Not in My Back Yard
by Scott Hardie on May 11, 2007
I love Unsolved Mysteries. The show told such interesting stories in perfect bite-size pieces, and knew how to make the hair on your neck stand up. I wish they were more objective in their reporting and didn't rely on pseudoscience as evidence (using psychics to prove ghosts and polygraph results to condemn criminals), but damn they put on an entertaining show. The boxed sets for Strange Legends, Bizarre Murders, and Ghosts are all worth renting, though I confess I'm not as eager to delve into the Psychics and Miracles sets.
Anyway, I just finished the Bizarre Murders set, and one case was off-the-scale weird. The Austin police get an anonymous call that "[Mom] is dead, [Dad] killed her, her bones are in the yard." They go to the house, Dad is having a seizure and is taken to the hospital where he can't talk to the cops. The adult son lets them into the backyard and they find only animal bones like a cattle skull. When Dad can finally talk, he says Mom disappeared and oh yeah, he ought to file a missing persons report. Mom's coworkers said she had black eyes and missed a lot of work, but the cops can't verify abuse. A few weeks go by. The tipster calls again with the same message, telling the cops to look under the tires. They return and look there, and find a human skull and tiny bone fragments, just thumbnail-sized bits. Dad says "I don't know how those got there." The DNA tests show that they don't belong to Mom. The cops bring in archeology students from the local university to prowl the yard like a dig site. They check carefully under every blade of grass and put a red flag in the ground every time they find a bone fragment; soon the yard is a sea of red flags. They even find bone chips in the ashes in the grill. Dad insists he has no idea how they got there. DNA tests show that the bones belong to three different people, and none of them are Mom. The best the cops can figure is that an industrial wood chipper did this, since it's way beyond household blades like a lawnmower, and Dad doesn't have access to such a machine. Barring an identification of the bones, there's nothing the cops can do to Dad, so the mystery goes unsolved.
After the segment, the director commentary (recorded years later) deflated some of the mystery. It turned out that the DNA testing was faulty and all of the bones belonged to Mom after all. Dad was already in jail for assaulting his next girlfriend and shooting at a cop, and who knows whether he'd ever stand trial for Mom's murder or what difference it would make. Even with these answers, what a hell of a weird case.
Two Replies to Not in My Back Yard
Scott Hardie | May 11, 2007
It's in my queue now. UFOs not my favorite topic but I do look forward to seeing the set.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Operation Chillax
Today begins a week-long vacation from work, my first break since GooCon last October. Well, not quite begins, since I still have more work to do tomorrow. But then I'm free! Go »Stepson
She hasn't come out and told me yet, but it seems pretty clear that my mom is engaged, or at least planning to get married to her boyfriend. I wish them both happiness, especially my mom after eleven solitary years as a widow. This is great news for both of them! Go »Revisiting Survivor: Australia
Since I'm a fan of Survivor and I missed the first halves of early seasons when they aired, lately I've rented them on DVD to see what I missed. And it's given me an opportunity to reflect on how the show has changed over twelve seasons. The first two seasons had a special quality that has largely been missing every since, which is the genuineness of the cast. Go »And If You're Not Careful, You Might Learn Something
Ten things I learned from watching the entire run of The Cosby Show over the last few months on Netflix streaming: - Cliff wasn't the only one who wore wild sweaters. - Seinfeld was celebrated as the "show about nothing," but this show had even less plot. Entire episodes just riffed for twenty minutes on Vanessa fretting over a test or Theo having a crush on a girl, nothing more. Go »Upsetting the Pace
Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on homosexuality (link): "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts... I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way." Go »
Denise Sawicki | May 11, 2007
What about the UFOs set? That is Darrell's favorite. He's not interested in any of the other ones, especially ghosts.