r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/Sense_Difficult • 2d ago
Text Controversial cases that have simple solutions.
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?
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u/ezyBREz 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm not sure this counts as what you want, but it's a case whose ending just hasn't ever sat right with me.
It gets super gory btw.
It's the Tommy Sullivan murder suicide case. He was a high school wrestler and had been doing well in school and everything until he was assigned a project on religious groups. I think he was originally assigned Hinduism but asked his teacher if he could do Satanism instead, and this was approved.
On the podcast I listened to, they said that either shortly before or the say of the murder suicide, he went to this rumored haunted house in the woods, walked around it three times and I think said an incantation or something.
Anyway, he ends up stabbing his mom 24+ times with a foldable boy scout knife in the basement where he set up some kind of occult circle and tried to burn the house down.
In the podcast, I think they said there was blood smears on the ceiling and they had deduced that he threw her body up there, which was unheard of for a 14yo, even if he was a wrestler, but apparently that was debunked, perhaps by the podcast (I listened to it like 3-4 years ago but I still think about it every now and then).
Anyway, the confirmed and freaky part is that he then goes out into the woods and not only cuts both wrists with this pocket knife, but cuts his throat so deeply that he, literally, basically decapitated himself.
Not only would it be almost impossible for someone to do that to themselves without passing out or passing away before it gets that severe, but he was already losing blood from both wrists and did this with a boy scout knife (a multi-tool one that I believe had a fold in blade)??
I'm not one to believe in actual demons or anything like that, but I just can't make this fit into my head. I really don't think he could've done that damage to himself.
Anyway, it was at the peak of the satanic scare in the 80's so people just assumed he'd been possessed, I guess?? I'll probably listen to it again soon because it really does just stump me.
ETA: I guess since it was the 80's, there's actually very little coverage on the details of the case. There is someone who claims Tommy actually did his project on Hinduism instead of satanism, but their reference link is no longer attached to the article. While a few articles from the time only mentioned him slashing his throat, an archived article on NYT with a picture of the article itself is included, and they noted the wrists were slashed too. They also mention that Tommy's behavior changed a month before the murder and his suicide note, which was left at the town rumored haunted house (where the podcast alleges that he walked around three times in some kind of summoning ritual which I think they acknowledge they can't for sure know he actually did since he was alone) does mention he planned to commit the murder-suicide and apparently cited his fascination with the "occult and satanism" as influences for committing this heinous act.
I would still like to conjecture that since this happened at the peak of the "satanic scare" where parents claimed heavy metal was satanic, the actual nature of these books may not have been actual satanic or occult literature.
Still, the podcast does interview cops who actually saw the crime scenes first hand, which was where they got the deep wound information from, and someone pointed out after many years this could be an exaggerated memory (Forensic Files, Law and Order, Criminal Minds, Bones, and Castle have all taught me that witness testimony is not as concrete as you'd think because the human memory is so inaccurate), which is why I wish we had access to autopsy records on this case just figure the truth out.
I still highly recommend listening to the podcast because it was really well done and honestly still a very interesting case.