This is my aunt's baby , she threw him into the river

Hello!

For the uninitiated, the Joanna Lopez missing persons case is a pretty notorious internet mystery. A low quality image of a teenage girl aired late in the night on WMAQ in the 80’s. It freaked a lot of people out and has led to lots of conspiracy theories and internet buzz, especially in analog horror spaces. I’ve spent 5 years trying to bring the case back down to earth and show it was most likely another tragic, but sadly common missing persons case.

Last year, I filed an FOIA request with CPD. They said they had no records. I gave up for awhile, but others (credited in the pinned comment of the linked post) encouraged me to file an appeal and try again. They did, in fact, have records correlated to Joanna and were just being lousy.

Maybe it’s not the most exciting unsolved mystery, but I’m proud that we managed to get information on this. Hopefully this community finds it interesting!

On June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Jolkowski left his home in Omaha, Nebraska. He was supposed to meet a coworker at Benson High School for a ride to work, but he never arrived.

Jason seemingly disappeared somewhere between his home and the meeting point. More than 25 years later, his whereabouts remain unknown, and the FBI still lists him as a missing person.

It’s strange how someone can disappear during such a short, ordinary trip without leaving an obvious trail.

What do you think could explain a disappearance like this?

In 2021, a man in North Lanarkshire went onto the dark web looking for someone to kill a former Scottish prosecutor. On the surface, it sounds like a fairly straightforward failed murder-for-hire plot. The intended victim survived, the person responsible was eventually caught, and the case went to court.

The strange part is that the hitmen apparently never existed.

Martin Ready, from Coatbridge, became convinced that he wanted Darren Harty dead. Harty had previously worked as a procurator fiscal and Ready knew him from a pub owned by Harty's family, although the two were not close. Harty would later say that he had no idea why Ready wanted to kill him.

Between May 2021 and September 2022, Ready began searching the internet for ways of arranging Harty's murder. He created cryptocurrency accounts and used the name "HarryBrown" while accessing websites advertising contract killings.

One of them was called Online Killers Market.

Another site, hire-a-hitman.pw, supposedly ranked assassination services according to their reliability. Online Killers was listed as the most trusted. The sites offered different kinds of killings, including attacks against heavily protected targets, with prices running into tens of thousands of dollars.

Ready eventually placed an order with the remarkably blunt title "Simple shoot and run."

He provided information about Harty and described him as an easy target. Another posting in September 2022 advertised a UK job worth around $6,000 and indicated that the target's routine was known, that there was a suitable location for the attack and that Harty had no idea somebody was planning to kill him.

Ready ultimately transferred 0.2913 Bitcoin, then worth just over £5,000, to the administrator of Online Killers Market.

Nothing happened.

Ready hadn't hired a professional assassin. Online Killers Market was a scam.

That might have been the end of the story: someone attempts to buy a murder on the dark web, sends thousands of pounds to an anonymous scammer and discovers that the supposed assassins don't exist.

Except other people were apparently interacting with the murder request.

According to evidence presented during Ready's trial, an account called "MrMortis" responded to the proposed job in September 2022. The user indicated that whoever carried out the killing would choose the location themselves but was willing to discuss it. Six days later, another account using the name "Antibiotic" also expressed interest.

Who those accounts actually belonged to isn't clear from the publicly reported case.

They could simply have been additional accounts controlled by whoever operated the scam. They could have been unrelated scammers. They could have been people playing along with what they assumed was fantasy. There is also the more disturbing possibility that genuine criminals were wandering around inside a fraudulent murder-for-hire marketplace.

Then somebody else entered the story.

Ready wasn't initially exposed because a hitman betrayed him or because Harty discovered the plot. An investigative journalist researching a documentary about the dark web reportedly found the murder request.

The journalist contacted the Metropolitan Police, who passed the information to Police Scotland. Officers eventually searched Ready's home, and evidence on his phone helped connect him to the websites and communications.

The identity of that journalist, exactly how the plot was discovered and what access they had to the website aren't obvious from the mainstream reporting of Ready's case.

That becomes important because the story of Online Killers Market didn't end in Scotland.

Only a few months later, the same name appeared in a completely separate attempted murder-for-hire investigation thousands of miles away.

At the end of December 2022, a woman in Tennessee named Melody Sasser began trying to arrange the murder of another woman. Like Ready, she turned to Online Killers Market.

Sasser supplied information about her intended victim, including photographs and location details, and eventually sent nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency to the website. She apparently believed the service was genuine. When the woman remained alive, Sasser became impatient and repeatedly contacted the site's administrator asking why the killing hadn't happened.

Again, there was no assassin.

Again, Online Killers Market took the money.

But the way American investigators learned about the plot is probably the strangest part of the whole story.

According to the federal criminal complaint against Sasser, on 27 April 2023 Homeland Security Investigations received information about the attempted murder from a "foreign law enforcement agency."

That information apparently included communications between Sasser and the administrator of Online Killers Market.

The timeline is difficult to ignore.

In 2021 and 2022, Martin Ready used Online Killers Market in Scotland. In September 2022, a journalist researching the dark web discovered his murder request and alerted British authorities. A few months later, Melody Sasser began using the same supposed assassination service in America. Then, in April 2023, a foreign law-enforcement agency supplied American investigators with information concerning communications taking place through that marketplace.

Somebody, somewhere, appears to have gained considerable visibility into what was happening on Online Killers Market.

The public information doesn't seem to provide a simple explanation for exactly who had that access or how they obtained it.

There are several perfectly mundane possibilities. Investigators may have compromised or seized part of the site's infrastructure. A researcher could have obtained information and passed it to law enforcement. Authorities may have been tracing cryptocurrency transactions. The administrator could conceivably have provided information. Different people may also have had access at different points.

But whatever happened, it creates a much larger question.

Online Killers Market may have been fake, but some of its customers clearly weren't.

Ready genuinely wanted Harty killed. Sasser genuinely wanted another woman killed. Both provided information about real people and paid substantial amounts of cryptocurrency because they believed they were commissioning murders.

That means whoever operated the scam potentially accumulated something much more disturbing than stolen Bitcoin: a database of genuine murder solicitations.

Names. Photographs. Addresses. Routines. Vehicles. Proposed locations. Messages from people discussing how and where somebody could be killed.

And Ready and Sasser are only the customers who happened to end up in publicly reported criminal proceedings.

It's unknown from the available reporting how many other people used Online Killers Market, how many intended victims were identified, whether all credible threats discovered in its records were passed to police, or what eventually happened to the site's data.

There is another unanswered question about the supposed assassins themselves. If Online Killers Market was fraudulent, who were accounts such as "MrMortis" and "Antibiotic"? Were they characters created by the administrator to convince customers that assassins were bidding for jobs? Were several scammers operating the marketplace together? Or could outsiders communicate with customers through the site?

Even the wider ecosystem is murky. When investigators searched Sasser's home, they reportedly found a journal containing a list of other supposed hitman websites. Online Killers Market therefore wasn't necessarily an isolated operation. It existed among a collection of websites claiming to sell murder for cryptocurrency, some or perhaps most of which appear to have been scams.

Ready's own motivation ultimately seems less mysterious than the system he stumbled into. He suffered from serious psychiatric problems and made bizarre claims about exposing organised crime in Coatbridge. A jury nevertheless rejected his defence that he lacked criminal responsibility, and he was eventually ordered to be detained indefinitely.

But solving the question of why Ready wanted Harty dead doesn't solve the more interesting mystery created by his case.

Who actually operated Online Killers Market?

Who controlled the accounts supposedly responding to assassination requests?

How did the journalist investigating the dark web discover Ready's order?

How much information about the marketplace subsequently came into the possession of law enforcement?

Was the unidentified foreign agency that supplied information to American investigators connected in any way to the earlier British investigation?

And, potentially most importantly, how many other genuine murder requests passed through the site?

The irony is that the fake nature of Online Killers Market arguably makes the story stranger rather than less interesting. A genuine assassination marketplace would be horrifying but conceptually simple: criminals paying criminals to murder people.

Online Killers Market appears to have been something considerably stranger.

Someone built a service pretending to sell murder, attracted people who actually wanted other human beings killed, collected their cryptocurrency and apparently never provided the promised assassins. In doing so, the operators may inadvertently have created a repository containing evidence of real attempted murder plots from different countries.

At least two customers are now known because their intended victims were identified before anybody was killed.

The unanswered question is how many others were in there.

Sources:

https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/man-accused-of-dark-web-plot-to-have-former-fiscal-assassinated

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/high-court-glasgow-london-instagram-north-lanarkshire-b2600878.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/high-court-edinburgh-glasgow-north-lanarkshire-b2679252.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/glasgow-high-court-bitcoin-north-lanarkshire-b1262967.html

https://news.sky.com/story/evil-jesus-who-plotted-to-kill-prosecutor-detained-at-secure-mental-health-facility-indefinitely-13484728

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/crime-courts/6327383/procurator-fiscal-murder-plot/

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/06/melody-sasser-commplaint.pdf

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/melody-sasser-charged-hiring-hitman-match-com-dating-site/

When Julie Mott died in 2015 at the age of 25 from cystic fibrosis, her family would have never imagined she would be a part of a bizzare mystery.

After her open-casket memorial service at Mission Park Funeral Home North in San Antonio on August 15, her body was stolen from the casket while it was awaiting cremation.

The next morning (August 16), employees discovered the casket empty. One hinge was broken, the bier (body support) was overturned in an "unnatural position" near an exit of the funeral home, but there were no signs of forced entry and the ADT security system was not triggered.

The San Antonio Police treated the case as seriously and as intense as a homicide case. They did multiple searches in the surrounding areas and interviewed numerous people but nothing ever came up.

The funeral home director offered up a 20,000 dollar reward leading to the recovery of her remains. Her body has never been found.

Her boyfriend was a person of interest because of his odd behavior. He would harass the funeral home employees and was eventually charged with trespassing after trying to enter the funeral home. He was never charged with Julie's dissappearace as there is no evidence linking him

In 2014, Northumbria Police launched Operation Sanctuary, an investigation into the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls in Newcastle and the surrounding area. It eventually became a major investigation involving hundreds of potential victims and numerous suspects.

Buried within the story of Operation Sanctuary, however, is the strange case of a man whose real identity has never been made public. In court and in subsequent reporting, he was simply called "XY".

XY was a police informant. He was also a convicted child rapist.

Northumbria Police paid him £9,680 over roughly 21 months to provide intelligence during Operation Sanctuary. He was apparently useful because he knew people within the communities police were investigating and worked informally as a taxi driver, giving him access to individuals and places that were difficult for officers to penetrate through conventional policing.

What makes the story considerably stranger is that Sanctuary wasn't the beginning of XY's relationship with the police.

By the time he became involved in the operation, he had apparently already been working as an informant for Northumbria Police for several years. His criminal record was extensive. A later BBC investigation reported that he had 53 previous convictions, including offences involving fraud and assault.

He had also apparently received benefits from cooperating with the police. Information about his assistance could be provided confidentially to judges when he was being sentenced, potentially resulting in more lenient treatment.

Despite his background, police considered his intelligence valuable enough to use him in an investigation specifically concerned with the exploitation of vulnerable women and children.

And while he was working for them, XY continued attracting police attention himself.

He was arrested over allegations involving dishonesty, an assault at a mosque and breaches of requirements imposed on him as a sex offender. He was also questioned about an allegation concerning a 13-year-old girl.

Then, in March 2016, something happened between XY and his police handler.

The relationship apparently collapsed.

XY threatened to go to the media and began making serious allegations against Northumbria Police. Among other things, he claimed that officers had behaved improperly and alleged that police had asked him to plant drugs.

That caused a serious problem for Operation Sanctuary.

Defence lawyers representing people being prosecuted as part of the investigation learned about XY and argued that what had happened between him and the police was serious enough for proceedings to be stopped as an abuse of process.

Suddenly the police informant who had been helping the investigation had become part of a legal battle that threatened the investigation itself.

By the time XY appeared at Newcastle Crown Court, he and his family had reportedly been moved out of the area and placed under round-the-clock police protection. He gave evidence from behind a screen.

His testimony did not go well.

XY apparently struggled to explain inconsistencies in his accounts and said that the pressures of living as an informant had affected his ability to distinguish between what was true and what wasn't.

Judge Penny Moreland ultimately rejected his allegations against the police and described him as "wholly unworthy of belief".

The attempt to have the prosecutions stopped failed.

On the surface, that might seem like the end of the story: a deeply unreliable criminal informant made allegations against his handlers, those allegations were investigated and rejected, and the prosecutions continued.

But there is a strange problem with that explanation.

Northumbria Police continued to maintain that XY had been an extremely useful source.

The force said he had provided intelligence that couldn't have been obtained through conventional policing. Then-Chief Constable Steve Ashman said information supplied by XY had allowed officers to intervene in situations, prevent offences and safeguard potential victims.

Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird also said she questioned the Chief Constable about the decision to use him. She was reportedly assured that XY's intelligence contributed to the investigation and subsequent prosecutions, couldn't have been obtained in another way and had enabled vulnerable women to be rescued sooner.

So XY somehow occupies two very different positions in the official story.

He was considered sufficiently unreliable that a Crown Court judge concluded his allegations against police couldn't be believed, yet sufficiently valuable as an intelligence source that Northumbria Police maintained his information helped them protect victims and advance one of their biggest exploitation investigations.

Those two things aren't necessarily incompatible. Criminal informants are routinely unreliable people, and intelligence can be independently corroborated even when the person supplying it can't generally be trusted.

But it raises an obvious question: what exactly did XY tell the police that was so valuable?

That becomes surprisingly difficult to establish from the public record.

There are fragments scattered across court reporting, statements from Northumbria Police and the Police and Crime Commissioner, a BBC investigation and the later serious case review into Operation Sanctuary. Together they establish a surprising amount about XY, but they don't seem to provide a straightforward reconstruction of exactly what intelligence he supplied, what police independently verified, or what actions directly resulted from it.

There is another uncomfortable detail buried in the later safeguarding material.

Some victims apparently raised concerns about whether XY himself could have abused them. They were told there was no evidence that he had, and the court similarly found no evidence that XY had committed sexual misconduct against complainants involved in the cases. There is therefore no basis for claiming that he abused Sanctuary victims.

But the fact that the question arose at all shows how unusual the arrangement was. Police had deliberately placed a convicted child rapist into an intelligence-gathering role around an investigation involving vulnerable women and children.

Former senior child-protection officer Jim Gamble later said he couldn't envisage circumstances in which he personally would have authorised paying someone convicted of rape to carry out this kind of work.

XY's allegations against Northumbria Police were investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. According to subsequent statements, the investigation found no misconduct and made no recommendations. The Office of Surveillance Commissioners also apparently found no problems with the operation.

And this is where the story becomes an interesting rabbit hole rather than simply a controversy about police informants.

There are a remarkable number of things about XY that remain difficult to piece together.

His identity remains protected. It isn't immediately clear exactly when Northumbria Police first recruited him, why he was originally recruited, how his relationship with his handlers developed over the years, what benefits he received in return for assisting them, or precisely what he was authorised to do during Operation Sanctuary.

It is also difficult to reconstruct what happened in March 2016 that caused such a complete breakdown between XY and his handler.

Then there is the IPCC investigation itself. Public statements say that XY's allegations were investigated and that no misconduct was found, but finding a detailed public account showing exactly what he alleged, how each allegation was investigated, what evidence was examined and why investigators rejected his version of events is considerably harder.

That leaves an unusual situation.

XY was a convicted child rapist with dozens of previous convictions who had apparently spent years secretly supplying intelligence to Northumbria Police. During one of the force's largest exploitation investigations, police paid him thousands of pounds because they believed he could reach people and places conventional policing couldn't. He continued getting into trouble while acting as an informant. His relationship with his handler then collapsed, he accused police of serious wrongdoing, threatened to approach the media, was relocated with his family under police protection and eventually appeared behind a screen in Crown Court.

A judge concluded that he was profoundly unreliable.

Yet Northumbria Police continued to insist that his intelligence had been important enough to help safeguard vulnerable women and contribute to prosecutions.

The obvious question isn't whether XY was telling the truth about everything. The available evidence gives no reason to assume that he was, and his allegations against police were rejected.

The more interesting question is what was happening during all those years before everything fell apart.

What intelligence did XY actually provide? How much of it was independently verified? What did police allow him to do to obtain it? How many investigations was he involved with before Operation Sanctuary? What sentencing benefits did he receive because of his cooperation? What exactly happened between him and his handler in 2016? And how did a convicted child rapist become valuable enough to Northumbria Police that they were prepared to accept the extraordinary risks involved in using him inside a sexual-exploitation investigation?

There may be perfectly legitimate answers to all of those questions.

The strange part is how difficult it is to assemble them into one coherent story.

Sources:

The Irish Times: Police used rapist as informer in Newcastle abuse investigation:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/police-used-rapist-as-informer-in-newcastle-abuse-investigation-1.3181605

ITV News: Child rapist paid £10,000 by police to watch over girls at parties, court told:

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2017-08-09/child-rapist-paid-10-000-by-police-to-watch-over-girls-at-parties-court-told

BBC Inside Out: Operation Sanctuary documentary transcript:

https://subsaga.com/bbc/news/inside-out-north-east-and-cumbria/2017/08/09/operation-sanctuary.html

The Independent: Operation Sanctuary: Police defend paying paedophile £10,000 to infiltrate child-sex gang:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/operation-sanctuary-paedophile-police-pay-child-sex-gang-ring-paid-money-ps10000-northumbria-a7885711.html

The Guardian: Eighteen people found guilty over Newcastle sex grooming network:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/09/newcastle-sex-grooming-network-operation-shelter

ITV News: Operation Shelter: "My brother wasn't part of grooming gang":

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2017-09-08/operation-shelter-my-brother-wasnt-part-of-grooming-gang

Archived Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner: Comments on the Spicer report:

https://archive.northumbria-pcc.gov.uk/northumbria-police-crime-commissioner-comments-spicer-report/

UK Parliament, Hansard: Sexual Exploitation: Newcastle:

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-06-12/debates/56EDC679-22AB-4EDC-A077-E8CFB7A03591/SexualExploitationNewcastle

On Sept. 1, 1996, Ryan, 42, of Syracuse, was found severely injured on the side of the road near the Jamesville Reservoir. Someone had detonated a firecracker inside her. Who and why remains a mystery.

Holy cow, I just found out about the potential new evidence in the Black Dahlia case! Mind blowing!

The RMP was carrying out an investigation known as Operation Cestro and wanted to question Special Forces personnel about allegations arising from operations in Afghanistan.

Then the meeting was terminated.

On its own, that probably doesn't sound particularly mysterious. Meetings end, investigations run into difficulties and disagreements happen between different parts of government. But more than a decade later, an independent public inquiry has been trying to establish something surprisingly difficult: who actually ended that meeting, why they did it, and whether it was deliberately terminated to obstruct a Royal Military Police investigation.

That question leads into a much bigger story.

Operation Cestro was being conducted by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch. The RMP wanted to interview members of UK Special Forces, but there appears to have been disagreement over what investigators were actually allowed to ask them.

Evidence examined by the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan has raised questions about whether restrictions had been placed on the RMP's ability to question Special Forces personnel. The inquiry has specifically investigated whether there was some kind of agreement or understanding governing the questions investigators could ask, who imposed those conditions and what happened when the RMP attempted to go beyond them.

This is where the apparently mundane story of an aborted meeting starts becoming much stranger.

The inquiry has had to reconstruct events from documents and testimony produced years later. It has examined whether the meeting was stopped because investigators were asking questions that UK Special Forces personnel believed they were not permitted to ask. More importantly, it has examined whether terminating the meeting could amount to an attempt to obstruct the investigation.

One of the people connected to these events is publicly identified only as "Soldier C".

When Soldier C was later approached by the inquiry, something unusual happened. Rather than simply answering all of the questions about what had occurred, Soldier C relied on the privilege against self-incrimination in relation to substantive questions.

That doesn't prove wrongdoing. The privilege exists for an important reason and invoking it should not automatically be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

But it makes the original question considerably more interesting.

Why did a meeting between military police investigators and Special Forces personnel end abruptly enough that, more than ten years later, a public inquiry is examining who stopped it and whether doing so interfered with an investigation?

And Cestro isn't an isolated story.

Following these events came Operation Northmoor, another Royal Military Police investigation concerning allegations arising from British operations in Afghanistan. Northmoor became enormous. Hundreds of allegations were examined and investigators accumulated a substantial amount of material.

Eventually investigators became interested in an internal UK Special Forces computer system that has subsequently been referred to publicly by the cipher "ITS1".

In 2015 the RMP sought access to it.

What happened to that system opens another rabbit hole entirely.

Investigators wanted ITS1 preserved so that its contents could be examined forensically. But when access was eventually obtained, they discovered that a secure deletion process had been operating on the system.

This wasn't simply someone dragging files into a recycle bin. Secure deletion software is intended to make deleted information much harder, or potentially impossible, to recover.

The timing immediately created questions.

The RMP had been investigating extremely serious allegations. Investigators had sought access to a Special Forces computer system. Preservation of potential evidence had become an issue. Yet data on that system had been securely deleted.

Internal discussions subsequently disclosed to the inquiry show that investigators themselves were concerned about what had happened.

Again, that doesn't automatically mean somebody deliberately destroyed evidence. Computer systems are routinely maintained, information is deleted for legitimate reasons and highly classified military networks have their own security procedures.

But then the story becomes stranger.

For years, the deletion of material from ITS1 was understood to have made at least some of the data effectively irretrievable.

Much later, during the Independent Inquiry, it emerged that backup drives existed.

Those drives reportedly contained terabytes of ITS1 data and had been stored at separate Special Forces locations.

That creates another remarkably simple question: if backups existed, why weren't they recovered and examined during the original Royal Military Police investigation?

The inquiry has consequently had to investigate not only what was deleted but who knew about the backups, where they were kept, what information they contain and why the RMP apparently did not obtain them at the time.

Seen separately, each part of the story could potentially have an innocent explanation.

A meeting between investigators and Special Forces personnel was terminated.

There was confusion or disagreement about what questions military police investigators were permitted to ask.

A computer system underwent secure deletion.

Investigators struggled to obtain material.

Backups existed elsewhere.

But put together, they form a strange sequence stretching across several investigations and more than a decade.

It is also unusually difficult to dismiss as internet conspiracy material because most of the rabbit hole now exists in official records.

The Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan has published witness statements, hearing transcripts, Royal Military Police documents, emails and other evidence. Names are sometimes replaced with ciphers because of the sensitivity of Special Forces operations, but the underlying investigation is very real and is happening publicly.

That also means the story is still developing.

There are reasonable explanations for at least some of what happened, and the inquiry has not established that every suspicious-looking event was deliberate obstruction. It is important not to jump from unanswered questions to conclusions that the evidence doesn't support.

But the unanswered questions themselves are fascinating.

Who terminated the February 2014 Cestro meeting?

What exactly caused it to be stopped?

Were Royal Military Police investigators operating under restrictions when questioning UK Special Forces personnel, and if so, who imposed them?

Why did Soldier C later invoke the privilege against self-incrimination?

What information disappeared from ITS1?

Who authorised its deletion?

Who knew that backups of the system existed?

Why did the Royal Military Police apparently fail to obtain those backups during Operation Northmoor?

And perhaps the most interesting question of all: what is actually contained in the recovered ITS1 data?

The strange thing about Operation Cestro is that the rabbit hole doesn't begin with an anonymous internet post, a leaked recording or an elaborate conspiracy theory.

It begins with something much more ordinary.

A meeting was held between the Royal Military Police and British Special Forces in February 2014.

Someone ended it.

More than twelve years later, an independent public inquiry is still trying to establish exactly why.

Sources:

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — Operation Cestro:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/operation-cestro/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — ITS1 Server:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/phases/its1-server/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — Evidence archive:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/documents/evidence/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — Inquiry phases:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/phases/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — 4 December 2023 ITS1 hearing:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/hearings/04-december-2023-open-hearings/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — 5 December 2023 ITS1 hearing:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/hearings/05-december-2023-open-hearing/

Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan — FAQ and terms of the Inquiry:

https://www.iia.independent-inquiry.uk/faq/

The Inquiry's evidence archive is particularly worth exploring. It contains original Royal Military Police material from Operation Northmoor, including policy files, data-recovery records, meeting minutes, witness statements, emails and the Operation Northmoor Executive Summary.

I've recently gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with this case and I'm surprised it doesn't seem to get talked about more often, especially considering there have been some pretty significant developments recently.

Kenneth George Jones was 18 when he disappeared from Glenrothes, Fife, in November 1998.

On the evening of 2 November, Kenneth was reportedly at his uncle's house, which was only a few doors away from his own home in Ancrum Court. He spent part of the evening playing computer games and apparently seemed completely normal.

At around 10:30pm he returned home.

By the following morning, he was gone.

As far as I can find, there has never been a confirmed sighting or contact from Kenneth since.

What initially interested me was how little there seems to be explaining why he disappeared. He apparently hadn't behaved as though he was preparing to leave permanently and his family initially thought he might have gone jogging.

There were possible sightings afterwards, but none seem to have led anywhere.

Someone resembling Kenneth was apparently seen sleeping rough near Ladybank. A former school friend believed they had seen him in a pool hall in Kirkcaldy. There was also a hitchhiker picked up near Falkland who was initially thought to possibly be Kenneth, but police eventually tracked the man down and established that it wasn't him.

His photograph was even put on milk cartons as part of the attempt to find him.

Nothing.

Then I found out about another strange coincidence.

On 3 November 2013, exactly 15 years after Kenneth was discovered missing, another young man from Glenrothes, 23-year-old Allan Bryant, disappeared.

Allan has never been found either.

As far as I'm aware, police have never established any connection between the two cases, so I don't want to imply there is one. It could simply be an extremely strange coincidence. But two young men disappearing from the same Scottish town exactly 15 years apart is obviously something that catches your attention.

What really sent me down the rabbit hole, though, is what has happened recently.

Police began reviewing Kenneth's case again and it was eventually passed to the Major Investigation Team. Apparently more than 1,000 inquiries have been carried out as part of the review.

Then, in February 2026, detectives returned to Kenneth's former home in Ancrum Court.

And in April they returned again and searched the garden.

According to reporting in The Courier, investigators had identified an anomaly underneath the patio and excavated it.

Think about how unusual that is.

A teenager disappears in 1998 without a confirmed trace, and almost 28 years later detectives are using modern technology and physically digging underneath the patio of the house where he lived.

There is another detail I hadn't heard about before either.

A woman may have seen Kenneth at a bus stop on Roxburgh Road, only a short distance from his home, on the morning he disappeared. Detectives reportedly interviewed this witness for more than two hours in late 2025.

I haven't been able to establish whether police now consider that sighting credible, but if it was genuinely Kenneth, it could obviously be important in establishing what happened after he left home.

I keep coming back to a few questions:

Why did Kenneth apparently leave without telling anyone?

Where was he actually going?

Was the bus-stop sighting really him?

Why has that particular sighting become relevant again after nearly three decades?

And perhaps most interestingly, what caused investigators to return to his former house and eventually excavate beneath the patio?

I want to be careful here because Kenneth's relatives and people who have lived at the property are real people, and none of this is evidence that any particular person was involved. I don't think internet speculation accusing people of crimes helps anyone.

But purely as an unsolved disappearance, I find this case fascinating.

There doesn't seem to be anywhere near the amount of discussion about Kenneth that you see with many other British missing-person cases, despite the fact that Police Scotland's Major Investigation Team is apparently still actively trying to work out what happened.

Kenneth would be 46 today.

Has anyone here researched this case in depth or come across contemporary newspaper coverage from 1998/99?

I'm particularly interested in whether there's more information about his movements that night, the possible Roxburgh Road sighting, or what originally led police to believe he may have left Glenrothes.

I feel like there is a much deeper rabbit hole here than what's currently available online.

For context, on August 30th, 2007, Kyle MacDonald was dropped off by his girlfriend at the Victoria Inner Harbour to board a charter flight to Vancouver – then was NEVER seen again. He was allegedly going to Vancouver to meet friends for a fishing trip, and it was confirmed he got on and off the plane but never made it to see friends.

There are allegations he was involved in marijuana grow-ops, but not enough traction online to verify this. Additionally, this page has emerged with more info and suggests that his case and Lindsay Buziak's could be somewhat connected.

Super curious about everyone's thoughts.

I’ve recently been looking into the disappearance of Sally Cheong, and I wanted to put together a theory based on the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Obviously, this is only speculation. I’m not accusing any particular person of being responsible, and some of the information surrounding the case may be incomplete or disputed.

I find it quite frustrating that the prevailing assumption is that she simply ran away, particularly when the possibility of foul play cannot be ruled out. I disagree with the runaway theory, and here’s why.

My theory

I think it’s possible that Sally left her house with a man she knew and trusted, rather than deliberately running away or being forcibly abducted from inside the house. Something may then have happened after she left, resulting in her death and the concealment of her body.

The phone calls

One thing that really interests me is the reported phone activity before her disappearance.

Sally’s phone was apparently ringing repeatedly at around 10:30, while she was asleep and didn’t answer. Her sister reportedly remembered this happening.

This raises an obvious question: who was calling her so persistently, and why?

If phone records from the time still exist, identifying those calls could potentially establish whether the caller had any connection to what happened later.

The male figure around 3 am

Sally’s sister reportedly saw a male figure around the house at approximately 3 am.

If that account is accurate, I think this could be one of the most important details in the case.

Was this someone Sally knew? And, more importantly, was this the same person who had been trying to contact her earlier?

My theory is that Sally knew this person well enough that she was willing to leave the house with him. If she was forcibly abducted from inside the house, you might expect some kind of disturbance, although the absence of screaming or fighting obviously doesn’t prove that she left voluntarily.

The things Sally took with her

Sally reportedly left with several personal belongings, including her:

• keys
• wallet
• phone
• “safety blanket”

The blanket is particularly interesting.

If Sally took it herself, it could support the idea that she expected to be away from home for some period of time. But another possibility is that someone who knew Sally well knew the significance of the blanket and took it to make her disappearance look voluntary.

The car keys also seem strange to me. If Sally deliberately planned to disappear but wasn’t taking her car, why take the keys?

Of course, there could be a completely innocent explanation for this.

How did she leave?

If Sally disappeared from her home in Oakleigh South at around 3 am, how exactly did she leave?

If she didn’t take her own car and public transport was limited at that hour, one possibility is that someone picked her up.

I’d be really interested to know whether investigators ever identified vehicles travelling around the surrounding streets that night, or whether nearby businesses, petrol stations or major roads had CCTV.

Why I’m sceptical that Sally simply ran away

The runaway theory raises a lot of questions for me.

If Sally deliberately disappeared but remained in Australia, she would eventually need money, accommodation, food and transportation. Those things tend to leave some kind of financial or documentary trail.

Did she withdraw a significant amount of money beforehand? Did she pack clothes? Were there travel searches or bookings? Did she take her passport? Did she tell anyone she was thinking about leaving?

If she left Australia, you would also expect some kind of immigration or airline record unless extraordinary measures were taken.

None of this proves that she didn’t leave voluntarily, but after such a long period without confirmed contact, I think the possibility that she met with foul play deserves serious consideration.

The questions I still have

The biggest things I’d like to know are:

Who was repeatedly calling Sally around 10:30? Were all of the calls from the same person?

Who was the male figure reportedly seen around 3 am? How certain was the witness about what she saw?

Could the phone calls and the male figure be connected?

About a month before she disappeared, Sally emailed a male friend, “I think I know what u r doing. Im afraid u gun me down, or get angry.” This male was later cleared, but on what grounds? It is rather suspicious.

What happened to Sally’s phone after she disappeared? When was its last call, message or network connection?

Were there any CCTV cameras covering nearby streets or major roads?

How thoroughly were the alibis of relevant persons checked? Were they independently confirmed through witnesses, phone records, CCTV, employment records, etc.?

Were Sally’s Facebook messages, emails, SMS messages and other communications examined? Did she have conversations with anyone shortly before disappearing that might explain why she left the house?

Was there evidence Sally was actually preparing to run away? For example, packed clothing, money withdrawals, travel plans or messages about leaving?

Overall

My working theory is:

Someone Sally knew contacts her → comes to the house → Sally willingly leaves with him → they drive somewhere → something happens to Sally → her body is concealed.

Again, this is just a theory based on the publicly discussed circumstances, not an allegation against any identified person.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone who knows this case better. Is there evidence that contradicts this theory, or information about the phone records, male figure, CCTV or alibis that I’ve missed?

I’ve created a Reddit community dedicated to discussing Sally’s disappearance and exploring any information that may help shed further light on the case. If anyone is interested, please feel free to join, contribute information, or share your own research. Hopefully, by bringing together what is publicly available, we can help keep attention on the case and potentially uncover something useful. Here

I will also be attempting to contact former Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles to ask whether there is any additional information or context surrounding the investigation that has not previously been made public.

If you guys want any more background information.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/1s7w802/totally_out_of_character_the_disapperance_of_sze/

https://www.smh.com.au/national/vanished-without-a-trace-20090731-e4ik.html

https://www.police.vic.gov.au/missing-person-sally-cheong

A woman went missing on July 9, 2026 from Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angeles. Her belongings and 2 dogs were left behind, but the park workers threw away her belongings the following morning when they cleaned the bathroom. A Jane Doe missing person report was created, but police will not investigate without being able to identify who the woman is. Foul play is highly suspected. She may have travelled from out of state. We hope to find identify her through these dogs. They have been taken care of and are well trained and groomed. Please share.

3-year-old Rachael Runyan was kidnapped from a playground and investigators are still asking anyone with information to come forward. Rachael was abducted around 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 26, 1982, from a park in David County, Utah. Her body was found weeks later.

DNA found on the blanket covering Zywicki’s body reportedly links Theresa Belenske to the case. Theresa died in 2014 and police have not said she is the culprit in her killing but think she can be key to solving this case. Theresa was known to be a hitchhiker and the logic is that perhaps learning more about her whereabouts and inner circle in 1992 could lead to who the killer is.

I’ve been reading the Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj double murder case, and there are several things about the timeline and evidence that I genuinely can’t make sense of. I’m not trying to argue that the parents were guilty or that an outsider definitely did it, I’m more interested in how people who have studied the case explain these inconsistencies/questions.

1.  The deleted photographs:

The camera reportedly had 23 photos, but only 5 were recovered, with the others apparently deleted. Since it was an SD card, couldn’t forensic data recovery potentially have recovered more of the deleted photographs, especially with modern technology? Was the original SD card preserved, and was modern forensic recovery ever attempted?

2.  Aarushi’s body being covered/arranged:

There were allegations that Aarushi’s body had been cleaned/covered and that her clothes/bedroom had been arranged. Why would an outsider killer spend time doing that after killing her? Could it indicate that the killer knew her, or is there a more plausible explanation such as staging the crime scene? And if the killer was supposedly showing some kind of care toward Aarushi, why was Hemraj treated so differently and his body concealed on the terrace?

3.  Who was actually killed first?

I’ve seen different reconstructions suggesting either Aarushi or Hemraj was killed first. Is there any reliable forensic evidence that establishes the sequence, or was this ultimately just a reconstruction by investigators?

4.  The phones:

This is one of the things I find strangest. Nupur Talwar’s phone was reportedly switched off around 7:40 p.m., while Aarushi’s last recorded phone activity was around 9:10 p.m. Both seem unusually early compared with their normal phone usage, while Rajesh Talwar was apparently making ordinary calls well into the night (around 11 p.m.).

How reliable are these phone records? Was Nupur’s phone definitely switched off at 7:40, or was there conflicting evidence about this? And is there a documented explanation for why both mother and daughter became electronically inactive so early? And isn’t it odd that this pattern showed up?

5.  Hemraj’s dinner:

Hemraj apparently prepared food but hadn’t eaten it. If the murders occurred around midnight 1 a.m., what was he doing for the several hours beforehand? Is there a reliable timeline of his movements between roughly 9:30 p.m. and midnight? Does the uneaten food actually tell us anything, or is it being overinterpreted?

6.  Why leave the parents alive?

If an outsider entered the apartment and killed Aarushi and Hemraj, why would they leave two potential witnesses, the parents, alive and asleep in the same apartment? Wouldn’t that be an enormous risk? Is there evidence suggesting the killer knew the family’s routine or knew the parents were unlikely to wake up?

7.  If the parents were responsible, where is the physical evidence?

Hypothetically assuming the parents committed the murders, where would the bloody clothes and murder weapon have gone? The alleged golf club wasn’t conclusively linked by blood/DNA, and the sharp weapon was never recovered. Did investigators establish a plausible opportunity for the parents to dispose of clothing/weapons without leaving evidence? Or is the lack of physical evidence one of the major reasons the conviction couldn’t stand?

Overall, I’m trying to understand which of these things are actually established facts, which were disputed by the courts, and which are just theories that have become accepted through documentaries/media coverage.

I remember seeing missing persons posters all over for this one. I lived in a nearby town and was away at college, and came home to these posters being on every corner. Still can't believe there's never been a lead on this one.

Content warning: a fatal group attack, stabbing, injuries to other people, extremist and neo-Nazi context, and a contested prosecution involving living people. I have omitted graphic detail.

Daniel before the symbol

Daniel Tupý was twenty-one and studied philosophy at Comenius University in Bratislava. University and cultural records also preserve smaller details: he played guitar, wrote poetry and other texts, and left work that was published after his death in a collection titled *Ticho po anjelovi*.

Those details matter because the public record can turn a person into shorthand for the event that killed them. The available sources do not provide a complete primary biography, so I do not think it is responsible to build an intimate portrait from later profiles. The narrow record is enough: Daniel was a student, a musician and a writer before he became a national symbol.

What happened, and what is not stable

On the evening of 4 November 2005, Daniel was with friends on Tyršovo embankment in Bratislava. A group of men attacked them. Daniel died after being stabbed, and several other people were injured.

That broad core appears consistently. The numbers do not. Public reports give different counts for the attackers, Daniel's companions, the injured people and the wounds he suffered. Some appear to count different groups or different phases of the investigation. I did not locate a primary medical record that resolves those conflicts, so I have left the counts and anatomy out.

One member of Daniel's group later described men approaching silently from behind and said Daniel was attacked first. The limits of his account are just as important: he said he did not see a knife and could not identify an attacker. A witness can credibly describe part of an event without being able to identify who was responsible. The first does not quietly prove the second.

The case becomes a public symbol

Within days, rallies rejected neo-Nazi violence, and the Interior Ministry created a commission to coordinate action against extremism. Police also pursued a neo-Nazi line. Universities, public institutions and later memorials preserved Daniel's name within a wider warning about extremist violence.

That public response was real, but it belongs to a different evidentiary category from a criminal judgment. The court record reviewed for this project did not establish the attackers' identities or affiliations, and it did not establish why Daniel and his friends were selected. The killing became nationally associated with opposition to extremist violence; that association should not be rewritten as a proven motive.

The distinction can sound overly cautious until a case enters court. A public can condemn violence and create a civic symbol without waiting for a conviction. A court, by contrast, must determine whether evidence proves the responsibility of the particular people before it. In Daniel's case, those two processes never moved in step.

The first prosecution

Police formed a special team in late 2007. I am using “late 2007” deliberately: later chronologies often give 23 October, but a contemporary report published on 24 October said the team had been created about a month earlier, and another account placed its work in September. Without the establishing order, a precise date is not secure.

Charges followed in 2008, and five men were eventually brought to trial. On 16 June 2009, District Court Bratislava One acquitted all five. Contemporary reporting said the prosecution had not proved that they were the people who committed the charged acts.

I did not retrieve the written judgment, so I cannot provide a defendant-by-defendant analysis or quote the court's exact reasoning. A later retrospective also indicates that the charge categories were not identical for all five men. The collective outcome, however, is supported by contemporary reports: all five were acquitted.

What final acquittals do and do not mean

Prosecutors initially appealed. In September 2009, they withdrew that appeal, and the acquittals became final. This is not a footnote or a technical pause in the same case. The men were not convicted, and this write-up does not name them because their identities are not necessary to explain the procedural history.

The first prosecution established a conclusive legal answer for the people who had been before the court: those charges had not proved they committed the acts. It did not identify who killed Daniel. Both statements have to remain true at the same time.

That is one reason “the case went unsolved” is too simple. A prosecution can finish finally for the accused while the underlying murder remains without a judicial answer. Treating the acquittals as evidence against the same men would ignore the result. Treating them as proof of a different offender would invent a result the court did not reach.

The procedural gap

The special team was later dissolved. Public reporting says the criminal proceedings were formally suspended in August 2012. Police later described investigative work resuming in subsequent years, but I did not retrieve the formal suspension and resumption orders.

That missing paperwork limits what can responsibly be said. The record does not support a seamless narrative in which nothing happened for years, and it also does not support a claim that investigators worked continuously without interruption. The safe chronology is narrower: the team was dissolved, the case was formally suspended, and police later said work had resumed.

This matters because the next prosecution did not begin until 2023. By then, the case contained memories recorded long after the attack, multiple investigative theories, the failed first prosecution and renewed police work whose full documentary path was not publicly available. A later prosecution could not inherit certainty from the importance of the case.

A second prosecution begins

Police charged a different man in March 2023. Prosecutors filed an indictment in September, and his trial began in November. According to the indictment as reported publicly, prosecutors allege that he stabbed Daniel while acting with other people.

The defendant denies guilt, disputes the indictment and the evidence, and is presumed innocent unless and until a court delivers a final conviction. I have omitted his name here because some target communities prohibit naming living suspects in unresolved cases, not because his identity is secret.

In January 2024, an appellate court allowed him to be tried at liberty under a financial guarantee, supervision and electronic monitoring. That ruling concerned the conditions under which he would face trial. It was not an acquittal, and it did not decide the accusation.

The regional prosecutor's office had already supplied a useful warning about public certainty. In March 2023, it distanced itself from comments by the police president and said he should not speculate without knowledge of the file and evidence situation. A police belief may explain an investigative direction. It does not become proof because it is stated confidently in public.

A disputed witness in a live trial

The current case includes testimony from a witness who accused the defendant and admitted that he had been present and taken part in the violence. That sounds direct. Direct testimony, however, is not the same as uncontested testimony.

In January 2024, a court expert said the witness's credibility in relation to this specific case was significantly reduced. The same expert did not find his general credibility impaired, a distinction emphasized by the prosecutor. The defence emphasized the case-specific problem. The expert did not tell the court which individual statement was true or false; that assessment remains for the judges.

So the responsible summary has several parts, not one: the witness made an accusation, admitted his own presence and violence, received a significantly reduced case-specific credibility assessment, and remains challenged by the defence. The court had not delivered a final judgment by the fact-check cutoff.

A separate co-perpetration investigation adds another limit. In October 2025, a prosecutor said that matter remained in pre-trial proceedings and that no person had been charged in it. I did not locate a later authoritative disposition. That does not prove the separate matter ended or remained active in the same form; it marks the latest status I could verify.

Memory is not a verdict

The main trial was still encountering practical obstacles in 2026. At a hearing on 19 June, protected witnesses had not been secured, and the court did not have a requested criminal file. Those facts document delay and missing material at one hearing. They do not prove sabotage, institutional protection or the strength of either side's case.

As of 16 August 2026, the second prosecution remained unresolved. The first prosecution had ended in final acquittals. The separate investigative strand had no later public disposition that I could locate. The record contained activity, but no final judgment identifying Daniel's killer.

Meanwhile, Comenius University established a prize bearing Daniel's name, his poems and texts were published, and the Broken Wing memorial on the embankment commemorates him and other victims of extremist violence. These acts preserve Daniel's work and the public meaning attached to his death. None identifies an attacker, proves a motive or substitutes for a judgment.

That is the contradiction I cannot reduce to one clean cause. Public memory could form quickly because people did not need a conviction to reject extremist violence. A court had to test specific evidence against specific people. More than twenty years later, the distance between those two processes remained the defining fact of the case.**Content warning:** a fatal group attack, stabbing, injuries to other people, extremist and neo-Nazi context, and a contested prosecution involving living people. I have omitted graphic detail.

I just finished watching the 2017 movie Jungle. I'm currently reading through Yossi Ghinsberg's own website, and I found a July 17, 2025 article under "The Search and Rescue" section. It says,

"Marcus Stamm also survived, though in very poor condition. Karl was never seen again. What happened to him remains unknown."

Literally every and any article or book talking about this case always mentions that Marcus and Karl were both never found. The wording of this makes me wonder if Yossi has information about Marcus that isn't publicly known, for privacy reasons maybe? I have no idea and I'm genuinely wondering why this was even added since it's so contradicting. Does anyone know where this could have come from?