"My impression of this man from the expressions on his face and from his actions was that he was either worried about something or afraid." On Wednesday, 2 January 1935, a young man arrived at the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri. Claiming to be from Los Angeles, he told the front desk his name was Roland T. Owen and requested an interior room several floors up. Staff there accommodated him, assigning him a room on the tenth floor that overlooked the hotel's courtyard. Over the next two ...
Nov 10, 2024•32 min•Season 10Ep. 4
"They would feel the need to wait for higher blood pressure, wait for a higher fever - really got to justify this one - bleed a little bit more." On the evening of 18 August 2022, Amber Thurman was rushed to the Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia. The 28-year-old single mother had been experiencing cramping and bleeding for days, and was beginning to vomit blood. After losing consciousness, her boyfriend had called 9-1-1 and requested an ambulance. After arriving at the hospital tha...
Nov 02, 2024•42 min•Season 10Ep. 3
"It's like she vanished into thin air." On the evening of 31 October 2001, Hyun Jong Song - better known as "Cindy" - went with some friends to a costume party at a nightclub in State College, Pennsylvania. Having just started her senior year at Penn State, the 21-year-old was still getting over a recent breakup but had a fun Halloween with her friends, dancing until the early morning hours of November 1st. At around 4:00 AM, a friend dropped Cindy off at her apartment, but didn't wait for her t...
Oct 27, 2024•48 min•Season 10Ep. 2
"A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field." School shootings have become a tragic and recurring part of American life, with events like Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland forever altering how we think about safety in our schools. Each incident has reignited debates about gun control, mental health, and the responsibility of those tasked with protecting students. Yet, despite the changes in policy and heightened aw...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Season 10Ep. 1
"Meet me at 2:00 PM at the Greyhound bus station. You know he's dead. If you want to know who killed him, I have the proof." In the summer of 1979, two youngsters in West Virginia struck up a fling. 25-year-old Mazie Mae Sigmon-Palmer was recently divorced and 18-year-old Jay Farley was fresh out of high school. Both were in transitory phases of their lives and recognized that their relationship was likely temporary, but they seemed to be enjoying it while it lasted. On the evening of July 14th,...
Sep 29, 2024•39 min•Season 9Ep. 28
"When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulfur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores." The 1960s were a decade defined by exploration, both earthly and cosmic. As the world watched the space race unfold between the United States and the Soviet Union, public fascination with what lay beyond Earth’s atmosphere reached new heights. It was against this backdrop of UFO fervor that Stefan Michalak’s strange encou...
Sep 25, 2024•30 min•Season 9Ep. 27
Paul Bergrin is a hotshot criminal defense attorney in Newark, New Jersey. Seemingly unstoppable and with unorthodox methods, he’s built a reputation for getting his clients off the hook. But as Paul's legend grows, so do the suspicions swirling around him. When FBI Agent Shawn Brokos starts investigating a major drug ring, she makes a shocking discovery: the gang's most powerful player is none other than Newark’s star attorney. Has the ex-federal prosecutor crossed the line and started committi...
Sep 23, 2024•8 min
"She was wanting to go out and see somebody. She wouldn't tell me who." On the morning of March 6th, 2012, the body of thirteen-year-old Jessica Funk-Haslam was found inside a locked baseball dugout at a public park. Jessica, who went to school just a stone's throw away from this park, had been acting up in the months before her death. She had begun rebelling - as most teenagers do - but had begun hanging around a rather rough crowd. In a final act of defiance, she had stormed out of her mother'...
Sep 16, 2024•55 min
"Hello? Is it me you're looking for?" In November of 2014, 6-year-old Julia Potter went missing. She was last seen in the care of her father, Jason, who'd had a scheduled visit with Julia that fateful weekend. As police would later learn, Jason had willingly fled from his North Seattle home, having informed his lawyers beforehand that he was "going off the grid." In the years that have passed, rumors have swirled around where Jason and Julia have been. Some theorize that Jason's family and frien...
Sep 02, 2024•25 min•Season 9Ep. 26
This episode contains two separate, unrelated stories from the Patreon archive. In 2013, a user on 4chan posted audio from an alleged radio hijacking that was purported to have taken place in the mid-1990s. Since then, theories have sprung up that the station affected, New York's WKCR, was hijacked in 1995, while others speculate that the audio itself is fabricated. In 1995, the body of 38-year-old Kathy Struckhoff was found alongside a road in New Port Richey, Florida. She was believed to have ...
Aug 27, 2024•25 min•Season 9Ep. 25
Introducing a NEW investigation from the BBC. World of Secrets, season 3: The Apartheid Killer. All the victims were black and the youngest was just 12 years old. Some relatives are still searching for the graves. During a three-year bloodbath in the 1980s, multiple people were killed in the South African city of East London – by one person. After years of investigation, we’ve tracked him down. He killed so many, he lost count. It has been 30 years since the white supremacist apartheid regime cr...
Aug 13, 2024•5 min
"We think that the person or persons... sought him out specifically. We don't think that this was a random act of violence that could have been anybody. We think that they specifically sought after James Duckett." On the morning of 10 November 2008, Katherine Nichols dropped by the home of her younger brother in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Jim Duckett, a 43-year-old U.S. Army veteran, had not been seen or heard from in more than a day, having been a no-show at his church the prior morning. Attempts t...
Aug 13, 2024•37 min•Season 9Ep. 24
"The Zuma payload is a restricted payload. The event represents a cost-effective approach to space access for government missions..." Given the code-name "Zuma," Mission 1390 was a collaboration between the U.S. government and two private companies, multinational aerospace and defense firm Northrop Grumman and spacecraft manufacturer and launch service provider SpaceX. However, it was unknown what the purpose of Zuma was, with specific details - such as the U.S. government agency in charge of th...
Jul 29, 2024•42 min•Season 9Ep. 23
Hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls in upstate New York. What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it “all in their head?” The series examines the outbreak in LeRoy, NY, believed by some to be the most severe case of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials. In his search for answers, Dan Taberski (9/12, Missing Richard Simmons, Running from Cops) explores other seem...
Jul 22, 2024•7 min
"How can someone do this and not come forward? It makes me believe this can't be a hit and run." Early on the morning of 17 July 2002, a motorist traveling down Cashdollar Road in Pennsylvania's Butler County came upon what appeared to be two lifeless bodies Emergency personnel arrived shortly thereafter and learned that this was two local teenagers who'd been heading home late on a summer night, who appeared to have been hit by a vehicle and left for dead. More than two decades later, though, q...
Jul 16, 2024•31 min•Season 9Ep. 22
"We have now, since April, three violent crimes, all sexual in nature, and the victims seem to fit the same profile..." Between April and August of 2000, three violent crimes shook the southwestern shores of Kauai. The fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands, this was a region that rarely saw violent crime on this scope. For it to happen three times in such a short amount of time was unheard of. In response, residents began fearing that they would be next. As police struggled to ascertain who thi...
Jul 01, 2024•38 min•Season 9Ep. 21
There has been an update in the story of Blake & London Deven (episode #270 from just a week ago). Earlier today, 26 June 2024, Fayetteville P.D. held a press conference in which they revealed the likely fate of Blake and London. It was also announced that a key figure had been arrested... Researched, written, hosted, and produced by Micheal Whelan If you would like to support this podcast and others, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer Be...
Jun 27, 2024•14 min
"How can a child be missing for two years - or even a second?" On 19 January 2024, a 9-1-1 call was received by authorities in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The caller told dispatchers that her adopted son, 17-year-old Blake Deven, had gone missing. Strangely, though, she was unable to identify where she'd last seen him - or when. While police would originally label Blake a runaway, that would change in the months ahead. Two months later, police were again called out to the Deven home on an unre...
Jun 17, 2024•45 min•Season 9Ep. 20
There has been another update in the long-running Long Island Serial Killer saga (episodes #14-16 from 2016). On Thursday, 6 June 2024, authorities in Suffolk County, New York announced that they were filing two new indictments against suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann: the murder of Sandra Costilla from 1993 and the murder of Jessica Taylor from 2003... Researched, written, hosted, and produced by Micheal Whelan If you would like to support this podcast and others, consider heading to https...
Jun 11, 2024•1 hr 16 min
"We don't know who committed the crime but we do know that our local law enforcement didn't react the way they should have." On the evening of 7 March 2014, police dispatchers in Dallas, Texas received a call from the grandmother of a 24-year-old woman that had only been missing for a couple of hours, but had gone missing under extremely distressing circumstances. Just hours beforehand, her family had received an unintentional call from her in which it sounded like she was being physically abuse...
Jun 03, 2024•47 min•Season 9Ep. 19
"We don't know where all the crime scenes were in this case and that's been a big problem." On the afternoon of 3 May 2014, 88-year-old Russell Dermond and his 87-year-old wife Shirley were expected over at a neighbor's home for a Kentucky Derby party. However, the elderly couple never showed up or called to apologize, something that was very unlike them. Hours passed. Then days. Nobody spoke with or saw the Dermonds, who were absent from their usual routines. Both were conspicuously absent not ...
May 20, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 9Ep. 18
"Normally on just a robbery, if people cooperate, they get the money and go, and leave the victims unharmed. This was more of an execution-style killing." On the evening of 6 June 1993, things were calm in the small town of Windsor, North Carolina. Located in the state's Inner Banks region, Windsor was the type of town where everybody seemed to know everybody. Where residents felt safe leaving their front doors unlocked. At around 6:00 PM that Sunday, things were beginning to close up for the ni...
May 12, 2024•45 min•Season 9Ep. 17
"Somebody tragically killed him. We don't know who, we don't know why." At approximately 5:30 PM on 17 January 2020, authorities were called out to an apartment in Ballston, a Virginia neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington D.C. There, a young man had been discovered bloodied in his bedroom, and was believed to have gone into cardiac arrest. By the time medics arrived at the scene, however, the victim was already dead of an apparent homicide. Later, it would come to light that 24-year-old S...
May 08, 2024•25 min•Season 9Ep. 16
"I don't think she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I feel like someone was after her." On the morning of 18 April 2016, early-rising gymgoers began to arrive at the Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, Texas, a suburb on the southern outskirts of Dallas. There, inside the church, they expected to find their instructor, 45-year-old Missy Bevers. Bevers, a married mother of three, had woken up early and gotten to the church a little after 4:00 AM, well ahead of her fitness students....
Apr 22, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 9Ep. 15
"None of this has a reasonable explanation. It's just mystery after mystery after mystery." Beginning in 2016, U.S. diplomats in Cuba began to report a wide range of symptoms, everything from nausea and headaches to permanent hearing loss and brain damage. These symptoms came upon suddenly, seemingly preceded by a strange high-frequency noise. Many believed they'd been attacked, and theories would surface ranging from a sonic device to weaponized energy beams. In the years since, some have dispu...
Apr 15, 2024•56 min•Season 9Ep. 14
"That's when we found out our suicide victim was alive. It looks like he placed the body in the trailer to cover his disappearance." Early on the morning of 3 February 1994, authorities responded to a fire at a campground roughly thirty miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada. There, they discovered that a trailer had been set on fire, and the trailer's occupant - a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps named Arthur Bennett - had seemingly perished in the flames. Years later, however, an arrest in southwes...
Apr 01, 2024•30 min•Season 9Ep. 13
"I think this man's record and conviction do not fully apprise the court of this man's threat to society." Following his 1983 arrest, Mike DeBardeleben would stand trial for various offenses. First came a series of counterfeiting trials in Tennessee and North Carolina, which were then followed by a number of trials related to the violent crimes, abductions and assaults that DeBardeleben had carried out in Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. After receiving an almost-comical amount of time - 375 ...
Mar 18, 2024•41 min•Season 9Ep. 12
"... Mike DeBardeleben is the best-documented sexual sadist since the Marquis de Sade. He's the one I used as the standard for all others." Awaiting trial for the litany of crimes he'd committed over several years, Mike DeBardeleben couldn't do anything as authorities continued to dig around in his background. They'd learned about all of his failures - his familial relationships, his schooling, his marriages, his business - but now began trying to figure out how that resulted in this career crim...
Mar 12, 2024•39 min•Season 9Ep. 11
"I'll tell you what's going down. I had an ex-old lady who really pissed me off and f***ed me over. I just want to get back at women." After his arrest in May 1983, the Secret Service began looking into the background of 43-year-old Mike DeBardeleben to determine what he had been up to. Agents knew that the "Mall Passer" had been counterfeiting and distributing his own bogus $20 bills, but evidence indicated he had been up to much more than that over many years, stretching back to over a decade ...
Mar 04, 2024•42 min•Season 9Ep. 10
"I feel that I have been unjustly tormented, degraded and shit upon by society... In order to regain an adequate self-image, I feel compelled to somehow restore my self-respect..." Shortly after his stint at Western State Hospital in Virginia, Mike DeBardeleben would begin a series of relationships with young women. All followed a series of repeated steps, centered around breaking down the women in question and making them dependent entirely upon Mike. This was usually accomplished through typic...
Feb 19, 2024•32 min•Season 9Ep. 9
