Murder of Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen

Swedish tourists Sven Urban Höglin, 23, and his fiancée Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen, 21, disappeared while tramping on the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand in 1989. Police, residents, and military personnel conducted the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, attempting to find the couple. In December 1990, David Wayne Tamihere was convicted of murdering the pair, and sentenced to life imprisonment based largely on the testimony of three prison inmates. Höglin's body was discovered in 1991, revealing evidence which contradicted the police case against Tamihere, who has always maintained he is innocent of the murders and filed a series of unsuccessful appeals during the 1990s. Tamihere was released on parole in November 2010 after serving 20 years. In 2017, Secret Witness C, one of the former prisoners who had testified against Tamihere at his murder trial, was found guilty of perjury. On 26 April 2018, the identity of Witness C was revealed as Robert Conchie Harris. He had originally been convicted of the double murder of a couple in 1983. Disappearance: On 8 April 1989, backpacking tourists Höglin and Paakkonen from Storfors, Sweden went into the bush near Thames. They vanished and were reported missing in May. The disappearance led to an intense police investigation under the name Operation Stockholm and attracted substantial media interest. Police, local residents, search and rescue and military personnel carried out the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, performing grid-searches centred on Crosbie's Clearing, 12 km from Thames. David Tamihere- Background: David Tamihere is the brother of former MP John Tamihere. David Tamihere had a prior conviction for the manslaughter of an Auckland stripper, 23-year-old Mary Barcham, whom he killed in 1972 when he was 18 by hitting her on the head with a rifle. In April 1986 he broke into an Auckland house, where he sexually violated and threatened to kill a 47-year-old woman over six hours. He pleaded guilty, but fled while on bail and was still at large, living rough in the bush on the Coromandel Peninsula when the two tourists disappeared. He was not found until 1989 after which he was jailed for six and a half years for the 1986 offences. In 1992 he was found guilty of assaulting a 62-year-old woman in her home in 1985. Trial: After absconding, David Tamihere lived rough in the bush in the Coromandel area for three years before Hoglin and Paakonen disappeared. He moved around in the area and said, after his arrest on the rape case, that he came across the Swedish couple's white Subaru on 10 April 1989. It was parked at Crosbies Clearing and 'loaded with gear'. He says he broke into the car, planning on driving up to Auckland, but the next day, he gave three visitors to the area a tour of the peninsula. He drove one of the tourists to Auckland the day after that and dumped the car at the Auckland Railway Station. Tamihere was picked up on the 1986 rape charge on 24 May 1989, two days before the story broke that the Swedes were missing. His link to the Swedish couple surfaced when one of the three tourists recognised photographs of the Swedish couple's car and told police in June 1989 that Tamihere had given him a ride in it. Tamihere was already in prison on the rape charge when he was charged with murdering the Swedes. He was tried for their murders in October 1990. At the trial, three witnesses (fellow inmates of Tamihere's, granted name suppression by the court) gave evidence that Tamihere had confessed the murder to them. One of the inmates told the court that Tamihere said he tied Höglin to a tree and sexually abused him before raping Paakkonen. Two trampers also identified Tamihere as a man they saw with a woman believed to be Paakkonen in a remote clearing. In December 1990, the jury found Tamihere guilty of the murder and theft, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 10-year non-parole period. Appeals: Paakkonen's body has never been found. In October 1991, ten months after Tamihere's conviction, pig hunters discovered Hoglin's body near Whangamata 73 km from where police alleged the murders took place. With the body was a watch which police had claimed at his trial Tamihere had given to his son following the murders. Discovery of the body also contradicted the testimony of the fellow prison inmate who said Tamihere had confessed to cutting up the bodies and throwing them into the ocean (and that he had sexually abused the couple). Based on these evidential discrepancies, Tamihere appealed his convictions. The Court of Appeal of New Zealand rejected the case in May 1992 arguing there was "nothing substantive in defence claims that the skeleton revealed new evidence" and that the Crown had provided "convincing circumstantial proof". In 1994 Tamihere was also denied leave to appeal to the Privy Council. Parole: On 3 November 2010, Tamihere was granted parole, to be released on 15 November. At a parole board hearing on 11 November 2011 he was said to have spent several months in hospital due to on-going health issues but was otherwise actively involved in marae activities and carving, being actively supported by his family. His parole conditions were relaxed. Tamihere continues to maintain his innocence, claiming he was framed by police. A 2012 interview with TV One's Sunday current affairs program, in which he advanced this claim, was widely watched with 413,300 viewers. During filming, the film crew flew him by helicopter over areas prohibited to him by his parole conditions and while the parole board chose not to revoke his parole, police charged him in relation to the incident. Royal prerogative of mercy: On 21 April 2020, Tamihere was granted a royal prerogative of mercy by the governor-general, Dame Patsy Reddy, on the advice of the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, which means that the case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal. Secret Witness C: Three prison inmates testified against Tamihere at his trial. One of them, known as Secret Witness C, who has permanent name suppression, claimed that Tamihere confessed to him in prison that he had beaten Urban Höglin over the head with a lump of wood and dumped the couple's bodies at sea. He also claimed Tamihere told him he gave Hoglin's watch to his son. Höglin's remains were eventually found near Whangamata on 10 October 1991 with his skull still intact and the watch still on his wrist. On 25 August 1995, five years after the trial, Witness C swore an affidavit retracting this statement, saying police had fed him the information, and told him: “a sum of money up to $100,000 was available should I decide to give a statement helpful to the Police". The prisoner also claimed the police indicated they would support his early release at his parole hearing if he did what they wanted. The existence of this affidavit only came to light a year later on 17 July 1996, when Witness C spoke to broadcaster Paul Holmes in a prison telephone interview. He publicly admitted to lying at Tamihere's trial and confirmed that the affidavit he had signed in 1995, stating that he had lied and given false evidence, was the truth. He told Holmes that his original testimony against Tamihere had been "playing on his mind" and "they definitely have an innocent man inside". The publicity created immediate concerns about police conduct in the case, leading a Member of Parliament to request a ministerial inquiry. The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) was also asked to investigate the police handling of the case. The IPCA eventually concluded that the police had not been guilty of any wrongdoing, and Minister of Justice Doug Graham rejected a call for further inquiry. Witness C later tried to withdraw his affidavit and claimed that his original trial testimony was the correct version of events. He said he only signed the affidavit because he and his family were under threat of violent reprisal because of his reputation as a jailhouse "nark". Twenty years later, long after Tamihere had been released on parole, jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor brought a private prosecution against Witness C for perjury. In August 2017, Witness C, who still has name suppression, was found guilty on eight charges of perjury. Taylor was represented in court by lawyer Murray Gibson, who said the verdict called into question everything about Mr. Tamihere's conviction. On 25 October 2017, Witness C was sentenced to 8 years 7 months on each of the eight charges of perjury, the sentences to be served concurrently. On 26 April 2018, the identity of Witness C, the prisoner whose false testimony in 1990 helped convict David Tamihere to jail for 20 years, was revealed as Robert Conchie Harris. He had originally been convicted of the double murder of a couple in 1983. Other developments: In November 2009, New Zealand journalist Pat Booth, formerly a journalist of the Auckland Star, alleged that the Crown prosecutor and the police inquiry head in the Tamihere case were both leading figures in the earlier prosecution of Arthur Allan Thomas which had involved the planting of evidence, perjury, and withholding of information and evidence from the defence. In May 2017, Alan Ford, an experienced bushman, found a plastic bag containing three pairs of women's leggings in the rugged bush on the Whangamātā Peninsula about 15 km from where Urban Höglin's remains had been found. Ford took the bag and clothing to the Whangamata police station. Two months later, a police constable emailed him saying that his senior officer had "no interest in the items" and that they wouldn't be testing them. The constable said Ford could pick up the items the next time he came to town. On 7 July, Ford went to the police station but was told the items had been destroyed on 9 June, a month before the constable had indicated by email that the items still existed. Media interest: -The TV3 show Inside New Zealand: What's Your Verdict? re-examined the case with a television jury in 2007. -Filmmaker Bryan Bruce made a documentary Murder, They Said in 1996 examining the case, and wrote the book Hard Cases, which puts forward the theory Tamihere did not act alone, on the basis that as there were no defensive cuts to the bones of his hands, Höglin may have been held from behind while being stabbed from the front. -In 1999, Leanne Pooley made a television documentary Relative Guilt about the impact on Tamihere's extended family of his arrest, trial and conviction. The documentary won Best Documentary at the 2000 Qantas Media Awards.

Disappearance of Kirsa Jensen

Kirsa Jensen was a 14-year-old girl who lived in Napier, New Zealand when she disappeared on 1 September 1983 while riding her horse, Commodore. She never returned home that night and has not been seen since. Her horse was found wandering near the Tutaekuri River but few traces of Jensen were ever discovered, and the case remains unsolved. Police believed that Jensen was abducted and murdered. The case is one of the few unsolved New Zealand murder mysteries and significant within a New Zealand context. Disappearance: At around 3:00pm on 1 September 1983, Kirsa collected her horse for an afternoon ride to a local beach. The last confirmed sighting was of Kirsa, with a bloodied face, and her horse near an old World War Two gun emplacement at the mouth of the Tutaekuri River. She was also seen speaking to a man in a white utility vehicle around the same time. The search: When Kirsa failed to return home by 5:30pm, her family began to search for her, and alerted the police shortly afterwards. Though her horse was located, continued searches by police and volunteers over the following days, including through the local river and other waterways, failed to turn up any signs of the missing girl. On 6 September, a $5000 reward was offered by a Napier newspaper for any information leading to the recovery of Kirsa. Various psychics and mediums sought to assist police but these were later described by the investigating officer as unhelpful. The man in the white utility vehicle: One of the most important pieces of information received was from a passer-by who noticed a girl fitting Kirsa's description by the gun emplacement, being held at arm's length by a European man, who was approximately 1.8 metres tall and 45–50 years in age. The same witness also noted a white utility vehicle with brown sides which was parked close by. Another witness stopped and talked to Kirsa at the gun emplacement, who noticed her bloodied face, which she told him had occurred when she fell from her horse. Kirsa advised the witness that someone had gone to collect her parents and that she expected them to arrive shortly. Another witness advised police that at approximately 4:30pm he had driven past a white utility vehicle coming off the bridge. The driver was described as a brown-haired white male, approximately 20–30 years old. His arm was around the girl passenger's shoulders and he was driving using one hand. Kirsa's horse Commodore was seen by several witnesses after this, tied to the gun emplacement. Case still open: The primary suspect was John Russell, who already had a conviction for rape. He identified himself to police as the man who was seen with Jensen at the gun emplacement. The police investigated his house and truck, but no evidence was found that Kirsa had been there. In 1985, Russell confessed to murdering Jensen but later retracted the confession. No charges were laid. In 1992, Russell committed suicide in a Hastings guest house after going to Lake Alice Hospital psychiatric facility for help with a medical condition. He left no note explaining why he killed himself. The case remains open and in 2009 the officer in charge said that there was probably more evidence to suggest Russell was not involved than that he was. In 1999 a Melbourne, Australia man confessed to police that he had killed Jensen but this also proved unfounded. In 2012 workmen discovered human bones in the area and initially thought they were Jensen's. Examination found that they were too old. Advances in forensic science: Ongoing advances in forensic science have added to the potential for solving the Jensen case according to media reports. They have included pollen sampling and new DNA detection techniques. Stuart Nash MP cited the case as one of his reasons for supporting the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill in the New Zealand Parliament. Legacy- Victim Support: In 2009, Jensen's mother Robyn Jensen was working as a school guidance counsellor and had a private practice. She said she wanted to provide a place where parents of murdered children can connect with others who have suffered such trauma, talk, ask questions, and have therapy and group work. In 2003, Robyn undertook a pioneering study for her master's degree called The grief experiences of parents who have lost a child through violent crime which explored this area of victim support. Memorials: A memorial plaque was erected and a pohutukawa tree planted at the site of Jensen's disappearance by the local community. In 2006 the tree was damaged by vandals. Saint Augustine's Church in Napier, where Jensen's father was minister at the time of her disappearance, has a Chapel dedicated to her. Trust Fund Scholarship: The Trust Fund set up initially to aid the search asked Massey University to administer a portion of the funds for an award for students entering the third, fourth or fifth year of a Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree. The award takes into account need as well as academic attainment. Jensen had intended to study veterinary science. There is also a Cup. The Arts: The legacy of Jensen's disappearance has also found its way into the Arts, with a movie reviewer of 2003 New Zealand film For Good by Stuart MacKenzie stating that the film would bring back people's memories of the case. Jensen was also one of the names on Wilson O'Halloran's 2004 mixed media artwork Fifteen Murders of Fame. Media: In November 2017, a podcast in the Radio New Zealand series The Lost featured the case.

Disappearance of Lynette Dawson

Lynette Joy Dawson was an Australian missing person who disappeared on 9 January 1982, leaving two daughters and her husband, Chris Dawson. Her whereabouts are unknown, but two coronial inquests have found that she had been murdered. In December 2018, Chris Dawson was charged with her murder and, in June 2019, pleaded not guilty. Background: Lynette Simms and Chris Dawson, both aged sixteen, met at a high-school function in 1965. They were married in 1970 at St Jude's Church, Randwick in Sydney and later had two children. A former professional rugby league footballer for the Newtown Jets, Chris Dawson was a physical education teacher at Cromer High School. In 1981, he commenced an extramarital affair with student Joanne Curtis. In October 1981, Curtis temporarily moved into the Dawson family home at Chris Dawson's invitation. Dawson was phoned by her mother on 8 January 1982, the last time they would communicate with each other. She planned to meet her mother and family at Northbridge Baths the following day, but she never arrived. Curtis permanently moved into the Dawson residence on 10 January 1982. Chris Dawson reported his wife missing on 18 February 1982, six weeks after her disappearance. Chris Dawson claimed that she left after marital problems caused over her Bankcard spending. In a statement to police, he suggested that there was a possibility that she joined a religious organisation. Chris Dawson finalised divorce proceedings against Dawson in 1983; and the following year married Curtis. Investigation: Early investigations by New South Wales Police were inconclusive. The NSW State Coroner conducted two coronial inquiries into the disappearance of Dawson. At the first inquest held in February 2001, the Deputy State Coroner Jan Stevenson determined that Dawson had been murdered and that her killer was someone she knew. The coroner recommended charges be laid; however Nicholas Cowdery QC, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, assessed that there was insufficient evidence for a criminal conviction. A second inquest, held in February 2003 by State Coroner Carl Milovanovich, recommended Chris be charged with the murder of Dawson. Cowdery again refused to prosecute Dawson, citing the lack of evidence. In April 2018, following extensive investigations, NSW Police requested the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to review its brief of evidence. Chris Dawson was arrested in Queensland in December 2018, extradited to New South Wales, and charged with the murder of Dawson. He was granted bail; and in June 2019 pleaded not guilty to her murder. In February 2020, he was committed to stand trial for the murder of Dawson. He is also facing a charge of carnal knowledge with a girl between the ages of 10 and 17. This charge relates to his time as a teacher in the 1970s and 1980s. Media: A 16-episode podcast series, The Teacher's Pet, by Walkley Award winning journalist Hedley Thomas, was broadcast in 2018 with large amounts of evidence that was not collected by any of the police investigations. The series had over 28 million downloads before being taken down, and has seen a large media and public interest in the case.

Death of Don Kemp

P. Donald "Don" Kemp (ca. November 16, 1982) was an advertising executive from New York who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in a remote part of Wyoming in 1982. He remained missing until his remains were discovered in 1986, a short distance from where his car was found abandoned four years previously. Background: Kemp was working in advertising on Madison Avenue in New York City when a traffic accident left him with debilitating injuries that took him several years to recover from. He decided to leave the rat race and embark on a fresh start in a mountain cabin in the Jackson Hole valley in Wyoming. Last known movements: Kemp left New York in September 1982 and drove to Wyoming in his Chevrolet Blazer. On November 15, 1982, the day before he disappeared, he visited a museum in Cheyenne, where he stayed for around two hours and did not speak to anyone. Upon leaving the museum, he left behind his briefcase, which contained his diaries, address book, traveler's checks and glasses needed for driving. Vehicle discovered: On the morning of November 16, 1982, Kemp's car was found abandoned with its engine still running, on a ramp off I-80, 40 miles from the nearest town. The car was so full of belongings that there would have been no space for anyone except the driver. A single pair of footprints in the snow led investigators six miles into the wilderness to a barn, where they found a pile of sticks arranged to start a fire, and three of Kemp's socks. There were no footprints leading away from the barn, but Kemp was nowhere to be found. Nearby, investigators found a duffel bag containing laundry soap, clothes and a teapot, all of which belonged to Kemp. Due to the solitary set of footprints, the lack of space for anyone else in the car, and the featureless terrain which should have enabled searchers to easily spot a human being, investigators believed from the outset that Kemp had either disappeared of his own volition and did not want to be found, or was mentally unstable. Deputy Rod Johnson stated: “I felt the guy was disorientated, and I felt that he didn’t want to be found. If he would’ve wanted to be found, he would have heard the aircraft, could have waved his arms, got our attention, gone up to a ridge, anywhere, and been sighted.” Three days after Kemp's disappearance, there was a blizzard and the search was called off. Everyone involved in the search agreed that if Kemp was in the area and not already dead, he would have died in the blizzard. Mysterious phone calls: Several months after Kemp disappeared, Judy Aiello, a close friend of his from New York, returned home from an extended vacation to find six messages on her answering machine featuring a voice that she was certain was Kemp's, although the caller never stated his name. The caller sounded panicked and read out a number, urging Aiello to call him back. She did so the next day: a man answered and Aiello asked if Don was there. The man replied "Yes," then almost immediately said, "No". Aiello asked the man if he could ask Don to call her back; the man replied "Yeah" and hung up. Aiello never received a call back. Aiello informed Kemp's mother, Mary, who in turn informed the authorities. They traced the calls to a rented trailer in Casper, Wyoming, occupied by a man named Mark Dennis. Dennis denied making the calls and of ever having met Don Kemp. He suggested that either someone else used his telephone without his knowledge, or that the telephone company made a mistake about the number used to call Aiello. He agreed to a polygraph test and the authorities described him as cooperative and were satisfied that he was not involved in Kemp's disappearance. Mary Kemp disagreed with the police's opinion on Dennis and traveled to Wyoming to question him herself. Dennis refused to speak to Mary Kemp and hired an attorney, before abruptly moving away from Casper three weeks after he was initially questioned by the police. Remains discovered: Kemp's decomposed remains were discovered in 1986 by hunters a few miles from where his car was found. The autopsy showed no signs of foul play, and the authorities are satisfied that he walked into the wilderness voluntarily and died in or before the blizzard in the immediate aftermath. However, it remains a mystery as to how Kemp's body was not found during the initial search, as his body was located in a clearly visible place that had already been searched. Sightings and other theories: Mary Kemp never accepted the findings and claimed up until her death in 2014 that her son was murdered by Mark Dennis. The telephone calls remain a mystery, as Judy Aiello's number was unlisted. Theories on online forums have surmised that someone found Kemp's address book that he had left at the museum in Cheyenne, and phoned Aiello as a prank, while others have suggested that Kemp may have been abducted upon leaving the museum, explaining why Aiello was convinced that it was Kemp's voice on the voicemail messages. In addition, two separate sightings of Kemp were reported in Casper in the months following the believed time of his death. One sighting was at an Abraham Lincoln exhibition and the other was at a bar. Online enthusiasts have theorised that Kemp may have been targeted in relation to his research on Abraham Lincoln, believing that he discovered something about Lincoln that would have caused shockwaves and was consequently silenced. In the years following Kemp's death, some of his research notes were stolen, and several of the people who came into possession of these notes died in suspicious circumstances. Media coverage: -Kemp's case was covered in the first-ever episode of long-running investigative show Unsolved Mysteries in January 1987. -The case was covered in a June 2016 episode of true-crime podcast The Trail Went Cold.

Disappearance of Russell Bohling

Russell Bohling is an English man who disappeared from West Ella, East Riding of Yorkshire, England on 2 March 2010. Many theories have been put forward regarding his disappearance, with police surmising that he either killed himself or met with an accident, whereas his family maintains that a third party was involved. Despite repeated appeals for witnesses to come forward, Bohling's disappearance remains unsolved. Day of the disappearance: On the morning of 2 March 2010, Bohling left the family home at West Ella to attend Bishop Burton College in Beverley, where he was studying bricklaying. It is not known if he actually attended college that day, but his Renault Clio was found 45 miles (72 km) away at Bempton Cliffs, near to a former Royal Air Force bunker at Bempton on the East Yorkshire coast. Bohling's car was noted by an RSPB worker at 5:00 pm on 2 March 2010 and was still there when the worker returned the next morning. It had a ticket on it that had been paid for a full day's parking having been bought at 11:30 am the morning of 2 March. Discovery and initial investigation: In the initial searches of the area, the former RAF bunker was checked for a living human only, something that Bohling's family would go on to criticize. The Humberside Fire and Rescue Service (HF&RS) undertook their first search using heat-sensitive cameras and torches, which would be ineffective if Bohling was dead at that point. Firefighters went back and, as a training exercise, conducted a more detailed search of the bunker in December 2012. When this search was conducted, Bohling's family was present at the briefing and stayed there for the full three hours that the HF&RS were inside the bunker. This search cost the family £1,200 for the bunker's concrete to be opened up as it had been sealed because of illegal use. Searches were also undertaken on land around the bunker and Bempton Cliffs, which is a known suicide spot. The Coastguard also helped by searching at sea and from the air. Bohling's family later started court proceedings regarding the thoroughness of the search, but the case was thrown out when the Recorder presiding over the case said that it was not up to the courts to determine whether or not an investigation had been 'handled well'. Searches were also carried out at the Bohling family's holiday home at Ravenscar in North Yorkshire. Two years after Bohling's disappearance, his family found his best pair of training shoes at the holiday home, which they are convinced he was wearing on the day he disappeared. Subsequent investigations: Police were eager to determine what Bohling's movements were three days before his disappearance. He had left home and returned without informing anyone of where he had been or what he had done. Investigations later established that he had visited York, Bradford and Bridlington, but no indication of why or what he did there. It emerged that Bohling had logged on to an RAF Bempton website at 7:30am on the morning that he disappeared and had also looked at a webpage about Ravenscar. His father indicated that his son had been interested in the erotic and satanic artwork that had been left on the bunker walls by a cult in the 1970s, well after the bunker had been closed. Bohling had kept the information on the drawings on a USB stick which did not 'match that of his computer and those at his college.' The USB stick was not found during searches. Bohling's family insist that a third party was involved in the disappearance, pointing to the fact that his car had only 3.8 litres (0.84 imp gal; 1.0 US gal) of fuel in it, so it would be impossible to reach the Bempton area without refuelling. The family recreated the journeys he undertook after his car was refuelled on 1 March 2010, determining that the car ran out of fuel at Brandesburton, which is 20 miles (32 km) short of Bempton. Bohling's debit card had not been used and he had very little cash on him, which the family claims is indicative of someone else being with Bohling when he drove to Bempton. The family also maintain that a £300,000 payment that his father was set to give him, so that he could start up a business, may also be behind his disappearance. Bohling has a speech and language disorder where, when people ask him if he is all right, he would reply 'yes' even if he wasn't. His family say that this makes him vulnerable. The police also think Bohling killed himself because of a tape they had found that he had recorded intimating suicide. The family were at pains to point out that this was a three-year-old tape that Bohling had recorded when he was 15 and anxious about his exams. Subsequent events: -Bohling's disappearance was featured as an appeal on the BBC programme Crimewatch in the summer of 2010. -When the possessions that Bohling had taken with him on the day he disappeared were checked by his family, it was discovered that his brown, steel-capped boots were missing. Human feet were found on the banks of the Humber Estuary in August and September 2010. The second find was a human foot encased in a brown, steel-capped boot. After extensive investigation it was found that the feet were not connected to Bohling's disappearance. -Bohling's father was subsequently convicted of possessing child pornography when police searched the computer he had given to them in the unsuccessful hope it might reveal clues to his son's whereabouts.

Disappearance of Julie Weflen

Julie Ann Weflen is a missing woman who was last seen on September 16, 1987. Disappearance: Weflen worked as an operator for the Bonneville Power Administration in Spokane, Washington. She parked her minivan in the gravel lot along Four Mound Road and logged into the Spring Hill Substation near Riverside State Park at 2 p.m. on the day she disappeared. BPA workers have stated that she probably finished work and returned to the minivan about 3:45 p.m. Weflen was last seen heading toward a substation at Four Mound and Coulee Hite Road. Her hard hat, toolbox, a water bottle, and a pair of sunglasses were located on the ground beside her truck and the driver's side door and back hatch were found open. Her purse was discovered in the rig where she had worked. Investigation and aftermath: A reward of $25,000 has been issued for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in Julie Weflen's disappearance. Since she disappeared, the BPA and local law enforcement officials have received plenty of information, but nothing has ever helped in finding her. Weflen's mother died in 2006.

Disappearance of Ludovic Janvier

Ludovic Janvier is a six-year-old French boy who went missing on 17 March 1983 from Saint-Martin-d'Hères, a suburb of Grenoble, in the Isère département of south-eastern France. His disappearance has been linked to that of several other children in the area, collectively known as the Disparus de l'Isère (literally, the "Disappeared of the Isère"). Ludovic's whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Disappearance: Six-year-old Ludovic Janvier disappeared from Saint-Martin-d'Hères on Thursday 17 March 1983. He was last seen in Place de la République, on the way home with his two brothers, Jérôme (8) and Nicolas (2½). They had gone to buy cigarettes for their father sometime between 6:30 and 7:45 pm. Investigation: Several witnesses testified that a man wearing a construction-style hard hat, blue work overalls and black heavy-duty zip-up shoes approached the boys and said to them: "I've lost my wolf-dog. If you help me find him, I'll buy you sweets." The man allegedly asked them to separate in two different directions. Jérôme and Nicolas went one way, and the unknown man left in the other direction with Ludovic in hand. Jérôme and Nicolas returned home and told their father what had happened. Their father then informed the police. Later that year, the clerk of a court judge in Grenoble received a phone call informing her that the child had been adopted by a new family. The anonymous correspondent claimed to have read this in the newspaper L'Union de Reims. On 23 May 1985, police found the body of a child in the nearby Vercors Cave System. The body was never identified. Aftermath: -Around 2010, Virginie – Ludovic's sister – received a phone call from a nurse at a hospital near Reims, a French city 600 km (370 miles) to the north. The nurse claimed to have seen someone resembling Jérôme, Ludovic's older brother. She recognised the now adult Jérôme after seeing him in a news report about Ludovic's disappearance. -In 2011, the Grenoble authorities announced that they were reopening Ludovic Janvier's case, as well as that of another girl in the "Disparus de l'Isère" investigation. Their disappearances were reclassified as "illegal confinement". In 2013, Ludovic's mother appealed to the authorities in an attempt to find out whether the body of the unidentified child found in 1985 was that of her son. -In 2014, the Grenoble authorities announced that they were closing Ludovic Janvier's case. The family's lawyers, Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann, hope to appeal this decision on the basis of witness statements which they believe have not been followed up. -In 2015, the Court of Appeal reopened the case and ordered new investigations.

Disappearance of Mirella Gregori

Mirella Gregori mysteriously disappeared from Rome in May 1983, about 40 days before the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a citizen of Vatican City. Both vanishings are unsolved as of today. International events: Both the Gregori and the Orlandi cases led to the Grey Wolves, an extremist Turkish group, claiming to be involved in the abductions and demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. According to Mehmet Ali Ağca's autobiography, the two girls' disappearances as well as the disappearance of Soviet journalist Oleg G. Bitov from the Venice Film Festival on September 9 that same year are closely linked. Circumstances of disappearance: Gregori left her house telling her mother she "had a date" with a former schoolmate. She has not been seen since. Suspects: During a visit of the Pope to a Rome parish, on December 15, 1985, Gregori's mother recognized a man in the papal escort as the person who often came to pick up her daughter at the house. The man was identified as Raoul Bonarelli. Roman remains: Remains found in Rome in October 2018 were thought to possibly be those of Mirella or of Emanuela Orlandi. Early reports said the remains could be those of a woman, but results of tests released on 1 February 2019 showed they were of an ancient Roman man who died between 190 and 230 AD.

Wheaton Bandit

The Wheaton Bandit is an unidentified bank robber suspected to be responsible for as many as 16 armed robberies around Wheaton, Illinois from 2002 to 2006. He appeared to be 25 to 35 years old at the time of the robberies, always wore a hood or ski mask, and wore different clothing in each robbery. Instead of placing his finger on the gun trigger, he often kept his trigger finger along the side of the gun, a safety position that suggests law enforcement or military training. Outlines of his jackets suggest that he also wore a bulletproof vest. There were at least two possible sightings of the Wheaton Bandit without a face covering. In late December 2004, an unidentified man entered the MidAmerica Bank in Glen Ellyn without conducting a transaction, but was recorded by the bank's security cameras. Two weeks later, in January 2005, the Wheaton Bandit robbed the bank, and the December visitor fit the known physical description of the robber. On November 29, 2006, a witness spotted a suspicious man in the parking lot of the Fifth Third Bank one hour before it was robbed. This witness helped the police draw a composite sketch of the suspicious person. After the sketch of the parking lot man was released to the public on December 11, 2006, the crime spree abruptly ended and there were no further reports of the Wheaton Bandit. Despite a $50,000 reward being offered for information about the robber, the five-year statute of limitations on the bank robbery charges ran out on December 7, 2011.

Shotgun Man

Shotgun Man was an assassin and spree killer in Chicago, Illinois in the 1910s, to whom murders by Black Hand extortionists were attributed. Most notably, Shotgun Man killed 15 Italian immigrants from January 1, 1910 to March 26, 1911 at "Death Corner," the intersection of Oak Street and Milton Avenue (now Cleveland Avenue) in what was then Chicago's Little Sicily. In March 1911, he reportedly murdered four people within 72 hours. Although witnessed by dozens of bystanders, the Chicago police were never able to identify the murderer. However, he was said to be well known throughout the Italian community and, with the political influence of the Black Hand, residents may have been hesitant to turn in the assassin. Although the fate of Shotgun Man is unknown, he seems to have disappeared from Little Italy shortly before Prohibition, as extortion operations of the Black Hand all but faded away by the end of the decade.

Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi

Emanuela Orlandi was a citizen of Vatican City who mysteriously disappeared on 22 June 1983. Sightings of Orlandi in various places have been reported over the years, even inside Vatican City, but all have been unreliable. Disappearance: Emanuela was the fourth of five children of Ercole and Maria Orlandi (née Pezzano). Her father was an employee of the Vatican Bank according to some reports, or an employee of the papal household according to others. In any event, the family lived inside Vatican City and the children had the free run of the Vatican gardens, according to Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela's older brother. Orlandi was in her second year at a liceo scientifico (high school) in Rome. Although the school year had concluded, she continued to take flute lessons three times per week at the Tommaso Ludovico Da Victoria School, connected with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. She was also part of the choir of the church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri in the Vatican. Orlandi usually travelled by bus to the music school. She would get off the bus after a few stops and then walk 180 to 210 metres (590 to 690 feet). On Wednesday 22 June 1983, Orlandi was late to class. She had asked Pietro to ride on the bus to the class, but he had other commitments. "I’ve gone over it so many times, telling myself if only I had accompanied her maybe it wouldn’t have happened," he recalled decades later. Later that day, Emanuela called home, speaking to one of her sisters. Since then, there has been no trace of the teenager, and Italian investigators have been unable to reach a conclusion about what happened to her. She had explained her tardiness in a telephone conversation with her sister, stating that she said she had received a job offer from a representative of Avon Cosmetics. Her sister suggested she talk it over with their parents before making any decisions. According to some reports, Orlandi allegedly met with the Avon rep shortly before her music lesson. At the end of the lesson, Orlandi spoke of the job offer with a girlfriend, who then left the girl at a bus stop in the company of another girl. Orlandi was allegedly last seen getting into a large, dark-coloured BMW. Chronology: At 15:00 on Thursday 23 June, Orlandi's parents called the director of the music school to ask if any of their daughter's classmates had information. The police had suggested waiting because "perhaps the girl was with friends". She was officially declared a missing person that day. Over the next two days, announcements of the disappearance were published with the telephone number of the Orlandi house in the newspapers Il Tempo, Paese Sera and Il Messaggero. At 18:00 on Saturday 25 June, a phone call was received from a youth who claimed to be a 16-year-old boy named "Pierluigi". He reported that he and his fiancée had met the missing girl in Piazza Navona that afternoon. The young man mentioned Orlandi's flute, her hair, and the glasses that the girl did not like to wear, along with other details that fit the missing girl. According to "Pierluigi", Orlandi had just had a haircut and had introduced herself as "Barbarella". He claimed she stated that she had just run away from home and was selling Avon products. On 28 June, a man calling himself "Mario" called the family and claimed to own a bar near Ponte Vittorio, between the Vatican and the music school. The man said that a girl called "Barbara", a new customer, had confided to him about being a fugitive from home but said that she would return home for her sister's wedding. On 30 June, Rome was plastered with 3,000 posters displaying Orlandi's photograph. On Sunday 3 July, Pope John Paul II, during the Angelus, appealed to those responsible for Orlandi's disappearance, making the hypothesis of kidnapping official for the first time. Two days later, the Orlandi family received the first of a number of anonymous phone calls. Emanuela was supposedly the prisoner of a terrorist group demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish man who shot the Pope in May 1981. No other information was given. In the following days, other calls were received, including one from a man identified as "The American", due to his apparent accent, who played a recording of Orlandi's voice over the phone. A few hours later, in another phone call to the Vatican, the same man suggested an exchange, of Orlandi for Ağca. The anonymous interlocutor mentioned the "Mario" and "Pierluigi" of the earlier telephone calls, defining them as "members of the organisation". On 6 July, a man with a young voice and an American accent informed the ANSA news agency of the demand for an Orlandi-Ağca exchange, asking for the Pope's participation within 20 days and indicating that a basket in the public square near the Parliament would contain proof that Orlandi was indeed in his hands. These were to have been photocopies of her music school ID, a receipt, and a note handwritten by the kidnapped girl. However, the magistrate who was overseeing Orlandi's case did not believe that there was a credible connection between Orlandi's abduction and the Pope's assailant. On 8 July, a man with an alleged Middle Eastern accent phoned one of Orlandi's classmates saying Orlandi was in his hands and that they had 20 days to make the exchange with Ağca. The man also asked for a direct telephone line with then-Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli. The line was installed on 18 July. A total of 16 telephone calls were made by "The American" from different public telephone booths. On the morning of 14 May 2001, the parish priest of the Gregory VII Church near the Vatican discovered a human skull of small dimensions and lacking a jaw in a bag with an image of Padre Pio in a confessional. It has not been officially identified as Orlandi's skull. Emanuela's father, Ercole, died in 2004, a month after giving his last interview. Theories: Over the years a number of theories regarding the motives for the crime have been broached in the Italian press. Orlandi-Ağca connection theory: Ağca, who once declared that Orlandi had been kidnapped by Bulgarian agents of the Grey Wolves, a Turkish ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist youth organization of which Ağca was a member, spoke about Orlandi during a prison interview with Italy's RAI state television, telling the interviewer that the girl was alive, not in danger, and living in a cloistered convent. He denied any direct knowledge of the girl's fate, though, saying that he had made "some logical deductions". With no evidence to support these claims, the case was closed in July 1997. In mid-2000, Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, based on what he had learned about the Grey Wolves, declared that Orlandi, by then an adult, was living a perfectly integrated life in the Muslim community and that she had probably lived for a long time in Paris. He remains the only supporter of this idea and of the Orlandi-Ağca connection. In a letter published in 2006, Ağca claimed that Emanuela Orlandi and another girl, Mirella Gregori, both of whom vanished in 1983, were abducted as part of a plan to secure his release from prison. He claimed that the girls were whisked away to a royal palace in Liechtenstein. Ağca was temporarily released from an Istanbul prison after serving 25 years in Italy and Turkey for the murder of Abdi İpekçi, a prominent Turkish journalist. However, he was quickly imprisoned again, the release seemingly a "mistake". Ağca was permanently released from a Turkish prison in January 2010. On 9 November 2010, Ağca was interviewed by state television in Turkey-TRT's Kozmik Oda Program for the first time since his release the preceding January. In that interview, as well as declaring that the Vatican organized the assassination attempt, he claimed that Orlandi was kept as a prisoner by the Vatican (for Ağca) and was then living in a Central European country as a nun in a Catholic monastery. He added that Orlandi's family could see their daughter whenever they liked, but that she was not allowed to leave the monastery. Organised crime theory: In 2011, the former Banda della Magliana member Antonio Mancini implied that Orlandi's kidnapping was one of a number of strikes that the gang was making against the Vatican in order to force the restitution of large amounts of money they had lent to the Vatican Bank through Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano. On 14 May 2012, Italian police opened the tomb of gangster Enrico De Pedis (1954-1990) and took DNA samples, according to some reports at that time. An anonymous call to an Italian television programme in 2005 said it contained evidence that would help the police explain Orlandi's disappearance, and in 2008 a former girlfriend of De Pedis said that De Pedis had once confessed to her that he had kidnapped Orlandi. No clues were found in the tomb linking De Pedis to Emanuela. Vatican sex scandal theory: In May 2012, when interest in the case was renewed, leading police to search the De Pedis tomb, 85-year-old exorcist Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016) claimed that Orlandi was kidnapped by a member of the Vatican police for sex parties and then murdered. Amorth claimed that officials of an unnamed foreign embassy were involved as well. Other public activity: On 6 April 2007, in a Good Friday sermon in St. Peter's Basilica, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa advised the congregation to make amends for sins before dying. He said: "Don't carry your secret to the grave with you!" This provoked speculation that he was suggesting someone at the Vatican held information about Orlandi's disappearance. Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi issued a statement that detailed Vatican cooperation with civil investigators over the years and said the Church had no objection to the opening of the De Pedis tomb, which was then being discussed. It said: ""As far as we know, there is nothing hidden, nor are there 'secrets' in the Vatican to reveal on the subject. To continue to assert it is completely unjustified; also, we reiterate, yet again, all the material from the Vatican was handed over, in its time, to the investigating magistrates and to police authorities." In October 2018, remains found during renovation work on the Holy See's Embassy to Italy in Rome were the subject of speculation related to the Orlandi affair. An attorney for the Orlandi family objected to the media attention. She said: "We have no idea why the association with Emanuela was made.... We’re still asking ourselves why you’d find some bones and immediately assume they were Emanuela’s." Test results released on 1 February 2019 showed they were the remains of a Roman man who died between 190 and 230 AD. On 10 July 2019, It was announced that the Vatican would be opening two tombs inside Vatican City which would then be examined by forensic anthropologist Giovanni Arcudi. The tombs were the "Tomb of the Angel" meant to contain the remains of Princess Sophie of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Bartenstein and the adjacent one which was meant to contain the remains of Duchess Charlotte Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The exhumations took place on 11 July 2019. Neither Emanuela's body nor the bodies of the two princesses said to be buried there were found. The Vatican is currently conducting an investigation into the whereabouts of the princesses' remains. According to a report on 13 July 2019, the Vatican announced that two sets of bones had been found near the tombs of the two princesses, raising speculation that one might be the remains of Orlandi. The bones were discovered as staff probed other locations to which the princesses’ remains may have been moved within the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College. Further inspection of the site revealed two ossuaries placed beneath the floor of an area inside the college, closed by a trap door. Reports by numerous news media outlets stated on 20 July 2019 that the tombs had actually found to be empty. According to the BBC for example. that first July 2019 search "only deepened the mystery as even the bones of two princesses thought to be there were missing." The same finding was reported by other news outlets too, including The Guardian. Thousands of human bones belonging to dozens of bodies were, however, found on 20 July, in the underground ossuaries at the Teutonic College. Forensic investigators were to analyse the remains and were expected to use carbon-14 methods to obtain a rough estimate of their age.

Playboy Channel religious message

A broadcast of softcore pornography on the Playboy Channel was disrupted with a text-only religious message on September 6, 1987. The message read, "Thus sayeth the Lord thy God: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Repent, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (from the Bible verses Exodus 20:8 and Matthew 4:17). Thomas Haynie, an employee of the Christian Broadcasting Network, was convicted of satellite piracy in connection with the incident. Haynie, who pleaded his innocence, was the first person convicted under a new federal law which had made satellite hacking a felony following the Captain Midnight and Max Headroom incidents. According to investigators, it was the religious content of the transmission and the type of equipment used that drew them to CBN. The jamming signal left behind subtle technical clues that were captured on a VHS recording made at the Playboy Channel's uplink at the time of the event – like finding "fingerprints" in the video. After investigators were confident that they identified the brand of transmitter and character generator from the video, they concluded that CBN was the culprit. Haynie, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, was on duty at his job as an uplink engineer at the time of the jamming. CBN maintained that the FCC's case was entirely circumstantial since there were no witnesses and the signal could not be traced to a point of origin. During the investigation, experts on both sides attempted to recreate the incident with CBN's equipment. According to CBN spokesman Dino McCann they were unsuccessful. Furthermore, CBN asserted that there was not enough power for Haynie to jam Playboy's signal but during the trial, government witnesses said the CBN station was capable of interfering with satellite transmissions. After initially being deadlocked, the jury eventually sided with the prosecution and convicted Haynie on two of six counts. (Haynie was acquitted of similar charges of interfering with the American Exxxtasy channel; a recording of the event was of such poor quality that it was unusable.) Haynie received three years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 150 hours of community service.

Southern Television broadcast interruption

The Southern Television broadcast interruption was the first major television broadcast interruption. It occurred at 17:10 on 26 November 1977 through the Hannington transmitter of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Description: On Saturday, 26 November 1977, Southern TV's Andrew Gardner was presenting the early-evening news. At 17:10 the TV picture wobbled slightly, followed by a deep buzz. The audio was replaced by a distorted voice delivering a message for almost six minutes. The hoaxer claimed to be Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command. Reports of the incident vary, some calling the speaker "Vrillon" or "Gillon", and others "Asteron". The interruption ceased shortly after the statement had been delivered, transmissions returning to normal shortly before the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Later in the evening, Southern Television apologised for what it described as "a breakthrough in sound" for some viewers. ITN also reported on the incident in its own late-evening Saturday bulletin. Transcript: Speaking on British commercial radio on 6 December 1977, Sir John Whitmore also questioned newspaper reporting of the incident, referring to a recording of the complete broadcast which appeared to exist at the time. A complete transcript of the message reads: This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments. Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all. You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides at present operating on your world. They will suck your energy from you – the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return. Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies. You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We here at the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos. The Winter 1977 issue of Fortean Times (issue #24) magazine featured a transcript of what they described as the 'short message' that was broadcast: This is the voice of Asteron. I am an authorised representative of the Intergalactic Mission, and I have a message for the planet Earth. We are beginning to enter the period of Aquarius and there are many corrections which have to be made by Earth people. All your weapons of evil must be destroyed. You have only a short time to learn to live together in peace. You must live in peace... or leave the galaxy. Explanation: At that time, the Hannington UHF television transmitter was unusual in being one of the few main transmitters which rebroadcast an off-air signal received from another transmitter (the Independent Broadcasting Authority's Rowridge transmitter on the Isle of Wight), rather than being fed directly by a landline. As a consequence it was open to this kind of signal intrusion, as even a relatively low-powered transmission very close to the rebroadcast receiver could overwhelm its reception of the intended signal, resulting in the unauthorised transmission being amplified and rebroadcast across a far wider area. The IBA stated to carry out a hoax would take "a considerable amount of technical know-how" and a spokesman for Southern Television confirmed "A hoaxer jammed our transmitter in the wilds of North Hampshire by taking another transmitter very close to it." The hoaxer has not been identified. Public and media response: The incident caused some local alarm and attracted publicity. In the next day's Sunday newspapers, the IBA announced the broadcast was a hoax. The IBA confirmed it was the first time such a hoax transmission had been made. Hundreds of worried viewers flooded Southern Television with calls on Saturday night after the voice interrupted the routine news programme for more than six minutes. Reports of the event carried worldwide with numerous American newspapers picking up the story from the UPI press agency. The broadcast became a footnote in ufology as some chose to accept the supposed "alien" broadcast at face value, questioning the explanation of a transmitter hijack. Within two days of the incident's report in The Times, a letter to the editor published on 30 November 1977 asked, "How can the IBA – or anyone else – be sure that the broadcast was a hoax?" The editorial board of one American regional newspaper—the Eugene Register-Guard—commented, "Nobody seemed to consider that 'Asteron' may have been for real." By as late as 1985, the story had entered urban folklore, with suggestions there had never been any explanation of the broadcast. A 1999 episode of children's television series It's a Mystery featured the event, produced by one of Southern's successors, Meridian Television. The feature reenacted the incident with faux news reports and viewers watching the incident play out at home. Usage in popular culture: Author Nelson Algren included a variation of the message in his book The Devil's Stocking (1983), a fictionalised account of the trial of Rubin Carter, a real-life prize-fighter who had been found guilty of double murder. In the book, as a period of unrest within the prison begins, the character 'Kenyatta' gives a speech closely mirroring the Fortean Times transcript of the Southern Television interruption: "I am an authorized representative of the Intergalactic Mission," Kenyatta finally disclosed his credentials. "I have a message for the Planet Earth. We are beginning to enter the period of Aquarius. Many corrections have to be made by Earth people. All your weapons of evil must be destroyed. You have only a short time to learn to live together in peace. You must live in peace" – here he paused to gain everybody's attention – "you must live in peace or leave the galaxy!" On his 2020 album, Common Sense Dancing, musician Duncan Parsons included a track A Breakthrough In Sound which describes the Broadcast Interruption from the fictionalised point of view of a person witnessing the event, watching television as it was happening. The underlying soundscape makes heavy use of Mellotron sounds.

Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion

On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall (using the pseudonym "Captain Midnight") jammed the Home Box Office (HBO) satellite signal on Galaxy 1 during a showing of the film The Falcon and the Snowman. He broadcast a message lasting four and a half minutes, seen by the eastern half of the United States (accounting for more than half of HBO's 14.6 million subscribers at the time) protesting HBO's rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive. MacDougall was working at his second job as an operations engineer at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station in Ocala, Florida and fought with a technician at HBO's communications center in Hauppauge, Long Island for control of the transmission. The technician attempted to increase uplink power but gave up because of the risk of damaging the satellite. MacDougall eventually abandoned his control of the satellite. Although the intrusion was a minor annoyance to viewers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the jamming. After the FCC identified the transmitters and stations equipped with the specific character generator evidently used during the broadcast signal intrusion, MacDougall surrendered to the authorities, after which he was served with a court subpoena due to a tourist having overheard him discussing the incident on a pay phone off Interstate 75. Under an agreement with the prosecutor, he plea bargained and was sanctioned with a $5,000 fine, one-year unsupervised probation, and a one-year suspension of his amateur radio license. The jamming received much attention in American society, with one executive dubbing the intrusion an act of "video terrorism". As a consequence of the incident, the U.S. Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. § 1367), making satellite hijacking a felony. The Automatic Transmitter Identification System was also developed in response to this incident. Background- Scrambling of satellite transmissions: Beginning in the late 1920s, when the first experimental transmissions began, broadcast television was delivered for free over local frequencies. When the industry began charging viewers for access to its services via cable around this period in time, free broadcasts continued. Starting in the 1970s, a small community of satellite television enthusiasts (mostly engineers) shared the technology and knowledge of how to construct satellite dishes, as well as how to access pay television from the airwaves for free. This was not illegal at the time, and restaurant and hotel chains made use of this technology to distribute programming to guests and patrons without charge. In the mid-1980s, controversy erupted in the cable programming world as American media companies that owned pay television channels began scrambling their programming and charging fees to home satellite dish owners who accessed the same satellite signals that cable operators received. Many satellite dish owners faced the prospect of having to purchase descrambling equipment at a cost of hundreds of dollars, as well as having to pay monthly or annual subscription fees to cable programming providers. Fees for home dish owners were often higher than fees paid by cable subscribers, despite dish owners being responsible for acquiring and servicing their own equipment. When Home Box Office (HBO) began scrambling its signal on a 24-hour basis on January 15, 1986, it offered subscriptions to home dish owners for $12.95 per month ($28.92 in 2017 dollars), which was either equal to or slightly higher than what cable subscribers paid. HBO also advised viewers that purchasing a descrambler for $395 ($882.21 in 2017 dollars) would (along with the monthly fee) allow them to continue watching HBO. Several satellite dish dealers across the United States closed their stores as a result of a reduction in dish sales, caused by the rise in signal scrambling. Satellite dish owners began protests over keeping free access to broadcasts. One such protest was by members of the Satellite Television Industry Association, who converged on Washington, D.C., in March 1986 to urge the United States Congress to protect access to satellite transmissions. John R. MacDougall: John R. MacDougall was born in Elmhurst, Illinois; a western suburb of Chicago. He is the youngest of five children of building contractor Robert MacDougall and his wife Thelma, a homemaker. Shortly after his father's retirement in 1970, the family moved to Florida. He spent his childhood years tinkering with cars and CB radios. MacDougall was brought up in Fort Lauderdale, where he was educated at American Heritage School. After two years of studying in a management engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MacDougall abandoned his studies and found employment installing satellite dishes in Ocala. In 1983, he opened the satellite dealership MacDougall Electronics in Ocala. The company initially turned a healthy profit, but following the scrambling of HBO's signal on January 15, 1986, its turnover declined. Consequently, he reduced his expenses where possible and in the same month was offered a part-time job at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station (which uplinked services to satellites) as an operations engineer to help him pay his bills. As he was not receiving any customers, MacDougall pulled all company advertising and saved money by switching off his air conditioning. He became increasingly reclusive during this period, watching television and reading magazines. MacDougall later said of the experience: "I have been watching the great American dream slip from my grasp." He wrote protest letters to legislators, and spent a large amount of money to raise awareness about wanting to keep the market free from excessive charging of its services. At 12:49 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on April 20, one week before the jamming, MacDougall transmitted a color bar test pattern that was superimposed on HBO's signal. This lasted for a brief period, and HBO did not investigate the incident, as it had occurred during the overnight hours, and as a result, very few people had been watching at the time. Jamming: On April 26, 1986, MacDougall worked at his shop as normal, and closed at 4:00 p.m. EST. After eating dinner, he reported to Central Florida Teleport with one other engineer on duty. The second engineer left at 6:00 p.m., leaving MacDougall to operate the building on his own. MacDougall oversaw the uplink of the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure as part of the evening's programming for the pay-per-view network People's Choice, which used Central Florida Teleport's facilities. After the film ended, he went through his regular routine. Before logging off, MacDougall set up SMPTE color bars and used a Quanta Corporation Microgen MG-100 character generator that placed letters on the television screen. He spent a couple of minutes composing his message. MacDougall began his message with a polite greeting as he did not wish to be insulting. He selected the name "Captain Midnight" from a film he had recently seen: On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (no association with the popular Captain Midnight radio show of the 1940s). Described by The A.V. Club as "a Reagan-era Robin Hood", MacDougall swung the 30-foot (9.1 m) transmission dish back into its storage position, which aimed it at the location of Galaxy 1, the satellite that carried HBO. Locating the satellite coordinates was not of great difficulty for MacDougall as frequencies were widely published in manuals and enthusiast magazines. As a protest against the introduction of high fees and scrambling equipment, he transmitted a signal onto the satellite that for four and a half minutes overrode HBO's telecast of the 1985 film The Falcon and the Snowman, which had begun two minutes earlier. The five-line text message printed in white capital letters that appeared on the screens of HBO subscribers across the eastern half of the United States (accounting for more than half of HBO's 14.6 million subscribers at the time), starting at 12:32 a.m. EST (05:32 UTC) on April 27, appeared as follows: GOODEVENING HBO FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT $12.95/MONTH ? NO WAY ! [SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!] Hughes Communications immediately noticed the jamming, and threatened to shut down HBO's satellite signal or alter the satellite's course, with executives believing the hacker was a domestic terrorist. HBO's technician, working at the company's communication center in Hauppauge, Long Island, telephoned Hughes Communications, but officials there could not offer an explanation to the jamming, and so he attempted to regain control by increasing the uplink transmission power from 125 watts to 2,000 watts. This was unsuccessful, as MacDougall increased his power in a control battle that lasted about 90 seconds, during which it was feared that a further power increase would damage the satellite. MacDougall became scared, abandoned his control of the satellite, and went home. The following day, he felt guilty about his actions, but hoped the jamming would not be noticed by anyone not working for HBO. MacDougall was later surprised to see his actions being reported on network television. Thus, when he returned to work that night he pretended to have no knowledge about the intrusion, and asked questions about what had happened. MacDougall only told close friends, and had visions of federal agents visiting his home. Investigation: Galaxy 1 carried HBO on transponder 23 at a rate of 125 watts, with relay signals sent out at 6,385 MHz. Mother Jones magazine determined that MacDougall could have potentially taken over the signals of three additional satellites. He could have taken control of the network feed of CBS had he positioned his satellite dish at the Telstar 301 satellite, operated by AT&T, tuned at 6,065 MHz. He also could have taken over the foreign language feed of the Voice of America network by aiming his satellite dish at 72 degrees west longitude. The final theorized hijacking would have been aiming his satellite dish at 100 degrees west longitude, above the Galápagos Islands, with a frequency setting of 293.375 MHz, thereby jamming the signal of United States Navy satellite Fleetsatcom 1. The magazine also posited that an amateur hobbyist could hijack the satellites that alerted American military forces to Soviet actions, creating confusion for world leaders and placing the world at risk of nuclear destruction. Although the intrusion caused minor annoyance to viewers, HBO contacted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and announced that the hijacker would face prosecution. The commission's chief, Richard Smith, assembled staff in his office for an emergency meeting at the FCC headquarters eight hours after the intrusion to discuss how the culprit should be caught. On April 28 the chairman of HBO, Michael J. Fuchs, wrote to the FCC saying the company had received calls threatening to place Galaxy 1 into a different orbit, but the company was unable to determine whether these were credible threats or not. Fuchs's letter additionally urged the commission to use all of its resources to capture the culprit. In the days after the jamming, more than 200 people called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to "confess" that they were Captain Midnight. The Department of Justice made indications of its desire to get involved, and the FBI was called in to assist the investigation. One hundred FCC field offices and monitoring stations across the United States were actively involved in the investigation, with no fewer than six FCC employees working on the case. Oliver Long, the head engineer of the FCC's Texas field office bureau, oversaw the investigation, and the commission assigned agent George Dillon to the case. The case first led investigators from the FCC to focus on the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, after an anonymous tip accused an amateur radio operator residing in Lewisville, Texas, of being the culprit. Later, the FCC determined which teleport uplink sites out of the 2,000 licensed transmitters in the United States had the capability to override the HBO signal. That narrowed it down to 580 uplink sites that had sufficiently large antennas that had the capability of broadcasting the signal. The manufacturer that produced the character generator graphics model used to generate the typeface on the television screen was also identified after studying footage of the jamming. Investigators from the commission obtained copies from an FCC engineer and HBO viewers, as tape machines were not running during the jamming. The FCC removed stations from the list of 500 that were inoperative on April 27 or transmitting other material. This method brought the number of potential stations down to twelve. After FCC investigators visited these stations, there were now three prime suspects which included MacDougall. The commission later learned an accountant from Wisconsin had overheard MacDougall bragging about the jamming at a payphone in a rest area off Interstate 75 in Gainesville, and obtained a license plate number of a car owned by MacDougall. Arrest and prosecution: Prior to the jamming, the FCC warned that anyone interfering with television signals would be harshly dealt with and MacDougall was charged after surrendering to the authorities following media and industry pressure. Investigators from the commission spoke to MacDougall in July (he lost his job at Central Florida Teleport beforehand due to the closure of People's Choice), asking him questions that led him to believe that the commission was aware of the incident. Two FCC agents visited MacDougall's house two weeks later along with U.S. Attorney Lawrence Gentile III, who served MacDougall with a subpoena to appear in Jacksonville's U.S. District Court. In their meeting, MacDougall claimed not to have committed any crime. According to MacDougall, Gentile tried to make an agreement that if MacDougall discussed the incident, Gentile would be willing to recommend a small fine and probation to the judge. At that time, MacDougall stated that he started to feel that there was not enough evidence to convict him, and despite continuing to protest his innocence, MacDougall told Gentile he would attend court. MacDougall contacted attorney John Green Jr., who advised him the chances of him winning the case were 70 percent, and that a trial would be risky and costly. He faced being fined up to $100,000 and being sentenced to one year in prison if he was convicted. Furthermore, MacDougall was worried about going before the jury and lying to get himself acquitted. He thus changed his mind and agreed to cooperate fully with the FCC. At his first hearing on the afternoon of July 22, he pleaded guilty to the charge of "illegally operating a satellite uplink transmitter", a violation of 47 U.S.C. § 301. Under an agreement with Gentile, MacDougall plea bargained and received a $5,000 fine, was put on unsupervised probation for one year, and had his amateur radio license suspended for one year. Later, he was arraigned and freed on a $5,000 bond. MacDougall's plea bargain was confirmed at his sentencing by Judge Howard T. Snyder on August 26. Lawyers for Hughes Communications subsequently reviewed the option of taking MacDougall to civil court, but chose not to take any further action. He was approached for interviews by the major news stations in the United States after his arraignment, but Gentile advised him to not appear on television until his sentencing. MacDougall held a news conference in which he stated he did not contest the rights of cable companies to scramble their programs, but asked the government to allow the marketplace and not corporations to set prices. He revealed he was aware of a year-old magazine that spoke about the type of signal interference he caused, but affirmed the article was not influential on his actions. Reaction: MacDougall's jamming of HBO's satellite signal generated much publicity, and attracted attention from several sectors of society. The jamming was described by various press publications as either the first instance of high-technology terrorism, or the most widely watched instance of electronic graffiti in the world. The House Communications Subcommittee planned to hold meetings concerning the issue of satellite jamming. Members of Congress showed interest, with those coming from states with extensive rural areas showing more sympathy to owners of satellite dishes. The hijacking raised concerns over satellite-borne communications: that data transmitted by business and military users would become potential targets. MacDougall's action led to him being immediately regarded as coming close to being a folk hero amongst disgruntled satellite dish owners who felt unfairly treated. The Satellite Television Industry Association released a statement denouncing intentional interference, and a spokesperson for the organization called for the offender to be imprisoned. Showtime vice president Stephen Schultz dubbed the intrusion as an act of "video terrorism". A correspondent for Television/Radio Age wrote the jamming was similar to the plot of the film Network. in which a disenchanted news anchor broadcast his frustrations with the negative aspects of commercial television. Aftermath: As a consequence of MacDougall's jamming, and ambiguity about the federal misdemeanor charge made against him under 47 U.S.C. § 301, the United States Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. § 1367) which made satellite hijacking a felony. The FCC subsequently implemented strict requirements that all radio and television transmitters must have an electronic name tag for tracking purposes. The Automatic Transmitter Identification System (ATIS) was developed in response to the Captain Midnight jamming incident. It allows satellite operators to quickly identify unauthorized uplink transmissions. In 2009, HBO and Elmer Musser were awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for ATIS. Although HBO has not been targeted since the channel's signal power was increased to make it more difficult for hijackers to intrude, there have been multiple instances of uplink video piracy across the United States. One such incident happened in November 1987, when WGN-TV in Chicago had its transmission briefly interrupted by a man in a Max Headroom mask, and that same evening, the signal of PBS affiliate WTTW was overridden for one-and-a-half minutes, where the same person mooned the viewing audience and had his buttocks struck with a fly swatter. The jamming did not appear to affect HBO's pricing policies in the long-term. Richard Acello, the editor of the home satellite dish magazine Satellite TV Week, stated MacDougall had not been able to achieve folk hero status as had been widely reported in the press: "He didn't have any No. 1 records written about him or anything like that, and that's always an indication. The whole event was misunderstood. People took Captain Midnight to be a symbol of frustration people were feeling about scrambling. It made him seem a representative of dish owners, but he was not. There was no way a dish owner could do what he did." The jamming was romanticized by the cartoon strip Bloom County. A group called the Captain Midnight Grassroots Cause was formed, and sold merchandise to help raise money for MacDougall to pay his legal fees. MacDougall found the constant media attention difficult to deal with, and was regularly bothered at home. MacDougall shut his office because no work could be undertaken without him being asked about Captain Midnight. As of 2011, he still resides in Ocala and undertakes consulting work under the MacDougall Electronics name. In a retrospective interview with Network World in 2011, MacDougall said he did not regret his actions but wished his motivations were more clearly understood: I do not regret trying to get the message out to corporate America about unfair pricing and restrictive trade practices. That was the impetus for doing what I did; that's the reason I jammed HBO; that's the reason I sent them a polite message. What I do regret is that I was young and fairly naïve in the ways of the media. I didn't grasp the fact that no one understood my motives and that everyone would make assumptions. Had I known that up front I would have been much more fervent in explaining my motivations. I had no animus and I had no malice in my heart.

Disappearance of Sandy Davidson

Sandy Jardine Davidson is a Scottish boy who disappeared on 23 April 1976, when he was three years old, while he was playing in the back garden of his house in the Bourtreehill housing estate in Irvine, Ayrshire. Background: On 23 April 1976, Sandy Davidson was in his garden with his little sister Donna playing with their dog. They were being looked after by their grandparents, who had gone inside the house at the time. The gate flew open and their dog ran out. Sandy ran out trying to catch him. His sister Donna says that all she can remember was Sandy motioning for her to go too but she refused and went into the house to tell their grandparents. Work ground to a halt on the new building estate nearby to search for Sandy but nobody has seen him since. The most believed scenario is that there was a man delivering leaflets around the time of Sandy's disappearance and that he could have opened the gate and taken Sandy. Sandy's mother Margaret and father Phillip believe that it was a lonely man wanting a son. Another theory is that he ran down to the river five minutes away and followed the dog in, and subsequently drowned. Subsequent events: -The case was featured in an episode of the television series Missing Children: Lorraine Kelly Investigates in 2009 but nobody phoned in with information. -A DNA test was carried out in November 2013 on someone who was born around the same time as Sandy and who lived 20 miles away, but he turned out not to be the missing toddler. -In September 2014, the Broomlands Primary School, which was constructed around the time of Sandy's disappearance, was demolished. The police and council refused to excavate the land to search for Sandy. -In February 2015, a surprise new witness emerged who had made contact via the social networking website Facebook, claiming to have been abducted and tortured by a teenage girl at around the same time that Sandy disappeared.

Disappearance of Trudie Adams

Trudie Jeanette Adams disappeared in the early hours of 25 June 1978 after attending a dance at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club, New South Wales, Australia. She left the event early before hitchhiking home, at which point she entered a vehicle on Barrenjoey Road, and has not been seen since. Her disappearance is significant in that it sparked New South Wales' biggest missing person search at the time, sparked extensive and ongoing national media attention, and eventually a $250,000 reward. Disappearance and investigation: Adams' ex-boyfriend, Steven Norris, and parents reported her missing on 25 June 1978 after she failed to arrive home from the dance. Although police initially believed that the car she entered was a green Kombi van, Norris, as the main eyewitness, stated that he saw her enter a light-coloured 1977 Holden panel van. Police who investigated the case originally cast suspicion on Norris. Eventually he was cleared, and suspicion widened to those involved in the drug scene. In the days after the attacks, a number of female rape victims, who had been assaulted by two disguised men, began to report a series of then-unknown crimes to police. Investigators then suspected that Adams' disappearance was linked to the 14 now-known violent rapes that had occurred in the Northern Beaches between 1971 and 1978, and may also be related to an attempted attack on a hitchhiker earlier that same evening. On 16 August 1978, a reward of $20,000 was offered by the New South Wales Government, and over the years, her suspected murder has been investigated by police four times. Developments: -In 1992, the case was reopened based on a refocused interest in the possible involvement of the green Kombi van. -In 2008, the reward was raised to $250,000 for information which would lead to the conviction of her murderer(s). -In 2009, the case's prime suspect, a convicted drug dealer and sex offender known as Neville Brian Tween, who was identified by some of the rape victims, was finally interviewed by police regarding the disappearance. Tween, who had also been a police informant, however, denied any involvement in the Adams and rape cases (despite circumstantial evidence), and died in 2013. -In 2011, an inquest was held in order to further investigate the disappearance of Adams, which resulted in the Coroner declaring that Adams died of "homicide or misadventure." -In 2018, interest in the case was reignited by the airing of the second series of the ABC podcast series Unravel and TV documentary Barrenjoey Road. A number of non-reported crimes and previously unknown victims have also come forward due to the airing of the podcast.

Max Headroom signal hijacking

On November 22, 1987, in an act of video piracy, the television broadcasts of two stations in Chicago, Illinois were hijacked by a video of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, accompanied by distorted audio. The first incident took place for 25 seconds during the sports segment of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. news broadcast; the second occurred around two hours later, for about 90 seconds during PBS affiliate WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who. The hacker made references to Max Headroom's endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and "all the greatest world newspaper nerds", a reference to WGN's call letters, which stand for "World's Greatest Newspaper". A corrugated panel swiveled back and forth mimicking Max Headroom's geometric background effect. The video ended with a pair of exposed buttocks being spanked with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. The culprits were never caught or identified. Signal intrusion- WGN-TV: The first of two broadcast signal intrusions took place during the sports segment of a live broadcast of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News. For 15 seconds, the screen went black, then displayed a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses, accompanied by a buzzing sound and swaying in front of a rotating corrugated metal panel that mimicked Max Headroom's geometric background effect. The hijack lasted 28 seconds, and was stopped after engineers at WGN switched the broadcast frequency of their link to the transmitter atop the John Hancock Center. Following the incident, sports anchor Dan Roan commented, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I", and joked that the computer running the news "took off and went wild"; he then repeated his report of the day's Chicago Bears game. WTTW: Later that night, during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock on local PBS station WTTW, the signal was again interrupted by video of the Max Headroom impersonator, this time with distorted audio. The masked figure made a reference to WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky, whom he called a "frickin' liberal", held up a can of Pepsi while saying "Catch the wave" (a slogan from an ad campaign for Coca-Cola featuring the character Max Headroom), and held up a middle finger (inside what appeared to be a hollowed-out dildo). After singing the phrase "your love is fading", humming the theme song to the 1959 TV series Clutch Cargo, and saying "I still see the X" (a reference to the last episode of that show), he said he had "made a giant masterpiece for all the Greatest World Newspaper nerds" (WGN's call letters stand for "World's Greatest Newspaper"). He then partially exposed his buttocks, saying "they're coming to get me", while a female figure spanked him with a flyswatter. After a few moments of static, viewers were returned to the Doctor Who broadcast. The signal takeover lasted 90 seconds. WTTW, which maintained its transmitter atop the Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker due to the fact that there were no engineers on duty at the Sears Tower at the time of the hijacking. According to station spokesman Anders Yocom, technicians monitoring the transmission from WTTW headquarters "attempted to take corrective measures, but couldn't". "By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over," he told the Chicago Tribune. WTTW received numerous phone calls from viewers who wondered what had occurred for the duration of the intrusion. WTTW was able to find copies of the hijacker's telecast with the help of Doctor Who fans who had been taping the show. Legal issues: An investigating FCC engineer quoted at the time said the perpetrators of the intrusion faced a maximum $100,000 fine, up to a year in prison, or both. Cultural impact: Not long after the incident, WMAQ-TV humorously inserted clips of the hijacking into a newscast during Mark Giangreco's sports highlights. "A lot of people thought it was real – the pirate cutting into our broadcast. We got all kinds of calls about it," said Giangreco. According to Motherboard, the incident became an influential "cyberpunk hacking trope". Thirty years later, the identity of the hijackers is still unknown.

Disappearance of Philip Cairns

Philip Cairns disappeared on the afternoon of 23 October 1986 while walking back to school in south Dublin, Ireland. The 13-year-old schoolboy left his home in Ballyroan to return to school, but has not been seen since. A large-scale investigation was carried out but no trace of the boy has ever been found. His disappearance is now treated as a high-profile child murder case, the only similar incident in Ireland being the murder of Robert Holohan in January 2005. It is one of the most high-profile disappearances in recent Irish history. Philip's family have issued numerous appeals for information. A reconstruction took place in 2007 and was later televised on RTÉ One, while a reward of €10,000 has also been offered. The book, When Heaven Waits, published in 2007, featured an interview with Philip's mother. Nobody has ever been arrested. The case remains open. Disappearance: Philip Cairns disappeared while returning to school in Rathfarnham. He had departed Coláiste Éanna secondary school at 12:45 to go home for lunch. He left his home at 13:30 to return to Coláiste Éanna. There have been no confirmed sightings of the boy since. His family believe he was abducted by someone who knew him personally. Speculation at his school the day after his disappearance had Philip being kidnapped by a "bad man" who had offered him sweets then lured him into a van. "The very sad fact is that life went on after we lost Philip. I can remember we all went out and helped with the search, it was the neighbourly thing to do. But after a while you had to just get on with things. Young people, I think, are more resilient about things like that, they are able to forget more easily and put things behind them." - Brendan Vaughn, former principal of Philip's school, Coláiste Éanna in Rathfarnham. Investigation: Several hundred Garda Síochána officers and divers took part in a large-scale search of forests, lakes, mountains and rivers. Psychics and clairvoyants were called in to assist. Posters were distributed by milk companies. Cairns' classmates were interviewed by Gardaí at the school during their mid-term holiday break the following week. Six days after his disappearance, Philip's school bag was located by two girls in an alley close to his house. The lane had already been searched, and the bag was not there at that time. The school bag was thought to hold vital clues, but nothing is known of how it came to be in the lane. It is thought the bag had been left there a short time previously. It was examined forensically but no clues were located. Philip's implements, including pens, pencils, copybook, maths textbook, school journal and his pencil case were within. Some of Philip's books were missing, including a geography book and two religion books. A forensic examination produced no clues as to Philip's whereabouts. Gardaí have sealed the bag and it is now locked in a safe. Over 400 sightings were reported in the aftermath of the boy's disappearance. In one, Philip was reportedly seen in Manchester in the United Kingdom after his disappearance. Each sighting was seriously investigated, but none led to Philip. Philip's parents appeared regularly on the news and clutched what has now become a well-recognised picture of a smiling Philip in his Confirmation clothes of a blue jacket and a red rosette. This photo has been deemed a precursor to that of British infant Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal 21 years later. However, the family, unlike the McCanns, have been relatively private about their loss, speaking to the media on only a few occasions in the past 25 years. It has been reported that this is due to several inaccurate reports of the incident of which they have disapproved. Gardaí have, however, praised the media as a proven method for encouraging people to come forward with further information on the case each time an appeal is broadcast. Residents' organisation ACRA also launched an intense campaign to attempt to find Philip. Several theories have been reported by the media, most of which have been discounted by investigators. These have ranged from death by accident to Philip having been taken by extremists such as paedophiles and Satanists. One theory had a woman tell gardaí that her partner, an alleged paedophile, had killed Philip after abducting him. This was later declared a false allegation. Detectives based at Rathfarnham Garda Station have been reinvestigating the disappearance of Philip Cairns for several years. Several searches of land have been carried out in the years since the disappearance, often without the media being informed. In October 2006, the Cairns family issued an appeal for information on the twentieth anniversary of the disappearance. They said they had not given up all hope of finding him alive. A special Mass was also held to mark the occasion. A further appeal for information was launched following the twenty-first anniversary of Philip's disappearance in 2007, when it emerged that over 50 people had approached investigators individually and had provided new lines of inquiry. That month saw a reconstruction of Philip's typical school route being broadcast on RTÉ One's Crimecall television series and the Irish Crimestoppers Trust offering a €10,000 reward for information. Within one day, over 80 people had been in contact with Gardaí or Crimestoppers in what was described as a "tremendous response". In May 2009, a stretch of private, wooded south Dublin land near a golf club on the M50 motorway was searched by investigators. On 6 May, the area was sealed off and vegetation was cleared. Specialist equipment and finger tip examination techniques were used in an attempt to detect evidence of soil movement. A second search was carried out around 50 metres away later that month. An elderly woman from Dublin told Gardaí that Cairns was murdered and later buried at both sites. She said that a man she was in a relationship with some time before had confessed to killing Philip. Despite the involvement of geophysicists, the searches both proved to be a failure. The man is now a pensioner who lives in Rathfarnham but cannot be charged due to lack of evidence. “I hoped every day for months. I left the light on in the hall downstairs and in the bed at night. I used to listen to see if he would come in the door. You would be hoping the phone would ring and that would be him." - Alice Cairns, speaking in the book When Heaven Waits. 2016 investigation: In May 2016 a woman contacted Gardaí to tell them that she suspected former DJ and convicted paedophile Eamonn Cooke of having killed Philip Cairns. Gardaí questioned Cooke and he was reported to have confirmed some details, but not to have revealed the location of Philip's body. He died in June 2016. In August 2016 it was announced that DNA samples taken from Philips' schoolbag did not match Cooke, but he had not been ruled out as a suspect. Gardaí also sought to identify two people who may have left Philips' schoolbag in the laneway. Family Philip's mother is Alice Cairns and his father was Philip Cairns, Snr. Alice is a grandmother now and lights a candle each evening in memory of her missing son. Philip has four sisters, Mary, Sandra, Helen and Suzanne. Sandra and Suzanne are active in organisations promoting missing children. He has one younger brother, Eoin, who was 11 years of age when Philip disappeared. Eoin has spoken of his memories of Philip which include childhood games of soccer, fishing and hurling. His father, Phil, died on 6 July 2014 at Tallaght Hospital. Impact: The disappearance of Philip Cairns affected the entire country. The case was particularly unusual because it happened in the early afternoon and prompted parents to fear for the safety of their children, even in broad daylight.

Disappearance of Lee Boxell

Lee Darren Boxell is a British schoolboy who disappeared from the London Borough of Sutton in England on 10 September 1988, aged 15. He was last seen in Sutton High Street before saying he might go to watch a football match at Selhurst Park in Croydon. At the time of his disappearance, Lee was described as 5.5 ft (1.7 m), of slim build with light brown hair; he was wearing black jeans, a white Flintstones T-shirt and brown suede shoes. Despite a lengthy police investigation and numerous appeals, there have been no further sightings of Lee since the day of his disappearance. His parents, Peter and Christine, have kept his bedroom exactly how it was the day he went missing. Disappearance: On the morning of Saturday 10 September 1988, Lee Boxell left his home in Cheam, South London, to meet a friend at 11am in nearby Sutton. Lee and his friend spent a couple of hours window shopping, and parted company at 1pm. When he was leaving, Lee said he might go to Selhurst Park football stadium to watch a match between Charlton Athletic F.C. and Millwall F.C.. Despite extensive appeals on both Crimewatch and at Selhurst Park and other football stadiums, no one has come forward with any confirmed sightings of Lee at any of the football grounds in the area. However, a witness did come forward to say that they had spotted Lee outside Tesco on Sutton High Street (now an Asda) at 2:20pm. This meant it was unlikely that Lee would have made it to any of the football grounds in the area in time for a 3pm kick off. Lee has not been seen since. Subsequent events: In 2012, a further witness stated that Lee attended an unofficial youth club in the annexe of St Dunstan's Church in Cheam, known as "The Shed", which was previously unknown to the police. Following extensive inquires the police found out that paedophiles were operating in the area at the time Lee disappeared.[6] William Lambert, the St Dunstan's Church graveyard digger who ran The Shed, was jailed for 11 years in 2011, when he was aged 75, after sexually abusing four girls who attended the club. Between June and September 2012 the police excavated part of the St Dunstan's Church graveyard, which resumed in April 2013. In 2013, to coincide with what would have been Lee's 40th birthday Crimewatch featured another appeal for information, working on the new theory that Lee attended The Shed on the day he disappeared. Following this appeal, there was an allegation of sexual abuse never before reported, and police are now working on the theory that "Lee may have died after intervening to try to stop sexual abuse at a youth club in Cheam". In 2018, a Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed that cold case detectives had interviewed a potential witness and new information was being investigated that could lead to Lee's remains being found. In 2019, Lee featured in a missing person campaign promoted by Italian football club, AS Roma.