Yahoo Lifestyle 6 Unbelievable FBI Cases That Remain Unsolved, And 6 That Were Successfully Closed
I recently found myself lost in a rabbit hole of crime one day on the internet, and happened upon the FBI's website. What I found there was a trove of the FBI's (somewhat) detailed accounts of hundreds of their cases. Specifically, they have a section titled "Famous Cases & Criminals," that was eye-opening to say the least.
So I'm about to give you a rundown (based on the information given on their website) of the 6 (ish) times where they caught the criminal, and the 6 where they...did their best:
Content warning: Some of these cases contain disturbing descriptions of violent crimes.
1.The Kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.: At 19 years old, Frank Sinatra Jr. was a new musician on the scene, traveling from city to city to perform. Unbeknownst to Frank Sinatra Jr., he was being trailed by two 23-year-old men, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, who were old high school buddies. They decided to team up and kidnap the son of one of the most famous musicians on the planet in order to "hopefully" collect a large ransom from his father for his return.
On December 8th, 1963 (just 16 days after the assassination of US President and Frank Sr.’s close friend, John F. Kennedy), Frank Sinatra Jr. was performing at Harrah’s Club Lodge in Lake Tahoe, and around 9 p.m., while hanging out in his dressing room with a friend, FSJ was interrupted by a knock on his door from someone claiming to be delivering a package. When Sinatra answered, Amsler and Keenan broke into the room, tied up Sinatra's friend, blindfolded Sinatra, and carried him out of the door to an awaiting vehicle.
Once the friend quickly freed himself, he immediately contacted the authorities, and roadblocks were set up to catch the kidnappers. Wildly enough, Amsler and Keenan were stopped by police but "bluffed their way through" the stop. They made their way to their suburban Los Angeles hideout with Sinatra Jr., and by 9:40 p.m. (yes, just 40 minutes later), the FBI in Reno had hopped on the case.
They met with the senior Sinatra in Reno and recommended he wait for a ransom demand, comply, and the FBI would track the money and the kidnappers. After the kidnappers enlisted John Irwin to handle the ransom demands, on December 10, 1963, he contacted Frank Sinatra Sr. to demand $240,000 for the return of his son. Frank was keen on the plan, collected the money, took it to the FBI for documentation, and dropped the ransom money off per their request between two school buses in Sepulveda, California, in the early morning hours of December 11th.
After becoming increasingly nervous, the third conspirator, John Irwin, ended up freeing Sinatra Jr., while the two kidnappers went to go pick up the ransom money. Frank Sinatra Jr. walked a few miles before hitting Bel Air and alerting a security guard to who he was and what had happened.
To avoid alerting the press, he was put in the trunk of the security guard's car and taken to his mother's home in Bel Air. He described the little of what he saw of the kidnappers to the FBI, and they were able to track those clues back to where he was being held. As more news of the kidnappings hit the press, the conspirators were really starting to feel the pressure. The final addition, John Irwin, who sneakily let Sinatra Jr. go, ended up telling his brother about what he had done, and his brother promptly called the San Diego FBI. All three men were convicted, and nearly all of the ransom money was recovered (even against the defense's best efforts to make the case that Sinatra Jr. had planned this all as a publicity stunt).
2.The Alcatraz Escape: The former maximum security prison, Alcatraz, was known to be the home of criminals like Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and plenty of attempted escapees. It was refortified into the world's most secure prison in 1934 due to the war on crime, and escape "seemed nearly impossible."
However, from 1934 until the prison was shut down in 1963, 14 different escape attempts happened by 36 men, and nearly all were known to be caught or didn't survive, except for three. Clarence Anglin, John William Anglin, and Frank Morris were old acquaintances from multiple prison stints they had done together. Morris was sent to Alcatraz in January of 1960 after being convicted of bank robbery, burglary, and attempted prison escapes. Frank Morris was followed by John Anglin, who was brought in later that year, and John was followed by his brother Clarence in early 1961. Now assigned to adjoining cells, the three attempted to hatch an escape plan with the aid of another inmate, Allen West.
On June 12th, 1962, during the early morning bed checks, Clarence, John, and Frank were nowhere to be found. Instead, in their beds were three cleverly made dummies that were created with plaster, flesh-tone paint, and real human hair to fool the night guards. Of course, the whole place went into lockdown, and a massive search ensued.
The FBI in San Francisco was immediately on the case and sent out a nationwide message to other offices across the country to begin gathering information on the three escapees and their previous prison escape attempts. The FBI also contacted the prisoners' families, collected any identifying records on them, and asked boat operators in the Bay to keep a lookout. A few days later, a packet of letters related to the men was recovered, and later, paddle-like pieces of wood, bits of rubber, and even a homemade life-vest. But after an extensive search, no more evidence was collected. As time went by, and with assistance from the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Prison Authorities, and Allen West (who helped create the plan and was supposed to escape with the three but didn't make it out of his cell in time), they were finally able to possibly piece together what happened.
The FBI claims the preparation plan was as follows: The group had been planning this since December. Using tools like a homemade drill with a motor made out of a broken vacuum cleaner, the three loosened the air vents in the back of their cells by drilling small holes into the wall to effectively remove them. Behind the wall was an unguarded utility corridor. They went down the corridor and made their way to the roof, where they had a secret workshop.
There, they had stolen and donated materials to craft what they needed to escape. They did things like using more than 50 stolen raincoats to create a raft and makeshift life preservers. They even converted musical instruments into a way to inflate the raft. When evening fell on June 11th, that was the three men's moment. They left their cells, grabbed their gear, got onto the prison roof, climbed down the bakery smoke stack, went over the fence surrounding the prison, headed to the northeast side of the island, and launched their raft. What happened to them after that is a total mystery, but according to the FBI, "they didn't survive." But the FBI closed the case in December 1979, and they turned it over to the US Marshals, who still "continue to investigate in the unlikely event the trio is still alive."
3.The Murders in the Osage Hills: In May of 1921, a badly decomposed body was found in a ravine in northern Oklahoma. The body belonged to Anna Brown, an Osage Native American woman. After a further look at her remains, the undertaker found a bullet hole in the back of her head, but "since Anna had no known enemies," the case went unsolved, like most cases involving Native American people disproportionately and horrifically do.
Sadly, just two months later, Anna's mother, Lizzie Q, "suspiciously died," and two years later, her cousin Henry Roan was shot to death. To make it all even wilder, in March 1923, Anna's sister and brother-in-law, Rita and Bill Smith, were also killed when their home was bombed. Anna's last sibling, Mollie Burkhart, was devastated and suspiciously came down with an ongoing illness. At least two dozen Osage Native Americans, a prominent oilman, and others had turned up dead. The FBI claims that many private detectives and other investigators turned up nothing, so the Osage tribe turned to the federal government, and Bureau agents were briefed on the case.
The early suspect was William Hale, nicknamed "King of the Osage Hills," a local cattleman who had lied and stolen his way to wealth and power had something to do with it. It's claimed he grew greedier in the late 1800s when oil was discovered on the Osage Reservation. The Osage became incredibly wealthy overnight and even earned federal royalties from oil sales.
Plot twist: Hale's connection to Anna's family was that his nephew Ernest Burkhart was married to Anna's last living sister, Mollie. If Hale managed to kill all of the family members leading up to his nephew, he would be able to take control of the head rights and rake in half a million dollars a year or more. Again, when it came to solving the crime, the FBI found themselves blocked by the lack of people willing to talk about the incident. They believe Hale threatened or paid many of them off to keep their mouths shut. Hale was also coming up with false leads to fool the FBI and keep them off his trail.
In the end, four of the FBI agents ended up going undercover as a cattle buyer, an insurance salesman, an oil prospector, and a herbal doctor to find some sort of substantial evidence. They ended up "gaining the trust" of the Osage overtime and building a case. Eventually, the nephew talked, and the others confessed right behind him.
The agents were able to prove that Hale had ordered the murder of Anna and the rest of her family to inherit their oil rights. It's alleged Hale attempted to kill Mollie by poisoning her, but they failed in that attempt. In January 1929, he was convicted and sent to prison. He was promptly followed by his hired killer and lawyer.
4.The Murder of Elizabeth Short: On the morning of January 15th, 1947, a woman on a walk with her child in Los Angeles happened upon a naked body that was just a few feet away from the sidewalk and posed in such a way that the woman reported to police that she believed it was a mannequin at first. Despite the precise and disturbing cuts and mutilations done to the body (including her being cut in half and cuts made to her mouth that are only comparable to The Joker), there wasn't a drop of blood at the scene.
The investigation was led by the Los Angeles Police Department, and the FBI was asked to assist. Within 56 minutes of receiving the lifted prints from the victim's body, the FBI had identified 22-year-old Hollywood hopeful Elizabeth Short as the victim, whose prints were in the system due to a previous arrest for underage drinking and a previous job application. The press later named her "The Black Dahlia" because of her alleged love for sheer black clothes, and of course, publications made sure to imply that such a heinous act of violence toward a woman was in some way due to her being a "sex fiend" or "sexually promiscuous."
The FBI ran records checks and conducted interviews nationwide to potentially find her killer. They even questioned a batch of students at the University of Southern California Medical School due to the terrifyingly skillful dissection that was done to Elizabeth's body. The FBI was sent an anonymous letter "from the killer" that they tried to take prints from that came up with no match in the database.
Elizabeth's murderer has never been found, and the sad thing is, the FBI goes as far as to say, "And given how much time has passed, probably never will be. The legend grows." Unfortunately, it wasn't some legend or scary folktale for Elizabeth. She was completely mutilated and violated, and she never received any type of justice. Her murderer could legitimately be someone's grandparent who's reading this right now, and the world may never know.
5.The Judge Vance Murder: On December 16th, 1989, Federal Appeals Judge Robert Vance found a small brown package sitting in the kitchen of his family home. When Vance opened it, it exploded, killing him instantly and injuring his wife. Two days later, Atlanta attorney Robert Robinson also received a package that, upon opening, exploded, killing him instantly.
Two more bombs appeared; the third was sent to the federal courthouse in Atlanta and intercepted, and the fourth was recovered after an attempt to be sent to the Jacksonville office of the NAACP. Both bombs were successfully defused. The FBI aimed to discover any motive behind these mail bombs. They started with the obvious: Both men were known for their work in civil rights, but it ended up not leading to anything. Meanwhile, between the FBI and the US Postal Inspectors, they attempted to collect as much evidence from the bombs as possible to analyze, learn their route, and find some suspects.
Their break came when an ATF member was contacted by a colleague who had assisted in defusing one of the second-round bombs. He claimed that he believed it resembled one he'd seen 17 years prior, which was built by a man named Walter Leroy Moody. Of course, the FBI put everything into this lead, tracing phone calls, purchases, etc. They finally ended up linking all of the bombs to each other and back to Moody. The courts authorized surveillance of his home, and with Moody's knack for talking to himself, it provided additional evidence.
His experimentation with bombs dates back to the early 1970s, when he was convicted of possessing a bomb that harmed his wife when it exploded. He basically held huge resentment toward the court system for years due to his conviction and failed appeals after the case with his wife. He also had a connection with Judge Vance from a later case in the 1980s. The FBI suspects the final two bombs were racially motivated. By the spring of '91, they had developed a case against Moody and took him to trial. Moody, of course, attempted to "conceal" his involvement, but on June 28th, 1991, with assistance from the FBI, ATF, IRS, US Marshals, Georgia State Police, and more, the jury found Moody guilty on 70+ charges and sentenced him to life in prison. He was executed in 2018. The FBI names this "one of the largest cases in FBI history."
6.The Wall Street Bombing of 1920: On September 16th, 1920, during the middle of the work day on a very busy Wall Street in New York City, a nondescript man driving a cart pulled by a horse stopped in front of the US Assay Office across from the J.P. Morgan building (today known as JPMorgan Chase).
The man proceeded to step out of the cart and disappear into the crowd. Moments later, the cart exploded into tons of metal fragments, killing 30 people and injuring more than 300. The carnage was described as "horrific," and the death toll continued to rise throughout the day as more and more people succumbed to their injuries.
At the beginning, it wasn't completely obvious that this had been a terrorist attack. Cleaning crews for the city cleaned up the explosion overnight, eliminating any evidence from the scene. Literally, by the next day, everyone went back to work on Wall Street, bruised and broken, with tarp covering their exploded windows.
The New York Police and Fire Departments, the Bureau of Investigation (what the FBI was called before it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the US Secret Service teamed together to locate the bomber. Although the FBI interviewed hundreds of people who were at the attack before, after, and during...there was no lead. They claimed the few recollections of the driver and wagon were useless, but the NYPD was somehow able to recreate the bomb and its fuse mechanism...there was some skepticism about that one.
When it comes to leads, prior to the explosion, a letter carrier mentioned finding printed flyers from a group called the "American Anarchist Fighters," who demanded the release of political prisoners. The letters that weren't discovered until "later" were claimed to have been similar to ones found at two other bombings that were instigated by Italian anarchists.
The FBI says they worked diligently investigating up and down the East Coast to trace the origin of the flyers. However, they came up short. They initially suspected the followers of an Italian anarchist, Luigi Galleani, were responsible, but nothing could be proved, and the anarchist fled the country. They continued to investigate over the next three years, but nothing ever came out of it. They claim their best evidence and analysis of the situation was simply that the "Italian anarchist" did it.
7.The Mississippi Burning: Back in June 1964, it was the start of "Freedom Summer," a huge three-month initiative to register southern Black people to vote (something the KKK often tried to ensure didn't happen). The KKK in Mississippi was planning to go after 24-year-old New Yorker Michael Schwerner. He often organized local boycotts of racist businesses and helped with voter registration. On June 16th, a mob of KKK members attacked a local church meeting looking for him; he wasn't there, so they torched the place and beat the churchgoers.
On June 20th, Michael and two other volunteers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, headed south to investigate what happened at the church. They interviewed witnesses and met with fellow activists. Around 5 p.m. on June 21st, the three were headed into Philadelphia, Mississippi, before being arrested for "speeding" by a deputy sheriff named Cecil Price. At 10:30 that same night, the klan members were released from prison after attacking the church. They gathered some more members and headed out in a blue station wagon with a crew of klan members following behind.
The three civil rights activists were never heard from again after this. In the early morning of June 22nd, the Department of Justice notified the FBI, requesting their involvement in the case, and they boasted that a few hours later, the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, asked them to lead it. Agents quickly began interviews around the area, and it eventually led them to locate the activists' burned station wagon on June 23rd, but no bodies were found.
The FBI led a massive search from June 24th to August 3rd; they searched through back roads, swamps, and hollows. They said that they were increasingly putting pressure on the klan and developing informants. Lyndon B. Johnson also requested that they open an office in Jacksonville, Mississippi, and that helped them develop a "comprehensive analysis" of the local KKK. On August 4th, acting on an informant tip, they found all three bodies of the activists 14 feet below a dam on a local farm.
More than a dozen suspects were indicted and arrested, including Deputy Price and his boss, Sheriff Rainey. Naturally, it took until October of 1967 for any sight of the end. Only 7 of the 18 defendants were found guilty, which fortunately included Deputy Price; however, no one was charged with murder.
One of the men went free after a singular juror couldn't bring herself to convict a Baptist preacher, Edgar Ray Killen, even though he had heinously assisted in murdering three people. The FBI claims that in the end, "the Klan's homicidal ways backfired," and "the murders galvanized the nation and provided impetus for the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964." I'll just end it by saying this: That Baptist preacher I told you about wasn't even convicted of manslaughter until June 2005, on the 41st anniversary of the murders.
8.The Horrifying Anthrax Attacks: Back in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, letters laced with anthrax began popping up in the US mail system. This attack killed five people and exposed many others to the harmful and potentially deadly substance.
The FBI names it as one of its "largest and most complex investigations in the history of law enforcement." The interesting thing is that for something so "large and complex," they're extremely vague about it on their website, even in comparison to cases they never even solved.
It wasn't until August 2008 when the DoJ and FBI had a "breakthrough" in the case. They randomly released a bunch of documents and information detailing that charges were to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins (a senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) for the attacks, but he took his own life before they could file the charges.
On February 19, 2010, the FBI, the US Postal Inspection Service, and the other involved law enforcement agencies formally closed the case. Of course, there was tons of doubt, even back in 2008, regarding the possibility of it even being Ivins: from inconclusive evidence to handwriting that doesn’t match up, to questions of how someone could’ve done something on such a large scale by themselves and have so much access to something like that in the first place. The FBI prided itself on this case by saying their efforts consisted of more than 10,000 witness interviews on six different continents, 80 searches, and the recovery of more than 6,000 pieces of "potential" evidence.
9.The Jonestown Murder/Suicides: Jonestown was a makeshift settlement in Guyana that was led by cult leader Jim Jones and inhabited by him and his followers, known as "the Peoples Temple." The allegations against Jim and what was going on in Jonestown were very disturbing...beatings, forced labor, imprisonments, the use of drugs to control behavior, and many suspicious deaths.
On November 14th, 1978, California Congressman Leo Ryan continued to grow concerned about what was going on in Jonestown. So, he took it upon himself, his congressional delegation, a group of reporters, and government officials to fly out to Guyana and see exactly what was going on out there with more than 900 Jonestown members, many of whom were said to be his constituents from San Francisco who had followed Jim to South America.
Once there, Congressman Ryan met with Jim and interviewed many of the members. Thankfully, some families and several people asked to leave with the Congressman, while others left on foot on their own. Of course, Jones was livid. Leo Ryan wanted the entire group to fly out together, fearing that anyone left behind would be met with a bad fate. Of course, they needed another plane to safely transport everyone, which resulted in a departure delay.
The group of people ready to get the hell away from Jim found themselves at an airstrip on the afternoon of November 18th, and as Congressman Leo Ryan's plane prepared to leave, a dump truck with several armed loyalists began firing at one plane, while one of the "escaping" cultists, Larry Layton, pulled out a gun and began firing shots in the other. Somewhere in all of this chaos, Leo Ryan and several others were killed, and many others were wounded.
If you didn't think it was already unbelievable, it gets worse. Back at the compound while all of this was happening at the airstrip, Jim Jones was calling all of his followers together and telling them the attack on the planes would bring harm to the people of Jonestown. He told them to ingest a fruit-flavored drink that was laced with cyanide, and the great majority of them did.
In the end, more than 900 people (including 200 children) had drank the cyanide and lay lifeless on the ground of Jonestown. Somewhere in all of this horrible tragedy, Jim Jones was shot in the head. Now, with the majority of the people, including the leader, dead, the FBI launched an extensive investigation into the tragedy in collaboration with other agencies and the authorities in Guyana. They interviewed survivors of the mass murder/suicide, members of the US section of the Peoples Temple, and experts from the FBI disaster squad who identified all of the victims. In the end, they only had Larry Layton to make a case against. He was the only member of the Peoples Temple tried in the US for their criminal acts in Jonestown. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison.
10.The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper: On November 24th, 1979, a man claiming to be Dan Cooper used cash to buy a one-way ticket from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington on Northwest Orient Airlines (Flight #305). Cooper is described as a quiet man, mid-40s, and wearing a business suit. They even detail that he ordered a bourbon and soda while the flight was waiting to take off.
Shortly after 3 p.m., Cooper handed the flight attendant a note that detailed how he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit beside him. Obviously, she did as she was told, and Cooper proceeded to give her a peek inside of his briefcase, which was described as a "mass of wires and red-colored sticks." He told the flight attendant to write down what he told her, and next thing she knew, she was walking the note to the captain. Cooper was demanding four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills.
When the plane arrived in Seattle, Cooper traded the 36 passengers on the plane for money and parachutes. He kept several crew members with him, ordering the plane to take him to Mexico City. A little after 8 p.m. somewhere between Seattle and Reno, D.B. Cooper opened the back of the plane and jumped out into the night with the ransom money, a parachute, and a dream. The flight and remaining crew members continued on and safely landed.
The FBI was let on to the crime in-flight (they don't detail which flight, and for that reason, I'm going to go ahead and guess it was the later one) and opened an investigation named NORJAK (Northwest Hijacking). They, of course, searched the aircraft for any evidence and tracked leads across the nation, and by the fifth anniversary, they had interviewed 800 suspects and eliminated all but 24 from being tied to the crime.
They say a "favorite suspect" amongst people is Richard Floyd McCoy, who had performed a similar stunt just months after Cooper but was later ruled out as he didn't match the nearly identical descriptions given to them by two flight attendants and "for other reasons."
Of course, their first theory is that he's just dead. However, in 1980, a young boy did find a rotting package of $5,800 (yes, in $20 bills) that matched the serial numbers of the ransom money. For that, it suggests to the FBI not that he could've possibly dropped one of the packages full of money and went on with the rest of the $200,000, but that it was an added boost to the claim he didn't survive the jump. They end it by letting us know, "The daring hijack and disappearance remain an intriguing mystery — for law enforcement and amateur sleuths alike." Umm.
11.The Strange Case of Patty Hearst: On February 4th, 1974, a woman and her fiancé received a knock on their apartment door in Berkeley, California. As they opened the door, in came a group of armed men and women. They grabbed 19-year-old college student Patty Hearst, beat up her fiancé, and threw her in the trunk of a car.
It would soon come to light that Patty was kidnapped by a group of armed radicals from various walks of life named the Symbionese Liberation Army, or "SLA". They were led by a man named Donald DeFreeze, and it's stated that their aim was to "incite a guerrilla war against the American government and destroy what they called the 'capitalist state.'" They snatched Hearst in particular to get the country's attention, as she was a part of a very wealthy and powerful family and the granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Of course, their plan worked, and Patty's disappearance was all over the news and front pages.
Soon after Patty's disappearance, the SLA began releasing audiotapes demanding food donations that would cost millions, for which they would exchange her. All the while, they had begun abusing and brainwashing her, hoping to eventually turn this high-profile society member into the poster child of their revolution.
Well, it seemed to have worked because on April 3rd, the SLA released an audiotape of Patty telling them she'd join their fight and free the oppressed; she even took on the alias Tania. Twelve days later, Patty was spotted on a bank surveillance camera with an assault weapon "barking" orders at bystanders and providing cover to her fellow SLA members during an SLA bank robbery.
In the meantime, the FBI launched what they call "one of the most massive, agent-intensive searches in its history" to find Patty and the SLA. They worked with many partners, running down thousands of leads. It seemed that the SLA had scared any potential witnesses or informants into silence. They were also using an organized network of safe houses and great operational security. On May 16th, the FBI finally had movement.
Two SLA members had attempted to steal an ammunition belt from a local store and were nearly caught. Authorities located the getaway van, and it led them right to the SLA safe house. The following day, the house was surrounded by Los Angeles police, and a massive shootout broke out. The safe house went up in flames, and six members of the SLA died, including their leader. Patty was still nowhere to be found, as she and several other members were traveling around the country to avoid capture. They finally caught up with her on September 18th, 1975 in San Francisco, and she was charged with bank robbery and "other crimes." Despite the kidnapping and brainwashing, she was still found guilty by a jury and told to serve seven years in prison. She served two years before President Carter commuted her sentence, and she was later pardoned.
And finally, here's one that, while the case is closed and most of the people were tried for their crimes, I hesitate to ever refer to it as a "win":
12.The Baptist Street Church Bombing: One of the many cases involving disgustingly racist acts, the Baptist Street Church Bombing happened in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. A dynamite bomb exploded in the back stairwell, killing four young Black girls (the FBI never names them in their accounts, but I will: Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14)) and injuring more than 20 people inside the church. A very clear act of racial hatred.
The FBI's Birmingham office launched an immediate investigation and let the FBI director know of the crime. FBI bomb experts were sent to the scene via military jets, and a dozen additional personnel were sent to assist the Birmingham office. That night, the Assistant Director of the FBI assured the Assistant Attorney General they "considered this a most heinous offense and entered the investigation with no holds barred." They continue on to say they "backed that promise up."
Dozens of agents worked on the case from September into the new year, "as many as 36 at that point." Even with all of those agents on the case, they still didn't have any serious suspects until 1965, and naturally, they were all KKK members. Robert E. Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. were the suspects in the crime, and "due to witnesses reluctance to talk and lack of physical evidence," there were no federal charges ever filed against them in the 1960s.
The FBI then goes on to talk about the claim that Director Hoover held back evidence from prosecutors or even tried to block prosecution in the '60s, saying that it's "simply not true." They then go on to overcompensate Hoover's innocence for an entire paragraph and claim he "simply didn't think the evidence was there to convict." In the end, it's hard for me to ever claim that justice was served. In 1977 — yes, you read right — Chambliss received life in prison. They reopened the case (why they would close it, you tell me) in the mid-'90s. Blanton and Cherry were indicted in May 2000, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. If this wasn't bad enough, the last vile man who killed those poor little girls, Herman Frank Cash, had already died in 1994.
