5 Times Normal People Forced The Cops To Do Their Jobs

Andy revealed to the media that the exhumation and testing had been his goal all along. He admitted that it could have gone horribly wrong, but he had to act because he now knew who the killer was. It was his father, and the DNA test would prove it! Except not quite, since it was determined that the killer was in fact that random "Jos de G" guy, who it turned out had previously been convicted of multiple sex crimes. He was sentenced to 12 years, leaving Andy and Ad to continue on with a presumably very, very tense relationship.

Four decades later, Charles Moore's brother Thomas visited Mississippi to make a documentary about the killings. He wanted some kind of justice for Charles, but this probably wouldn't come in the form of any kind of punishment for Seale, seeing as how the guy had died some years earlier, according to reports. But then when he was in a gas station talking to some locals, he mentioned Seale's name. "He ain't dead," said the man there, "I'll show you where he lives." And when they knocked at his door, there was the killer, almost 70 years old. He didn't want to talk, but he couldn't escape Moore's camera.

A U.S. attorney happened to be an army buddy of Thomas', and when he heard about the case, he jumped on it. Seale was eventually found guilty and got three life sentences. He ended up dying in prison, which is nice, even if it was after living 40 years of undeserved freedom.

Of course, alligators aren't really that prolific in December. In fact, in the winter, they may not eat at all. But that fun Nat Geo fact wasn't enough to solve the case. Then in 2016, there was a development: Denise was kidnapped. And the kidnapper was a dude named Brian, who was another ex-husband of Denise and *insert dramatic orchestral music* Mike's former best friend.

So when police interrogated Brian, thanks to Cheryl, Mike's case was probably fresh on their minds too. And Brian, eager for a deal (and being the one who'd killed Mike) had a lot to say on the matter. Denise had masterminded the murder, as Cheryl has suspected, but Brian was the one who took him out on a boat, pushed him overboard, then shot him in the face with a 12-gauge (you know, as best friends do). Brian got 20 years for the murder, Denise got life, and alligators everywhere found momentary vindication.

Australia, Steve learned, had had an epidemic of hate crimes against gay victims in the 1980s called "poofter bashing." Sydney police finally agreed to reopen Scott's case, and they ended up concluding that yes, Scott's death was both a homicide and a hate crime.

And his was far from the only one. They looked closer at a whole lot of other men found dead at the bottom of cliffs, and discovered a whole lot more murder. The police put together a team called Strike Force Parrabell which looked at 88 suspicious deaths, none having been investigated as murders at the time. By last June, they'd concluded that 27 of these were hate crime victims, and they even managed to convict the murderers of eight. So to all of the other tech millionaires out there looking for something to do with the money, let this serve as a suggestion. You don't really need another boat.

A year went by, and still there was no trace of DeVore. Enter random dude Douglas Crawford, who read a story on DeVore on the anniversary of his disappearance and recalled how a woman who'd gone missing in the same area ended up being found in the California Aqueduct. So he mapped out DeVore's driving route the night of his disappearance and descended into the aqueduct himself. There he discovered remains of a Ford Explorer, the car DeVore had been driving.

Crawford brought this info to police, and they ... laughed and brushed him off. Unless he was planning on confessing that he'd killed the guy, they joked to "call back Monday." So he put together a 30-page report and faxed it to the sheriff's office, and that was ignored too, even though this was 1998, when faxes were positively revered. Finally, he contacted DeVore's publicist, who contacted police himself, and investigators finally started to give a shit. They got around to interviewing Crawford, though he thought it seemed like they were treating him as a suspect. (So yeah, they really were only interested if he was confessing to killing the guy.)

Police searched the aqueduct and found DeVore's body. The death was officially labeled a traffic accident, and in hindsight, his wife's intuitions sound unconvincing and kind of sad. But conspiracy theorists will never stop speculating that this was a government assassination. The Daily Mail "confirmed" that DeVore's death was connected to the CIA, and boldly asked the real question: If his death was just an accident, THEN WHY WERE HIS HANDS SWITCHED WITH THOSE FROM A 200-YEAR-OLD BODY?

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

For more, check out Why The Cops Won't Help You When You're Getting Stabbed:

Also, we'd love to know more about you and your interesting lives, dear readers. If you spend your days doing cool stuff, drop us a line at iDoCoolStuff at Cracked dot com, and maybe we can share your story with the entire internet.

Follow us on Facebook. Because we said so.