The Drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley

The drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley off the Italian coast two-centuries ago is still the subject of skepticism and conspiracy theories today.

Sailing novice Shelley and his two experienced shipmates “accidentally” perished at sea on July 8, 1822, when their small vessel, The Ariel, was caught in a sudden “fierce” storm and “sunk.”

At the time of his premature death, the celebrated British poet and notorious atheist was just shy of his thirtieth birthday.

His corpse washed ashore soon after the “boating accident,” having been submerged long enough that “the face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by dress, were fleshless.”

Curiously, Percy Shelley died in the exact same manner as his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, the woman whom he’d scandalously abandoned for another while she was pregnant with his child.

"No more let Life divide what Death can join together"

On December 10, 1816, the body of Mrs. Harriet Westbrook Shelley was fished out of a chilly London waterway near Hyde Park, in an “advanced” state of decomposition and pregnancy.

The drowning death of Shelley’s wife of five years was not ruled suspicious, however, since she allegedly had a history of melancholia and was particularly “despondent” in the months leading up to her “suicide.”

A few short weeks later, though, Harriet’s illustrious widower-husband married the paramour he had left her for -- the “brilliant” 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of the gothic-horror bestseller Frankenstein.

But the newlyweds’ bliss would also be short lived…

Shelley shipwrecked, or slain?

Despite initial reports that the deceased poet’s “unseaworthy” craft had dramatically “capsized” in the summer of 1822, searchers eventually located the sunken shipwreck upright about ten miles offshore, in the area where it was believed to have gone down.

It’s at this point in time when people started openly speculating about “foul play” as opposed to foul weather, because the hull of the boat was said to be “damaged” in such a way as would suggest it had been intentionally “rammed” by a much bigger ship.

Pirates, or worse players, who could have mistaken Shelley’s recently renamed vessel as belonging to his wealthier colleague Byron, were pinned with the blame; and many years later a deathbed confession by an Italian sailor of ill repute helped to solidify the theory.

On the other hand, disinherited Shelley was frequently in debt, and, with his flagrantly atheistic and adulterer ways, not loved and admired by all of his god-fearing countrymen. Consequently, it doesn’t seem too farfetched even these days to suspect that a public figure steeped in so much controversy was either killed by a vengeful creditor or the victim of an elaborate assassination plot.

Indeed, several years prior to dying at sea, cotenant-in-arrears Percy Shelley had skipped out of town without paying his share of overdue rent. Shelley’s abrupt departure, by the way, reportedly coincided with a “surprise attack” at the estate which he and his deadbeat housemates were letting in 1813.

Shelley’s midnight assailant that year, and the man’s motive for wanting to harm the young poet, remains a mystery to this day, but many continue to believe that the unidentified intruder was a “secret” government operative.

Percy Shelley’s Heartless Demise

Regardless of popular theories about Percy Bysshe Shelley being cruelly slain in the prime of his life and his death made to *appear* an accidental drowning, there were other theorists adamantly asserting that the 29-year-old had somehow deliberately brought about his own doom.

Some claimed a haunted Shelley was always “depressed” and finally managed to kill himself while seafaring; implying that, by 1822, those suicidal impulses were so strong he had no regard for the fate of his unwitting crew.

Others, like Mary Shelley, dismissed suicide altogether, insisting instead that The Ariel rolled over in rough waters due to "inferior" construction, and/or that the three men aboard it lacked both the “skill” and “navigational expertise” to weather a terrible storm.

According to the Shelley post-death myth, it was Mary herself who, in taking possession of her husband’s ashes following a rushed seaside cremation, made off "with his heart" as well. Purportedly after the organ was secretly removed from the funeral pyre by a grief-stricken friend of the couple.

Of course, just as in modern times, it’s critics who really excel at murder and the art of killing somebody twice -- upon learning of Percy Shelley’s tragic death off the shores of Italy, the heartless publisher of the British newspaper The Courier blared this shocking announcement:

"Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned. Now he knows whether there is God or not."

Eponymous Rox

author of THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN

Jacob Wetterling Cold Case: Confession But No Charges for Killer Pedo

The heartbroken parents of missing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling have at last learned the sad fate of their abducted son: He was molested and murdered over two and half decades ago, then buried in a Minnesota cow pasture.

Jacob had been kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man in October 1989 while biking home on a country road with his brother and a friend. The armed assailant ordered the two other terrified boys to run and “not look back” or he’d shoot them.

They both fled on foot together, and Jacob Wetterling was never seen again.

In September 2016, however, the Associated Press reported that a longtime “person of interest” who, 27 years ago lived fairly close to the Wetterling residence in St. Joseph MN, “led FBI investigators” to Jacob’s skeletal remains.

A spokesman for the Bureau, speaking on condition of anonymity, also tipped off reporters for the St. Cloud Times and KSTP TV that 53-year-old Daniel Heinrich would soon be appearing in Federal Court on charges loosely connected to Wetterling’s missing-persons case.

And it was during those subsequent legal proceedings when Heinrich confessed to cuffing and driving Wetterling to a wooded area some 30 miles from his abduction site. There, the defendant said, he raped the boy and shot him to death, after “panicking” when he overheard on a police scanner that a patrol car was in the vicinity.

The killer pedophile then hastily buried Wetterling’s body at the crime scene; reburying it a year later in another remote location nearby when a “visit” to the first gravesite revealed that Jacob’s jacket had partially emerged.

Heinrich, who is reportedly a victim of child molestation himself, was taken into custody over a year ago for possessing and distributing child pornography. He previously entered innocent pleas to more than two-dozen such criminal counts, but those pleadings have drastically changed now.

Heinrich had come to the immediate attention of authorities during the earliest days of the Jacob Wetterling investigation, albeit there was never any substantial evidence in 1989 or the ensuing years to charge him for anything.

At that time, deviant ‘Danny’ Heinrich lived in Paynesville Minnesota and matched the description of an unknown man who had been stalking and sexually assaulting neighborhood boys.

In fact, in the years just before and after young Wetterling’s horrific abduction, at least eight juvenile males are believed to have suffered similar attacks and survived.

‘Nuclear’ DNA tests conducted in 2015 on one of these victims’ clothing implicated Heinrich as the perpetrator, but prosecuting him for the decades-old crime spree is no longer possible because statutes of limitation have since expired.

Court papers in connection to Wetterling’s now-solved cold case showed police strongly casting suspicion on Daniel Heinrich a year before the slain boy’s shallow grave was actually unearthed, with the aid of his killer.

According to Fox News, the "volatile" child-exploiter begrudgingly "cooperated" with FBI agents in this manner in exchange for lighter sentencing on the bevy of kiddie porn charges he couldn't otherwise hope to defend.

Consequently, because of his extraordinary plea deal, Heinrich can't be charged now for kidnapping and murdering Jacob Wetterling in 1989, nor for abusing his corpse -- twice.

But his belated admission of guilt puts to rest one of the most disturbing disappearances on record, and was all that was needed to finally tie it to unsolved assaults on other boys who were likewise targeted by a dangerous sexual predator in the 80s and 90s, but lived to tell about it.

Eponymous Rox

Will diggers find missing student Kristin Smart this time?

The stunning blonde in the poster below is Kristin Smart. The 19-year-old freshman vanished from a campus beer party at Cal Poly in May 1996 and was declared deceased in 2002, although her remains were never found.

This month, however, “excavation” of the college grounds has begun at various locations which, according to a report by the Washington Post, cadaver dogs have hit upon.

The FBI also revealed that a new lead had “developed” during the past couple of years that prompted them to target those “high visibility” sites in September.

The renewed effort to solve Smart’s mysterious missing-persons case follows two decades of sporadic inquiries which resulted in only one individual being labeled a ‘person of interest’ -- a male student who escorted the inebriated undergrad to her dorm room that spring night.

He wasn’t identified in the Post’s article this week, but police say the man had been repeatedly questioned when Kristin "Roxy" Smart first disappeared and, while he’s back on their radar again in 2016, still hasn’t been named a suspect in her puzzling cold case.

And he may never be, due to the amount of time that has passed and lost evidence.

A barely conscious and barely dressed Smart was last seen alive in the young man’s company wearing only “running shorts” and a “short cropped” tee shirt.

A female classmate of Smart’s told the Associated Press that she’d attempted to alert university officials about her friend’s subsequent unexplained disappearance and that they declined to take any action, insisting “she’ll be back” after the Memorial Day break had ended.

But Kristin Smart was never seen or heard from again.

Eponymous Rox

Chicago, The Dixmoor Five, and a 1991 Homicide

As the city of Chicago continues to grapple with its biggest homicide spike in decades, a notorious one committed there decades ago has finally been resolved.

Illinois police initially charged five innocent teenage boys for the brutal abduction, rape and murder of 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews in November of 1991.

The girl was snatched in a Dixmoor neighborhood while she was waiting to take a bus home from her grandmother’s house. Her body wasn’t found until weeks later -- she had died from a single gunshot wound in the mouth.

All of the ‘Dixmoor Five’ black youths framed for Matthews’ shocking death served a minimum of ten years in prison before DNA tests exonerated them in 2011, implicating, instead, violent career-felon and registered sex-offender, Willie Randolph.

Now 58 and serving time on yet another drug-related offense, Randolph was a parolee in his early thirties 25 years ago when he is believed to have forcibly kidnapped Cateresa Matthews and driven her to a secluded place off Interstate-57.

Here, according to boasts Randolph has allegedly made to fellow inmates, he sexually assaulted the teen then shot her to death as she begged him not to kill her.

Cateresa’s corpse, together with a casing from the 25-caliber bullet that claimed her life, was spotted in a overgrown area near the highway on December 8, 1991; the gruesome discovery triggering a heavy-handed police inquiry that many have since compared to the infamous ‘Central Park Jogger’ arrests.

Illinois State Police assisted the Dixmoor Police Department with their 1990s investigation of the controversial case. Both agencies now stand accused of suppressing evidence and coercing false confessions from at least two of the five juvenile suspects which Chicago prosecutors later used to convict the entire group.

With help from the Innocence Project, the wrongful convictions of Robert Taylor, James Harden, Jonathan Barr, Robert Veal and Shainne Sharp were thrown out in 2011, resulting in 2014’s record-breaking settlement of $40-million by the State of Illinois for their unlawful imprisonments.

That same year the Cook County Sheriff’s Department launched its own probe of the Matthews kidnapping, rape and murder, but, despite DNA evidence already proving beyond a doubt that lifelong criminal Willie Randolph was the actual perpetrator, his arrest was still not forthcoming.

In fact, it wouldn’t be till September 1, 2016, a full two and a half decades after Cateresa Matthews was viciously attacked and slain by him, that Chicago authorities finally did charge Randolph for the crime. They also belatedly issued a public apology to each of the Dixmoor Five for victimizing them “in a way that can never possibly be repaired.”

Eponymous Rox

ID sought in 1981 Jane Doe cold case murder

PHOTOS: Ohio police are once more appealing for help in IDing a slain Jane Doe teen and finally bringing her killer to justice.

Dubbed also the "Buckskin Girl" for the distinctive overcoat she wore at the time of her death, remains of the unknown victim below were found on April 24, 1981 -- approximately two days after she'd been killed.

 

Ohio's Jane Doe is estimated to have been in her late teens or early twenties when she brutally died.

In addition to the buckskin leather jacket, she was also wearing bell-bottom slacks and a brown turtleneck.

Investigators believe the young woman might have been hitchhiking when she was picked up by her killer then bludgeoned to death and dumped dead in a ditch near Troy Ohio.

A recent forensic breakthrough has revived interest again in actively pursuing, and ideally solving, her 35-year-old cold case murder, which many people have speculated could be the work of a serial killer still at large.

The ominous theory is supported by the fact that several Ohio women were similarly murdered during the 1980s and 90s, and their bodies (or body parts) deposited throughout the region.

Although most of these other victims reportedly have long ago been identified, their murders also remain unsolved.

For decades in the Jane Doe homicide case, however, authorities had no idea even where the victim originally hailed from, let alone her name.

But at least this aspect of the tragic mystery appears to have been partially solved now: Pollens, native only to the American northeast, and a substantial amount of soot particles, have been recovered from the Buckskin Girl's outer clothing.

Both residues have helped narrow down the likely U.S. states and urban industrial locales where she could have lived in or been visiting for some time, before coming to Ohio in the spring of 1981.

Therefore officials are especially appealing for the public's help in IDing Jane Doe in such states as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

A bit of "southwest pollen" was also detected on the Buckskin Girl's coat, which could indicate she briefly traveled through that section of America en route to Ohio, or even that the garment itself was borrowed.

The Miami County Sheriff’s Office is heading up the renewed investigation into her wrongful death and has distributed the above composite images of what the slain teen probably looked like, including alternate hairstyles.

Anyone who thinks they recognize her, or who has other information relevant to her cold case, should call the MCSO at (937) 440-3865.

EPONYMOUS ROX

Brian Shaffer Missing Persons Reward Now $100,000

The missing persons case of Brian Shaffer resembles all the other Smiley Face Killer disappearances -- before and after his -- with two notable exceptions...

Shaffer vanished upon reentering a bar. And his remains have yet to be recovered.

Ten years later, both of Brian Shaffer's parents are also now deceased, and the reward for info that will help solve their son's puzzling cold case has risen to a $100,000.

The 27-year-old Ohio State University med-student was celebrating Spring Break in downtown Columbus on the evening of April 1, 2006.

He went missing that night at the Ugly Tuna Saloon, a popular bar-and-grille located not far from the one where 26-year-old Joey LaBute similarly disappeared last month.

The LaBute and Shaffer disappearances in Ohio, though spaced a full decade apart, are almost identical in that both magically vanished without a trace inside a pub where they'd been socializing with friends and relatives.

True to The Case of the Drowning Men, however, LaBute's body was found weeks later dumped in an outdoor body of water; but this young man's death is one of the few to subsequently be ruled a homicide.

A medical examiner determined that LaBute hadn't been in the Scioto River the entire time he was gone without a trace. And it was clear by other autopsy results that he didn't really "drown."

Naturally, these two strikingly-similar missing-persons cases in Ohio has generated a lot of speculation as well: For Joey, over what role his "sexuality" might have played. For Brian, whether he "deliberately" fell off the radar or even "killed" himself.

Though Joey LaBute was found dead relatively soon after he disappeared and his suspicious death remains unsolved, the LaBute family has partial closure that the Shaffer family has not.

Thus, the rumors surrounding the Shaffer's missing young man still abound, even ten years after the fact.

“There is a possibility he is alive," conceded one of the detectives who first worked the Brian Shaffer case back in 2006. "But, if you look at the probabilities that he isn’t, those are just as great.”

“Everybody has a theory,” he added,“but the ultimate mystery remains -- where is Brian?”

What do you think, was Shaffer also killed the night he went missing in Ohio? Did he, instead, commit suicide someplace where he'll never be found? Or is he alive and well today, living under a false identity?

EPONYMOUS ROX

Parents of Missing Adrian Lynch Renew Search Pleas

The parents of 20yo Adrian Lynch (below), who went missing from Jersey UK four months ago, has renewed pleas for help in finding his body.

Adrian 'Addy' Lynch vanished this past winter after leaving a Christmas work party in a taxi sometime around the witching hour.

The cabbie reportedly dropped him off on the evening of December 5th in the Carrefour Selous area of St Lawrence, which is approximately one mile from Lynch's residence.

He was then observed traveling on foot through that neighborhood by a number of eyewitnesses, and filmed as well by several surveillance cameras.

But where the youth went after that, and what happened to him there, is still a mystery.

Jersey island police believe Adrian Lynch was "disoriented" from drinking and suffered a fatal "misadventure" that night; which seems likely because the young electrician hasn't been seen or heard from since.

However, months later there are still no hard clues as to Lynch's actual fate, and nothing but a few personal possessions were ever recovered from the area he was last sighted alive in.

This week Adrian Lynch's parents are issuing new fliers listing some of those items -- and others -- he had on him when he disappeared, in hopes of refreshing people's memories and reigniting interest his unsolved missing persons case.

These are as follows:

1. a Ford Fiesta car key
2. a Yale house key
3. a pair of black shoes (which may have come during an accident)
4. a blue suit, white shirt, and white undershirt
5. a Signet ring

Danny and Sharon Lynch also released a written statement about the emotional impact their 20-year-old son's troubling and unexplained disappearance has had on them:

"Four months have passed since Adrian was last seen and although time is said to be a great healer, in this case that doesn’t seem to be true," they jointly stated. "Not knowing where he is or what happened to him on that night is just unbearable and it feels as though things are just getting worse, the longer this goes on."

Local officials have previously assured the Lynchs that as long as their young man is missing his cold case will be actively investigated, although "not [as] a crime."

Indeed, police recently alerted farmers and seasonal workers arriving in the region this spring to be on the lookout for human remains or related evidence. But so far no one's come across anything.

 

Anyone who knows what befell Adrian Lynch on December 5, 2015, or his current whereabouts, is urged to contact Jersey UK authorities at 612612 or CrimeStoppers at 0800555111.

EPONYMOUS ROX

Robert Kovack, Missing 18 Years, Found Dead Under New River Gorge Bridge

The body of 24-year-old Robert Kovack (below) who's been missing for almost two decades was finally unearthed under the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.

The Virginia Tech grad-student disappeared September 18, 1998, allegedly en route from his campus to a Maryland University football game.

Despite an intensive search for him, only Kovack's abandoned vehicle was ever recovered.

Last Thursday, though, a construction crew beginning initial repairs of the New River Gorge span discovered skeletal remains and other personal effects -- including a college ID -- hidden in an area of dense foliage near one of its pilings.

ABC News is reporting that the bones were transported to the Smithsonian Institute for positive identification and possible autopsy, but a member of the Kovack family already expressed his belief that they're those of his long lost relative.

“We may never know what happened,” the decedent's older brother also acknowledged to the Associated Press, but "I find it highly unlikely he just gave up and jumped.”

No one does know for certain yet if Kovack leaped, fell or was thrown to his death, but the bridge that appears to have claimed his life has a perilous 875-foot drop from its highest point, making it the third tallest in America and a worldwide attraction.

In fact, West Virginia officials revealed this week that dozens of people have fatally plummeted from the New River Gorge Bridge during the 18 years that Robert Kovack had been gone without a trace.

Some met an end there intentionally, they said, either while engaged in recreational 'BASE' jumping or by committing suicide, and other victims fell by accident.

Search and rescue teams in 1998 had discovered Kovack's car parked, locked and out of gas in close proximity to the infamous structure, but never came across any other proof that the missing college student had himself died.

The investigation into the young man's missing persons case was also obstructed somewhat when his roommates at Virginia Tech hastily packed up all his belongings before police had a chance to examine these items for evidence of a crime...

EPONYMOUS ROX

DEAD AND DISCARDED: Deer Island's Baby Doe Still Needs ID and Funeral

Dead and discarded, Dear Island's dead Baby Doe girl still needs to be identified, as Massachusetts police continue to investigate what caused her death, and who callously dumped the toddler's body in a garbage bag on the shoreline.

If you recognize this child's face please contact police ASAP

Investigators are totally stumped and at a standstill over the Baby Doe case, however, because there was no sign of trauma or neglect on the deceased child's body, and they still can't figure out where she came from and who her family is.

DNA analysis is pending, but may require additional weeks of waiting to see if those results match up with anyone currently listed in a national database.

Since the computer-generated of Deer Island's dead Baby Doe above was released to the Web this month, it's been viewed by over 50,000,000 people, but ... continue reading here

Eponymous Rox