The following two cases were amongst the first I ever encountered that got me into unsolved mysteries.
Sigrid Barginde, an 87 year old woman living alone, was found dead in her Chicago home on June 26th, 1981. Her hands had been tied behind in her back with a tan scarf; medical examiner Wayne Carver determined that she had died of a heart attack and even suggested she had tied the scarf herself. There were no signs of forced entry into her home.
Starting in April of that year Sigrid began to complain of "shadowy figures" inside her home. Sigrid, who was nearly blind and deaf, told police she saw three people inside her home after waking up from a nap. She claimed they had beaten her, covered her with a sheet and forced her into a closet. Sigrid said the men ransacked her home before leaving, prompting her to exit the closet and call the police. Sigrid found that her landline receiver wasn't working and had to use a neighbour's phone. Despite having a black eye, Chicago police did not fully believe Sigrid's story. They did discover that the voice receiver in Sigrid's phone had been tampered with and fixed it for her, prompting lead investigator Bill Melmine to "half believe her".
Whoever was invading Sigrid's home intended to keep her isolated; about a week after the first assault the voice receiver was tampered with yet again. Following that repair Sigrid's tormentors began ripping the receiver and cord out of the landline altogether. Police began patrolling Sigrid's house after this, and neighbours tried to help Sigrid by trimming her hedges to improve visibility and checking on her regularly. The locks on Sigrid's doors were changed as well, but this didn't whomever was tormenting Sigrid from accessing her home. On June 18th, just over a week before her death, Sigrid was mugged by a still unknown assailant as she walked home from her bank. Despite living in terror at this stage with police encouraging her to leave, Sigrid refused to leave her home and seemed to accept her fate, telling a neighbour "They'll get me one day, I know it".
After Sigrid's death her sister Ingevelde claimed that her daughter had found the bed to be soaked with blood when she went into the house on August 30th. I haven't found any verification of this claim. To this day Sigrid's cause of death is officially from natural causes and her tormentor(s) have never been found.
This case has always really creeped me out. It's terrifying to think of someone being in your home unbeknowst to you, even worse when your senses are gone like Sigrid's and you can't see them. Whoever was tormenting Sigrid seemed to be doing it as a sadistic torture game as well; she wasn't wealthy and had no valuables, and they were intent on isolating her. There's never been any established suspects or motives in this case either. The reaction of the police is very frustrating as well. It should have been obvious that the intruder(s) were squatting in her home as opposed to breaking in constantly, but they essentially let a disabled elderly woman be terrorised for months before she died from the trauma of it all. No wonder Chicago is such a notorious dump if these are the calibre of officers staffing its PD.
Second mystery is that of the Danilovsky Maniac, an unidentified Russian serial killer that terrorised Cherepovets from 2004 to 2007, killing nine girls and women. He is suspected in ten other murders dated from the early 90s up to 2011.
Starting in 2004, five females ranging from 17 to 32 were killed in Cherepovets in monthly intervals: 17 year old Marina Ostrovskaya, 32 year old Olga Berdina, 19 year old Irina Popova, 22 year old Tatyana Baeva and 17 year old Tatyana Maksimova. Marina went missing in February and was not initially found, while the bodies of the other victims were found very shortly after their disappearances. All of the victims had been raped and strangled; Irina Popova's body was found on an abandoned lot while Tatyana Beava's body was found at a local art school.
On the 26th of June 2005 31 year old Lyudmila Miroshnichenko went missing, approximately six months since Tatyana Maksimova's murder. Several weeks later 19 year old Svetlana Stepanova was walking with friends along Danilov Street when she stopped to tie her shoelace. When her friends walked past her, Svetlana was swiftly abducted by the maniac. He panicked when her friends heard her struggle, prompting him to slit Svetlana's throat. During the investigation police uncovered the killer's "lair"; he was living on an abandoned construction site on Danilov Street (hence the killer's name), and the bodies of Lyudmila Miroshnichenko and Marina Ostrovskaya were found buried in concrete holes covered with tires. The walls of his lair were covered in "erotic" drawings.
The sheer brazenness of his attacks and the obvious sexual motive lead to police dubbing him a "sexual maniac". His first 2004 victim found in his lair, Marina Ostrovskaya, had taken a shortcut through Danilov street at 2pm when walking to meet her fiancé's parents, unfortunately leading to her encounter with her murderer. Lyudmila Miroshnichenko had intended to meet a friend less than a mile away from her home when she was abducted. Soon police began connecting him to the other murders of women in Cherepovets, as they had generally taken place quite close to one another.
(Map of where four bodies of the 2004 victims were found and Svetlana's killing on Danilov Street).
More photos of the lair:
Attacks on women slowed following the discovery of the lair, but they did not cease completely. At the end of 2006 a 17 year old girl named Sukhareva disappeared, with her body being found in 2011 on the same abandoned lot Irina Popova's body was found. In 2007 17 year old Natalya Zakalova was walking to meet her parents at the Skeksna Riverbank; she was in shouting distance of them when she was abducted and killed by the Maniac. Until this point the police had no description of him; eyewitnesses described him as being between thirty and fifty, 180cm tall with short hair and prominent cloudy eyes, leading to to be known as the "Dull-eyed Maniac".
Unlike the Barginde case police made extensive efforts in trying to capture the Danilovsky Maniac, and the investigation is still ongoing. He is a suspect in the murder of 19 year old Svetlana Filyuk in 2011 as her body had been buried in a similar manner to Tatyana Maskimova. Sometime after the canonical killing spree a teacher caught a strange man drawing pornography similar to what was found in the killer's lair, which is an important detail as the Maniac had crossed into this school's very courtyard to escape after killing Svetlana Stepanova. The police believed the man drawing was the Maniac revisting old "stomping grounds". The police do have DNA from the killer as it has been used to clear suspects. They've also collected DNA from hundreds of men living in Cherepovets (especially along Danilov Street) but have yet to find a match. One theory the police have is that the killer is a former police officer as he demonstrated some sophistication in using makeshift garrotes to strangle his victims, paying careful attention to avoid being seen purchasing suspicious items. This case has always unnerved me in how brazen his attacks were yet never being caught.
