Police Detectives Discuss Disturbing Cases They Wish Were Never Solved

Given the nature of many crimes, you are better off not knowing who committed them. Sometimes the answer is too hard to bear, but other times the answer may not result in the desired outcome.

The real-life police detectives here discuss the acts that they wished had gone unsolved, whether they were for tragic reasons, humorous ones, or gruesome ones. These stories, all from Reddit, are of real life stories, leading you to the answer that, yes, there are answers that even law enforcement doesn't wish to find.

A lady wanted us to come out and investigate because she believed while she was out, two people broke into her home and crapped in her toilet. Just one of them though, while the other was acting as a lookout. Didn't really delve into that one.

I'm not a cop, but I do investigate and enforce against environmental violations. 99% of the time I deal with companies who have environmental staff or attorneys that can address issues and work with us to resolve them. They have deep pockets, and they know they screwed up. Every once in a while though, I get something a little different.

A few months back, I got a call from one of our actual cops who received a complaint. Turns out a couple of Amish guys decided to open a sawmill. They got a hold of an old steel tank, had someone weld a chimney on it, and torch a hole for a door. They used it to burn all of their wood scraps (branches, bark, waste pieces etc.). Unfortunately, the property they were doing it on was across the street from some jerk who complained, so I had to investigate.

I dragged my feet for a while because I knew that once I found a violation (operating an non-permitted emission source) I would have to act on it, but I can't sit on things forever so I had to go out there. We explained everything to the gentlemen, who were confused but very nice about the whole situation, and fortunately our legal folks were fine with waiving any penalties so long as they stopped doing what they were doing.

I really hope I didn't put those guys out of business.

Bit of background: We are often, if not always, dispatched to rescue calls depending on the severity/type, due to the fact that we are closer than FD. We responded to a four-year-old who was unconscious and vomiting. Without getting into the details, it didn't take long after my arrival to realize it was a cover up. My partner and I already knew where this incident was headed, but you keep your head down and try and do the job without getting emotional.

Mother and father both adamantly lied that the child had just eaten some junk food and had gone to sleep before he started vomiting. Without getting into the details, investigation revealed that the father was mad at the child for eating some junk food. So he grabbed the child by the ankles and swung him around the house into furniture all over the home, nearly killing him.

It's one of those cases that you don't want to investigate, because you know ahead of time what the outcome is going to be, and how bad it's going to get.

My sister had a boyfriend that was a LEO who told a story about this very scary phenomenon.

A guy had been doing some advances on a girl on a train and she wasn't having it, but he refused to call it quits. A bystander (guy around 30) actually intervenes and tell him to cut it out and go away. The bad guy leaves, and everything is fine, but apparently his mates were elsewhere in the train so they get off at the same station as the guy that intervened and begins beating him. This is where the police are called - they arrive a few minutes later and find that the guy is still on the ground being beaten by these five/six people, while 15-20 other people where just looking. The guy I knew was furious that no one as much as told them to stop, much less intervened (admittedly that can be dangerous, but there were no weapons involved).

Had an 18-month-old murdered by his mom's boyfriend. I don't know if it was intentional or accidental.

Mom found the kid after she got off work. He was staged in his crib all tucked in but had been dead for several hours. Suspect had cut his wrists, written an apology in his blood on the bathroom wall: "I'm sorry Tammy". The suspect had laid down in bed to wait to bleed out. Both wrists. We could tell because of the blood pooling on the bed.

It took too long so the suspect got up and left the house, and I didn't care to find him to save him from his suicide attempt. I would have tried to to save the guy so he could go to court, but his death was easier and seemed more just. But part of the job requires us to look.

We put out a search on his car, and received a hit immediately. The suspect had driven into a neighboring county out in the country. He drove into a concrete barrier, going an estimated 80mph. He wasn't belted-in and was ejected through the windshield. The vehicle rolled and landed on him. The coroner couldn't tell which impact killed him.

I still remember the kid's full name. His mother's name. I remember my seargent saying "[the victim] hasn't been down long, he's got a full belly" while I hooked up an AED and my partner did CPR. I remember thinking "he's not full, his stomach is distended. He's been down too long," while we tried to save a dead child.

This was some years ago. The guys on the case all got grand cordon awards. I wear the ribbon on my class A's. We didn't do anything though really. It's just a reminder of how fucked up it gets.

That was a time I didn't want to find a suspect.

Every time you smelled 'that' smell on a welfare check.

The smell of decomposition.

Usually gets really strong just as you get up to the door.

My uncle was a cop in Florida in the 90s. They were finding dead kids in by the interstate for maybe five years or so before my uncle retired. No suspects, kids abducted within 100 miles or so. At the peak, it'd be one body every two months, but usually they found two-a-year. Never been solved.

After he retired, evidence photos in some of those cases got destroyed in a flood. For like 10 years after uncle's retirement, his department would call him when a similar case came through so he'd reproduce the details for them. He stopped responding to those requests at some point, said he wants to live the rest of his life without seeing another dead child.

I really never wanted to find the answer to two particular murders in my area. Two known sexual offenders were killed in the space of eight weeks. One was a rock spider (pedophile), the other used to drug women. The two issues were unrelated.

Only one of the alleged offenders was caught (also a scumbag). He was released after a week due to lack of evidence.

I know it's bad to wish death on people but these two blokes were just rancid. As a cop it was my job to find the offenders but as a human I had no interest in solving the issue at all. Luckily I was never in charge of the investigations

Not the cop, but the guy they didn't want to find.

In 1983 stopped a guy that was beating a six-year old. I beat him pretty bad and got arrested when the cops got there. Several witnesses came forward and gave statements and the cops ran a 'wants and warrants' check and found he had a conviction for 'crimes against children' (still don't know what that is) and a restraining order to stay away from children. The sergeant made me a deal on the scene. They would not charge me with aggravated assault if I left and forgot they had me in custody.

I had been alerted to a well-known local philanthropist, turned up dead. These were the days where physician-assisted euthanasia was illegal in most of the developed world.

This man in question I knew quite well, and he had been suffering from a very serious terminal illness that was going to kill him before his 40th birthday, shattering his family, especially his two young children.

He was always donating to local charities, he gave a struggling single mother $25,000 at Christmas one year so she could pay off her debts, repair her car, buy food and presents for her children.

An autopsy had determined that he had been murdered, intentional overdose of morphine. The Health Authority and Department of Justice wanted us to investigate and bring the person who essentially murders him to justice.

We chalked it up that there was no way we could ever determine who it was that killed him.

Years later, his wife sent our department a letter saying she gave her husband the lethal dose to put him out of his misery.

I wish I had never known.

She was brought in for an interview and to write her statement of confession.

We had no other supporting evidence to prove she had done it, but one thing she mentioned was his "dying wish" to end his suffering.

The Crown Prosecutor declined to pursue as the likelihood of conviction was low.