11 International Unsolved Crimes That Americans Have Never Heard Of

The United States frequently generates sensational and disturbing crimes that make headlines all over the world. The Kennedy assassination, the Manson Family murders, and the OJ Simpson trial are just a few of the media spectacles that became recognizable worldwide. Typically, Americans are not as aware of crimes that occur outside our borders, even when those crimes mystified and terrified the local population. But these crimes are no less compelling because they occurred outside the American media spotlight. Here is a list of some of the world's most baffling and sensational crimes that aren't as recognizable in the United States - yer.

In August of 1966, an individual was flying a kite on Vintem Hill in Brazil when he found two adult male dead bodies. The men were identified as Miguel Viana and Manuel Pereira Da Cruz. Strangely, they were dressed in suits and raincoats, with crude lead masks covering their eyes. Police noted an empty water bottle nearby and a small notebook with a cryptic message inside in Portuguese: "16:30 be at the agreed place. 18:30 swallow capsules, after effect protect metals wait for mask sign.” 

An autopsy turned up no trace of anything inappropriate; however, there was a long delay before the autopsy that might have invalidated any testing that was done. Further investigation turned up the fact that both men were UFO enthusiasts and clearly were on the verge of ingesting something that might be dangerous. There were rumors of UFO sightings in the area, which might explain what drew the men there. The masks turned out to be homemade by the men themselves.

What happened to these two men remains a mystery to this day. 

Jill Dando was a British BBC television journalist and on-camera broadcaster who was shot to death on April 26, 1999. One of Britain's most recognizable television personalities, she hosted the program Crimewatch, which coincidentally broadcast information about unsolved crimes.

After leaving the home of her boyfriend on the morning of April 26, she arrived at her own home in suburban London. As she was opening her front door, an assailant grabbed her, wrestled her to the ground, and shot her once through the temple, killing her immediately. A neighbor observed a six-foot-tall white man rapidly leaving the vicinity but did not connect him to the incident until later, having heard nothing.

After a year-long investigation, police arrested a man with a criminal history of stalking and inappropriate sexual behavior named Barry George. Convicted and given a life sentence, his conviction was eventually thrown out on appeal; he was retried and acquitted and eventually won several libel lawsuits against a number of British tabloids.

A case has been made that Dando was murdered by someone with a Yugoslav or Serbian connection as revenge for a NATO bombing which killed sixteen employees of a Serbian TV station. According to The Mirror, "Jill had fronted a TV appeal for Kosovan-Albanian refugees just weeks before her death, which is believed to have enraged Serb paramilitaries."

However, the case has never been solved and no subsequent arrest has ever been made.     

On December 30, 2000, Mikio Miyasawa, 44; his 41-year-old wife, Yasuko; 8-year-old daughter, Nina; and 6-year-old son, Rei were all found murdered in their Setagaya, Tokyo neighborhood home. Japanese police launched a massive investigation that initially indicated a sloppy and easily solvable killing. Far from being easily solved, however, over 246,000 investigators have been involved in total, and even today, 40 officers remain assigned to the case full-time. There is currently a 20-million-yen ($187,000) reward for information concerning the killer.

The Miyasawas and their daughter were stabbed, their son strangled. Police found a knife, a sweater, sneakers, and a gym bag all tied to the killer, who remained long enough to eat ice cream, use the family computer, and even use the toilet, leaving fecal residue. A DNA composite from blood found at the scene indicated a father of Korean descent and a mother of Mediterranean descent. The Miyasawas lived near an expanding skate park which had prompted many neighbors to move after receiving sizable government payments to do so. In fact, the Miyasawas were also planning to move after such a payment and one theory is that the motive for the murder was robbery by an acquaintance. Mikio Miyasawa had also quarreled with users of the skate park, which may also have lead to animosity.

The puzzling case remains unsolved.  

Since 2007, numerous severed and decayed human feet began to surface on the coastline of British Columbia. These decayed body parts, sixteen in all, were typically found encased in running shoes or hiking boots. The location of these discoveries concentrated around the Salish Sea area roughly near the city of Vancouver, with some found on Vancouver Island.  Only five feet and four people have been identified from these remains; the rest are from unknown individuals and some include feet that came from children.

There are several theories concerning these discoveries, most centering around the concept that a decaying body in water will eventually separate with sneaker-clad feet remaining preserved and eventually breaking off the from the rest of a decomposing cadaver. Some feet have been linked to individuals who were known to be depressed and probably jumped from any number of nearby suspension bridges.

Another theory is that these are remains from the Asian Tsunami of 2006. But the sneakers on these feet have typically been linked to products sold in British Columbia, not Asia.

While there is no conclusive answer as to the source of these feet, they keep turning up- the latest was discovered in February 2016. Because only feet have been found, it is impossible to rule out foul play as a source of these discoveries. 

On the evening of November 30, 1948, a couple was walking along Somerton Beach, a resort area near Adelaide, Australia. They noticed a well-dressed man about 20 yards away, propped up against a concrete barrier in the sand. He motioned erratically toward them but then was still. The next day, other passersby noticed the man in the same position and one finally checked on him. He was now dead, a cigarette butt positioned as if it had fallen out of his mouth.

Police were called and the body was transported to the morgue. Although his pockets contained transit tickets from Adelaide, a pack of cigarettes, matches, gum, and combs, there was no wallet, cash, or ID. His behavior suggested intoxication or even poisoning, but an autopsy turned up nothing. His suit had no name tags and even had the brand names removed with one exception. His calves were abnormally well-developed and his feet had a peculiar pointed shape that lead to a theory that he might have been a ballet dancer.

Police circulated fingerprints worldwide, tried to connect the corpse to known missing persons and checked hotels, lost and founds, and dry cleaners for any relevant material until they found a suitcase in the local railway station's checked luggage office. They connected thread from the suitcase with repairs done on the man's pants' pocket. But any items that would identify the suitcase owner's identity seemed to have been deliberately removed.

Months after the investigation began, a small pocket in the waistband of the pants was discovered. Inside was a tiny rolled-up slip of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" printed on it. Eventually this scrap of paper was linked to an edition of The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, a popular, 12th century book of Persian poetry. Translated, the words mean "It is ended."

The actual book that the slip of paper came from turned up in the backseat of another individual who had been at the beach, most likely tossed there by someone else. When police examined this book, they found a phone number that they ultimately connected to a man named Alfred Boxall. However, Boxall was still alive and still had his own, intact copy of The Rubiyat. He received it from a woman only identified by her first name, "Jestyn." When confronted with the likeness of the unknown dead man, Jestyn practically turned white, but claimed to have no knowledge of who the man was.

Theories concerning espionage and murder have been floated for decades in Australia, but no one has ever identified the mysterious Somerton Beach Man, and why and how he died there. 

On September 5, 2012, four people were killed in a shooting near the French Alpine town of Chevaline, on Lake Annecy. The location of the murders seemed utterly unlikely, a small parking area at the end of a remote 3 km-long road.

One set of victims were members of the Al-Hilli family: Saad, 50, an Iraqi-born British citizen; his wife Iqbal, 47; her mother-in-law, Suhaila al-Aliaf, 74; and a local French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45. The bodies were discovered by another cyclist who happened on the scene, first discovering Al-Hilli's seven-year-old daughter stumbling around the parking lot before she collapsed. She had been shot in the shoulder and brutally pistol-whipped. Her 4-year-old sister hid underneath her mother's skirt and was not found until hours later, unscathed physically but traumatized by the incident. Initially, an estranged brother was suspected to have committed the crimes over a dispute involving their father's estate. He was eventually not charged due to lack of evidence.

Revelations that Al-Hilli possibly had connections to bank accounts linked to Saddam Hussein, that his wife had a secret ex-husband in the US who died on the same day as she did, and that Al-Hilli was involved in complex security technology has only added to the mystery and speculation surrounding the case. It is believed that Mollain may have unfortunately stumbled onto the scene of the murders. 

Although media has discussed several potential suspects (the most recent, a Belgian suspected of a similar 30-year-old murder in Brittany and attempted murder of some of his own family members), no definitive solution has emerged in this high-profile, baffling case.

On March 24, 1998, on a cruise ship sailing from Aruba to Curaçao, 23-year-old Amy Lynn Bradley left her cabin in the early morning hours, intent on smoking a cigarette. The ship was on the verge of docking, and while her father saw her sleeping in the family cabin at 5:30 am, when the entire family awoke at 6 am, Amy had vanished, having left her cabin barefoot and only taking her lighter and cigarettes with her.

While the family began a frantic search, cruise ship management was nonchalant, refusing to stop passengers from disembarking and also refusing to publicly alert the other passengers about Amy's disappearance. Crew members had interacted with Amy in the ship's nightclub and expressed an inordinate interest in her during the cruise. 

Amy was never found and despite an FBI investigation into her and her family's background, they were unable to further investigate in an international jurisdiction. Several credible tips were received from people who correctly identified her tattoos, including one tip that indicated that she was being held against her will in a Curaçao brothel.

Con artists claiming to be ex-Navy Seals who knew Amy's whereabouts offered to stage an armed intervention and successfully extorted $200,000 dollars from the Bradley family until the ringleader was unmasked and prosecuted.

A photo bearing an uncanny resemblance to Amy was emailed to her parents. It came from an adult website and indicated that the individual in the photo was being held against her will. In 2005, an individual claimed to have spotted Amy in Barbados.

Although the case of Natalee Holloway rekindled interest in Amy's disappearance, she has never been located. 

The disappearance of three Australian children from an Adelaide beach over 50 years ago still resonates as one of the most haunting events in the history of Australia. Called the equivalent of the Lindbergh kidnapping in the United States, the crime altered attitudes about personal security and child safety in a previously care-free society.

On Australia Day, January 26, 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont traveled by bus to nearby Glenelg Beach, a trip they had previously made without incident. They were seen there in the company of an older man in his mid-30s and appeared comfortable in his presence. The eldest Beaumont purchased food with a one-pound note; her mother would later state that she had only given the children coins, therefore someone else must have given them the money. The children were last sighted together in mid-afternoon, walking in the direction of their home. They were never seen again and their disappearance prompted a media circus and shocked the entire country, used to routinely allowing their children the same unsupervised mobility.

Although police would receive many tips over the years and attempts to connect at least one infamous local serial killer to the disappearance seemed promising, no trace of the children has ever been found. This despite the fact that the children had at least seventeen items, including towels and toys, with them at the beach that day. The Beaumont parents, an object of national sympathy, are still alive as of 2016.       

Olof Palme was an outspoken Swedish politician and the country's prime minister when he was assassinated in Stockholm in February 1986. He was shot to death on a city street as he was walking home with his wife from a movie. Palme was a vocal, left-wing Social Democrat whose politics alienated many factions, both domestic and international.

Possible entities behind his assassination included the Yugoslav Security Service, a separatist Kurdish group, the South African government (Palme was a passionate and vocal opponent of apartheid), even extremist members of the Swedish security services.

Most likely because of public pressure to solve the crime, Swedish police eventually arrested a low-level street criminal and addict named Christer Petersson, who was initially convicted after being identified by Palme's wife as the assailant and given a life sentence in 1988. Upon appeal, the case fell apart as utterly circumstantial with no weapon ever being retrieved and no explanation as to why Pettersson would kill Palme, someone he claimed to admire. Subsequently, Petersson would confess on numerous occasions, usually when compensated by news organizations, admissions deemed not credible.

The writer Stieg Larsson of The Girl wih the Dragon Tattoo fame was fascinated by the case and had voluminous files about it at the time of his death. As late as 2014, another long-time right-wing Swede was again mentioned as a suspect, but Palme's murder remains an enduring mystery.    

David Sneddon was a 24-year-old Mormon missionary studying Chinese and traveling as a tourist in Yunnan Province when he disappeared in 2004. Local Chinese authorities asserted that he had fallen into a popular canyon and drowned, but no body was ever located. His parents traveled to China and located several witnesses who credibly claimed that they had interacted with David long after he traversed the gorge, and that he had been seen near the China-Burma border.

For 12 years, the Sneddon family maintained that they did not believe that David was dead. In September 2016, Choi Sung-yong, the head of the South Korean Abductees' Family Union, said he had information claiming that David is currently living in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Now 36 and married to a Korean, he has two children and is an English teacher. Incredibly, Choi maintains that he was kidnapped on the express orders of then-Korean leader Kim Jong Il to tutor his son, Kim Jong Un, in English. (Sneddon was fluent in Korean and had been approached mysteriously in Beijing by a Korean woman, inquiring if he could tutor her children.)

While such an allegation would usually be considered utterly bizarre and unthinkable, North Korea has a history of abducting foreign nationals, including numerous Japanese couples who were subsequently forced to remain in North Korea and tutor government officials in the Japanese language and culture.  In November 2002, North Korea even repatriated five Japanese nationals and admitted abducting eight more that they claimed were now deceased.  These individuals were kidnapped from remote western Japanese cities and forcibly abducted by sea to North Korea. 

In a bizarre incident in 1978, a Korean film director and his wife were kidnapped separately and ultimately asked to help improve the North Korean film industry. They would remain in the custody of North Korea until they managed to escape and seek asylum at the US embassy in Vienna in 1986. Thai, Lebanese, and Romanian nationals have reportedly disappeared under circumstances indicating that North Korea was complicit.

Although several Americans have been detained in North Korea recently, this is the first allegation of a North Korean kidnapping of an American. The State Department maintains that it will investigate.