18 Baffling Forensic Cases That Stumped Everyone

Paul Fronczak

In 1964, 1-day-old Paul Fronczak was kidnapped from the Chicago hospital where he was born. In 1965, the FBI believed they had found him abandoned in a shopping mall and returned him to his parents. The physical characteristics of the recovered infant matched the only picture of the newborn Paul.

But in 2012, DNA testing revealed Paul was not the son of his parents after all. Further investigation indicated that he was born Jack Rosenthal, a full six months before the real Paul Fronczak was born. Thanks to additional DNA testing, the real Paul Fronczak was found in Michigan in 2019 living as Kevin Baty.

Sadly, Baty passed away in 2020 from cancer without meeting his biological parents, though he did speak to his mother on the phone. His father died in 2017.

Jill Rosenthal

In 2015, the man who believed he was Paul Fronczak (but was actually Jack Rosenthal) reconnected with his biological family, who revealed that Jack was one of four siblings, all of whom had been neglected by their deceased parents.

Even more upsetting, Jack was born a twin, and his twin sister Jill had also gone missing as a child—and she has yet to be found. So far, Jill’s DNA hasn’t turned up in any databases, and the question remains: What happened to Jill Rosenthal?

Orlando and Brandon Nembhard

The case of Orlando and Brandon Nembhard illustrates why eyewitness testimony isn’t always helpful in securing a prosecution. In 2011, witnesses claimed they saw Orlando brandish a pistol and shoot a young man dead outside a nightclub in Chandler, Arizona.

It could have been an open-and-shut case, except that Orlando’s identical twin, Brandon, was also present at the crime scene. No forensic evidence from the crime could reveal which brother was responsible, so prosecutors had to drop the case.

Patrick and James Hennessy

In another twin case, Patrick Hennessy was accused of reckless behavior and possession of a knife behind the wheel of a car in the United Kingdom in 2016. He was cleared of the charges because prosecutors were unable to distinguish between Patrick’s DNA and that of his identical twin, James, whom Patrick claimed was driving the car.

Angelina and Debora Logue

On a summer day in 1974, Angelina and Debora Logue (ages 7 and 4) were spending the afternoon at their aunt’s swimming pool on Long Island, New York. Out of nowhere, the girls fell ill, lapsed into comas and died soon after.

But from what? No toxin or organism was ever identified, despite sophisticated tissue analysis. “Something killed those girls. I wish I knew what it was,” the New York Times quoted the medical examiner, Sidney Weinberg, MD, at the time. Weinberg died in 1996, and this strange mystery remains unsolved.

Kim Jong Nam

On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong Nam, half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was murdered in a Malaysian airport. A woman ambushed him and rubbed something in his face before scurrying away, and Kim Jong Nam collapsed and died en route to the hospital.

The toxic substance was later found to be the banned VX nerve agent, and an Indonesian woman was charged with his murder. Two years later, charges were dropped when the woman said she thought she was part of a TV prank. A motive for the assassination is still unclear, but there was speculation that Kim Jong Nam’s brother was behind the murder.

The Central Park jogger

In 1989, a 28-year-old jogger named Trisha Meili was raped, beaten and left for dead in New York City’s Central Park. Five teenagers, dubbed the “Central Park Five,” were rounded up as suspects, but none of their DNA matched the crime’s DNA evidence.

Nevertheless, they endured hours of interrogation by police, and a jury convicted each of the Central Park Five based on their coerced confessions, which they had recanted. All five were imprisoned until 2002, when another man, Matias Reyes, confessed to the crime.

Now known as the “Exonerated Five,” the group successfully sued the city of New York for malicious prosecution and racial profiling, and one of the five, Yusef Salaam, now sits on the New York City Council. Reyes is serving a sentence for other crimes, including rape and murder, but was not charged in the Meili case due to the statue of limitations.

Louise Talley

Anthony Wright served 25 years in prison for the 1991 rape and murder of 77-year-old Louise Talley in Philadelphia before he convinced the district attorney to examine DNA evidence that had not been used in his case. Ultimately it was found that the DNA matched that of another man, Ronnie Byrd. Wright was exonerated, but because Byrd was already dead, he was never prosecuted for the crime.

Meredith Kercher

You may know this case better by the accused’s name, Amanda Knox. In 2007, Meredith Kercher, a British college student studying in Italy, was fatally stabbed in the apartment she shared with Knox. Trace amounts of DNA belonging to Knox and Knox’s boyfriend were found at the scene and on the knife that was presumed to be the weapon.

Despite the fact that another man’s fingerprints and DNA were also found at the scene—and that the knife couldn’t have been the weapon because it didn’t have Kercher’s DNA on it—Amanda and her boyfriend were convicted. In 2015, after a lengthy appeal process, the two were exonerated.

Urooj Khan

In 2012, Urooj Khan won a million dollars with a lottery a ticket he purchased at a 7-Eleven near his home in Chicago. But before he had a chance to collect his winnings, he died. The medical examiner determined that the 46-year-old had died of natural causes—until the family petitioned him to take a closer look at the case.

Upon additional testing, an autopsy revealed that Khan had been poisoned with cyanide. But no one has ever been able to connect the poisoning to anyone with a motive. The case remains unsolved.

John Schneeberger

For years, a female patient claimed that John Schneeberger, a physician in Saskatchewan, Canada, had drugged and raped her in 1992. But repeated DNA tests failed to match the sperm sample from her underwear. The patient hired a private eye to obtain DNA samples from Schneeberger’s car—which proved to be a match.

But yet again, further police testing couldn’t get enough of a sample from Schneeberger to match. It wasn’t until another victim came forward, Schneeberger’s own stepdaughter, that investigators were able to order more extensive testing. They were finally able to get a match and reach a conviction.

At trial, Schneeberger revealed how he had been able to fool the DNA exam: He had implanted a vial of another man’s blood in his bicep and tricked the nurse into drawing blood from that vial.

The Zodiac Killer

The Zodiac Killer murdered multiple people in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and early 1970s and has never been caught—but not for lack of forensic evidence. Zodiac, as he called himself, left behind fingerprints and handprints at his crime scenes and on the taunting letters he sent to law enforcement.

The handwriting of the letters provided forensic evidence as well. And while several people have claimed to be the Zodiac, they don’t match the forensic evidence from the killings.

Kathy Mabry

In 1997, Kathy Mabry was found murdered in an abandoned house in Belzoni, Mississippi. Law enforcement attempted to use the bite marks found on her body to identify a suspect. Bite mark identification—a controversial forensic technique—led the police to James Earl Gates, whom they arrested despite the lack of any other evidence connecting him to the crime. The case was dismissed, and the real murderer has never been found.

The “Dr. X” killings

Sometimes even seemingly airtight forensic evidence is insufficient to convince a jury. That’s how Mario Jascalevich, a surgeon who always seemed to be “around” when other doctors’ patients died inexplicably following routine surgeries in 1965 and 1966, apparently got away with murder when he finally went to trial in 1975.

Although an investigation revealed the doctor’s locker held 18 empty bottles of the potentially fatal muscle relaxer curare—which was shown to be in the bodies of some of the victims—the jury was convinced that curare would not be found in tissue from bodies buried for more than a decade. The patients’ deaths remain unsolved to this day.

The Black Dahlia

In perhaps the most famous unsolved mystery of all time, Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress, was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947. The LAPD conducted a lengthy, high-profile investigation, but a lack of forensic evidence (aside from her mutilated body) left the detectives empty-handed.

Nearly 80 years later, the Black Dahlia murder has been the subject of multiple true crime documentaries, movies and books, and it remains one of the oldest cold case files in L.A., as well as the city’s most famous, according to Biography.

Santae Tribble

When 17-year-old Santae Tribble was in the crosshairs of law enforcement for the murder of cab driver John McCormick in Washington, DC, in 1978, FBI forensics experts matched a strand of hair recovered at the scene to Tribble (this was prior to DNA testing).

Primarily based on that evidence, the jury came back with a guilty verdict after 40 minutes of deliberation. The only problem? The hair wasn’t Tribble’s. In fact, it wasn’t even human. In 2012, a review of the evidence revealed the hair came from a dog. Tribble was exonerated, and McCormick’s murder has not been solved.

The Somerton Man

On December 1, 1948, a dead man turned up on Somerton Beach in Australia. He was fully dressed, and the crime scene was rife with forensic evidence: a half-smoked cigarette, a bus ticket, two combs, a pack of gum and a piece of paper that had been cut from a book. Since no one ever came forward to identify the body, he became known as the “Somerton Man.”

The book from which the paper had been cut was eventually found, but it yielded nothing but further questions. No one ever filed a missing person report that fit his description, and the case went cold. In 2022, DNA and genealogical testing revealed the Somerton Man to be Carl Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne who disappeared in April 1947.

JonBenet Ramsey

On the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, JonBenet Ramsey’s mother, Patsy, reported that her daughter was missing from their Boulder, Colorado, home. There was a ransom note demanding $118,000 in cash. A few hours later, JonBenet’s father, John, discovered the six-year old’s body in the basement. She’d been strangled.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Boulder police processed more than 1,500 pieces of evidence and interviewed more than 1,000 people in their search for the killer. But to this day, the case has never been solved. Authorities blame it on the way the crime scene and house were handled—or more to the point, improperly secured.

Friends and relatives were in the house throughout the search, and John, upon finding JonBenet, removed duct tape from her mouth and carried her upstairs, compromising the collection of forensic evidence.

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Sources:

• Chicago Sun Times: “What happened after Paul Fronczak found the real baby kidnapped from Michael Reese Hospital in 1964”
• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: “Finding the Missing Piece: Brother Searches for Twin Sister”
• ABC News: “Twin Brothers Complicate Arizona Murder Investigation”
• Independent: “Identical twin found ‘not guilty’ of charges after DNA tests unable to determine which brother committed crime”
• New York Times: “Deaths of 2 Sisters on L.I. Continue to Baffle the Experts”
• CBS News: “What killed Kim Jong Nam? Deadly poison remains a mystery”
• History: “Central Park Five”
• NBC 10 Philadelphia: “Man Who Was Wrongfully Convicted of Rape and Murder Reaches $9.85M Settlement With Philly”
• Salon: “Amanda Knox, what really happened: Writing toward the actual story”
• Chicago Tribune: “Lottery winner’s cyanide poisoning death remains unsolved five years later”
• History: “The Zodiac Killer: A Timeline”
• FBI: “Black Dahlia”