7. Sodder Children Disappearance
This has never been officially declared a murder/kidnapping/arson/etc, but the Sodder children disappearance never fails to give me goosebumps.
My personal theory is that the fire was set by Mussolini supporters and the kids were taken back to Italy and conscripted into the army or something similarly awful. Only the one who sent the picture survived the war, but kept his identity secret so that he wouldn’t bring any further harm to his family.
But even still – how did they get the kids out of the house without anyone noticing? They were on the second floor.
From Wikipedia:
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children were never found. The Sodders believed for the rest of their lives that the five missing children survived.
8. The Murder Of Elizabeth Short AKA ‘Black Dahlia’
From Wikipedia:
On the morning of January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short’s naked body was found in two pieces on a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street (at 34.0164°N 118.333°W) in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Local resident Betty Bersinger discovered the body at about 10:00 am, while walking with her three-year-old daughter. Bersinger at first thought it was a discarded store mannequin. When she realized it was a corpse, she rushed to a nearby house and telephoned the police.
Short’s severely mutilated body was completely severed at the waist and drained entirely of blood. The body obviously had been washed by the killer. Short’s face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect called the Glasgow smile. Short had several cuts on her thigh and breasts, where entire portions of flesh had been sliced away. The lower half of her body was positioned a foot away from the upper, and her intestines had been tucked neatly beneath her buttocks. The corpse had been “posed”, with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles, and her legs spread apart. Detectives found a cement sack nearby containing watery blood. There was a heel print on the ground amid the tire tracks.
