unbelievable series of
coincidences. The second victim told police that her attacker wore a red hooded
sweatshirt and military-style jacket and had threatened her with a knife. Later
that night, while exiting a liquor store, Maher garnered a cop’s attention
because he was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt. A military jacket and a knife
were later found in Maher’s vehicle. Given the
circumstances, it seemed perfectly logical to believe Maher was the attacker,
especially after the victims identified him. However, at the time, Maher was a
sergeant in the United States Army, so it wasn’t unusual for him to have a
military jacket and military knife in his vehicle. After DNA testing exonerated
Maher, it became apparent the victims who identified him were mistaken, and
that he was just a tragic victim of bad luck. The real perpetrator was never
found.
6 The Mary
Morris Murders
On the morning of October 12, 2000, 48-year-old Mary Henderson Morris left her
Houston home. Later that day, her burned car was found in a remote area with
Mary’s torched body inside. Curiously, the victim’s wedding ring was missing.
By all accounts, Mary was a loving wife and mother without any enemies, so no
one could figure out why she was murdered in such a horrific fashion. However, the
case took a surprising turn three days later when a 39-year-old woman was found
dead inside her car in the same vicinity. She had been beaten and shot with her
own gun in a failed attempt to make her death look like suicide. The victim’s
name: Mary McGinnis Morris. Shortly
before her death, Mary McGinnis Morris had made a frantic phone call to 911
while she was being attacked. Attention soon turned toward Mary’s husband, Mike
Morris, who stood to collect a substantial life insurance policy from his
wife’s death. While Mike had an alibi during the time of Mary’s murder, phone
records showed that he made a four-minute call to Mary’s cell phone two hours
after her frantic call to 911. Mike claimed
that no one answered the call, and that he let Mary’s phone ring for four
straight minutes. This led to a theory that Mike hired someone to murder his
wife but that they killed another person named Mary Morris by mistake. Mary
Henderson Morris’s missing wedding ring may have been taken by a contract
killer as proof that they completed the job. However, police have since leaned
toward the position that the two Mary Morris murders are nothing than more than
a bizarre coincidence and have no connection to each other. Nevertheless, they
both remain unsolved.
5 The
Disappearances Of The Palmer Brothers
In missing person cases, it’s not uncommon for siblings or family members to
disappear together. However, it’s extremely rare for two siblings to go missing
at different times under completely different circumstances. In 1999,
15-year-old Michael Palmer lived in Wasilla, Alaska and was the youngest of
three brothers. During the early morning hours of June 4, Michael and three
friends left a graduation party on their bicycles, but Michael got so far
behind that they lost sight of him. When Michael
never returned home, he was reported missing. Michael’s bicycle was later
discovered in the Little Susitna River, and his wet, muddy sneakers were found
180 meters (600 ft) away. A search of the river turned up no trace of Michael’s
body, and he has never been found. Believe it
or not, Michael’s older brother, Chucky, would also disappear under mysterious
circumstances over a decade later. On April 13, 2010, 30-year-old Chucky was
staying with friends and relatives at a cabin in the Talkeetna Mountains. That
night, they decided to take a ride through the area on their snowmobiles.
However, much like his younger brother, Chucky became separated from his group
at some point and was never seen again. His
snowmobile was found the following day, but there was no sign of Chucky or any
footprints in the area. Chris Palmer, the oldest sibling in the family, had
stayed behind at the cabin the night Chucky disappeared. He now had to go
through the ordeal of searching for a missing younger brother - for the second
time in 11 years - and coming up empty.
4 Couple
Reports Murder Before Being Charged With Unrelated Murder
Shortly after midnight on July 3, 1991, 21-year-old Kirsten Davis was finishing
up a trip from her hometown of Boulder, Colorado to visit a friend in Vidalia,
Georgia. Davis was approximately 8 kilometers (5 mi) away from her destination
when another vehicle pulled up alongside her station wagon. Someone from the
vehicle pulled out a shotgun and fired it at Davis’s head. She was killed
instantly, and her car overturned on the side of the road. Shortly
after, a young married couple named Tracy and Karen Wilkes happened upon
Davis’s overturned car and reported her murder to the police. In a strange
coincidence, the couple would soon find themselves embroiled in another murder
in the area - which they themselves committed. About 45
days after the Davis murder, Tracy and Karen Wilkes burglarized and burned down
the Treutlen County home of 69-year-old Moril V. Hudson, shooting him three
times in the head. The couple attempted to flee the area and escape to Alabama.
When Tracy decided to return home to retrieve some items, he was subsequently
arrested. Shortly thereafter, Karen was found living in a trailer in Alabama
and had the murder weapon in her possession. On August
23, they were both formally charged with murder, burglary, and arson.
Naturally, authorities started to suspect that the couple who found Kirsten
Davis’s body were actually responsible for her murder. However, they both
passed polygraph tests, and there is no evidence they committed the crime.
Tracy and Karen pleaded guilty to the Hudson murder and went to prison, but
Kirsten Davis’s senseless - and seemingly random - murder is still unsolved.
3 The Lucia
De Berk Trial
One of the most sensational murder cases in the history of the Netherlands was
the trial of Lucia de Berk, where the very concept of coincidence was
introduced as evidence. De Berk worked as a pediatric nurse at three different
hospitals in The Hague. On September 4, 2001, De Berk was present when an infant
girl died at the Juliana Children’s Hospital. Her co-workers soon expressed
concern after noticing a pattern: De Berk just happened to be on duty during a
large number of deaths and resuscitations at the hospital, most of them
involving infants. After an
investigation, the hospital concluded that these deaths were unnatural and
decided to press charges against De Berk. On March 24, 2003, she was sentenced
to life imprisonment on four counts of murder and three counts of attempted
murder. Since there
was no physical evidence against De Berk, or any witnesses to her crimes,
statistics were used as the linchpin of the prosecution’s case. They claimed
that De Berk’s presence in the hospital when all these deaths took place could
not be coincidental. An expert testified that the odds of it being a
coincidence were 1 in 342 million. However, De Berk had numerous supporters who
believed she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and appealed her
conviction. They sought
to debunk the statistics from De Berk’s trial, which had been presented by an
unqualified law professor. A professor of mathematical statistics argued that
the odds of all these deaths being a coincidence were 1 in 48. The case was
heard in front of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which agreed that the
statistical evidence was flawed and granted a new trial. A new investigation
concluded that De Berk’s alleged murders were likely natural deaths. In April
2010, she received a not guilty verdict and was exonerated.
2 The Liquid
Matthew Case
On December 6, 1983, an unidentified Hispanic man was found strangled to death
in a vacant lot in Hialeah, Florida. For a brief period, this baffling murder
became known as the “Liquid Matthew Case” because of a series of bizarre notes
discovered at the scene. A plastic bag was found taped behind a nearby “no
dumping” sign containing a note with some strange poetry. It read: “Now the
motive is clear and the victim is too. You’ve got all the answers. Just follow
the clues.” The poetry also contained a riddle which led police to the next
clue: Another poem was taped behind a speed limit sign. This poem contained the
cryptic verses: “Yes, Matthew is dead, but his body not felt. Those brains were
not Matt’s because his body did melt. For Billy threw Matthew in some hot
boiling oil. To confuse the police for the mystery they did toil.” However,
there soon turned out to be an innocent explanation for this confusing mystery.
On Halloween, four local churches had organized an elaborate murder mystery
game where the participants concocted fictitious crimes and hid cryptic clues
throughout the area. The strange poetry was all part of this murder mystery
game. Since it wound up raining on the night the game took place, the notes
were never retrieved and remained there for over a month. In a macabre
coincidence, a real murder victim was found in the exact same area, but his
death ultimately had no connection to the cryptic poetry whatsoever. In the
end, the victim was identified as a Colombian seaman named Francisco Patino
Gutierrez, and his murder was believed to be related to drug smuggling.
1 The Trunk
Murders
During one seven-year period, the town of Brighton, England had two unrelated
murders in which female victims were dismembered and found inside trunks. There
were also two similar murders nearby. In 1927, a trunk containing the body of a
dismembered woman named Minnie Boniati was found at Charing Cross Station in
London. Her killer, John Robinson, was soon charged with the murder and hanged. Seven years
later, two trunk murders took place within one month of each other. On June 17,
1934, an unclaimed trunk was discovered at Brighton Railway Station containing
the dismembered torso of a young woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing
but, one day later, a suitcase containing the legs was found at another railway
station. The victim was five months pregnant, but there was no indication about
who she was. To this day, the identity of the woman and her killer remains
unknown. In an
attempt to solve the murder, police started searching through residences in the
area. Incredibly, they would find a trunk containing another dismembered woman.
The decomposing victim was identified as a 42-year-old prostitute named
Violette Kaye, who had been missing since May. When Kaye disappeared, her
boyfriend Tony Mancini told everyone she left for Paris. The trunk containing
Kaye’s body was found inside Mancini’s flat, and he was arrested and charged
with her murder. At trial, Mancini’s defense team argued that Kaye had been
killed by someone else. When Mancini
found her, he was worried about being accused of the murder, so he decided to
dismember her body and hide it inside a trunk. Believe it or not, the jury
bought Mancini’s story and acquitted him. In 1976, Mancini finally confessed to
Kaye’s murder, but he could not be tried for the crime again. In spite of their
similarities, the two Brighton trunk murders were determined to be unrelated.
~Blog Admin~
steroid satın al
ReplyDeleteheets
7E3T