4

A Rocket Scientist And A Mystery Novelist Teamed Up To Solve Genetic Mysteries

One has a PhD in nuclear physics. The other used to write code and mystery novels. The only thing they had in common was a passion for genealogy ... and justice.

3

An Accountant Identifies Murder Victims Through Better Police Sketches

Like most recently unemployed people, former Disney accountant Carl Koppelman spent a lot of time on the internet, especially on message boards. The difference is that, instead of getting in 20-page debates about whether or not Shrek is circumcised, Koppelman's message board addiction is identifying long-forgotten murder victims.

Koppelman stumbled upon amateur investigators site websleuths.com, which has a forum dedicated to identifying murdered John and Jane Does. But as he looked over the police sketches for these cases, Koppelman realized something: They sucked. So he loaded up a copy of Corel Photo-Paint and began modifying photos of unidentified dead bodies to simulate what they might look like if they were alive, which is way more complicated than drawing googly eyes on them.

And it worked. In 2015, Koppelman linked a missing person's photo with his reanimated sketch of a body that no one had been able to identify since 1979.

Carl KoppelmanThat's roughly 500 Star Wars movies ago.

2

The Women Who Track Bogus Crowdfunding Campaigns

In 2015, the internet fell in love with Bart, the "zombie cat" who got ran over by a car, was buried, and clawed his way back to life. A GoFundMe to pay for his medical bills got more than $6,000. Remember that feel-good tale? So does financial reporter Adrienne Gonzalez, because she's the one who found out there were no bills. The Humane Society was paying for everything.

When Gonzalez informed GoFundMe about the situation, they responded by doing fuck all about it. So she took it upon herself to start GoFraudMe, a site that tracks crowdfunding scams. How does she determine which stories are fake? She says there's no simple formula, but sometimes it's as easy as Google image searching a campaign's photos and finding out that you're actually looking at a Swedish stock photo model.

Adrienne GonzalezSounds like faith-in-humanity-killing work, but at least she got a neat Halloween costume idea out of it.

1

The Beach Bum Who Can't Get Out Of Bed Without Taking Down An Evil Cult

Paul Morantz was a self-described LA "beach bum" who'd studied law as a fallback but really wanted to become a professional writer. That didn't work out, because Morantz was apparently cursed to fight injustice wherever he went. In 1974, he stumbled upon the case of Golden State Manor, a nursing home that was basically abducting homeless people and keeping them doped up while making big bucks billing the government for their "care."

Having nothing better to do, Morantz spent two years building and winning a case against Golden State and the "dog-catchers" who fed hapless bums to them. He returned to focusing on his writing career, and even sold a TV movie of the week ... but then an old acquaintance came back to pull him right into the stakes-raising sequel.

Morantz was asked to help a girl held prisoner by a group called Synanon, a drug treatment program that gradually transitioned into a truly terrifying cult. They brutally assaulted anyone who opposed them, forced members into having abortions, and built a heavily armed "security force" known as the Imperial Marines. Not satisfied with merely getting the girl out, Morantz dedicated himself to taking Synanon down. The cult hated him so much that they put a live rattlesnake in his letter box, which is something we had no idea happened outside of kung fu movies.

Via Paul MorantzLittle did they know he would be treated with an IV drip of concentrated vengeance.

Morantz survived, barely, but Synanon's founder was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and the cult collapsed, so it was all worth it. The snakebite left him with lifelong medical problems (he's currently housebound, and says his death will set a record for the longest murder). But if anything, this only gave Morantz more of a hate-boner against cults.

He ran the class-action lawsuit that put the sickening Center for Feeling Therapy out of business, organized the campaign that stopped the LAPD from being trained by the bizarre group known as est, and even fought early cases against Scientology. That's numerous major cults and a hobo-kidnapping conspiracy, all foiled by a guy who really only wanted to write and surf. By contrast, when we set out to write and surf, we barely manage to write, and certainly don't manage to surf. How does one just stumble onto justice?

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