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3 Murder Cases With Bizarre Twists
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Number 3: The murder of Yara Gambirasio
Thirteen-year-old Yara Gambirasio lived in the small town of Brembate di Sopra in northern Italy.
The town only had a population of about seven thousand people.
On the night of November 26, 2010, she left her home to walk to a gym that was less than a mile from her home.
She was supposed to drop off a stereo with her gymnastics coach and then walk right back home.
Two hours after she left, she still hadn't returned home.
Her mother called her cell phone and her call went straight to voicemail.
20 minutes later, her father called the police. A massive search was launched but Yara was nowhere to be found.
Three months to the day of her disappearance,
her body was found in a field about six miles south of the town.
The autopsy revealed that Yara had been stabbed several times and her head had been beaten.
The cause of death was exposure.
Her bra was unhooked, but she had not been sexually assaulted.
The police caught a break and found male DNA on Yara's underwear.
He became known as Ignoto Uno or "unknown one".
The DNA didn't match anyone on file and led to one of the biggest manhunts in Italian history.
The DNA of over 18,000 men was tested.
A year after the murder, the police took some DNA from a man who had DNA that is similar to the DNA of Unknown One.
The man, whose last name was Guerinoni, even had a connection to Yara:
his mother was her family's housekeeper for years.
She wasn't working for the family when Yara was murdered, but she was still friendly with them.
Guerinoni was ruled out as a suspect
because he was in South America when Yara was killed.
The lead detective on the case knew that the Guerinoni DNA was her strongest lead, so she started to trace his family tree.
She eventually got the DNA from an uncle of the man, named Giuseppe Guerinoni.
Giuseppe's DNA was nearly identical to Unknown One's DNA.
Case closed, right?
It turned out that Giuseppe had died 11 years before the murder, in 1999.
The DNA samples were taken from the backs of two stamps that he licked when he was alive.
In March 2013 his body was exhumed and DNA was taken from his femur.
Experts confirm that the DNA was very similar.
They said that Unknown One was the son of Giuseppe.
Giuseppe had three children with his wife, and they were all quickly excluded as suspects.
When Giuseppe was alive, he was a bus driver and the detective interviewed one of his former co-workers.
The co-worker said that Giuseppe wasn't a faithful husband.
The detective interviewed 532 women that Giuseppe knew when he was alive.
She eventually came across 67 year-old Esther Arzuffi, who gave her DNA.
She said she never had sex with Giuseppe.
She had been married to the same man,
Giovanni Bisetti, since she was 19 and they raised three children: a set of twins who are a boy and a girl,
Massimo and Laura, and then another son, named Fabio.
It turned out that Esther was lying about having sex with Giuseppe, because she was the mother of Unknown One.
The police decided to get DNA from Massimo, whose middle name happens to be Giuseppe.
In June 2014, the police set up a road block not far from Massimo's home.
When he reached a roadblock, they asked him to do a breathalyzer test.
He was sober and they let him proceed on with his drive.
They took his DNA from the breathalyzer and compared it to Unknown One's DNA.
It was a match.
Giuseppe was the father of Massimo and his twin sister
It also turned out that the third child, Fabio, was not fathered by Giovanni either.
His father is a third man.
Massimo was arrested on June 16, 2014, nearly four years after the murder.
Besides the DNA, there is some circumstantial evidence linking Massimo to the crime, as well.
Massimo was known to frequent businesses around Yara's home.
Also, his phone was turned off at 5:45 the night of the murder and it wasn't turned back on until the next morning.
Traces of lime and jute, which is a vegetable fiber used to make rope, were found on Yara's body.
This suggests that the killer was a construction worker, and that was Massimo's profession.
Massimo, who is married and has three children, denies killing Yara.
He admits that it's his DNA on Yara, but he has no idea how it got there.
His trial lasted a year.
His lawyers argue that his DNA only proves his presence, but does not prove that he is responsible for the murder.
Massimo Giuseppe Bisetti was found guilty and he was sentenced to life in July 2016.
Number 2: The murders of Rick and Gail Brinks.
On the evening of Saturday, November 21st, 1987,
27 year old Rick Brinks and his 22 year old wife, Gail Brinks,
attended a wedding and then they returned to their home in Holland, Michigan.
The couple had only been married for 18 months.
When the couple didn't show up for work on Monday, Rick's parents went to their home.
In the driveway was Rick's Chevy Blazer.
Rick's body was laying across the front seat.
He had been shot twice in the face with a 22 caliber gun.
Gail's body was found on the couple's water bed in their bedroom.
She had been shot three times in the head.
After she was shot, a throw pillow from another room was placed carefully over her face.
The police were baffled by the shooting.
The couple didn't have any known enemies and there was no obvious motive.
The house was ransacked, there was cash found throughout it, and the couple were still wearing their jewelry.
It wasn't long before the case went cold
Years would go by and most members of both Rick and Gail's family kept hoping that one day the case would be solved.
In 2009, the county were Gayle and Rick once lived started a cold-case investigation unit,
and in 2011 they looked at the murder of the couple.
They reviewed thousands of pages of documents and interviewed over 200 people.
They thought the way the pillow was placed on Gail's (sic) face seemed to indicate that the killer couldn't look at her.
That suggested the killer had some type of personal relationship with Gail (sic), so they started to re-interview her family.
One family member said that the day before Rick and Gail were killed, Gail and her brother, Ryan Wyngarden,
had gotten into a huge fight.
Ryan wanted their parents, along with her two youngest brothers, to move their trailer onto Gail and Rick's property.
Gayle didn't want that to happen because her brothers were disrespectful and the couple had spent months renovating their home.
The detectives then looked into what Ryan was doing the night of the murders.
His alibi was his girlfriend Pam.
The detectives went over Pam's statements and noted some inconsistencies.
In January 2013, the detectives interviewed Pam, who had been married to Ryan for over two decades,
to see if she could clear up the inconsistencies.
She originally told the police that on the night of the murders, she and Ryan or doing laundry at her friend's house.
When she was re-interviewed, she clarified what happened that night.
She said that they did do laundry, but they were home by 9:00 p.m..
Ryan stayed for a little while, but then he left and he didn't say where he was going.
She said that she didn't know anything else.
So the police interviewed other witnesses.
One of Ryan's good friends swears that four hours before the bodies were found, he stopped by Ryan's house.
He said that Ryan was upset and Ryan explained that his sister and his brother-in-law have been shot to death.
Another one of Ryan's sisters also remember him saying something unusual after the murders.
He supposedly said, "I wonder if I could have done this?".
Another witness was a woman that Ryan was dating while he was also dating Pam.
She said that several days after the murders, Brian told her that he was holding on to a big secret.
She thought he was going to confess to killing his sister and his brother-in-law.
Instead it was a whole other dark secret that shed some light on the motive.
Ryan said that when he and Gail were teenagers he had forced Gail to have sex with him on several occasions.
With this additional information, the detectives went back to interview Pam.
She broke down and said that Ryan killed Gail and Rick.
Hours after they were shot, before anyone else knew that they were dead, Ryan took Pam to the couple's house.
He dragged her by the wrist and forced her to look at both bodies.
The detectives found it odd that Pam married Ryan after he killed his sister and his brother-in-law, and that they had children together.
They wanted to know why she didn't come to the police earlier.
Pam said that while they were standing in front of his sister's dead body,
Ryan swore he'd kill her and the child she had who was fathered by a man who she met before Ryan.
The detectives think that the main motivation for the murders was jealousy.
Ryan hated that his sister and his brother-in-law had good jobs and they were homeowners.
He was barely scraping by selling small quantities of marijuana.
He was also jealous that Gail had chosen another man instead of him.
What the detectives believe happened that night was that after the wedding, Ryan went over to the couple's house.
They continued to argue about their parents and their younger brothers moving on to the property.
Gail and Rick kicked Ryan out, but he claimed he ran out of gas.
Rick got into his vehicle to drive him to the gas station and Gail stayed in bed.
Ryan then walked up to the driver's side of Rick's vehicle and shot him through the open window.
He then walked into the bedroom and executed his sister.
Ryan swore he didn't commit the murders.
He said he personally wanted to kill the person who murdered Rick and Gail.
The jury didn't believe him, and he was convicted of both murders.
Before he was sentenced, Ryan went off on an hour-long rant in court in front of the judge.
He again swore that he was innocent.
He also accused his wife, the sister who testified against him, the police, and even the judge of lying to conspire against him.
When the judge spoke, Ryan interrupted him to call him a liar.
The judge told him to keep quiet or he'd get duct tape for his mouth.
He then sentenced Ryan to two consecutive life sentences,
over 26 years after Rick and Gail Brinks were killed in their home.
Number 1: the murder of Susan Powell.
On December 7th, 2009 a daycare provider in West Valley City, Utah
became concerned when two boys that she cared for weren't dropped off.
She called the boy's parents, Susan and Josh Powell, but they didn't answer their cell phones or their home phone.
The day care worker then got in contact with Josh's mother and sister.
They alerted the police, who sent officers to the family's home.
There was no one there and one of the family's vehicles was gone.
There were no signs of a break-in and nothing had been ransacked.
There were two fans blowing on the wet red stain on the carpet.
The police questioned the family's neighbors and one of them said that they last saw the family the day before.
In the morning 28 year-old Susan along with the couple's two sons, 4 year old Charles and 2 year old Brayden,
attended a service at a ward of the Church of Latter-Day Saints near their home.
That afternoon, the neighbor said she visited with the family and Susan wasn't feeling well
so she would have to have a nap at about 5:00 p.m..
Josh then took the two boys out to do some sledding.
Another neighbor saw Josh and the boys return home at around 8:30.
That was the last time any of the neighbors saw the family.
At around 5 p.m., just hours after they had been reported missing,
Josh and the kids returned home but Susan wasn't with them.
Josh was brought into the police station and he said that he went camping with the boys about 25 miles away in Vernon, Utah.
They left at 12:30 a.m. and Susan didn't come with them because she didn't feel well.
Josh said he had no idea where she was.
The police asked Josh why he took the kids camping after midnight,
just hours before he had to work, without telling anyone, when temperatures were below freezing, and it was snowing.
He said it was because they like to do fun things.
The police searched the family's home, the vehicle Josh was driving, and they interviewed Charles and Brayden.
The boys both confirmed that they were camping with their father
For obvious reasons the police didn't believe Josh's story, and they knew that he killed Susan.
In the days following Susan's disappearance, Josh give three interviews with the police, and he hired a defense lawyer.
A week after Susan vanished, Josh was named a person of interest by the police, but he wasn't charged.
On December 18th, Josh took Charles and Brayden to Palala, Washington, to spend the holidays with his father, Stephen Powell.
Susan was also from Palala and that's where her family lived.
Before the end of the year Josh was fired from his job, and on January 6
he returned to the family's home in West Valley City to collect some of their possessions.
Josh decided that he and the boys were going to move in with his father
and then rent out the family home in West Valley City.
Over the following year, the police put a lot of manpower and money into finding Susan, but they didn't have any luck.
They didn't charge Josh with murder and his sons continued to live with him in his father's home.
Obviously, Susan's family was upset with the progress of the case.
They spoke with the media several times and said that Josh was abusive, and they encouraged Susan to leave him.
On the anniversary of Susan's disappearance, Josh and his father Steven gave their theory on what happened to Susan.
They said that Susan ran away with a man named Steven Kosher.
Kosher lived in St. George, Utah, and he went missing from Las Vegas a week after Susan disappeared.
He has never been found.
Josh and Steven said that they went to Brazil, where Kosher had performed missionary work for the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
Susan's family didn't believe Josh and Steven.
They said that she was a devoted mother and would never abandon her children.
In the summer of 2011, Steven made several strange television appearances.
On July 15, Steven appeared on The Today Show and said he planned on publishing Susan's diaries that she wrote as a teenager.
He said that the diaries showed that she was sexually open.
And, as promised, he sent two passages from her diaries to the media and uploaded them to a web site.
About a month later, Steven got into a confrontation with Susan's father on the public street in Puyallup in front of a local news team.
A few weeks after that incident, on August 24th, Good Morning America aired an interview with Steven and Josh.
Stephen said that he had an unconventional relationship with his daughter-in-law.
He said that Susan had come on to him sexually several times.
He was asked if he was in love with Susan and he said: "that's pretty likely. yeah,
I think so, and there's no question in my mind that the feelings were mutual".
Josh was asked if he knew about his father and his wife's supposed relationship.
Josh didn't confirm or deny it, and only said that Susan was very flirtatious.
Susan's father said that the interviews and releasing the diary passages were only done to embarrass Susan.
The day after the interview on Good Morning America
nearly two dozen police officers raided Stephen's home, and they made some disturbing discoveries.
They found 17 spiral notebooks with 2330 pages of writing.
All of it was Stephen writing about his daughter-in-law Susan.
In the passages, he details the sexual fantasies about Susan and he expresses his love for her.
On Stephen's computer they found a folder that was labeled with Susan's initials.
It contained nearly 4,500 pictures of Susan.
Almost all of them were taken without Susan even being aware that she was being photographed.
Many of them are taken in public places.
Often Stephen took the photographs while he was hiding in his car.
There were also photographs that were close-ups of specific body parts.
The police also found videos and pictures that Stephen had secretly taken of his neighbor's children in the bathroom.
On September 22nd, Stephen was charged for possessing the photographs and the videos of the children and for voyeurism.
Susan's father then filed for custody of Charles and Brayden.
He was granted temporary custody and Josh was given supervised visitations twice a week.
He was also ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Josh rented a house and went along with the court's orders.
While living with their grandfather, the boys said that Josh had sexually and physically abused them.
They also said that they remembered the night that their mother went missing.
One of the boys said that while they were driving to the campsite they asked where she was
and Josh said she was in the trunk.
on February 1st, 2012,
over two years after Susan went missing,
a judge denied Josh custody of the boys and he ordered Josh to take a psychosexual evaluation and a polygraph test.
Just four days later, a social worker brought Charles,
who was seven, and Brayden, who was five, to Josh's home for a visitation.
When they arrived, Josh opened the door and let the boys in but kept the social worker outside and locked the door.
The social worker pounded on the door, and then suddenly the house burst into flames.
The fire department and paramedics arrived a brief time later, but Josh, Charles, and Brayden were dead.
The police investigated the fire and discovered that Josh had been planning the murder-suicide for several days.
Just days before he gave the boys toys and books away to a charity.
20 minutes before the fire, Josh called a family member and left this voicemail:
"This is Josh. I'm calling to say goodbye. I am not able to live without my sons and I'm not able to go on anymore. I'm sorry to everyone I've hurt."
"Goodbye."
There were two gas cans in the home and Josh lit the fire.
He then picked up a hatchet.
He started to hack both boys in the head and the neck, but then he was overcome by smoke, and he didn't finish killing them.
All three died from smoke inhalation.
Once after the fire, Stephen was convicted of voyeurism. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
The charges stemming from possession of the pictures and the videos were dropped.
One year and four days after Josh killed his two sons and himself,
Josh's brother and another one of Stephen's sons, Michael, died by suicide.
He jumped off a parking garage.
The police strongly believe that he helped his brother dispose of Susan's body.
In 2014, just before Stephen was going to be released, the charges for possession of the photographs and the videos were reinstated.
He was convicted and he was sentenced to an additional five years in prison.
He was released from prison in July 2017.
The police and Susan's family think that he knows where Susan's body is.
Stephen says Susan is still alive and swears his son didn't kill her
One question that many people have around the case is why wasn't Josh ever charged with Susan's murder?
After the murder-suicide, it was revealed that the police found Susan's blood in the family's home in West Valley City.
In the vehicle that Josh drove to go camping, the police found a generator,
blankets, a gas can, tarps, and a shovel.
Josh was also in possession of his wife's cellphone, which was missing its SIM card.
His phone was also missing its SIM card.
Finally, the police found a journal hidden in the house that was written by Susan.
In her journal she expressed fear of her husband.
She wrote that if anything happened to her that Josh was probably responsible for it.
She wrote that even if it looked like an accident, Josh was still probably responsible.
Obviously, if the police knew that Josh was going to kill the boys they would have arrested him.
However, since there is no statute of limitations on murder., they were probably not going to charge him until they found Susan's body.
It is very rare for a murder case to go to trial without the body in the United States.
If they went to trial without finding Susan's body,
there would be room for reasonable doubt and this could lead to Josh being acquitted, and he would never be charged again.
In the end, it was a judgment call. Now unfortunately, this one had tragic consequences.
Sadly, Susan Powell's body has never been found, but the police consider the case closed.
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