Insane Coincidences That Solved 'Unsolvable' Crimes

When Bergin recounted the unlikely story to police, they weren't sure whether or not Bergin was the world's most needlessly convoluted liar, so they traced the chain of unlucky motorists back to Robert Fry. Forensic evidence connected him to the body, and also to a bunch of other bodies, enough to get him the death penalty. "I didn't murder all of them," Fry should have said, "I just murdered the last one, who murdered the one before that, who murdered the one before that ..."

In June 2011, a young Macon, Georgia, woman named Lauren Giddings was reported missing, so a pair of detectives went to check her apartment. They found no trace of Giddings, but that was fine -- they'd already solved the case accidentally, by parking their patrol car in front of a row of trash cans. When the garbage man arrived, he was unable to collect the trash, so he just kept on driving. Her corpse was found in one of the uncollected cans later that day. Had those cops been willing to walk just a little farther, they may never have found her killer. Yes, a murder case solved by the laziness of police.

That's not the only lucky coincidence that led police to Giddings' murderer. Later the same day, local media conducted a bizarre interview with one of her neighbors, Stephen McDaniel. This guy:

It was a run-of-the-mill interview in which McDaniel expressed his concern for his neighbor's safety, until the reporter mentioned the fact that Giddings' body had just been discovered. If you're curious, here's what it looks like at the exact second a murderer realizes he's boned:

"Wait, trash day is on Monday?"

If McDaniel had kept his cool, he might never have appeared on the police radar. But detectives took notice of his poorly concealed panic, and soon discovered enough forensic evidence to pin him to the crime, to which he pleaded guilty. Interestingly, McDaniel was a law graduate who was preparing to take his bar exam. You'd figure he'd be better at lying.

The killer turned out to be a postal employee named David Berkowitz. His motive was about as sane as that of any unhinged psychopath -- he claimed his neighbor's dog was possessed by a demon and commanded him to kill. But the truly batshit ones are often the hardest to catch. The completely random nature of the crimes made it impossible to predict where or when he would strike. Indeed, the Berkowitz case was solved not by hard-hitting detective work but by the Son Of Sam's flagrant disregard for the traffic code.

In the early morning hours of July 31, 1977, Berkowitz parked his car in a Brooklyn neighborhood. He walked several blocks to shoot his last two victims before returning to his vehicle and driving away. At some point during this series of events, a pair of patrolmen noticed that Berkowitz's car was parked in front of a fire hydrant and ticketed it. Later, a neighborhood resident out walking her dog (a perfectly reasonable thing to do in Brooklyn at 2 in the morning while a serial killer is running rampant) saw a man running to his car in an awful hurry, and remembered that there was a ticket on his windshield. After hearing about the shooting that morning, she reported it to police.

The cops traced the ticket to Berkowitz and decided to pay him a visit. When they arrived at his apartment and found his car, they noticed a note on the dashboard that they immediately recognized for its distinctive and famous handwriting -- the childish, all-capitals scrawl of the Son Of Sam. Berkowitz confessed his identity the moment he was arrested. If you're taking note, that is now two murders solved by people unwilling to look for a proper parking spot. Feel free to use this excuse next time you're in traffic court.

Nearly 18 years went by without any sign of Zephany. By that time, her mother, Celeste, had three more children, and one of her daughters, Cassidy, was starting high school. Cassidy soon became close friends with another girl at her school. The two hit it off almost instantly, like they were long lost sisters ... you see where this is going.

Once Cassidy's father noticed the amazing physical similarities between the two girls, he contacted police. DNA testing soon revealed that the older girl was, in fact, the missing child. Zephany and the woman she didn't realize was her kidnapper had spent the past 17 years living only a few miles away from the Nurse family. And we imagine that discovering that your BFF is secretly your sibling is already the plot of a sitcom on Nickelodeon.

In 1942, Max Geller, the owner of the Green Parrot Restaurant, was shot inside his establishment. There were around 20 witnesses, but nobody wanted to come forward. There was one witness willing to snitch, however: a large green parrot, who, not coincidentally, lived at the Green Parrot Restaurant. When police questioned(?) the bird, it exclaimed, "Robber! Robber!"

Not super helpful, bird.

The investigation went nowhere for a year, but eventually a detective figured that something about the parrot's testimony(?) didn't quite add up. The bird had been trained to learn the names of frequent restaurant guests so that he could greet them at the door, which actually sounds like a pretty awesome gimmick. What if the parrot was saying ... "Robert"?

That's a plot twist even M. Night Shyamalan would reject for being too stupid, but the cops checked into it anyway. They discovered that the Green Parrot did indeed have a regular customer named Robert Butler. And that Butler had conveniently left town right after the shooting and was now living in another state.

It should be noted that at this point the police had less than no case, because, in the state of New York at least, the testimony of a parrot is worth about as much as other stuff that comes out of a parrot. But Butler must have had some real respect for the integrity of that bird, because upon being told that he'd been fingered(?) by Geller's parrot, he admitted to the crime immediately. He wound up getting 15 years for the murder. We imagine the chief emitting a long, dejected sigh, stamping "case closed" on the file, then sealing it away in the Raiders Of The Lost Ark-style warehouse that they use to catalog all the unsolvable cases secretly cracked by birds.

Robin Warder is the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and worked on a sci-fi short film called "Jet Ranger Of Another Tomorrow."

For more great mysteries, check out 23 Creepy Unsolved Mysteries Nobody Can Explain and The 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain.

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