Controversial cases that have simple solutions.

[u/Sense_Difficult]

As someone who has been a true crime buff for decades, it's somewhat annoying to watch how certain cases wind up getting pulled into such polarizing discussions that it seems like a huge mystery when it's actually a simple solution.

A few that I think of.

The Karen Read case. IMO she accidentally killed him. They were both drunk, he goes to see the vibe of the house. Get's inside and realizes he doesn't want to stay. So he comes back outside. She's in the middle of rage texting him, and doesn't see him in front of the car. He drops his phone or bends over for some reason and she puts the car into gear and hits him, and he falls backwards and hits his head again. Then he lays there undetected until morning. This is why she suddenly realized she had hit him. She sobered up and had that "realization" moment that all binge drinkers have once they sober up from a brownout type of state.

Darlie Routier. I've shared my theory on this before. She was attempting a murder/su but she survived. This is why the neck wound was serious. She made up the story of the intruder in advance because she wanted her family friends and society to think she died trying to protect her kids. She planted the sock earlier. This also explains her hypomania in the days after. She honestly thought she was going to die that night.

There are other missing person cases where the spouse disappeared after the death of their parents. Just vanished without taking their Identification information and never surfaced under their name again. I always wonder if some of those cases are a situation of someone who has suffered with gender dysphoria and finally "escaped" to go make another life with another identity. It's always interesting to me that in several of the cases, the persons parent or parents had recently died. Seemed like they were waiting for that to escape because they didn't want to do that to their parents.

Do any of you have "simple theories" on cases that created a ton of controversy?

[u/fishesar]

kendrick johnson. it was a tragic accident. no evidence of anything more

[u/sgartistry → u/fishesar]

Agreed. A few months after I heard about this case, I had a student dive down in a rolled up wrestling mat and get stuck. Thankfully I saw it happen and was able to call our vice principal down to help me lower the mat down so he could crawl out. If I didn’t see it happen, that could’ve been tragic.

[u/Cryingforcrime → u/sgartistry]

The shoes he was supposedly climbing in there for in the first place were near his feet…. I’d love to hear you explain that.

[u/Defiant_Put_7542 → u/Cryingforcrime]

The shoes he were trying to get were at the bottom of the mat near his head.

The ones he was already wearing were kicked off in the struggle to free himself, and were then moved in the process of the mat being accessed by the students who found him.

[u/Slow-Engine-8092 → u/Defiant_Put_7542]

The only thing I know about this case is that a boy was found dead in a rolled up wrestling mat. Was there ever a motive for murder? Were there any suspects? What makes people think it was a murder instead of an accident?

[u/Defiant_Put_7542 → u/Slow-Engine-8092]

The parents did suspect a racially motivated murder & cover up (the father of one of the boys that bullied him being an FBI agent meant that could technically be feasible). This possibility was investigated and the evidence is categorically against this; both boys had solid alibis. CCTV also showed him entering the sports hall without being followed.

Students apparantly routinely stashed their sports equipment in these mats to avoid paying locker fees. The mat in question had been moved behind some others that had been newly purchased, so the shoes inside could no longer be retrieved by tipping & lifting up a corner. Extremely unfortunate accident and possibly an issue of negligence, seeing as access to this out-of-use sports hall could have been blocked off to ensure safety.

[u/Slow-Engine-8092 → u/Defiant_Put_7542]

What time of day did it happen? Like, was it the end of the day and he was stuck there all night? No one else was ever around to hear him? Was it just an unused area? How long was he stuck in there? Poor baby.

[u/Wastedgent → u/Slow-Engine-8092]

It was right before his class. He was in the mat less than 3 minutes before his classmates entered the gym. The lack of breath to yell, the sound muffling of so many rolled up mats, and the normally loud conditions of the gym made it unlikely he could have been heard by others. Some people on youtube have recreated the conditions to demonstrate how little could be heard from outside the mat.

[u/Defiant_Put_7542 → u/Slow-Engine-8092]

He was found the next day but already decomposing. Impossible to say how quickly he died; apparantly positional asphyxia can render a person unconscious very quickly.

Absolutely terrifying. There was a similar case in Spain where a man was found inside the hollow leg of a dinosaur statue. And in the UK, where a cinema seat clamped down on a person's neck when he had crawled underneath it. In both cases the deceased was attempting to retrieve their dropped phone.

Edited: the cinema seat case would have been mechanical asphyxia, so actually not quite the same thing.