Mysterious Stories

Little Lord Fauntleroy On March 8, 1921, the body of a young boy was found in some water behind the O’Laughlin Quarry in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. He was believed to be between five and seven years old and had been struck on the head with a blunt instrument. Five weeks before the boy was discovered, a quarry employee reported that a couple had stopped by in a vehicle to ask if he’d seen a young boy, and the woman appeared to be crying. In spite of this, no one ever came forward to claim the boy’s body, even after a reward was offered for information. Curiously, the boy was dressed in upscale clothing, suggesting that he hailed from a wealthy family. Since the victim bore a resemblance to the title character in Francis Hodgson Burnett’s famous children’s novel, he was nicknamed “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” The case remained cold for 28 years, till a connection was made between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Homer Lemay, a six-year-old Milwaukee child who seemed to disappear i

Monica Libao Throughout her childhood, Monica Libao moved around a lot and spent the first 15 years of her life living at 28 different addresses with her parents, Pablo and Burma. After she turned 16, Monica discovered a secret after her mother became ill and Monica caught a glimpse of her medical records. She noticed that Burma underwent a hysterectomy nearly two decades before Monica was even born. After confronting Burma about this, Monica was told that one of her older half-sisters was her real biological mother. After giving birth to Monica when she was 19, the sister gave her up and let Burma and Pablo raise her instead. However, when Monica questioned her sister, she was informed that Burma’s story was a complete lie and that Monica’s real mother had actually sold her to the Libaos in exchange for a bus ticket. The story got even more bizarre when Monica found her old birth certificate, which stated she was born in Chicago but listed no hospital or doctor and had been

The Toledo Clubber There are many notorious serial killers who have never have been identified, but few of them were as unpredictable as the “Toledo Clubber,” who committed a strange, random series of crimes in Toledo, Ohio, during the mid-1920s. The unknown assailant started off his crime spree by setting fire to a series of lumberyards in 1925. When the city responded by posting guards at lumberyards, the perpetrator decided to start bombing homes and tenements. When federal agents were called in to investigate, the bombings suddenly came to an end, and the assailant soon turned to murder. Over the course of one week in November, at least nine women were attacked by an unknown male, who proceeded to rape them and club their helpless bodies with a heavy object before leaving them for dead. Four of these women lost their lives, and the attacker became known as the “Toldeo Clubber.” After a reward was offered for the Clubber’s capture, the violence ended for a year. However, on

The Boy In The Dean Corll Polaroid One of the worst serial killers in the history of the United States is Dean Corll, who is believed to have raped, tortured, and murdered at least 28 victims during the early 1970s. Corll exclusively targeted teenage boys and was nicknamed “The Candy Man” because his family owned a candy factory and he often handed out candy to children. Corll worked alongside two teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. and David Brooks, who helped lure Corll’s victims to his home. In 1973, Henley shot Corll to death to prevent him from murdering one of his friends. Henley and Brooks both received life sentences for their roles in Corll’s murders, but a recent piece of evidence suggests that the horrific saga of The Candy Man may not be completely over. In 2012, filmmaker Josh Vargas was doing research for a movie about Henley’s life and went through an old box containing Henley’s personal effects. He uncovered a faded Polaroid of what appeared to be

B. Traven It’s not uncommon for writers to publish works of literature under a pseudonym, but few of them went to greater lengths to conceal their identity than a mysterious author named “B. Traven.” Over the course of two decades, B. Traven published 12 novels and several short stories under this pseudonym. His most famous novel is probably The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , a 1927 adventure story that was eventually adapted into an acclaimed, Academy Award–winning film starring Humphrey Bogart. Yet in spite of writing such an iconic piece of work, Traven managed to take the secret of his true identity to his grave. When he died in 1969, he left behind a will claiming his real name was “ Traven Torsvan Croves ” and that he was born in Chicago in 1890. However, there is no evidence that anyone named Traven Torsvan Croves actually existed. It is believed that B. Traven spent the early part of his life living in Europe, as many of his works were written in German before they we

Mr. Bojangles On May 5, 1993, the town of West Memphis, Arkansas, would be plagued by one of the most controversial criminal cases of all time after the brutal murder of three eight-year-old boys: Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Steve Branch. Three local teenagers—Damian Echols, Jesse Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin (the “West Memphis Three”)—were convicted of the crime but soon acquired a slew of supporters who believed they were wrongfully convicted. The case generated so much controversy that the West Memphis Three were released from prison in 2011 after entering an Alford plea. There has always been much debate about who the real killer of the three boys might be, but a major wild card in this story is an unidentified individual known only as “Mr. Bojangles.” On the night the boys went missing, West Memphis police received a phone call from the manager of a Bojangles’ chicken restaurant, which happened to be located near the wooded area where the victims were eventually