9 Car Crashes Shrouded In Mystery.
Driving is one of the most dangerous day-to-day activities in the modern world.
It just takes one mistake to change lives.
One small silver lining is that car accidents are often very public and there is usually
enough evidence to recreate the scene.
But there are also a handful of accidents that turned into very strange mysteries indeed.
1.
Kyle Peterson.
According to Kyle Peterson's mother, the 29-year-old was unhappy with certain aspects
of his life in early 2014.
Her son often talked about quitting his job and moving away.
However, his roommate and other friends said that Peterson was excited for an upcoming
trip to California.
On February 24, 2014, Peterson was driving his SUV in Troutdale, Oregon, when he took
his eyes off the road to check his cell phone and veered into a guardrail.
Peterson got out of the car and waited for the police to arrive.
When they did, he was cooperative.
Witnesses said he looked shaken, but unharmed.
Then Peterson started acting strangely.
First, he got back in the car and started revving the engine.
The officers backed away from the vehicle and Peterson eventually stopped.
He then got out of the car and ran into a heavily wooded area near the scene of the
crash.
That was the last time anyone saw him.
In the days that followed, a search group of over 100 people, including a dive team,
combed the area, but there was no trace of Peterson.
Kyle Peterson is currently still missing and his family are continuing the search.
The month's long search for missing man Kyle Peterson is over after his body was pulled
from the Sandy River, roughly half a mile from the river's mouth in Gresham.
The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said a hiker reported the floating body just after
4 p.m. Friday, roughly four miles downstream from where 29-year-old Peterson was last seen
alive.
On a Facebook page entitled "Find Kyle Peterson," an administrative post Friday confirmed Peterson's
body was pulled from the river.
"It is with a heavy heart that we inform everyone that Kyle's body was recovered
from the Sandy River this afternoon at 4:45pm," it reads.
"Our family is in utter shock and heartbroken that we have lost a son, a brother, an uncle,
and friend.
Kyle was a wonderful person whose life was cut tragically short.
We love you Kyle."
The discovery follows months of intensive searches, including drones, K-9's, water
and ground efforts conducted by Peterson's family.
In February, Peterson crashed his car into a guard rail along SE 35th and Stark and waited
for police to arrive.
When officers arrived, Peterson did not appear to be injured and was cooperating, but without
notice, he walked off into the woods and was not seen alive again.
"The officer was walking back to his car and he assumed Kyle was following him and
he wasn't," his mother, Lynn Bauer, told KOIN 6 News.
"He turned around and looked and Kyle had just walked into the woods."
A concern from Peterson's family members was that police did not do enough on scene
to ensure his safety following the crash.
Multiple theories about a potential concussion and other possible outcomes have been floated
in the media.
The body has been officially identified by the Multnomah County Medical Examiner's
Office.
2.
Michael Hastings.
At the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he
counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government.
Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took
part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the
National Security State.
Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed against
the Obama administration, which "has clearly declared war on the press"; the only recourse,
he said, was for the press to respond: "We declare war on you."
On May 31, he dashed off an urgent tweet: "first they came for manning.
Then Assange.
Then fox.
Then the ap.drake and the other whistle-blowers.
Any nyt reporters too."
He attended screenings of his friend Jeremy Scahill's film Dirty Wars, which seeks to
expose "the hidden truth behind America's expanding covert wars," and when leaks about
the NSA began appearing in The Guardian, and Edward Snowden was charged with espionage,
Hastings was deeply troubled by the revelations and the Justice Department's response.
On June 7, his last post for BuzzFeed, where he was a staff writer, focused on "Why Democrats
Love to Spy on Americans," and at the time of his death, Hastings was working on a profile
of CIA director John Brennan for Rolling Stone.
It was for Rolling Stone, where Hastings had a contract, that he'd written "The Runaway
General," the 2010 article that resulted in the cashiering of General Stanley McChrystal,
America's commander in Afghanistan, and made his name as a journalist.
Mark Leibovich, in this summer's inside-the-Beltway big read, This Town, describes Hastings's
McChrystal piece as "the most consequential" journalism of 2010 and possibly Obama's
entire first term.
But despite going after big game, Hastings tended to be nonchalant about possible repercussions.
"Whenever I'd been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people,"
he said once, "one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me."
By the middle of June, though, Hastings, then 33, had become openly afraid.
Helicopters are a common sight in the Hollywood Hills, but he had told Jordanna Thigpen, a
neighbor he'd become close to, that there were more of them in the sky than usual, and
he was certain they were tracking him.
On Saturday the 15th, he called Matt Farwell, his writing partner, and said Farwell might
be interviewed by the FBI.
Farwell was unsettled.
"He was being really cagey over the phone, which was odd, very odd," Farwell says.
On the 17th, Hastings e-mailed colleagues at BuzzFeed to warn them that "the Feds
are interviewing my 'close friends and associates' "; he was "onto a big story" and needed to
go "off the rada[r] for a bit … hope to see you all soon."
"He was deeply agitated," says The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur.
Since Hastings didn't want to say anything more over e-mail or the phone, Farwell, who
lived in Virginia, set up a lunch for him the following Thursday with a trusted friend
of Farwell's, also in L.A., so that she could pass along whatever Hastings had to
tell him on her forthcoming trip East.
The lunch never happened.
At 4:20 a.m. on Tuesday, June 18, Hastings's silver Mercedes C250 coupe, speeding south
on Highland Avenue, crossed Melrose, jumped the median, hit a palm tree, and exploded.
The charred body of the driver was identified by the Los Angeles coroner as John Doe 117
until fingerprints confirmed that the deceased was Michael Hastings.
Sergeant Joe Biggs, who met Hastings in 2008, when the reporter, on assignment for GQ, was
embedded with his unit in Afghanistan, hadn't spoken to his friend in three months, but
Hastings had Bcc'd him on the June 17 e-mail to BuzzFeed colleagues.
"I tried calling him when I got that e-mail," Biggs says, "'cause I felt so fucking
scared, because it didn't seem like him."
Biggs e-mailed BuzzFeed, too.
"They weren't helpful at all.
I kept e-mailing back, 'What should we do?
I'm not a journalist.
I don't know how to go about this stuff.'
They never responded to me."
Biggs tried contacting other media to let them know about the ominous e-mail; the only
person who got back to him was a local L.A. reporter.
"If that thing didn't get released," Biggs told me when I first called him, two
weeks after Hastings's death, "people would keep thinking it was an accident."
Hastings lived as he died.
On the small side, with blue eyes and scruffy good looks that suggested Jude Law's little
brother, he did everything fast: chain-smoking Parliament Lights, calling and e-mailing people
late at night, speaking in a jittery torrent, churning out copy.
(The first, long draft of his McChrystal article was a 48-hour production.)
"The dude was exhausting," Farwell says.
"He just kind of vibrated energy.
He had a deep well of moral outrage and sadness that I think goes back to a lot of the hypocrisy
he saw and felt."
3.
Geoffrey Wilson.
The police department released its report on Wilson's death to the Post-Dispatch last
month.
It says the night of May 24-25 unfolded this way:
Pinkston and Wilson arrived at Harry's together, but they became separated when Wilson hit
the dance floor.
At almost 3 a.m., Pinkston went to pay his tab and Wilson left to get the SUV.
Pinkston told police he walked the street looking for Wilson before calling a cab to
go back to Wilson's hotel room in Chesterfield.
At 3:02 a.m., a passer-by called 911 to report an SUV had backed into a fire hydrant and
a man was in the driver's seat, passed out.
Harry's green sign glows within sight of the scene, and the thumping of the music echoes
there.
A Pear Tree Inn, a bank and a syrup factory border the intersection.
The FBI's St. Louis office, along Market Street, is within sight.
Police found Wilson struggling to breathe and smelling of alcohol in the driver's
seat.
There were no outward signs of trauma.
His clothes appeared "fairly neat and clean," but he had urinated on the SUV seat.
Paramedics took him to St. Louis University Hospital, where X-rays revealed massive internal
injuries.
During emergency surgery, doctors discovered that Wilson's kidneys, spleen and liver
had been lacerated, and several ribs were cracked.
The bleeding wouldn't stop.
He died at 6:46 a.m.
Medical staff told officers at the hospital that Wilson's injuries were not consistent
with the minor accident police described.
The case was turned over to the homicide division as a "suspicious death."
About two hours later, Detective Jerome Jackson went to the scene.
He saw two dents on the rear of the SUV, and found the "E" from the Ford Escape logo
lying near the hydrant.
He also saw unidentifiable handprints smeared diagonally from the center of the back toward
the right side of the rear bumper.
The dent on the right matched the shape of the hydrant; paint analysis confirmed the
impact.
The dent to the left was more of an oval.
At about the time Jackson took over the case, Pinkston was waking up in Wilson's hotel
room, concerned that his friend never arrived, he told police later.
He said he went to work that day and learned afterward from calls and texts with mutual
friends that Wilson had died after a car accident.
In an autopsy May 28, the Medical Examiner's Office determined that "the injuries were
consistent with a single crushing type of event."
The only external injury was a crescent-shaped, dotted-like bruise on Wilson's back.
The medical examiner's investigators found that the pattern of the bruise matched photographs
and measurements of the hydrant.
Toxicology results also showed Wilson's blood-alcohol content was 0.182, more than
twice the legal limit for driving.
Police determined that nothing had been taken from him, and they discounted the possibility
of an attack.
Jackson collected surveillance pictures from every camera he could find in the area, but
none showed the incident.
Video from Harry's shows Wilson walking north from the bar at 2:36 a.m. and disappearing
into the night.
Pinkston leaves at 2:43 a.m. and remains in sight of the cameras until he gets into a
cab at 2:56 a.m. Detectives interviewed the 911 caller, Pinkston's
taxi driver and a woman Pinkston and Wilson met that night.
She said nothing had seemed amiss.
The cabdriver said he took Pinkston to the hotel in Chesterfield.
The caller saw no one else when he stopped to check on Wilson.
Police hired Tom Morris, who is certified by the Accreditation Commission for Traffic
Accident Reconstruction and owns St. Louis Traffic Accident Reconstruction.
"He's the guy we call to teach our accident reconstruction team," Jackson explained.
Morris rented the very same SUV Wilson had used and performed three trials to see whether
it could roll back into the fire hydrant and bounce off far enough to free someone trapped
in between.
He estimated that the impact with the hydrant was between 3 and 5 mph.
And he said there was a 95 percent probability that the vehicle, if left in neutral at a
distance from 29 to 63 feet, could mount the curb, crush Wilson with nearly 3,000 pounds
of force and bounce back about 1.8 feet.
Using an average man's walking speed, Morris also determined it was possible for Wilson
to exit the vehicle and beat it to the hydrant.
"Based upon these results, I cannot exclude the possibility that the victim was injured
by an unoccupied rolling vehicle," Morris wrote.
There is little else left to investigate, but Jackson still has questions.
Wilson's shirt was lost after paramedics cut it off.
The investigator wonders whether it showed evidence of contact with the hydrant.
The vehicle's internal crash data recorder either didn't activate or was reset after
many subsequent start-ups.
DNA tests are pending from a water bottle in the SUV and swabs of the Ford's door
handles.
But Jackson doubts the results will be probative, especially given the number of people in and
out of a rental car.
Wilson's family suspects that someone with a grudge killed him.
They believe he was set up to be beaten with something like a baseball bat, and think police
should review phone records of Wilson's friends and even ex-lovers.
Countered Jackson: "This investigation wasn't done in a couple of hours or over a weekend;
we put in the time."
He added, "We don't have enough answers to give (the Wilsons), and until we tell them
we have arrested someone for this, it will never be enough."
Virginia Wilson said she thinks St. Louis police botched the investigation to avoid
putting another murder on their books.
St. Louis ended 2013 with 120 homicides in a population of roughly 300,000 residents.
Calgary has a population of about 1.2 million and had 22 homicides last year.
She said her family doctor reviewed the autopsy report and told her he thinks someone beat
Wilson to death.
But the assistant medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Jane Turner, strongly disagrees.
She said a smooth surface consistent with the SUV's bumper caused an injury to Wilson's
abdominal area, and the bruise on his back matched the hydrant.
Because both injuries were on the same plane of his body, Turner said, they must have occurred
at the same moment in a crushing manner — not through blows.
Turner said Wilson had some scrapes on his knees, and bruises on his left arm, that could
have happened when he fell — or even before the incident.
"We did the right thing by considering the possibility of homicide, and initially that
was the point we worked from, but it became clearer and clearer that this was an accident,"
she said.
"All of our findings are consistent with the damage to the car and the patterned injury
on his back … Had it not been for the patterned bruising on his back, we'd still be stumped."
St. Louis police are voluntarily sending Turner's and Jackson's findings to police in Calgary.
"Understandably, she's very upset," Calgary Inspector Scott Boyd said in a telephone
interview.
"Here you have a promising doctor whose death is not supposed to happen that way.
It's very difficult for a family to come to terms with that when there are so many
outstanding questions."
While Virginia Wilson cannot be certain of what did happen, she insists she knows what
didn't.
"What they are saying about this hydrant, it doesn't make sense," she said.
"My son was not that stupid.
Whoever did this to him, he took our son away and now our life is shattered and will never
be the same.
My tears never stop.
Every day, I cannot believe that my son is gone."
4.
Patricia Meehan.
At around 8:15 pm on April 20, 1989, on Highway 200 in Circle, Montana, Peggy Bueller and
her parents were driving to Great Falls, Montana, to visit her sister.
Behind them was Carol Heitz, an off-duty police dispatcher.
Out of nowhere, a car driving the opposite direction came onto their side of the road.
Peggy swerved out of the way, barely missing a head-on collision with the wrong-way car.
Carol pulled off to the side of the road, but the other car still collided with her.
Carol exited the car without any serious injuries.
The woman driving the wrong-way car also exited her vehicle.
She looked at Carol for several seconds, but said nothing.
The woman then walked away from the accident scene.
Peggy and her parents went to the accident scene to make sure everyone was alright.
Peggy then noticed the woman; she was standing on the other side of a fence, a few yards
from the accident scene.
According to Peggy, the woman was looking at the accident as if she was a bystander
and not involved.
The woman then walked into the field and vanished.
Within half an hour, police traced the car to its owner, thirty-eight-year-old Patricia
Meehan; she was the wrong-way driver.
Immediately, police began to search for her; however, they had no idea if Patricia was
injured or if she was purposefully hiding from them.
Shoe prints were found in the field near the accident scene that went on for several miles;
by 3 am, the tracks disappeared and the search was suspended until the next morning.
The search continued for five days, but no trace of her was found.
Two theories emerged as to how Patricia eluded her trackers.
The first theory was that she had stowed away on a hay truck parked about a half mile from
the accident scene.
The other theory is that she just hitchhiked out of the area.
Since her disappearance, she has been spotted multiple times throughout the United States.
At first, it seemed as though she vanished to avoid prosecution for leaving the scene
of an accident.
However, eyewitness reports of her increasingly strange behavior suggest that she may be suffering
from a rare and dangerous form of amnesia.
Patricia was originally from Pennsylvania but had moved to Oklahoma to attend college
and prepare for a career in daycare.
She worked in that field until 1985 when she decided to move to Montana to work on a ranch.
Before her disappearance, her family and friends had noticed that she had become depressed
and withdrawn.
Psychiatrists believe that she sustained a head injury from the crash and that this injury
combined with her previous problems may have caused her amnesia.
Since her accident, Patricia has been spotted at least one-hundred times between Montana
and Seattle, mostly at truck stops.
However, she has apparently been able to hitchhike out of the areas before her family could find
her.
One of the confirmed sightings of her occurred in May 1989, in Bozeman, Montana, which is
just a few miles from her home.
She went to a restaurant and behaved strangely around both the hostess and the waitress that
served her.
Unfortunately, based on the sightings, it does not appear that Patricia's condition
is improving.
If she is not treated soon, then the damage to her mental state could be severe and irreversible.
Patricia Meehan remains missing.
5.
The Oldnall Road Car Crashes.
A SUDDEN spate of accidents on a rural stretch of road between Cradley and Wollescote has
led to calls for urgent action amid fears that someone will be killed.
Oldnall Road has been the scene of four accidents in three days and one victim claims he knows
of more than 20 crashes in just two months - all involving vehicles losing control.
Sharon Peacock, from Colley Gate, said her 18-year-old daughter Rebekah was lucky to
be alive after her car spun off the road and into a field earlier this month.
And Stourbridge father-of-two Sean Windsor is still shaken and baffled as to how he lost
control and crashed into a telegraph pole, writing off his Volvo in October.
The 43-year-old, who was travelling with his wife Sally, aged 42 and sons, Thomas, aged
15 and 11-year-old Harry, had started to brake from about 40mph - which is the speed limit
- when he saw another vehicle stopped about 200 yards ahead, which had also lost control
and hit the kerb.
Mr Windsor, of Queensway, Wollescote, said he believed the road surface was to blame,
causing vehicles to skid when it was even slightly wet.
A spokesman for Dudley Council's highways department blamed recent frosty driving conditions
and speed, although he added that it was hoped to conduct skid-resistance tests on the road
surface in February.
But Mr Windsor, who knows the road well, said: "There is something different about the
road from when I used to drive to work in Cradley on it - and there was no frost when
I crashed.
"It's lunacy to wait until February to do the tests.
At this rate someone is likely to have been killed by then."
"Not all the accidents are reported to the police and living and working in the area
I know there have been at least 20 accidents in Oldnall Road since mine.
There's always accidents there, it's a real blackspot."
Three years ago a spate of accidents on the road hit the headlines when a ghostly apparition
of a young girl in Victorian dress was blamed.
Latest victims have not turned to the spirit world for an explanation and Mrs Peacock is
urging highways bosses to investigate more likely causes.
"I could have lost my daughter just before Christmas.
She had a miraculous escape, although she had concussion, bruising and seatbelt injuries.
"In the same conditions and circumstances people are having accidents at a phenomenal
rate.
Something needs to be done before there's a fatality," said Mrs Peacock, of Ladysmith
Road, whose daughter's car was written off in the accident as she drove to work at a
hair salon in Hagley.
6.
Grateful Doe.
Police call him "Grateful Doe," but all they really know, 18 years after he was found
dead at the side of the road, is locked in a secret surrounding a handful of stray clues
— four quarters, two Grateful Dead ticket stubs, a BIC lighter and a cryptic note mentioning
two people named "Caroline."
That's what police found at the crash scene on the afternoon of Monday, June 26, 1995,
when authorities arrived to investigate a fatal car accident in Emporia, Greensville
County, Virginia.
"The vehicle went off the side of the road, braked and crashed head-on into two trees,"
Lt. Ted Jones of the Virginia State Police told The Huffington Post.
"The occupants were not restrained and were both partially ejected through the windshield."
Both occupants, Jones said, died of massive head injuries at the scene, presumably upon
impact.
"There was no presence of drugs in either of their systems," Jones said.
"It's my opinion that the driver fell asleep at the wheel.
That is based upon the lengthy and gradual departure of the vehicle from the paved surface."
Jones added, "They were in a Volkswagen Vanagon.
It's a cab-over design with a rear-engine mount, so they had no protection up front
from anything."
Police were able to identify the driver as Michael Hager, a 21-year-old student at the
University of South Carolina.
Contacted by HuffPost on Wednesday, Hager's father and step-mother declined to comment
on the circumstances leading up to the accident.
According to Jones, Hager had been visiting his girlfriend in Fairfax County, Virginia,
and had left her home at about 7:45 a.m. on the day of the crash.
Later that day, Hager stopped at his father's home in Gloucester County.
His father wasn't there at the time, but Hager did call him at about 12 p.m. to say
he was on his way to his mother's house in Inman, South Carolina.
Hager did not mention having anyone with him, police said.
In a July 1996 article in The Free Lance-Star, a Virginia newspaper, a neighbor of Hager's
father had reported seeing a young man with Hager when he stopped at his father's house.
Jones said the report is incorrect.
"When he stopped at his father's house, he was alone," Jones said.
"The theory is that the passenger was a hitchhiker [Hager] likely picked up between
Gloucester and Emporia."
Whatever the case may be, the accident occurred roughly 90 minutes after Hager called his
father.
The passenger had no identification, and none of Hager's friends or family members knew
the man or had any information about Hager traveling with another person.
The unidentified man's fingerprints were not in any law enforcement database and he
did not match any missing person reports.
Further hindering investigators was the fact that the injuries to the passenger's face
were so severe that authorities were unable to release a photo of him to the public.
The only thing the coroner could determine was that the young man was between 15 and
21 years of age.
In the passenger's pockets, police found the four quarters, the BIC lighter and the
two ticket stubs.
The stubs were from a Grateful Dead concert at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington
D.C. on June 24 and 25, 1995.
The two-day event had drawn fans from across the U.S., with an estimated 60,000 concertgoers
in attendance.
The concert made headlines around the world after its opening day, when three people were
struck by lightning while waiting outside the stadium.
All three survived, although one was left permanently disabled.
The concert was also of note to fans, as it was one of lead singer Jerry Garcia's last
performances.
He died of a heart attack less than two months later.
According to Jones, the ticket stubs, along with the appearance of the unidentified young
man, which included a Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirt from the 1995 summer tour, led investigators
to believe the young man was a "Deadhead," a name given to fans of the Grateful Dead.
Jones managed to trace the sale of the tickets back to the original buyer, but discovered
they were part of a bulk purchase the man had made.
The tickets had been scalped to strangers outside the concert, with "Grateful Doe"
presumably buying it then.
Authorities found no evidence suggesting Hager had attended the Grateful Dead concert, which
Jones said adds to his belief that "Grateful Doe" was a hitchhiker.
However, Jones does believe the Grateful Dead was a mutual interest that prompted Hager
to give the young man a ride.
"Based on the personal items [Hager] had and the age of the two, they appeared to be
into the same trends and styles," Jones said.
"Both were fans and both had affinities to the Grateful Dead-following lifestyle."
In addition to the items found on "Grateful Doe," authorities found a note near the
site of the crash that was addressed to someone named "Jason."
"To Jason, sorry we had to go.
See you around.
Caroline O. and Caroline T.," the note read.
It also had a small doodle and a phone number with a 914 prefix.
Jones said authorities do not know if the note belonged to Hager, "Grateful Doe"
or someone with no connection to either.
At the time of the accident, some media outlets mistakenly reported that the note was found
in "Grateful Doe's" pocket.
Jones said that information is incorrect.
"It was found within proximity of the vehicle and may not have even been in his original
possession," Jones said.
Jones said reports suggesting the doodle on the note was a caricature of Jerry Garcia
are also incorrect.
"It is a random doodle," he said.
"We had looked into a Grateful Dead connection and never saw any link between that illustration
and the Grateful Dead or their followers."
The phone number proved to be a dead end — there was no area code and when investigators called
variations of the number, they were unable to find anyone with "any connection" to
the note, Jones said.
The forensics lab was also unable to lift any fingerprints from it.
Authorities also have no idea where "Grateful Doe" was heading at the time of the accident.
He was evidently not following the Grateful Dead to their next venue, as the next show
was in Michigan and Hager was headed in the opposite direction.
"Obviously, because of the time that's passed and no solid leads, I can only assume
maybe he was from foster care early on and maybe floated from family to family," Jones
said.
"I say that based on that kind of lifestyle — following the Grateful Dead from venue
to venue.
He may have found his own family in that cult-like following."
Jones no longer works on the "Grateful Doe" case.
"I investigated everything from every angle, and nothing ever panned out," he said.
Jones said the case is now in the hands of the state medical examiner's office in Richmond,
Virginia, where it is managed by Dr. Kevin Whaley.
HuffPost made numerous calls to Whaley this week, but none were returned.
Today, nearly 20 years after his death, the story of "Grateful Doe," or "Jason Doe"
as he is sometimes called, would likely be all but forgotten were it not for members
of Websleuths, an online community of volunteers who brainstorm unsolved mysteries.
For the past several years, multiple Websleuths members, including two known as "Killarney
Rose" and "Rainwater," have picked apart the case and helped raise awareness about
it on social media.
"He was someone's son, brother, grandson, nephew, uncle [and] it is so hard to believe
that in this day and time that no one can identify him," Killarney Rose told HuffPost,
explaining why she is dedicated to the case.
"Although Grateful Dead fans may not know each other's names, at a Dead concert all
are members of the same family for magical hours," Rainwater said.
"We want to see this family member given back his name."
Grateful Doe is described as a white male, between 15 and 21 years old, 5 feet, 8 inches
tall and approximately 169 pounds.
He had curly light brown to dark blond shoulder-length hair and brown eyes.
His left earlobe was pierced, but he had no earring at the time of his death.
He was wearing light blue jeans, a Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirt from the 1995 summer
tour, size 11-and-a-half Fila sneakers and a macramé and bead necklace.
He had a homemade tattoo of a star on his upper left arm and a faint pattern, possibly
a faded homemade tattoo of an unknown design, on his upper right arm.
He also had a scar on the middle of his back.
7.
Willie MacRae.
ITAL evidence on the mysterious death of SNP activist and campaigner Willie McRae – including
the gun that killed him – is inexplicably missing from police files, the Sunday Herald
can reveal.
Police have also formally admitted for the first time that the weapon was not swept for
fingerprints, while other key forensic evidence was not gathered from the scene.
McRae, a Glasgow lawyer and leading light within the SNP, died on April 7, 1985 after
appearing to crash his car on a lonely Highland road.
However, a single gunshot wound to his head was later discovered in hospital.
Rumours of involvement by the security services have persisted for three decades, due to McRae's
politics and campaigning – yet the official stance has always been that the wound was
self-inflicted.
Now it can be revealed the .22 Smith & Wesson revolver found at the scene, said to be illegally
owned by McRae, has disappeared with no administrative record as to why it was discarded, where it
ended up, or when it vanished.
Other items recovered from the area and from McRae's person whilst he was in hospital – including
files which, for many years, were said to be linked to his anti-nuclear campaigning
– are also no longer in the possession of Police Scotland.
And vital forensic evidence to support the assertion that McRae committed suicide does
not exist.
Police have admitted for the first time in correspondence that the gun was not swept
for fingerprints and McRae's car and clothes, which may also have contained vital evidence
such as fingerprints, gunpowder residue and blood spatter, were not subject to any forensic
analysis.
Much of the suicide theory has been hinged on McRae's history of depression and previous
drink-driving convictions.
A partially-consumed, half-bottle of Famous Grouse whisky – not one of McRae's usual
brands – was found in his crashed car on the banks of Loch Loyne, by Invergarry.
However, it can be revealed that McRae's body had point zero blood alcohol level at the
time of post-mortem.
John Finnie, the Green Party candidate for the Highlands and Islands, claimed that long-standing
interest in the case had always "been fuelled by a dearth of some fundamental information".
"The public will be rightly astonished that the weapon allegedly used in this case was
neither fingerprinted nor subject to basic forensic examination," he added.
In 2007, it was first revealed that two statements were missing from the police files on the
case.
It is now understood that these statements were from former officers of the Northern
Constabulary.
And that both statements are missing from the Crown Office files on the case.
The Crown Office had evidence that the statements existed in 1985, but no explanation has been
offered as to why no moves were made to secure them, or why they were ignored.
It was not until the Crown Office was alerted to the discrepancy in early 2015 – nearly
30 years after McRae's death – that it made efforts to directly contact the two officers
involved.
While a new statement was eventually secured from one of the officers, the second had since
died.
Finnie, a former police officer, added: "Perhaps most worrying has been the Crown Office's
inability to appreciate that the number of statements they had in respect of this death
excluded two statements taken from police officers.
"And until such time as satisfactory explanations are given, if indeed they can be, then the
understandable concern that exists about Mr McRae's untimely death will continue."
A Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) spokesperson said: "Crown Counsel
are satisfied with the extensive investigations into the death of William McRae and the case
is now closed."
Mark MacNicol, spokesman for the Justice for Willie McRae campaign, said 13,000 people
had now backed a petition and crowdfunding campaign calling for a fresh inquiry into
the SNP activist's death.
He added: "After 30 years of Chinese whispers we want to finally be able to separate fact
from fiction.
"Regardless of the Crown Office position our campaign is about getting to the truth."
Police Scotland said a report had been sent to the procurator fiscal following an investigation
into McRae's death on April 6, 1985, and further reviews carried out in 2010/11 did
not raise any new matters.
"Any further information or evidence reported to Police Scotland on any case will be always
be considered," it added.
8.
George S. Patton.
The newly unearthed diaries of a colorful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton
dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost
American lives.
The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war
era.
Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought
to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.
But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head
General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to
silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".
His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr. Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts
from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to
plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile,
which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.
Mr. Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials
turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.
Mr. Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr. Bazata: "He was struggling
with himself, all these killings he had done.
He confessed to me that he had caused the accident, that he was ordered to do so by
Wild Bill Donovan.
"Donovan told him: 'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control
and we must save him from himself and from ruining everything the allies have done.'
I believe Douglas Bazata.
He's a sterling guy."
Mr. Bazata led an extraordinary life.
He was a member of the Jedburghs, the elite unit who parachuted into France to help organise
the Resistance in the run up to D-Day in 1944.
He earned four purple hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre
three times over for his efforts.
After the war he became a celebrated artist who enjoyed the patronage of Princess Grace
of Monaco and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
He was friends with Salvador Dali, who painted a portrait of Bazata as Don Quixote.
He ended his career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman,
a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.
Mr. Wilcox also tracked down and interviewed Stephen Skubik, an officer in the Counter-Intelligence
Corps of the US Army, who said he learnt that Patton was on Stalin's death list.
Skubik repeatedly alerted Donovan, who simply had him sent back to the US.
"You have two strong witnesses here," Mr. Wilcox said.
"The evidence is that the Russians finished the job."
The scenario sounds far-fetched but Mr. Wilcox has assembled a compelling case that US officials
had something to hide.
At least five documents relating to the car accident have been removed from US archives.
The driver of the truck was whisked away to London before he could be questioned and no
autopsy was performed on Patton's body.
With the help of a Cadillac expert from Detroit, Mr. Wilcox has proved that the car on display
in the Patton museum at Fort Knox is not the one Patton was driving.
"That is a cover-up," Mr. Wilcox said.
George Patton, a dynamic controversialist who wore ivory-handled revolvers on each hip
and was the subject of an Oscar winning film starring George C. Scott, commanded the US
3rd Army, which cut a swathe through France after D-Day.
But his ambition to get to Berlin before Soviet forces was thwarted by supreme allied commander
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gave Patton's petrol supplies to the more cautious British General
Bernard Montgomery.
Patton, who distrusted the Russians, believed Eisenhower wrongly prevented him closing the
so-called Falaise Gap in the autumn of 1944, allowing hundreds of thousands of German troops
to escape to fight again,.
This led to the deaths of thousands of Americans during their winter counter-offensive that
became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
In order to placate Stalin, the 3rd Army was also ordered to a halt as it reached the German
border and was prevented from seizing either Berlin or Prague, moves that could have prevented
Soviet domination of Eastern Europe after the war.
Mr. Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph: "Patton was going to resign from the Army.
He wanted to go to war with the Russians.
The administration thought he was nuts.
"He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers.
I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected president if Patton had
lived to say the things he wanted to say."
Mr. Wilcox added: "I think there's enough evidence here that if I were to go to a grand
jury I could probably get an indictment, but perhaps not a conviction."
Charles Province, President of the George S. Patton Historical Society, said he hopes
the book will lead to definitive proof of the plot being uncovered.
He said: "There were a lot of people who were pretty damn glad that Patton died.
He was going to really open the door on a lot of things that they screwed up over there."
9.
Princess Diana.
The death of Princess Diana was one of the most shocking tragedies of the '90s.
Many people remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard about her
death.
The future Princess of Wales was born Diana Spencer on July 1, 1961 and married Prince
Charles on July 29, 1981.
However, the marriage started to fall apart in the early '90s and both Diana and Charles
started seeing other people while they were still married.
Their divorce was finalized in 1996, after a bitter media battle between Diana and the
Royal Family.
After her marriage, she dated heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
They broke up in May 1997 and within a month she started seeing Dodi Al-Fayed, whom she
met when his father, Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, hosted Diana and her sons
at his compound in the south of France.
On the night of the crash, Dodi and Diana left Sardinia in a private jet and landed
in Paris at 3:20 PM.
In Paris, the couple were hounded by the paparazzi, who followed them to the Hotel Ritz.
The couple tried to dine in the hotel's restaurant, but their dinner was interrupted
by photographers and they were forced to dine in Dodi's private room.
While waiting for them to finish their dinner, the head of hotel security, Henri Paul, was
seen having two drinks of his favorite liquor.
Shortly after midnight, the couple decided to travel the short distance to Dodi's apartment.
Henri Paul hatched a plan to send a decoy car out to the front of the hotel, before
sneaking the couple out of the back in an unmarked Mercedes.
Around 12:20 AM, Diana sat in the backseat on the driver's side and Dodi got in beside
her.
Their bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was in the front passenger seat, while Paul drove.
Minutes later, the Mercedes had just entered the Alma tunnel when it slammed head-on into
the tunnel's 13th pillar.
Al-Fayed and Paul were killed instantly while Diana and Rees-Jones were seriously injured.
Photographers immediately pounced on the scene, preventing rescue workers from getting to
the victims.
An hour later, Diana's ambulance finally reached the hospital, but she had already
had a heart attack.
She was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Of course, when a young and controversial person dies, there are going to be questions
about the death.
There are plenty of theories about what actually happened.
One popular idea is that another car caused the crash.
On the Mercedes, police found white paint specks from a Fiat Uno, but French authorities
have never been able to locate the car.
Despite there being about 10 cameras along the way to the tunnel and 14 in the tunnel
itself, there is no footage of the Mercedes or the crash.
Another prominent theory claims that a bright flash caused Paul to swerve into the pillar.
Three witnesses testified that they saw such a flash immediately before the crash.
However, this one is often controversial, since many other witnesses didn't see any
flash.
If a flash was bright enough to blind Paul, everyone in the tunnel should have noticed.
The most prominent supporter of the theory that the couple was murdered is Mohamed Al-Fayed,
who has claimed that they were assassinated by MI6.
However, both a French investigation and an English inquest have concluded that Paul was
drunk, which led to the crash.
His blood alcohol was three times the legal limit at the time of the accident.
Al-Fayed has recently stopped campaigning publicly for a murder investigation out of
respect for Diana's children, Prince William and Prince Harry.
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