Body Farms:

In 1981 a forensic anthropologist named Dr. William M Bass started the first “Body farm”; a facility to study human decomposition, behind the university of Tennessee medical center. 

The facility consists of a razor wired perimeter, which contains a two acre wooded area with bodies placed in different areas. The decomposition of the cadavers are recorded in great detail. These records aid investigations and help to further understand what happens to the body during different stages of death. The bodies are either donated via individuals who register before death, or donated by the families of individuals. This provides the facility with around 100 bodies per year, with 1300 people currently registered as donors.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/431287/We-need-human-body-farms-says-real-life-Dr-Bones-and-forensic-expert-Anna-Williams
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/body-farm-sci

The Doodler:

“The black doodler” as he was named by the media, or simply, “The doodler”, was a serial killer active between 1974 – 1975 in the state of California.

He was described a black male, aged between 19 and 22, with a tall, slim build and stood around 6 foot tall.

The Doodler would meet his victims in the restaurants, bars and gay clubs that he would frequent, where he would strike up a conversation with patrons as he drew sketches and portraits of them.

He would then leave the establishment with them to engage in sex with the victims, before stabbing them to death and leaving their corpses next to bays and harbors.

The doodler was awarded the responsibility of taking the lives of fourteen men, and left three survivors scarred for lie. The survivors did not want to give evidence, because it would mean coming out publicly in an era where homosexuality was far from accepted. In fact, it was barely tolerated and had only been declassified as a mental disorder in 1973, a year previously.

The Doodler was never caught.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doodler
http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-untold-story-of-the-doodler-murders
http://truecrimediva.com/who-was-the-doodler/

The enslaved hitchhiker:

It was the 19^th of May, 1977.

Twenty year old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking to a friend’s surprise birthday party...
UPDATED POST HERE [X]

Terri Hoffman and the Conscious Development of Body, Mind and Soul Inc. cult

Self-made spiritual guru, Terri Hoffman, attracted all kinds of people, from all kinds of different backgrounds, with her own brand of new age spirituality. 

She ran a free meditation class out of Southern Methodist University, where she gained followers and taught subjects familiar to most spiritual classes, such as astral travel, reincarnation, the theory of karma and meditation.

During meditation sessions it was said that she would have the participants surround her to form what she referred to as a psychic shield, to protect her from the “black lords” that she said were constantly trying to attack her.

Some of the members who had attended multiple classes were said to have been psychologically effected over time by constant apprehension of war with the dark lords.

Despite the classes being free, students were allegedly encouraged to hand over any items of jewelry that harbored “negative energy”. Allegedly, her followers shelled over thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry whilst alive, and the dollars kept on rolling in even after they were dead.

Terri Hoffman (Now Terri Lilya Keanely) was accused of driving the members of her Dallas Texas based “Conscious Development” cult to suicide following the untimely deaths and sudden suicides of at least ten members and even associates, all of which had left recently changed wills citing her as the exclusive benefactor of their money, property and assets. 

 A few alleged examples are:

One of Hoffman’s previous husbands, Glenn Cooley, wrote a will handing over the entirety of his real estate to her before OD-ing in 1977. 

She lost another husband, Don Hoffman, to suicide in the 80’s. He killed himself as he was convinced he had inoperable brain cancer. The autopsy showed no sign of the disease and from where the false diagnosis came is unknown.

A couple, Mr. and Mrs. Goodman were introduced to each other by Hoffman, and even married by her. Investigation found that She collected somewhere in the sum of $110,000 from them over the last few years before their deaths.  

"You are no longer David Goodman, son of Alice & Leonard. That person is gone

Because the programming is wiped out. You are Jupiter now" She told them.

The couple committed suicide; they ejected themselves from their seemingly perfect and successful lives with a bullet each to the head.

It was said that they lived in fear of the black lords and had been doing everything within their power to ward them off- including rejecting their friends, family and children, from the fear of negative energy transferal. 

Mrs. Goodman left behind an unfinished note, screwed up into a ball in a nearby trash can; it was addressed to her son and detailed the terror and pain she was going through in this war against the black lords. She told him that she was severely depressed and would kill herself if only she could find the courage to do so.

The discarded letter wasn’t the only record of their ordeal that the couple had left in their wake. There were journals that told of God, and how everything they did was dictated by him, right down to the guns pressed at their temples. 

The also wrote about Terri Hoffman, how she was enlightened by God and how she could help them transcend. They paid her cash and assets and in return would be propelled towards infinity, souls awakened, to the “purple ream” with its glittering pools and temples.

In ’87 another associate by the name of Robin Lynn Huntoon Otstott left assets, jewelry, money and land to Hoffman before shooting herself.

A young girl Deveraux Cleaver who was a follower of the cult, along with her mother, drowned. She left Hoffman her $125,000 trust fund. 

Following her daughter’s death, Sandra Cleaver singed over the ownership of her home over to Hoffman, she also took out a life insurance policy and died later after driving her car off a cliff.

The list goes on.

The allegations, however, drained Terri Hoffman of her profits and she was convicted on bankruptcy fraud. 

Many believe that Hoffman hypnotized or brainwashed members of her cult to commit suicide. Others propose that she deliberately chose and attracted emotionally unstable individuals who would be easy to manipulate. 

The suicides and untimely deaths could be put down to plain coincidence had it not been for the profiteering on Hoffman’s part. One of the old motives for murder is money, and this case has homicide and dollar signs written all over it.

If this is not the case, Terri Hoffman is a very unlucky individual to have been a part of the lives of so many people taken from life all too soon.

 Links to articles, go HERE <<

Article from D Magazine"The Rise and Fall of a North Dallas Cult"  HERE<<

The Jason Massey Murders:

Texas born Jason Massey was troubled from the start.

Born of a drug addicted mother and an alcoholic father who regularly abused him, a young Massey soon took shape into a juvenile delinquent.

Jason displayed troubling behaviors early in life, and as with the famous serial killers whom he idolized, he started to regularly torture animals.

People who knew him from in and around the small town of Ellis county said that he enjoyed beheading dogs.

 “He would find one, cut off its head and store it in a red cooler” said an acquaintance.

Jason acquired a criminal record, unsurprising for animal abuse and stalking offences. 

He was also awarded a trip to the psychiatrist, when his mother stumbled upon note books filled with fantasies and desires to rape and murder. Massey referred to these books as “The death slayer books”.

A self-proclaimed Satanist and Charles Manson fan, Jason Massey stated that he aimed to be the most prolific and infamous serial killer America would ever see.

He killed two teenagers in 1993.

He shot, stabbed and mutilated them, amputating a young girls head and hands post mortem.

The missing body parts have never been found.

Massey was linked to the crimes by forensics, anonymous tip offs and on account of his colorful history of torture and abuse.

He found God on death row and met the lethal injection in 2001.

What is the Voynich Manuscript?

The Voynich manuscript, named so after the Polish book dealer, Wilfred Voynich, who acquired it in 1912, has baffled the world for centuries.

The hand illustrated book is a one of kind codex, constructed of calf skin and carbon-dated back to 15^th Century Italy. It has a total 240 pages, although it is incomplete, as some of the pages appear to be missing. This could be due to rebinding, as the covers of the Voynich are not original.

It is filled it illustrations of plants and herbs, astronomy, biology diagrams and recipes and pullouts, however nobody knows exactly what any of it means, as the text is written in an unknown script. 

There is said to be some phrases or lines written in Latin, however they text seems to be unrelated to the images.  Some of the translated Latin is said to be derived from medieval languages of France or Italy, and a German note found next to one of the illustrations is unknown to be original in origin or that or a note later added.  

There is no punctuation present in themanuscript, although the script flows naturally, which is not characteristic of encoded lettering. There does seem to be some kind of structure of language in the text, though, for example some characters are present twice in some words, as with vowels in English. Common words do seem to repeat, and none of the bulk text is repeated in throughout the otherwise large book. There are no words consisting of more than ten or less than 2 letters.

Despite being studied by both American and British code breakers and professional and amateur cryptographers alike, none have succeeded in figuring out what the book is actually about.

Frustratingly for cryptographers, there are repeats of words that seem to be repeats of previously written words that do change only one letter, which worrying portray the writings as potential gibberish.

Since the script is undecipherable, the drawings are relied on to split the Voynich into chapters:

Herbal, Astronomical, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical and Recipes.

Strangely none of the plants or Herbs in the Herbal chapter cannot be identified. In the Pharmaceutical section the plants seem to be hybrids of different species; the roots of one, and heads and flowers of others connected together.

There are many theories out there of what the Voynich manuscript could be.

What’s your theory?

Orang Medan, the ghost ship:

It was around 1947.

Two American ships were making their way through the Strait of Malacca between west Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra when they received a coded distress call from the “Orang Medan”; a Dutch merchant ship.

“"S.O.S. from Orang Medan.

We float.

All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge.

Probably whole of crew dead”

There was a brief silence before the last message came through, stating simply:

“I die.”

One of the two American ships, “The silver star” managed to locate and board the ship, where they found the entire population of the ship dead, laying on their backs with curled fingers, mouths and eyes wide and gaping.

A fire broke out on the ship, causing them to evacuate and watch as the ship exploded and then sank.

No record of a ship named the “Orang Medan” was ever found.

Danny Casolaro and the Octopus conspiracy:

It was august 10th, 1991.
In Martinsburg, West Virginia, a member of the wait staff at the Sherrington hotel opened up room 571 for cleaning.
In the bath tub, in a pool of bloody water, they found the body of American freelance writer Danny Casolaro. His wrists had been slashed multiple times and his blood was sprayed on the walls and floor. The scene was so gory that the housekeeper passed out upon seeing it.
Under his body there was the razor blade, two white plastic bags and a beer can. Since there was a wine bottle nearby and no sign of a struggle reported, the police ruled it officially as a suicide. Supporting their conclusion was the presence of a suicide note, written on a legal pad on the desk that read:

"To those who I love the most: Please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down inside that God will let me in."

Casolaro was in Martinsburg to meet a source related to the story he had been working on which he referred to as “The octopus”.

The Octopus, according to Casolaro, was an international secret political clique, which he had uncovered during an investigation on the Islaw case in the 80’s. Islaw.inc was a Washington D.C based software manufacturer who developed a highly sophisticated people tracking program called “Promis” (prosecutor’s management information system) which they had developed for the United States department of justice. The PROMIS program was a people tracking program that was able to combine countless databases no matter what operating programs they were hosted on or what language they were in. When used in the court system, PROMIS could track everyone involved in cases, from judges to defendants to defense lawyers.

The Islaw case became a scandal. They sued the department of justice for refusing to pay for advanced versions of their program, and accused them of pirating and selling on Trojan copies of the tracking program to other countries in order to spy on them. The withheld payments eventually forced Islaw Inc. into bankruptcy, and feeling that they were the victim of a conspiracy, the company filed for a civil suit.

Accused of forcing Islaw Inc. into liquidation and stealing their program to sell to foreign nations as part of their own covert intelligence operations, despite Islaw complying within the terms of their contact, the department of justice lost the case to the tune of 6.8 million dollars, which would be awarded to Islaw Inc.

Casolaro Had been investigating the possible links between Isaw, The Iran-contra, the BCCI closure and the October surprise, and before his death, had been receiving death threats at his home.
His housekeep confirmed that he regularly received these calls from people telling him that he was going to die. Casolaro told his brother that he if was hurt, or died in an accident, that it was not suicide, it was murder.

His family was not informed that Danny had been found dead until two days after.
His body had been embalmed without their knowledge and his research papers were never found.
Casolaro, the son of a physician, was said to have been extremely squeamish around blood. So much so that he was unable to go through with a scheduled blood test earlier that month. The family said the nature of his suicide was completely out of character, and that if Casolaro ever was to take his own life, that this would be last way they would ever imagine him to do so.

At the funeral, an African American military man showed up in a limousine with another unknown man. He saluted Casolaro’s coffin, placed a medal on top of it and left.
Danny Casolaro had never served in the military, and nobody, neither his family nor friends could identify the mysterious military man.

So what really happened to American Freelance journalist Danny Casolaro?
Did he spill out his life by his own hand or did he simply get too tangled in the tentacles of the Octopus?

What happened to Sneha Anne Philip?

Sneha Anne Philip was an Indian American physician, assumed to have died during the world trade tower terrorist attack in New York on September 11^th, 2001.

The last images of her alive were caught on CCTV in lower Manhattan, outside of a department store on September 10^th 2001.  When investigated by her husband, Ron Lieberman, it was revealed that she had spent a sum of $500 and purchased some lingerie, a dress, stockings, bed linen and three pairs of shoes, before dropping off some clothes at a local dry cleaners.  The footage and the credit card charges are the last known records of Sneha.

That night she failed to return to the apartment she shared with her husband.

He assumed that she had stayed out all night as she sometimes did, and went to sleep.

Sneha was said to have frequented lesbian bars in the area, and according to an investigation, was possibly living a double life. According to Ken Gallent, a former FBI agent, Philip was going through a bad patch. He was said to have discovered information detailing a possible affair with another woman, a history of drug and alcohol abuse, a termination of Philips medical internship, and a pending court case. This lead Gallent to the conclusion that Philip had simply walked away from her life, despite leaving her passport, glasses and credit cards at the apartment.

Sneha’s family disputed the claims, and petitioned for Sneha to be legally declared as a 9/11 victim. They stated that due to her medical background and her living in lower Manhattan, that she most likely died trying to help the victims of the attack. They pointed out that the lack of remains were not evidence enough to rule out their theory, seeing as many of the victims officially ruled as dead in the terrorist attack were never recovered.

There was footage from the lobby of their apartment of a woman standing near the elevator with a similar hair style and clothing as Philip, on September 11^th at 8:45am. However the footage was too sun bleached to confirm 100%. On the tape, the woman presses the button to call the lift, hesitates and leaves a few minutes before the first plane crashed into the tower.

Philips brother lied to the media, saying he had spoken to her during the attacks, and she had said that she was going to help the victims inside. Philip didn’t actually have a cell phone. He later admitted that he had lied to spin a hero story that the media would be interested in, in an attempt to gain more coverage for the story and find his sister.

Sneha’s husband pasted missing flyers everywhere he could, but nobody came forward with information.

Sneha was officially listed as the 2,751^st  9/11 victim. Some still speculate that she has been missing since the 10^th, and propose the idea that she had succumbed to another fate of kidnapping or murder.

She hasn’t been seen since the 10^th of September 2001 and her remains have never been found.

 For those who remember this "Post secret" post card, you can't help but think it's not totally impossible that Sneha could have simply walked away - somebody did.