u/Suspicious-Body7766

On May 20, 2003, nine year old Yuri Yoshikawa disappeared while walking home from school in Kumatori, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.

That day, Yuri had gone on a school field trip to Osaka City. After visiting the Sewerage Science Museum in Konohana Ward, she got out of school at around 2:30 p.m., about thirty minutes earlier than usual.

At around 2:57 p.m., Yuri parted ways with three of her friends near the crosswalk by Shichiyama Intersection.

Two minutes later, at 2:59 p.m., a boy riding his bike saw her about 400 meters from her home.

Yuri reportedly said, “Bye bye.”

Then she was gone. That was the last confirmed sighting of Yuri.

Yuri was supposed to be home by around 3:10 p.m. When she did not arrive, her older brother was the first to notice that something was wrong.

At first, the family waited. But after 5:00 p.m., Yuri still had not come home. By around 6:30 p.m., her family and nearby residents began searching the neighborhood.

They found nothing.

At around 7:00 p.m., Yuri’s family contacted police.

At first, investigators could not rule out the possibility that she had been kidnapped for ransom, so officers stayed at Yuri’s home that night, waiting for a call from whoever might have taken her.

But the call never came, no one reached out, and there was still no sign of Yuri.

By the next day, with no leads, police went public with the investigation.

Investigators also considered whether Yuri may have been hit by a car, but there were no signs of an accident near the area where she disappeared.
They searched waterways, reservoirs, and wooded areas, but found nothing.

As time passed, police began to believe the most likely scenario was that Yuri had been taken by someone in a vehicle.

One thing that made the case especially difficult was her route home.

The road that passed by a local rice shop was supposed to be Yuri’s official route home from school. But according to reports, she did not always go that way. Sometimes, she took a different path.

Because of that, investigators could not be completely sure which route she had taken, or where exactly she was when she disappeared.

Police also looked into vehicles seen in the area that day. In the end, they identified five vehicles that seemed suspicious. One was later traced back to its owner and ruled out.

The other four were never fully explained. They were described as a black car, a red car, a white van, and a white car.

Police also searched for a black sedan that had reportedly been speeding toward the area of Yuri’s home shortly before 3:00 p.m.

Another detail came from the boy on the bicycle, the same boy believed to be the last person to have seen Yuri.

He later remembered seeing a suspicious white car parked in a narrow alley near Yuri’s possible route home. Another car was trying to pass from the opposite direction, so he had to carefully squeeze his bike between the two vehicles.

That detail stood out because it placed a suspicious car close to the area where Yuri was last seen.

A little over a year later, Yuri’s family would be put through something even more cruel.

Around July 2004, a little over a year after Yuri disappeared, Kouki Nakatani and Kayo Kawakami reportedly reached out to Yuri’s parents after seeing the case covered on TV.

They claimed they knew people who could help find Yuri and bring her home.

At first, they asked for 100,000 yen, about $730 in today’s money, claiming they needed it for transportation.
They told Yuri’s family she was in Mie Prefecture.

But when her parents asked to actually see their daughter, the excuses kept coming.

They said Yuri needed psychological care. Then they said more money was needed to keep her safe.

At one point, they even sent an email that was meant to look like it came from Yuri. They used a photo of her that had already been released to the public.

But none of it was real. It was a scam.

Over the next four years, Yuri’s family reportedly sent them around 70 million yen, about $500,000 in today’s money, through about 470 payments.

They canceled insurance policies and sold land they owned, still holding on to the hope that they might finally see their daughter again.

Eventually, they ran out of money and went to the police. Nakatani and Kawakami were arrested in 2008.

In 2009, Kawakami was sentenced to two years in prison and four years of probation. Nakatani later received nine years in prison.

For Yuri’s family, the damage was not just financial. They had already spent years living with the pain of not knowing where their daughter was. Then, on top of that, their hope was used against them again and again.

In 2010, another cruel moment was added to Yuri’s case.

A post appeared on 2chan, now known as 5chan, claiming that the writer had kidnapped and murdered Yuri before dumping her body in Jukai Forest.

Police took the post seriously, and in February 2011, a man was arrested.

Years later, in 2018, Yuri’s case was covered on television again. After the broadcast, a witness reportedly came forward with a possible sighting from the night after Yuri disappeared.

According to this witness, in the early morning hours of May 21, 2003, a young girl carrying a yellow bag was seen on the outbound side of National Route 2 in Okayama Prefecture.

She was standing next to a white or silver car. The trunk was open.

What made the sighting more disturbing was her clothing. According to the witness, it matched what Yuri had been wearing on the day she disappeared.

In 2023, Yuri’s case was revisited on a Kansai TV broadcast. Four of Yuri’s former elementary school classmates appeared on the program, along with the investigator who had worked on the case back then.

Some of those classmates are now married and have children of their own.

One of them, Misato, talked about how strange and painful it feels to grow up while Yuri remains frozen in time.

“It feels lonely,” she said. “When I really think about what it would have been like for her to grow up, I just can’t imagine it. She should have become an ordinary adult by now, but I still can’t accept that she isn’t here.”

Then, in 2025, the vehicle leads received renewed attention.

On May 20, the anniversary of Yuri’s disappearance, Osaka police released the estimated models of several vehicles they believed could be connected to the case, including the previously known Crown.

Now, more than 23 years after Yuri Yoshikawa disappeared, her case remains unsolved.

Late on the night of July 1, 2002, at around 11:30 p.m., two aircraft were approaching each other at the same altitude over southern Germany near the Swiss border.

One of them was a Tupolev Tu-154M operated by Bashkirian Airlines, carrying 69 people. Most of those on board were children and teenagers heading to Spain as part of a holiday program.

The aircraft was commanded by 52-year-old Captain Alexander Mikhailovich Gross, a highly experienced pilot with more than 12,000 flight hours. Next to him sat Oleg Pavlovich Grigoriev, the airline’s chief pilot, who was there to evaluate him on that flight.

Also in the cockpit were Murat Akhatovich Itkulov, navigator Sergei Gennadievich Kharlov, and flight engineer Oleg Irikovich Valeyev.

The second aircraft was a DHL Boeing 757 cargo plane traveling from Bergamo, Italy, to Brussels, Belgium. Unlike the Bashkirian Airlines flight, it carried no passengers and was operated by a two-person crew.

The aircraft was flown by Captain Paul Phillips, an experienced cargo pilot, and his co-pilot, Brant Campioni.

At the time, only one air traffic controller was working the relevant sector at Zurich Area Control. His name was Peter Nielsen, a 34-year-old controller from Denmark. Because his colleague was on a scheduled break, Nielsen was responsible for multiple sectors at the same time.

As the two aircraft approached each other over Lake Constance, they were on course to cross paths at the same altitude. Peter Nielsen eventually spotted the conflict on his radar screen, but by then there wasn’t much time left to react.

At 11:34:50 p.m., he instructed the Tupolev crew to descend to 10,000 feet.

Almost at the same time, TCAS, the aircrafts’ automatic collision avoidance system, activated on both planes.

That’s when things became complicated.

The DHL crew was instructed to descend. The Tupolev crew was instructed to climb.

At that moment, the two crews were being told to do completely different things.

Following standard procedure, the DHL pilots immediately obeyed the TCAS warning and began descending.

In the Tupolev cockpit, however, the situation unfolded differently. Despite receiving a TCAS instruction to climb, the crew chose to follow Peter Nielsen’s command from air traffic control and also started descending.

Neither crew knew it, but the two aircraft were now moving directly toward each other.

Nielsen then informed the Tupolev crew that the other aircraft was approaching from the right. In reality, it was coming from the left.

The crew looked to the right, where they had been told the other aircraft would be. By the time they realized it was actually coming from the left, only seconds remained.

At 11:35:32 p.m., the two aircraft collided high above the area near Überlingen.

The impact tore both aircraft apart. Wreckage rained down across the countryside, scattering over fields, forests, and residential areas around Überlingen and Owingen.

There were no survivors.

All 71 people aboard the two aircraft were killed, including 49 children and teenagers who had been looking forward to a summer trip to Spain. The two DHL pilots also lost their lives in the collision.

The investigation ultimately concluded that the collision was caused by a combination of human error and systemic failures rather than any single mistake. Despite his role in the events that night, Peter Nielsen was never prosecuted.

But the legal outcome was only part of the story.

The collision had a profound impact on Nielsen, and those close to him said he struggled with the consequences for years.

Although he was not considered solely responsible for the disaster, friends and colleagues later described a man burdened by guilt. The loss of 71 lives, many of them children, affected him deeply.

In the years that followed, Nielsen largely withdrew from public life in Switzerland and reportedly struggled with depression and other emotional difficulties.

In Russia, the disaster received enormous media attention and sparked nationwide mourning.

Among the victims’ relatives was architect Vitali Kaloyev, who lost his wife and two children, ages 10 and 4, in the crash. At the time, he was in Barcelona, where he had planned to meet them at the airport.

After learning about the disaster, Kaloyev traveled to Germany and helped identify the bodies of his family members. In the months that followed, he repeatedly tried to contact Skyguide and sought a personal apology, but never received one.

Kaloyev eventually came to blame Peter Nielsen for the loss of his family.

On February 24, 2004, he drove to Kloten, near Zurich, where Nielsen lived with his wife and children.

He waited outside the house and approached Nielsen. Exactly what was said between the two men has never been fully established. According to witnesses, Kaloyev showed him photographs of his wife and children in their coffins. Nielsen reportedly told him to leave.

A short time later, Kaloyev pulled out a folding knife and stabbed Nielsen. The 36-year-old air traffic controller died outside his home. His wife and children were inside the house at the time.

Swiss police arrested Kaloyev just a few hours after the killing.

He was later sentenced to eight years in prison but was released early in 2007 after serving just over two years.

His return to Russia was controversial. While many people viewed him as a murderer, others saw him as a grieving father who had lost everything in the disaster. He later became Deputy Minister of Construction in North Ossetia.

Nielsen’s family rarely spoke publicly after his death. His widow once said:

“He suffered and made mistakes. But he wasn’t a murderer. And no murderer had the right to kill him.”

The Überlingen air disaster remains the deadliest aviation accident in German history. Today, a memorial near Überlingen bears the names of all 71 victims.

On October 19, 2000, during a raid in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, police found a wooden shrine hidden inside the home of a camel farmer named Hadji Ali Aqbar.

Inside was a stone sarcophagus containing the mummy of a woman believed to be around 2,600 years old.

According to investigators, the mummy was supposedly being prepared to be sold on the black market for as much as $20 million.

The discovery reportedly happened after police investigating another case were handed a strange videotape showing the mummy being offered for sale.

A week later during a press conference, Pakistani archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani said the mummy seemed to date back to around 600 BC.

The body had been prepared in an ancient Egyptian style and placed inside a gold-covered wooden coffin with cuneiform writing all over it. There was also a large faravahar symbol carved into the coffin, and the mummy was wearing a golden crown across its forehead.

One of the inscriptions claimed the woman was Rhodogune, supposedly a daughter of the Persian king Xerxes I.

The discovery shocked archaeologists, mainly because mummification was almost never practiced in ancient Persia.

As news spread, Iran and Pakistan began arguing over who the mummy belonged to. Iran claimed she was part of the Persian royal family, while Pakistan argued she belonged there because she had been found in Baluchistan.

At one point, even the Taliban reportedly tried to claim it.

But not everyone believed the mummy was real.

After the story blew up, American archaeologist Oscar White Muscarella came forward. Months earlier, he had been shown photos of what looked like the same mummy.

Muscarella immediately got suspicious.

Part of the coffin had been carbon dated and turned out to be only around 250 years old — nowhere near old enough to come from the Persian Empire.

Convinced it was probably fake, Muscarella cut off contact and alerted Interpol through the FBI.

Asma Ibrahim, the curator of Pakistan’s National Museum, started noticing signs that the body itself was way more recent than the coffin. There was even decomposition fungus still visible on the face, something that shouldn’t be there on a 2,500-year-old corpse.

Other things started raising red flags too.

The inscriptions on the coffin had grammatical mistakes, and the name “Rhodogune” had apparently been written in a Greek form instead of the original Persian version.

CT and X-ray scans revealed even more issues. The body had been prepared in a pretty crude way. The brain seemed to have been removed through the bottom of the jaw instead of through the nose, and investigators found serious damage to the woman’s neck and spine, including fractures in several vertebrae.

Other parts of the mummification process didn’t match authentic ancient Egyptian methods either, and body tissue that should’ve decayed centuries earlier was still intact.

On April 17, 2001, Asma Ibrahim finally published her findings.

The “Persian princess” wasn’t ancient at all.

The body actually belonged to a young woman between 21 and 25 years old who had probably died only a few years earlier, sometime around 1996.

Investigators also found signs that she may have been murdered. According to Ibrahim’s report, the woman was possibly killed by a heavy blow to her lower back or pelvic area.

Her teeth had been removed after death, parts of her spine and pelvis were damaged, and the body had been stuffed with powder in an apparent attempt to imitate ancient mummification.

Not long after that, police in Pakistan launched a murder investigation and arrested several suspects in Baluchistan.

One of the suspects was Hadji Ali Aqbar, the camel farmer whose home police had found the mummy in.

But authorities were never fully sure if the woman had actually been murdered, or if the smugglers had simply used a stolen corpse for the fake mummy.

At one point, they even created a facial reconstruction from her skull, hoping someone would recognize her.

The woman’s body was later taken into the care of the Edhi Foundation, a Pakistani charity known for burying unidentified and unclaimed bodies.

In 2005, the foundation announced that she would finally get a proper burial. But for reasons that were never really explained, police and government officials reportedly never responded to multiple requests.

She wasn’t buried until 2008.

But the saddest part about the whole fraud is that, to this day, nobody really knows who this woman was or what exactly happened to her.

On July 31, 2001, around 2:50 p.m., people out for a walk spotted the body of a teenage girl floating in the Main River in the Frankfurt Nied district of the city of Frankfurt am Main.

Her body had been tied up and weighed down with a patio umbrella stand before being thrown into the Main river.
She was believed to be around 15 or 16 years old, about 5’2” tall, and weighed only around 85 pounds.

She was naked and her body showed clear signs of severe abuse. Investigators believed the injuries pointed to years of brutal mistreatment, without her ever getting proper medical help.

During the autopsy, they found that her arms had healed badly after being broken in the past, and she had a lot of long scars on her legs, upper body, and forehead. She also had burn marks that may have come from cigarettes, plus a badly damaged left ear that looked like it had been injured over and over again.

She died sometime within about three days before her body was found. The fatal injuries came from two broken ribs caused by a heavy beating, which ended up puncturing her lung and injuring her spleen.

Investigators believed the girl probably originally came from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, but had likely been living around the Rhine-Main region for years — possibly being kept there as a maid or house helper.

After her body was found, investigators asked the public for tips on the German TV show Aktenzeichen XY Ungelöst (kind of like America’s Most Wanted).

Investigators put up posters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India, including in churches and youth centers.

Police also spoke to women in Germany from those communities, hoping someone would recognize the girl. At some point, one woman reportedly told them,

“Why are you making such a fuss? It’s just a girl.”

That was when investigators realized there were places and communities where nobody would really care if a girl was murdered.

Despite that, the case eventually went cold.
The girl became known as the “Girl from the Main.”

Over the years, the “Girl from the Main” became one of Germany’s most haunting cold cases.

In 2024, the case was added to the international “Identify Me” campaign, which focuses on identifying women found murdered across six European countries.

Thanks to key tips from the public and a lot of investigative work, police were finally able to figure out who the victim was.

The unidentified “Girl from the Main” was eventually identified as 16 year old Diana S. from Offenbach, Hesse.

Then, on May 12, 2026, nearly 25 years later, the Hessian State Criminal Police finally arrested the victim’s 67 year old father, a German citizen who was considered the main suspect in the case.

The man, who was born in Pakistan, is accused of beating his 16 year old daughter, Diana, to death in the family’s apartment in Offenbach sometime between July 28 and July 31, 2001, before dumping her body into the Main River.

On the day of his arrest, the Frankfurt District Court ordered him held in pre trial detention on suspicion of murder. If convicted, he faces a life sentence in prison.

Right now, nobody really knows what the motive was, exactly what happened, whether anyone else was involved, or why nobody reported Diana missing for the past 25 years. The investigation is still ongoing, since the suspect was arrested only five days ago.

On September 2, 1994, in Tokyo, 27-year-old housewife Mayumi Arashi vanished after leaving her parents’ home in Sumida Ward, where she had been staying for childbirth.

She left behind her 1-year-old daughter after telling her family she was going out to meet a friend.

But when her older sister, Yoko, later contacted the friend, she learned that no meeting had ever been planned. Her family immediately began searching for her, but there was no sign of Mayumi anywhere.

On the night Mayumi disappeared, Yoko received several phone calls from a man known only as “Man A,” who claimed to be an acquaintance.

The following day, Yoko discovered a note hidden inside her wardrobe. The note read: “I was seeing A, but he betrayed me” and “I’m sorry.” At the bottom was A’s phone number.

Later that same day, Mayumi’s sister tracked down Man A and spoke with him directly. During their conversation, he admitted that he had met with Mayumi on the morning she vanished.
He also made a disturbing statement, saying,

“If I killed Mayumi, then I deserve to pay for it in prison.”

Mayumi’s sister later hired a private investigation agency to look into Man A. However, about six months after the incident, in 1995, Man A died under mysterious circumstances.

According to reports, on March 9th, he was seen heading into the mountains carrying two cans of juice, and was never seen again. Police reportedly became suspicious and launched an investigation, but nothing further was ever uncovered.

Seventeen years after Mayumi vanished, on October 13, 2011, TV Asahi featured the case on its program Super J Channel: Tracking! Where the Truth Goes.

The broadcast brought renewed attention to the mystery and included interviews with both Mayumi’s older sister, Yoko, and her father.

During the interview, her sister Yoko gave a tearful TV interview in which she recalled everything that had happened.

In a separate interview filmed at another room, Mayumi’s father said the family had no idea about her alleged affair until they found the note.

He also mentioned that, on the day she vanished, Mayumi seemed unusually troubled, like something was weighing heavily on her mind.

But what really caught viewers’ attention wasn’t the interview itself.

It was something in the background.

Behind the father, taped to a shelf, was a handwritten note the program never acknowledged or explained. It read:

“Don’t believe what Yoko says.”

After the episode aired, the case sparked major discussion across Japanese forums like 2channel (2ch) after viewers noticed a strange note in the background during the father’s interview.

Since most of the known details about Mayumi’s disappearance, including the mysterious memo and the story of “Man A“, came from Yoko herself, the message quickly fueled speculation online.

Some believed Mayumi’s parents may not have fully trusted Yoko’s version of events, but had no way to openly challenge her claims.

Mayumi Arashi’s case is still regularly discussed on Japanese forums like 2channel’s occult board, often alongside the Hitomi Masuyama disappearance case, which took place just seven months earlier, in February 1994, and which I also covered in a separate post.

The phrase “Don’t believe what Yoko says” became especially infamous online and remains one of the most talked-about parts of the mystery.

Because it was never determined whether she disappeared voluntarily or was abducted, the case eventually took on an almost urban-legend-like status online.

Over the years, countless theories began circulating. Some claimed that Yoko had always been jealous of her younger sister, had bullied her since childhood, and may have even had an affair with Mayumi’s husband.

According to some of the more extreme rumors, an argument between the sisters may have escalated into violence.

There is also a theory that “Man A” and Yoko may have been involved in Mayumi’s disappearance together. According to this speculation, Yoko may have been jealous and wanted Man A for herself.

However, none of these theories were ever proven, and police reportedly never found enough evidence to seriously investigate Yoko as a suspect.

In fact, people close to the family said the sisters actually got along well and were never known to have major conflicts.

Many online believe the key to the entire case lies with Yoko. But in a strange twist, Yoko herself reportedly disappeared in 2013, just as public interest in the case was growing again.

With the central witness now gone, Mayumi Arashi’s disappearance remains unsolved to this day.

Hachijo Island is located about 287 kilometers (178 miles) south of Tokyo, isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even though the island officially belongs to Tokyo, it feels incredibly remote due to its location far from mainland Japan.

Getting there isn’t easy either. The ferry ride from the mainland takes around 10 to 11 hours, while a flight from Tokyo takes roughly 50 minutes.

Because of the rough ocean, strong winds, and heavy fog that often surround the island, Hachijo was once known for being cut off from the outside world for days at a time.

The island is also home to the abandoned Hachijo Royal Hotel, one of Japan’s most infamous abandoned locations.

Back in August 1994, right before Obon, the staff at the crematorium on Hachijo Island showed up early on the morning of August 11 to get ready for a scheduled cremation.

But when they opened Incinerator No. 2, they found something seriously disturbing inside:

seven white human bones piled together in the furnace, even though the door had supposedly been locked the entire time.
The bones were all different sizes, and some of them were believed to belong to children.

What made the whole thing even creepier was the actual condition of the crematorium when the bones were discovered.

According to the employee who found them on the morning of August 11, everything was completely locked up. Not just the building itself, but the incinerator doors too. Even the boiler’s oil supply valve had been locked.

And somehow, all seven sets of bones were sitting inside Incinerator No. 2.

There was another strange detail: after a normal cremation, workers use a special tray to collect the remains afterward. But in this case, there was no sign that the tray had ever been used at all.

Basically, it looked like someone had cremated seven bodies in secret… without leaving behind the usual evidence that a cremation had even happened.

In Japan, you can’t just use a crematorium whenever you want. You need official permission from the town first, and none of these remains matched any cremation records.

So police immediately started investigating.

At first, investigators assumed someone had secretly used the crematorium sometime between August 7 and 10. The last official cremation had happened on August 6, meaning there was a four-day window where somebody could’ve illegally cremated the bodies without anyone noticing.

Because the incinerator had already cooled down by the time the bones were discovered, investigators later narrowed the estimated cremation window to sometime between August 7 and August 9, meaning whoever did it likely carried everything out in secret over those three days.

But then the case got even weirder.

After examining the bones, investigators discovered that all seven sets of remains had actually belonged to people who’d already been dead for at least 10 years.

That completely changed the direction of the investigation.

One theory was that someone had dug up old graves and cremated the remains afterward. And honestly, it wasn’t impossible.

Hachijo Island used to have an old burial custom where bodies were first buried, then later exhumed and cremated before being placed into a family grave.

Still, illegally using the crematorium was a serious crime, so police searched all 64 cemeteries on the island looking for disturbed graves.

They found absolutely nothing.
No dug-up graves. No missing remains. Nothing.

Police searched the cemeteries multiple times and even checked private land around the island, but there were zero signs that any graves had been opened recently.

Police also believed that if all seven sets of remains belonged to relatives or members of the same family, they most likely would’ve come from a single grave site.

That’s one of the main reasons authorities ended up carrying out a full investigation of every cemetery on the island.

Eventually, investigators considered another theory: maybe the bones had been brought to the island from somewhere else.

But that raised even more questions. Hachijo Island is a pretty remote island way out in the Pacific Ocean. Transporting seven bodies there just to secretly cremate them sounds insanely impractical. And even if someone did do that… why leave the remains behind in the furnace afterward?

As police struggled to figure out what was going on, rumors started spreading all over the island. People came up with every theory imaginable.

Some believed the bones belonged to murder victims and that whoever was responsible had secretly cremated the bodies to destroy evidence. Others thought the remains could’ve belonged to workers killed in some old accident.

And of course, there were also more supernatural rumors floating around, including one story claiming the remains had somehow “gathered together on their own” from different graves across the island.

The theory that got the most attention involved old construction accidents.

During World War II, workers reportedly died while building a Japanese military headquarters on the island. Then, in 1952, around 40 years before the crematorium incident, a massive landslide at a road construction site buried several workers alive, including the foreman.

The number of the dead workers was also 7.

Another, more realistic theory involved illegal immigration. The Izu Islands, where Hachijo Island is located, had seen several cases of Chinese migrants attempting to enter Japan illegally by boat, sometimes getting stranded during storms.

Because of that, some people believed the bones may have belonged to undocumented migrants, and that a smuggler had secretly cremated the remains to get rid of them.

There was also real historical context behind some of the accident theories. One of the construction accidents often mentioned in connection with the case had actually been reported in local newspapers at the time it happened.

Some people even connected the incident to an old local legend known as “The Seven Monks of Hachijo Island.”

The story comes from The Folktales of Hachijo Island, a collection of local legends compiled by historian Ryoji Asanuma and published in 1965.

According to the old legend, seven monks once drifted ashore on Hachijo Island after being lost at sea. But instead of welcoming them, the islanders became terrified of them, believing they were dangerous outsiders who used strange magic.

The villagers supposedly set up fences and traps to keep the monks away from the village and eventually forced them deep into the mountains, where food was scarce and survival was difficult.

As the story goes, the monks began cursing the villagers one by one after being driven out.

But the legend gets even darker. Some versions say the monks were actually helping sick and suffering people in the village, performing what they believed were acts of kindness. The villagers, however, became convinced the monks were using sorcery, and eventually turned against them out of fear.

According to the legend, the villagers ultimately lured the seven monks into a trap and killed them. After the monks died, the villagers supposedly started experiencing all kinds of strange disasters.

People claimed to see the spirits of the monks wandering through the village at night, dressed in white. Crops began to fail, famine spread across the island, and livestock mysteriously died off one after another.

Terrified, the villagers eventually built graves for the seven monks at the top of a mountain known as the “Mountain of the Dead,” hoping it would calm their spirits and end the curse.

But according to the legend, the curse never truly disappeared.

But in the end, none of the theories ever led anywhere. No graves were found, the victims were never identified, and no suspects were ever arrested.

To this day, nobody really knows where the bones came from or who put them there.

And because of how bizarre the whole thing was, the incident eventually turned into one of those eerie Japanese internet mysteries that still gets talked about online years later.

Rebecca Reusch was 15 years old when she disappeared on February 18, 2019, in Berlin-Britz. She lived in Berlin with her parents, Brigitte and Bernd Reusch, and had two older sisters, Jessica and Vivien.

The night before she vanished, Rebecca stayed over at her sister Jessica’s place, where Jessica (27) lived with her husband, Florian R (33). At the time, Jessica and Florian had a young child.

Florian R. said he had come home from a company party sometime during the night or early that morning, drunk, and wanted to sleep off his hangover.

But according to later media reports, he allegedly watched pornographic content on his phone on the morning Rebecca disappeared. It was later reported that some of that content allegedly involved bondage-related material and strangulation.

That morning, Jessica left the house with her child. Rebecca was supposed to leave from there and go to school, but she never showed up. Police fairly quickly came to believe that Rebecca did not leave the house alive.

Florian R. became the focus of the investigation, was arrested for a time, but was later released. He denies the accusations, and to this day, there has been no conviction.

Two car trips later became especially important: Jessica and Florian’s car was picked up on the A12 highway on February 18 and 19, 2019, heading toward Frankfurt/Oder and the Polish border. The reason for those trips has never been publicly clarified.

In 2024, another strange lead popped up involving a manhole cover. According to media reports, a witness came forward saying that on the day Rebecca disappeared, she was walking her dog in Großziethen and saw a tent set up over a manhole. Next to it, there was supposedly a raspberry-colored Renault Twingo.

That just so happens to be the exact kind of car Florian and Jessica were driving back then.

Later, it was reported that the heavy manhole cover had apparently been moved. Who moved it, and whether this lead actually has anything to do with Rebecca, has never been publicly cleared up.

I already wrote and posted a detailed deep dive on this case about four months ago, where I went into all the major theories in detail. But for this post, I mainly wanted to focus on the family’s behavior and the things that have been heavily criticized online, and also by investigators.

-The family defended Florian R. very early on, and they did it pretty strongly.

That’s one of the biggest points people criticize them for. Rebecca’s mother, Brigitte, said Florian was part of the family and that she couldn’t just assume he was guilty when there was no proof. She also said he personally told her, “I didn’t do it.”

That stance is still heavily debated to this day. Police considered him a suspect pretty early on, and even though investigators believed Rebecca had been murdered, the family continued to publicly stand firmly behind him

For a lot of people, that’s hard to understand, because investigators apparently had specific reasons to suspect him, while the family publicly kept insisting he was innocent.

On top of that, Jessica spoke out on TV in March 2019 about the accusations against Florian and said:

“My husband is innocent!”

A lot of people found that pretty striking too, because it showed the family was very clearly pushing back against the direction the investigation was going in.

-Criticism of the police for “one-sided investigations”

The family also criticized investigators for focusing only on one direction — Rebecca’s brother-in-law, Florian — instead of seriously considering the possibility that Rebecca might still be alive.

But in missing persons cases involving children and teenagers, once a longer period of time passes without any confirmed sign of life, that kind of investigative shift is pretty standard.

And in Rebecca’s case, she reportedly didn’t have the kind of things with her that would make it realistic for her to disappear and stay hidden for a long time.

-Rebecca’s father’s statement about Florian’s car trips toward Poland

Another thing people still debate pretty heavily is what Rebecca’s father, Bernd, said about Florian’s trips toward Frankfurt/Oder, near the Polish border.

He said: “The whole thing has to do with something else, but I’m not allowed to say what.”

To this day, that statement is seen as one of the strangest public comments the family has made, because it seems to suggest there is an explanation, but nobody ever gave one.

A lot of people speculated that it could have had something to do with drug deals, since driving from Germany to Poland for smuggling is something people have brought up in discussions about the case. On top of that, investigators and many people online believe Florian may have disposed of Rebecca somewhere along that route.

-The online contact “Max/Maximilian” as an alternative lead

The family also brought up alternative leads, including an online contact named Max from Hamburg, and that became controversial too.

It later turned out that Max had not groomed Rebecca. He was actually around her age, and he also had a clearly verified alibi — he was proven to have been in class at the time.

Of course, it makes sense that the family would want every possible lead to be checked out. But some people felt that bringing up Max only shifted attention away from the main line of investigation:

Florian, the brother-in-law, and possibly the family itself.

-The family allegedly joked about it

One especially disturbing claim came from a former friend or acquaintance of the family.

According to her, she had been at several family gatherings after Rebecca disappeared and claimed she heard family members joking about the search for Rebecca’s remains.

“One time, the family joked about how the police had only searched the woods and not the garden sheds.”

The same witness also claimed she heard something about Florian having a connection to garden sheds. That part is especially unsettling because wooded areas were searched, while certain sheds apparently were not searched right away.

None of this has been officially confirmed. Police either did not comment on it or said they could not provide any information.

-Family gatherings after Rebecca disappeared

The same alleged friend said she had been “at several family gatherings after Rebecca’s disappearance.”

People often turn that into “the family was out partying,” but that’s not necessarily what it means. “Family gatherings” can refer to a lot of different things, and the news articles don’t automatically prove that they were happily celebrating right after Rebecca went missing.

-The interview with Angie and Sonja

In the 2021 podcast Im Dunkeln, one of Florian R.’s former relationships is also discussed. Before he got together with Jessica, Florian was allegedly in a relationship with a woman named Angie.

Sonja, Angie’s younger stepsister, said in the podcast that Florian cheated on Angie multiple times during their relationship — allegedly even with Sonja herself.

According to reports, Sonja described Florian as more of a “buddy-type” guy who liked to party.

In the interview, Angie mainly talked about violence, cheating, and sexual violence.

Sonja also told that at first she didn’t believe Angie’s accusations of violence against Florian back then, and said Angie wasn’t exactly “careful with the truth.”

-Experts were critical of the family’s public stance

Some crime experts criticized the family’s behavior and said they found it surprising that the family continued to protect the brother-in-law, even though investigators viewed him as suspicious.

-The family seemed too calm / too composed in interviews.

This is something people online bring up a lot. Some felt the family didn’t seem desperate enough, or that they came across as too controlled. Some users said they felt there was a lack of “genuine desperation,” or that the interviews seemed “rehearsed.”

Jessica was also seen laughing, smiling, and acting playful in interviews shortly after Rebecca disappeared, which many people found strange. Others felt she was giving way too many details.

There are also some very personal online rumors about alleged jealousy or competition between the sisters. Some people speculated that Jessica felt like she was living in Rebecca and Vivien’s shadow.

According to those rumors, Rebecca and Vivien were supposedly much closer to each other and often left Jessica out. Some speculation even goes as far as claiming Jessica was only their half-sister, and therefore didn’t have the same “pretty” look or vibe as Rebecca and Vivien.

But to be clear, these are only online rumors and not proven facts at all.

A lot of people also strongly criticize Jessica for continuing to defend her husband so firmly, despite claims that on the morning her sister disappeared, he had allegedly watched porn videos focused on strangulation and violence and allegedly lied to police about it at first.

-“The family knows more than they’re saying.”

This is probably one of the biggest rumors in online discussions about the case. People often connect it to the father’s comment about “the other thing,” the family’s defense of Florian, and the other points mentioned above.

At the same time, a lot of people still ask: why would the family protect him at all if he was clearly responsible?

Some explain it by saying Jessica would have been left as a single mother and would have lost her husband. Others argue that admitting something like that would have completely destroyed the family’s image.

At this point, there really aren’t many other plausible possibilities besides Florian being involved in some way. Investigators also seem convinced of his guilt and have been looking for solid evidence for years.

Whether Rebecca’s family actually knows anything or not is impossible to say, though. That part remains speculation.

Most recent update:

To this day, Rebecca has never been found. Police still believe this was a homicide, while Rebecca’s family publicly held on to Florian R.’s innocence for a long time.

The last major new development was the search in Brandenburg in October 2025. Since then, no public breakthrough has been confirmed.

Cheryl Henry and Garland Andrew “Andy” Atkinson were found in August 1990 in a remote area of west Houston known as “Lovers’ Lane.” They were both in their early 20s and had spent the evening together. Henry had been sexually assaulted, and both victims died from severe neck injuries.

The case stayed unsolved for more than 35 years.

The breakthrough came in 2025/2026 through a combination of a tip, renewed investigative work, and DNA evidence. Parrott was arrested in March 2026 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and charged with capital murder. Investigators also said he had allegedly posed as a police officer at times, and they began looking into whether there may have been other victims.

According to recent reports, he died on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in a Lancaster County, Nebraska jail while he was waiting to be extradited to Texas.

Several local reports say investigators believe it may have been a suicide, but the official cause of death is still pending an autopsy.

His death basically means one thing: there will not be a criminal trial against him.

But authorities have said the investigation is not over. They are reportedly still looking into whether Parrott may be connected to other cold cases or assaults, including a possible case in Louisiana.

The Setagaya family murders happened on the night of December 30–31, 2000, in Setagaya, Tokyo and is still one of Japan’s most infamous unsolved true crime cases.

The victims were the Miyazawa family: father Mikio, mother Yasuko, and their two kids, Niina and Rei.

What makes this case especially disturbing is that the killer apparently stayed in the house for hours after the murders. He apparently ate food from the fridge, used the family’s computer, and left behind a ton of evidence — including clothes, personal items, fingerprints, and blood.

Investigators believe the killer was injured during the attack and left his own blood at the scene. DNA testing has given police some clues about the suspect’s background and possibly his age, but it still hasn’t led to an ID.

As of now, there has been no arrest and no official breakthrough.

The biggest recent update came out on July 24, 2025, when Japanese outlet FNN reported that newer DNA analysis may have changed the possible offender profile. According to FNN, investigators had the killer’s blood analyzed by a specialist institution, and the result suggested the killer may have been in his 30s at the time of the murders. 

That’s a pretty major shift, because Tokyo police had previously announced in 2018 that, based on things like the scarf and hip bag left behind at the scene, the suspect was estimated to be around 15 to his 20s at the time. 

If the newer DNA-based age estimate is accurate, the killer would likely be around 50 to 60 years old today. The method reportedly involved DNA methylation analysis, which can be used to estimate a person’s age. 

Tokyo police are still treating the case as active. Their official wanted page was updated on January 30, 2026, and they’re still asking the public for tips.

The reward remains up to 20 million yen, with the current tip window running from December 16, 2025 to December 15, 2026. 

There was also a more recent report about a possible later break-in or trespassing incident at the preserved crime scene house, but that has not been confirmed as a direct new lead in the original murders.

Anyone with information can contact the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Seijo Police Station Special Investigative Task Force at 03-3482-0110, or by email at so1-seijousyo-sousahonbu@keishicho.tokyo.jp.