Unsolved Mysteries

Join me. Perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery. —Robert Stack's intro for the first few seasons.

The 1988-1993 logo.

This TV show ran from 1987-2002 and was hosted for most of its run (which Channel Hopped from NBC to CBS and then Lifetime, and was also seen in Canada on CTV affilliates) by Robert Stack. It was revived in 2008 on Spike TV and was hosted by Dennis Farina. Netflix also rebooted the series in 2019, and as of very late 2024, there have been five short seasons.

As the show's name implies, this series delves into a variety of mysteries, showing dramatic re-enactments of each. They can range from true crime stories to typical missing persons cases and stories of lost loved ones to the paranormal: ghost stories, UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster, and all that good stuff.

Although it's presented like a piece of fiction, most every mystery is real. In fact, roughly 400 of this show's mysteries have been solved. It is believed to have originally directly competed with America's Most Wanted. Both versions of the show have a telephone hotline set up that you can call if you have any information, while the current version only has a website. And some of the mysteries presented back then are still being solved to this day.

It has been streamed for free on Pluto TV and YouTube thanks to FilmRise, although the episodes have been edited to some degree, including some segments being cut completely.

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From the files of TV Tropes.org

• Abusive Parents: Taken up to eleven in the case of Sharon Stevens, whose father regularly beat her savagely with a belt buckle - which, ironically, she had given him as a Christmas gift. She found a kinder environment with her foster parents, with whom she was reunited thanks to the show.
• Against My Religion: Investigators regarding the 1986 murder of New York yeshiva student Chaim Weiss were frustratedly unable to get his classmates to name anyone who might have had a motive to kill him, since Orthodox Judaism forbids anyone to voice such suspicion without concrete proof. Nearly 40 years later, the murder is sadly still unsolved.
  • Shannon Mohr's husband Dave Davis aroused suspicion after her death when he wanted to have her cremated. Her parents, who were devout Catholics, refused, and he reluctantly relented - a move that later sent him to prison for life when exhumation of her remains proved her death was murder, not an accident.
• Amnesiac Liar: Investigators suspect Arthur Paul Beal, first known to Unsolved Mysteries viewers as "Tyler," was one, since after his true identity was discovered, it was also learned he had an arrest warrant outstanding for stealing a shipment of food. A woman claiming to be Beal's ex-wife and the mother of his children claimed that this was in fact the case, and that he had been a deadbeat dad to boot.
• Animal Cruelty is Just Wrong: A Missouri woman ran a kennel for abandoned and unwanted dogs, which burned down in a fire determined to be deliberately set, killing all but one of the dogs. The perpetrator was never caught and the kennel's owner passed away without ever seeing justice served.
  • The Satanic cult alleged to be involved in the Son of Sam murders (of which David Berkowitz was a member) regularly sacrificed German shepherds. A mass canine grave was even unearthed in the park where the cult held its meetings.
• Arranged Marriage: Alice Arruda and David Vieira were engaged for five years before they ever met, and communicated only by letters during that time (never even talking on the phone). When David turned out to be a jealous and abusive husband, Alice defied her family's old-world Portuguese values and left him, which resulted in him bludgeoning and stabbing her to death and evading justice for six years.
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: Sadly this was true in several stories. In the Anna Anton case, the murderer was actually the Chief of Police. Cops were even suspected of turning on their own, as in the Steve Sandlin case (which police alleged was a suicide).
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: Some of the cases shown during the "solved" montage during the opening credits were not; in fact, some (among them the case listed under Animal Cruelty Is Just Wrong above) are still unsolved today. Some of them were even segments profiled under "The Unexplained" (for example: the ghosts in the St. James Hotel), which by their definition will never be fully resolved.
• Beware the Nice Ones: David Stone's father described him as a kind, gentle young man, but one who became "like a commando" on the football field. Stone also could go overboard when angered, as evidenced by his outburst at a party during which he allegedly attacked a friend and struck him roughly two dozen times. Reportedly this incident led him to undertake the "vision quest" from which he never returned.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: In some cases, a participant interviewed for a murder or missing persons story was later revealed to be involved in the crime. Notable examples include the record company exec who ordered a hit on a music trade magazine chart director for refusing to participate in a fixing scam, and the story of Wendy Camp, who along with her daughter and sister-in-law were murdered by her ex-husband's mother and grandmother (who was interviewed for the story and protested her innocence).
• Burial at Sea: The rapist/murderer of Joan Rogers and her daughters Christe and Michelle tried to dispose of their bodies in this fashion, by tying them to cinder blocks and dumping them overboard. The killer was later identified as Oba Chandler, who was executed for the murders in 2011.
• Cassandra Truth: The Brian Brophill case. A neighbor, noting how much money Brophill always seemed to have, remarked that Brophill must be a drug dealer. His wife pooh-poohed this possibility. Turned out her husband was right and Brophill was involved in a major international marijuana smuggling operation.
• Catch Phrase: "This program is about unsolved mysteries. Whenever possible, the actual family members and police officials have participated in recreating the events. What you are about to see is not a news broadcast."
  • "Join me. Perhaps maybe you may be able to help solve a mystery!"
  • "For every mystery there is someone, somewhere who knows the truth. Perhaps that someone is watching. Perhaps... it's you."
• Clear My Name: The goal of the "Final Appeal" segments. Sometimes they were successful, one notable example being Patricia Stallings, who got a life sentence without parole for allegedly murdering her infant son by poisoning him, and was exonerated after medical experts were able to prove that the boy suffered from a rare genetic disorder whose symptoms mimicked those of poisoning. Sadly, her second son had the same disease, although he managed to survive to age 23.
• Cool Old Guy: Robert Stack, and how.
• Cool Teacher: One story involved a woman looking for her middle-school music teacher, whom she credited with broadening her cultural horizons and augmenting her self-esteem. Sadly, she had encountered the teacher several years earlier, but, due to suffering from amnesia, didn't recognize her.
• Department of Child Disservices: From the family court judge who returned a teenage girl to the custody of the father who was sexually abusing her (the father had had her case file destroyed, but instead of investigating further, the judge just took the father's word as gospel) to the judge who conspired with infamous "baby broker" Georgia Tann (and was forced to resign as a result), the ways in which the authorities have failed or victimized children are often truly sickening.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Technically, all mysteries are unsolved by the very definition of the word. But a program called simply "Mysteries" wouldn't sound quite as flashy.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Lee Selwyn case involved one of Selwyn's biker friends confronting a motorist who had purposely tried to run the bikers off the road and smashing his car window. In retaliation, the motorist murdered Selwyn, who had not even been involved in the altercation, by running him off the road and into a utility pole. Then there's the man who was apparently shot to death in a road rage incident simply because he had a license plate of an opposing sports team.
• Downer Ending: Some mysteries, very often those in which a missing person's body was found. Honorable mention also to "Lost Loves" cases in which the person being searched for is revealed to have died years earlier.
• Evil Old Folks: Hard to top Ida Prewitt, who was posthumously implicated in the murders of her grandson's ex-wife, Wendy Camp, and Wendy's daughter and sister-in-law, though she was interviewed for the segment and denied having anything to do with their disappearance (the victims' bodies were not found until after Ida's death). Upping the evil quotient is the fact that Wendy suffered from multiple sclerosis and would have likely been unable to defend herself. Ida turned out to be essentially a career criminal, and at the time of her death was actually in prison for insurance fraud, though she was never charged in the Kemp case.
• Faking the Dead: Some criminals were revealed to have faked their own deaths in order to get away with their crimes. One of the more bizarre stories was that of Clarence Roberts, in which his dead body was identified twice by authorities after fires ten years apart. Investigators believe he probably murdered a vagrant in the first fire and tried to pass off the corpse as his own so his wife could live comfortably on his life insurance, and that he died for real (possibly by accident, along with his wife, whom he intended to murder) in the second fire. Some, however, remained convinced that Roberts faked his own death twice and was still alive somewhere.
• Foreshadowing: Could get downright creepy at times, especially if it involved a murder victim seeming to foresee their own demise. Cindy Anderson had a dream about being abducted and murdered not long before she was abducted for real; her body has never been found. And Tracy Kirkpatrick's favorite poem was Christina Rossetti's "Remember," in which the narrator tells her family not to grieve for her after her death but to remember her with a smile. After Tracy was murdered in 1989, the poem was inscribed on her headstone.
• Heroic Pet Story: A handful of stories dealt with pets who had saved their owners in medical emergencies, often through some uncanny ability to recognize when their owners were in distress. These included a dog who could predict when his owner was about to have a seizure and helped get her to a safe place, and a pot-bellied pig who ran for help when her owner was having a heart attack.
• I Have No Daughter!: During World War II, Helen Rose Myran, a First Nations woman from Manitoba, was disowned by her father after she joined the Canadian Armed Forces against his wishes. He later regretted it, but passed away before he and his daughter could reconcile. However, Helen Rose's surviving siblings did locate her thanks to the show.
• Impersonating an Officer: How the perpetrator of a still-unsolved double murder in 1991 in Blind River, Ontario, gained entry into Gordon and Jackie McAllister's RV. He then proceeded to rob and shoot them both, killing Jackie and wounding her husband; a would-be Good Samaritan was also shot to death when he stumbled upon the scene.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Wendy Radcliffe and her grandmother, Bernice Gardner, were not only relatives, they were best friends. After Bernice was struck and killed by a car right in front of Wendy's eyes, Wendy was comforted by a mysterious stranger, with whom she was eventually reunited thanks to the show.
• Irony: College student Angela Maher had been a crusader against drunk driving. In 1994, she was killed by a drunk driver - even sadder, she had been on her way to pick up a friend who had been drinking and did not want to drive. Maher's killer fled and was finally captured in 2024 - thirty years later.
• Karma Houdini: Murderers and other criminals such as William Bradford Bishop, Joe Maloney, and the I-70 Killer who have managed to evade justice for several decades and still have yet to be caught.
• Kids Are Cruel: Some stories of people looking for their lost loves involve the person not learning they were adopted until they were ridiculed for it by classmates (i.e. "My mom told me your own mother didn't want you").
• Kill 'Em All: The still-unapprehended perpetrators of the Las Cruces bowling alley massacre almost accomplished this, except that two of the seven people shot survived (one of the deceased passed away due to complications from her injuries nine years later). Among the deceased were children aged 2 and 6.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: One of the earliest stories profiled on the show was the case of Shannon Mohr, whose death was initially ruled an accident caused by hitting her head after falling off a horse. Subsequent autopsies revealed that she was actually murdered when her husband, Dave Davis, who wanted Shannon's life insurance money, injected her with a lethal dose of a muscle relaxer and bashed her head on a rock to stage the scene - and he might have gotten away with it if Shannon's parents had not refused his request to have her remains cremated. He evaded justice for nearly a decade until he was finally tracked down living in American Samoa. The story was later turned into a TV movie, Victim of Love: The Shannon Mohr Story, by the series' production staff.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Averted as they never tied the knot and eventually married others, but Eleanor Wozniak, a white teenager, and John Platt, a Black man in his late 20s, were lovers in early 1950s Buffalo, attracting attention as much for the difference in their ages as in their skin colors. When Eleanor had a baby girl, Rose Marie, she was forced to give the child up for adoption. She and John, reconnected as friends, were successful in locating Rose Marie (now named Sally) through Unsolved Mysteries.
• Mama Bear: In one segment, a young woman named "Sue," noticing an intruder in her house while her four-year-old watches TV, grabs a gun and fires at him while chasing him out of the house. She later learns that she's just encountered Edward Harold Bell - at the time only wanted for the 1978 murder of ex-Marine Larry Dickens, but now also believed to have been a serial killer who targeted teenage girls (including two, Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw, who were profiled in a separate UM episode).
• May-December Romance: When they married, Annette Burnside was 18 and her husband Jim was 46. The marriage failed not because of the age difference, but because Jim was abusive and jealous, and ultimately stabbed Annette to death after she left him. He was caught thanks to the show and eventually died in prison.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The crux of many of "The Unexplained" segments, which dealt with topics ranging from UFOs to fabled creatures such as the Yeti, Ogopogo and Chupacabras to religious topics such as the Shroud of Turin and the stories of Fatima, Lourdes, Medjugorje and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Stack was always quick to point out that while skeptics might insist on rational explanations for these occurrences, true believers were unlikely to be convinced otherwise.
• Mistaken for Murderer: One story involved a woman who claimed to have a psychic vision of the whereabouts of a missing woman's remains. While out investigating, she and her daughter came upon the missing woman's body. Not surprisingly, since she knew so much about the case, police viewed her as a suspect and booked her on a murder charge, and she might be rotting in prison today if the actual murderers hadn't subsequently confessed.
• Never Suicide: Probably the most common type of case during Stack's era involved someone being found dead, with Stack always introducing the segment by saying "the police ruled it a suicide, but the family says...MURDER." In many cases it WAS pretty obviously a suicide and the family was clearly just in denial, but the show would always side with the family.
  • And to be fair, some were so obviously not a suicide, complete with multiple types of blood being found at the crime scene, or victims that were bound with packing wire before being dumped into incinerators, that it made you wonder just who the police thought they were fooling.
  • The opposite was also true, as in the case of a Maine woman who appeared to have been abducted after leaving the house for a blind date. After her story aired, a viewer recognized her as a suicide victim whose body was found in an Alabama hotel, and it turned out she had staged the abduction to throw family and investigators off the trail.
• New Kids on the Block: The Kari Lynn Nixon story developed an interesting twist when a girl strongly resembling the missing teenager was supposedly caught on tape at an NKOTB concert. It also included a brief interview with Jonathan and Jordan Knight, in which they implored Kari to at least contact her parents and let them know she was alive. Sadly, she wasn't; the girl in the video clip was not Kari but another girl named Lynette Melancon, and when Kari's remains were found a few years later, it was determined she had been raped and killed shortly after her abduction. Still, her rapist/killer Robert Anthony Jones was ultimately caught and taken into custody.
• The Men in Black: An episode dealing with UFO sightings also talked about them
• Offing the Offspring: Or attempting to in the case of murderer and con artist Marie Hilley, who was profiled in the "Diabolical Minds" episode. She poisoned both her husband and her teenage daughter for their life insurance money. Her husband died; her daughter survived. Marie would eventually die of exposure while on the run from authorities.
  • Averted in the Patricia Stallings case. She was alleged to have caused the death of her infant son, Ryan, by poisoning him with ethylene glycol (the active ingredient in antifreeze), and was imprisoned for it. Medical experts were able to prove that the boy suffered from methylmalonic acidemia, a rare genetic disorder which causes symptoms similar to poisoning. Stallings was exonerated and released from prison.
• Parental Neglect: The Brenda Merrill story. Brenda's mother, Betty Nickerson, abandoned her children in a Pennsylvania farmhouse to move to the city and run a restaurant, forcing Brenda, then 16, to drop out of school to care for her younger siblings. What's more, Betty never contributed one cent to her children's well-being, and even went so far as to tell her new husband that her two youngest kids were Brenda's. The younger children were all eventually adopted out, and Brenda was ultimately successful in reuniting with all of them, but understandably still resented her mother, who was in a nursing home by the time the segment aired.
• Secret Circle of Secrets: Some stories revolved around mystery cults, a number of them alleged to be Satanic. Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly were allegedly murdered by Satanists after they left the cult. Another episode theorized that a Satanic cult were involved in New York's infamous Son of Sam murders, though only David Berkowitz (who was a member of this cult) was caught and prosecuted.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Some murders, or near-murders, were the result of this. One of the most egregious examples is that of Joe Maloney, who served his ex-wife a poisoned drink at a birthday party, causing her to lapse into a coma and eventually die. He was later located in Ireland, which conveniently had no extradition treaty with the U.S. at the time, allowing him to evade justice.
  • Patsy Wright died after taking cold medicine (which she used as a sleep aid) tainted with strychnine. Her ex-husband was suspected, but no one has ever been charged.
  • Elizabeth Ortiz made her husband, Gilbert, chocolate amino-acid milkshakes (for body building purposes) that she laced with insecticide. He survived, and she was caught after eight years on the run with their son.
  • Marie Hilley's son Michael, concerned about his mother's overspending and putting the bills in his name, told her one day they were going to the bank to straighten everything out. Shortly after eating breakfast, which Marie prepared, he became seriously ill, but recovered. He subsequently realized his mother had poisoned his meal and had been also poisoning his father (who died because of it) and younger sister (resulting in her becoming paralyzed).
• That One Case: For Eliot Ness, the Butcher of Kingsbury Run, who murdered and mutilated 13 victims in Cleveland during the 1930s. Ness believed he knew who the culprit was but lacked the evidence to bring him to trial. Another episode theorized that the Butcher subsequently made his way to the West Coast and continued to kill, with one of his victims possibly being "Black Dahlia" Elizabeth Short.
• Throwing Off the Disability: One story involved a multiple sclerosis survivor who claimed her symptoms miraculously cleared up after she was electrocuted while bathing during an electrical storm.
• Un Cancelled: After a whopping six years!!! And then again, in 2020, thanks to Netflix!
• Vision Quest: One story dealt with a young stockbroker named David Stone, who went on one to try to find "the beast" (according to new age philosophy, that thing inside of us that keeps us from being one with God). He never came home. Sadly, his remains would eventually be found over three years after he vanished.
• Would Hurt a Child: Many of the murder, kidnapping, sexual assault etc. cases sadly involved children. Jim Burnside threatened to kill his wife Annette and her family if she ever dared to leave him, and when his own daughter, Stacey, asked him if that included her, he bluntly said yes. He later made good on his threat to kill Annette.
  • Sometimes applies to the authorities too, as in the Fatima segment, in which Lucia Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto were abducted by government officials and threatened with torture and execution if they didn't reveal what the "lady from Heaven" had told them.
• The Un-Reveal: Everyone realized that the truly unexplained paranormal mysteries were never going to be solved. It didn't make their episodes on them any less awesome.
  • Some of the more infamous crime based cases the show covered, such as the harassment of Bill and Dorothy Wacker or the Circleville Letter Writer, will likely never be solved since in the former case both of the victims are now dead, and in the latter case the only remotely plausible suspect has already served a prison sentence and still actively denies he had anything to do with it.

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