History, Mystery & Crime

At 10:45 PM at the San Francisco Park Police Station, a bomb packed with inch long industrial staples exploded on a window ledge. Officer Brian McDonnell was standing nearby at the Teletype machine. McDonnell was hit by staples which cut his jugular vein and lodged in his head. Somehow he wasn’t killed instantly and died two days later. Another officer, …

On the evening of November 26, 2010, in the quiet town of Brembate di Sopra in Lombardy, Italy, 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio disappeared without a trace. Yara, a bright and spirited teenager, was last seen leaving the local sports center after attending a gymnastics class. When she failed to return home, her family grew increasingly worried and contacted the authorities. Yara’s …

2012: Eighteen-year-old rapper Joseph “Lil JoJo” Coleman was shot and killed as he was riding his bicycle around Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, taken down by the very street forces he so often rapped about. In the days and months that followed the rapper’s untimely death, Chicago police began speculating that JoJo was killed by members of 300, a faction of the …

MV Joyita was a 69 foot long wood ship built in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for film director Roland West, who named the ship for his wife, movie actress Jewel Carmen “joyita” being a spanish phrase for “little jewel”. In 1936 the ship was sold and registered to Milton E. Beacon. …

Authorities in Barrington Hills, Illinois have identified a man who was found decapitated, with his severed legs found near his body, alongside Old Dundee Road in 1979. The man, who was identified this past week as Joseph A. Caliva, was 27 years old at the time of the murder, authorities said this past week. In 2023, police reopened the cold …