‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Cases That Were Actually Solved

When Craig Williamson went missing while on a business trip to Colorado Springs, his wife knew he had to be alive still, but was convinced he was suffering from amnesia.

Sure enough, Williamson saw a re-run of the Unsolved Mysteries episode about his disappearance and recognized himself. He claimed that he has been beaten by two men and couldn’t remember much else, not even who his wife was. The two reunited, but later divorced and remain friends.

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Bonnie Haim, a young Florida mother, disappeared just days after Christmas in 1992. Police believed she was dead, suspecting her husband, Michael Haim, was responsible for her murder. While Bonnie’s parents claimed she left Michael intentionally, some of his relatives were convinced he had killed her.

A piece of skull was found on Bonnie’s former property, and Michael went to trial years later in 2019. He was found guilty of murdering his wife and was sentenced to life in prison.

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When multiple postal workers became mysteriously ill in 2001, doctors discovered with horror that they were suffering from anthrax poisoning. Just days earlier, a man had died from the same cause in Florida. As more and more anthrax letters were discovered around the country, the nation was left wondering, who was sending them, and why?

Years later, in 2008, scientist Bruce Ivins was hospitalized after a prescription drug overdose. Although he helped investigate the anthrax poisonings, he was actually a suspect himself. The FBI later closed the case, determining Dr. Ivins had been the anthrax killer all along.

One morning in 1987, coroner Cullen Ellingburgh was called to help solve the case of a woman who found at the bottom of a cliff in California. She was in her mid-20s, and had fallen down and died hours before, in the middle of the night. A cab driver was the last person to see the mystery woman alive, and she asked to take him as far as the money she had was worth.

The case haunted the coroner until 26 years later, when she was finally identified. DNA proved that the remains belonged to 21-year-old Holly Jo Glynn, who had died of suicide.

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The Freemans, a family living in Oklahoma, were struck by tragedy when their house went up in flames one night in 1999. After the fire, Kathy Freeman’s body was found, but her husband, Danny, daughter Ashley, and her daughter’s friend were all missing. Kathy had been burned, but she hadn’t died in the fire, she had been shot. When Danny was discovered, he had been shot, too.

A death row inmate claimed to be responsible for the deaths of the Freemans and the disappearance of the girls, but the real truth was later uncovered. Ronnie Dean Busick was found responsible and wad charged with four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping and one count of arson.

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22-year-old Matthew Chase left to deposit his paycheck one night and never returned. His roommates grew worried after he disappeared, and called the bank, where they found out that Matthew had made multiple transactions the night he left. Hidden camera footage from the bank showed Matthew at the ATM with a strange figure standing behind him. Police suspected he had been abducted.

Three months after he vanished, Matthew’s remains were found in a ravine in Pasadena, California. He had died of a gunshot wound, and Matthew’s family suspects David “Bear” Meza is the one responsible.

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Margo Freshwater, a babysitter from Ohio, landed in prison for murder, but soon escaped with another inmate, fleeing for life as a fugitive. Freshwater sought help from lawyer Glenn Nash to get her boyfriend out of jail, and the two soon began an affair. They went on a crime spree of their own, starting with the murder of a liquor store cashier and ending the killing of a cab driver.

The couple was charged with murder, but Nash was ruled insane and sent to a mental hospital. While Freshwater stood trial, and was sent to prison, she later vanished again, with no leads to where she was hiding.

Freshwater was eventually arrested after living under a different name, Tanya, and with her own family that was unaware of her past. She was taken back to prison, served her time and has since been released.

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Joyce McLain, a teenager in Maine, went for a jog on August evening and didn’t come back. Her body was found just two days later in the woods behind the local high school. While Joyce had been seen jogging toward the soccer field, nobody could come up with any clues to solve her murder or find who had been responsible.

In 2016, 34 years after Joyce’s jog, Philip Scott Fournier was arrested for her murder. He had been 19 when he killed the local teen, and had stolen and crashed an oil truck the same night he killed her. Fournier was found guilty in 2018.

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Entrepreneur Liz Carmichael created a three-wheeled vehicle called “The Dale” in 1974, hoping to solve America’s oil crisis. Her invention was profiled in national magazines, but the authorities were doubtful about her miracle car, or if it even existed. As the police began to close in, Carmichael moved her children and fled to Miami, where she lived under another identity. It was then discovered that she had another identity she had been concealing: she had previously been living as a man named Jerry Dean Michael.

Michael was wanted for counterfeiting in 1961 and for jumping bail in 1962, and was arrested and put on trial for conspiracy, grand theft, and fraud. Michael was convicted and released on bail, but in 1980, failed to show up in court.

While Michael was missing for eight years after, a viewer who saw the episode called in just minutes later, identifying Jerry Dean Michael as a flower vender named Kathryn Elizabeth Johnson in Texas. Michael was sentenced to 32 months in prison and discharged after two years.

When 5-year-old Alie Berrelez’s babysitter went inside for a minute and returned, the girl had vanished. It was 1993, and the search went on for days until the police brought in bloodhounds to help find her. One dog was on the trail for nearly 40 blocks following the girl’s scent, eventually leading to the highway. When the dog tired out, a team of volunteers found Berrelez’s body off the highway in a wooded area.

The police suspected Berrelez had been killed by someone living in her apartment complex, or a visitor to the complex. 18 years later, the case was solved. DNA samples proved that Nick Stofer, Berrelez’s neighbor, had killed her. Stofer died in 2001.

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Mia Zapata was a promising young singer in the Seattle grunge music scene, but one night in 1993, she was mysteriously killed. While Mia was in town visiting some friends, she left an apartment at around 2 AM and was later found raped and murdered only miles away.

While it remained a mystery who committed the horrifying crime for years, with some investigators thinking it was somebody close to Mia, it was later determined to be a totally random attack. Ten years after her death, Seattle police used a DNA test to discover that Jesus Mezquia, a felon from Florida, had killed Mia with no connection to her. He was arrested, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 36 years in prison.

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After two teenagers discovered a body by the side of the road in Kentucky, the county coroner later determined that it was a 40 year old woman, who was eventually identified as Nancy Daddysman, a 42-year-old who had disappeared two years earlier after losing custody of her children. She headed to Kentucky to start over after her divorce, but was never heard from again when her car broke down on the side of the road.

Ten years after her death, investigators cracked the case. David M. Bell, an inmate who was already serving time for a murder, confessed to killing Nancy, too. Bell said he was high on meth at the time and picked her up in his car, beating her and stabbing her, then dumping her by the side of the road. He’s currently serving a 65-year sentence for the first murder he committed.

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In 1992, a man named Pierre wandered into a shelter with only $17, and could not recall anything about his past, but knew his name from a library card and thought he had some vague memories of San Diego. After months, doctors could not find any reason for his memory loss, but guessed he was suffering from “trauma induced amnesia.”

Later, when Unsolved Mysteries showed Pierre some sketches from a police sketch artist, a drawing of a woman who may have worked with Pierre cracked the case. The woman, a former coworker of Pierre’s named Carol, called in to Unsolved Mysteries and confirmed she had worked with him. The clue helped piece together his past, reuniting Pierre with his family and identity.

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When six-year-old Michael Hughes was picked up from school one day, a man came to get him who claimed to be his father. Really, it was Franklin Delano Floyd, who kidnapped the boy after forcing his principal to lead him to Michael, and was later sentenced to 50-plus years in prison. Floyd would not say where Michael was, but he insisted the boy was alive and well.

When investigating Floyd’s background, authorities found that he had previously gone by the name Trenton B. Davis in Oklahoma City and had a young girl with him, Suzanne, who he claimed was his daughter. He later moved away with her, and at age 17, Suzanne gave birth to Michael. Floyd said the boy was his and married Suzanne, who died just two years later in a mysterious hit-and-run, leaving Michael to the foster care system. After Suzanne’s death, authorities discovered she wasn’t really Floyd’s daughter — she had been kidnapped by him, too — and Michael wasn’t even his son.

In 2013, the FBI re-opened the case. Through interviews with Floyd, the real identity of Suzanne was revealed, along with her full name, Suzanne Marie Sevakis. Floyd also confessed to killing Michael, murdering him on the same day that he kidnapped the young boy.

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Patricia Stallings, mother of Ryan Stallings, was accused of murdering her son in 1989 when he was found to have excessive amounts of ethylene glycol in his blood. Patricia, who was suspected to have poisoned Ryan with antifreeze, was sent to prison while awaiting trial, where she gave birth to her second son, David, who was subsequently placed in foster care. When David was diagnosed with the genetic disease methylmalonic acidemia, which can produce the same symptoms of antifreeze poisoning, the Stallings’ lawyer suggested Ryan could have died from the same disorder. Because the judge didn’t allow the medical testimony, the Stallings’ lawyer couldn’t argue that Ryan also had MMA, and Patty was sentenced to life in prison for poisoning her son. Shortly after the episode aired, doctors from across the nation called in to support the MMA argument, and a test was performed to confirm Ryan’s cause of death, which was in fact from the disease. Shortly after, Patty was released from prison and reunited with David.

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Randy Mark Yager, a member of the infamous Outlaws biker gang, was under federal investigation for racketeering, drug dealing, and murder when he met Margie Jelovcic, a young woman who worked at a tavern in Gary, Indiana. The two struck up a relationship and headed to Las Vegas, where they vanished when Yager was wanted by the FBI. Weeks later, Margie returned home, more invested in her relationship than ever. She disappeared again just months later, leaving behind her luggage, car and more essentials at home. Authorities were puzzled by her disappearance, and her family suspected that Margie was being held captive by Yager. In 2014, years after the episode first aired, Yager was finally captured in Mexico, where he was found living with Margie. When the authorities identified the couple, Margie took off in her car, leading the police on a chase that ended in her death when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed.

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Two years before the disappearance of Chandra Levy, another Washington intern, Joyce Chiang, also mysteriously vanished. Joyce, who lived in Washington, D.C., and worked as a lawyer after her internship, was last seen at Starbucks in 1999, when she told a friend she’d be walking home but never made it to her apartment. After the FBI opened up an investigation into her disappearance, Chiang’s belongings began turning up near the river, miles from where she was last seen. Months later, her body washed ashore, but it was so deteriorated that no cause of death could be determined.

Joyce’s case was later closed when investigators identified her killers as two men from the D.C. area who abducted Joyce with plans to rob her. Police suspect that in an attempt to flee, Joyce slipped on the riverbank and fell to her death below, where she drowned in the river. One of her killers is serving a life sentence in prison, while the other is reportedly living in Guyana.

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In July 2017, 9-year-old Kayla Unbehaun was with her mother Heather for a court-ordered visitation. When her father, who had custody of her, went to pick her up, she was missing. Netflix briefly shared Kayla’s story on November 2022, and included a photo of her in the roll call at the very end of the episode

Just over six months after the episode’s release, a store owner in Asheville, North Carolina recognized Kayla from the show and called the police. Her mother was arrested, and Kayla, now 15, is back with her other family members in Illinois.

Watch Unsolved Mysteries Volume 3, Episode 9 on Netflix