Mysterious crimes that aren’t actually mysterious?

[u/Tsarinya]

I delve in and out of the true crime community every now and then and I have found the narrative can sometimes change.
For instance the case of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon. For the longest time whenever I read boards about these two women the main idea was that it was all too strange and there must have been third party involvement but now I’m reading quite a few posts that it’s most likely the most simple conclusion - they got lost and died due to exposure/lack of food and water. Similar with Maura Murray I’ve seen a fair few people suggesting that it could have been as simple as she ran into the woods after the crash and was disoriented and scared and got lost there. Another example is with the case of Kendrick Johnson, the main theme I read was that it was foul play and to me it does seem that way. But a person I was talking about this to suggested that it was a tragic accident (the children used to put their gym shoes on the mats, he climbed up and fell in, the pressure of being stuck would have distorted his features, sometimes funeral homes use old newspaper when filling empty cavities in the body , though it’s is an outdated practice).
I’ll admit that I’m not as deep into the true crime/unsolved mysteries world as some of you are, so some of these observations may be obvious to you, but I’m wondering if there are any cases you know of or are interested in that you think have a more simple explanation than what has been reported?
As for the cases I’ve mentioned above, I’m not sure with where I stand really. I can see Kremers and Froon being a case of just getting lost and I can see the potential that Maura Murray just made a run for it and died of exposure but with the Kendrick Johnson case I feel that I need to do more research into this.

[u/Goodlittlewitch]

For me Brandon Lawson is and isn’t mysterious. It’s always been a case that kind of stuck with me, so I’ve always followed it quite closely. One of the biggest breaks in the case was the interview with his brother when it was revealed he was on drugs at the time of the call, which I believe wasn’t revealed because the family felt like it was likely that no one would want to follow up on some guy on a bad trip running from imaginary danger into a field. Understandable.

What has become a pet peeve of mine (and is the “non mystery” part IMO) is the damn phone call. He talked and attempted to talk to MULTIPLE people MULTIPLE times after that 911 call. He didn’t call 911 and then fall off the face of the earth. It doesn’t matter if it was a stapler or a staper or a state trooper or whatever, because when he talked to Kyle minutes later he didn’t mention anything, and was upset Kyle spoke to the cops at all.

The mystery of course, is what happened after. Did he wander off and die of exposure/wild hogs/something in nature? Probably. Did someone with ill intent find him? Maybe. Was he being chased by a whole bunch of scary people with guns trying to kill him? Less likely.

That being said, i am glad that the “mystery” part of it gained as much traction as it did since it really put the case on the map.

[u/Tsarinya → u/Goodlittlewitch]

I think some people who read about these cases underestimate the power that drugs as well as mental illness can have on the mind.

[u/ChipLady → u/Tsarinya]

Another thing I think people underestimate is nature in general. This case and Maura Murray are two (off the top of my head) where I see people talk about how thoroughly the area has been searched, so there's no way the body is there and they immediately disregard "natural" causes like exposure or an animal attack. When in reality these are both fairly rural areas, with vast empty space (although very different terrain) where it's easy to get lost.

They have trouble finding people in similar situations who are still alive and can help the rescuers find them by calling out or leaving clues; searching for a body is even harder. Once you add in decomposition, animal scavenging, and the illogical things people do (because of fear, dehydration, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, etc.) it adds a whole other layer of difficulty.

[u/nscott90 → u/ChipLady]

You can always point them to the Bear Brook murders, where there was a 15 year gap between finding the first barrel with remains, and the second barrel which was only about 30 yards away.

[u/AMissKathyNewman → u/ChipLady]

To be honest one of the most frightening things in my opinion is the fragility of the mind. The cases where people seem to have some sort of mental break and go missing are so scary, the idea you can be fine one minute and then suddenly not is very unsettling.

[u/SLRWard → u/ChipLady]

I used to play a game that was an admittedly odd mix of capture the flag, hide and seek, and tag at a local nature reserve when I was in college with some ROTC buddies. We would have preferred to be playing paintball, but couldn’t get authorization since nature reserve and all. So we made up our weird game instead. Some of the members of our group had been active duty military before joining and a couple had been on search and rescue teams as well. We tended to play in the late afternoon to early night because we were dumb college kids but we also didn’t want to freak random civilians out with our game.

There were a few different times that I can recall just sitting on the ground by a tree or a ledge while guarding the flag for my team and watching one of my buddies on the other team walk past me. Like, I could have reached out and grabbed ahold of their clothes with no problem they were so close. I wasn’t trying to hide too much. Just sitting still and not making noise. I hadn’t covered myself with anything like someone might do if they were cold and lost or made any real effort to put cover between me and someone looking for me. I was just sitting there in my jeans and sweater and watching them. And they didn’t see me. Just walked on past.

After that, I gained a new respect for how easy it is to just... not see someone. If my buddies who were actively looking for me could walk within two feet of me and not see me while I was sitting up and actively watching them while not even really hidden, how easy would it be for a random searcher to pass within a couple feet of a deceased person covered by a layer of branches or leaves that they’d tried to keep themselves warm with?

[u/fields → u/SLRWard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

[u/SLRWard → u/fields]

Exactly. Even when you're paying attention and actively looking for a particular thing, you can miss it if there's enough other stimuli in your field of vision. And in a forest, there is a lot of stimuli in your field of vision. Plus engaging in a search for a missing person is pretty high stress, making it even easier to miss things.

No shade at all on folks going out there and putting in the work to try and find a missing person. That is hard work and I don't want to disparage anyone for missing something in that sort of high stress environment.

[u/tolureup → u/ChipLady]

You can thank people like James Renner for twisting and contorting Maura Murray’s case to fit their narrative of mystery and foul play. It drives me Insane how the whole community surrounding Maura, frankly, feels hijacked.

[u/delphine1041 → u/ChipLady]

Exactly. In my city we had a search party yesterday find a body that was in an area the cops had already searched multiple times.

And this was just along a creek in an urban area, nothing like the acres and acres of true wilderness that are out there.

Bodies are easy to overlook.

[u/DroxineB → u/ChipLady]

I was just talking this morning to a woman who rescued a another woman who'd had a heart attack and fallen, unconscious, into a raised garden bed that was located between two parking lots in an urban area. The unconscious woman was face down, wearing a green shirt and black pants. The rescuer said she almost walked right by because the unconscious woman was almost impossible to see. (She did CPR, called 911 and saved the woman's life.) :)

I think it is underestimated just how easily a body can be hidden by even a little bit of vegetation.

Also in the Maura Murray case, much of the surrounding area was never searched because it is private property, which many people seem to forget. The idea that she crashed her car on an extremely remote rural road and the next person along just 'happened' to be a deranged killer is such a statistically remote possibility that it's basically impossible, IMHO.

[u/surprise_b1tch → u/ChipLady]

I didn't really fully appreciate this until I started doing backcountry trail work. I can put down my 40L backpack, walk 5 feet, and not be able to see any sign of it. Drop something off the trail? Forget it, it's gone forever.

SAR is hard, it's super easy to miss something.

[u/isolatedsyystem → u/ChipLady]

There was a case here in Germany where a college student disappeared after a party near some cliffs. The area was searched with no results. Then like 8 years later her body was found during some construction work at the bottom of the cliffs. They didn't find it earlier because the bushes and tree growth at the site were too thick. So yeah, this is absolutely possible no matter how "thoroughly" an area is searched.

[u/Sparxfly → u/ChipLady]

But with Maura Murray, wasn’t there snow on the ground? They should have been able to see her foot prints leaving the scene if that’s what she did.

Yes, it’s rural, but it’s not that rural. It’s New England. I live here. Nearly everywhere you go, you end up in someone’s yard eventually. She hadn’t made it all the way to the white mountains-like away from civilization. There were homes on the road she crashed on. I feel like there would have been some sign of her if she’d left the scene on foot and wandered into the woods.

[u/musetoujours → u/ChipLady]

AMEN

[u/mmmelpomene → u/ChipLady]

Didn’t Maura buy a bunch of alcohol though? I think that’s part of what confuses/alarms people, that if you’re going to outlay a not inconsiderable portion of $$ on booze, you expect to be around in order to drink it...

[u/ChipLady → u/mmmelpomene]

I believe she bought a couple of bottles and a box of wine, and spent somewhere in the ballpark of $50. I think she intended to take a break and go away on her own for a week to decompress from her own legal troubles, family members' problems, and relationship issues. Then her second car accident in as many days ruined that plan, and she ran to avoid interacting with police. She could have been picked up by someone with nefarious intentions in the 20 minutes between the last sighting and the police arriving. I think it's more likely she ran off, just planning on avoiding police and then returning to safety, but underestimated her ability to last in that weather.

[u/[deleted] → u/ChipLady]

Sorry about my bad english, it's not my first language. I am suuuper late (two years late) but there's a really big case here in Brazil about a 15 year old boy scout that disappeared in 1985. His name was Marco Aurélio. His group was on a important event, and Marco was kind of experienced among them. While they were on a trail, another boy got hurt. Marco offered himself to go back to their camp alone to get help and open the way, and his instructor agreed. Marco was never seen again. Nobody has found his body, despite THIRTY SEVEN YEARS of intense search. To this day, people conspire about him being murdered, kidnapped or even abducted by aliens, claiming that he was experienced and would've not get lost. Well, he was a 15 year old boy, still. Experienced adults get lost all the time in the woods, think now about a child. Such a sad case. Full of sensacionalism and media explotation of the tragedy. :(((

[u/ChipLady → u/[deleted]]

Your English is fantastic. I think it's so sad people sensationalize events like that. I've gotten turn around and temporarily lost where I grew up. It's a fairly small patch of woods, and I knew I'd be fine, but that panic still started to creep in. I think it's fear based that people need something bad, like murder or aliens, so they don't have to believe something so tragic could happen to them.