50 Chilling Unsolved Mysteries Of The 1970s

The Bigfoot Killer only targeted ladies of the night

One of the most inhuman killers was operating out of the Detroit area between February and October 1975. In that time seven young women, all living on low wages or working on the street were raped and murdered in the Cass Corridor neighborhood. Witnesses state that the killer drove a beige Oldsmobile and offered his victims $15 in exchange for sexual services before threatening the women with a knife before having his way with them and strangling them.

The unknown assailant became known as "Bigfoot" because of his immense stature. Even with all of this information available to the public only one suspect was ever named in the case, 29-year-old Carl Mayweather Jr., who was arrested in 1976 following an attempted rape of a woman. Even though his M.O. was similar to that of the Bigfoot Killer he had a solid alibi and no further charges were pressed. The case remains unsolved to this day.

Everyone at the Brodhaven Primary School saw a huge flying saucer

On February 4, 1977, a yellow cigar-shaped craft allegedly landed next to the Brodhaven Primary School. A class of 14 students claimed to observe the craft's landing as well as a silver creature moving about the ship. On February 17 of the same year teachers at the school claimed to have seen the exact same UFO making the rounds of the school. If that was all that happened we'd still be fascinated, but two months later the proprietor of the Haven Fort Hotel in Little Haven alleged that he noticed an "upside down saucer" in a nearby field and two humanoid creatures were piloting the crazy, mixed up ship. To this day no one has been able to prove or disprove these sightings, but pinning the claims on a prankster seems a bit light.

 D.B. Cooper jumped out of a plane with a ton of cold, hard cash

One the most enduring mysteries of the 1970s is the hijacking of a Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971, by an unknown man only known as D.B. Cooper. While on a flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington, Cooper told the flight attendant that he was armed with a bomb before demanding $200,000 in ransom. After receiving the money in Seattle, Cooper instructed the pilot to fly to Mexico before parachuting over southwestern Washington. He was never identified, and only a small amount of the ransom money has ever been found.

Bob Crane's murder showed that his private life was more salacious than his fans knew 

Known to most Americans as the beloved lead of Hogan's Heroes, in his private life he was a libertine with an insatiable appetite for women as well as filming his escapades with friend and cohort John Henry Carpenter. By the late '70s Crane was performing in regional theater productions while attempting to work his way back to television when was murdered at the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 29, 1978.

Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment with what local officials believe was a camera tripod, but with no physical evidence they were hamstrung. It's believe that Crane contacted Carpenter prior to his death to break off their friendship which had turned toxic, something that many theorists point to as a motive for Carpenter. However, no charges were filed against Carpenter even after police found smears of blood that match Crane's blood type on Carpenter's car. Carpenter was officially charged with Crane's murder in 1994, but after he was acquitted on all charges the case went cold.

The Zodiac Killer continued taunting the police into the 1970s

Canonically, the Zodiac Killer's brutal and seemingly random crimes ended in 1969, but not only did ZK continue communicating with the authorities well into the 1970s, this anonymous killer is likely responsible for a string of murders that occurred after their alleged final crime. In 1970, 22-year-old Kathleen Johns was abducted near I-580, west of Modesto, which was the Zod's stomping grounds, and on March 22, 1971 a postcard believed to to be from the Zodiac allegedly claimed responsibility for the disappearance of Donna Lass a few months prior.

The Zodiac continued to communicate with the authorities into 1974, when wrote a postcard to the San Francisco Chronicle stating The Exorcist as "the best saterical comidy [sic] that I have ever seen." The letter ended with a cryptic update on his crimes, a score that read "Me = 37, SFPD = 0."

In spite of an ongoing investigation into the identity of the Zodiac no results have ever been reported.

The Doodler was a menace of the San Francisco gay scene

Throughout 1975, the gay community in San Francisco was on watch for the Doodler, also known as the Black Doodler, an unidentified serial killer who drew pictures of his victims before stabbing them to death. The Doodler was known to meet with his victims at nightclubs and bars before having sex with and killing them.

Due to the fear of being outed in the mid 1970s it's unknown just how many victims the Doodler has to his name, but it's believed that between six and sixteen men were killed by this horrendous psycho in just nine months. Early stages of the investigation noted that there could have been as many as three different perpetrators, but the canonical Doodler was believed to be a Black man between the ages of 19 and 25, and standing at about six feet with a slender build.

Even though this case has yet to be solved, San Francisco officials are hopeful that modern DNA science will help them put an end to this tragic story.

The Lady of the Dunes has yet to be identified

This chilling case is not for the faint of heart. On July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl chased her beagle across the dunes of Cape Cod, Massachusetts when she found the body of a woman lying on the ground stripped of all her clothes. Known as the "Lady of the Dunes," her hands had been severed and she was nearly decapitated, a park ranger later said that he believed she was bludgeoned to death.

The police have made multiple attempts to identify the Lady of the Dunes, including an exhumation performed by Providence, Rhode Island officials in 2000. In 2010, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Smithsonian Institution worked together to create a composite image of her facial features. The case has yet to be solved.

Ronny DeFeo murdered his entire family, but we still don't know how he did it

The DeFeo murders that occurred on November 13, 1974, are some of the strangest crimes of the era. While Ronald DeFeo Jr. was technically found guilty of shooting and killing six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, the details surrounding these murders are truly mind boggling.

That night, six members of the DeFeo family were all shot in their beds without a struggle. It's unclear how Ronald was able to accomplish this with no one hearing a gunshot that night, but during his lifetime he claimed the murders were the outcome of everything from demonic possession to a mob hit. During his trial in 1975, DeFeo claimed insanity and stated that he heard voices telling him to kill his family, but he was found guilty of second-degree murder and received six terms of 25 years to life in prison. He passed away in custody in March 2021 without ever saying what really happened in the house on 112 Ocean Avenue.

The Oakland Child Killer was a brutal monster of the bay area

Between 1976 and 1977, Oakland County Michigan was the site of at least four child murders. Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich, and Timothy King were all between 10 and 12-years-old, they were all from well to do neighborhoods, and officials know that they were all killed by the same person.

In 2011, investigators discovered DNA evidence of a new suspect that matched hairs belonging to a man named James Vincent Gunnels who would have been a teenager at the time, but it's unclear exactly what his connection would have been to the crimes. The entire case is absolutely horrific.

Was The Wow! Signal a sign of intelligent life in space?

Intelligent life in far reaches of the galaxy was a hot topic in the 1970s, and in 1977 the Wow! Signal turned a lot of people into believers. Discovered through the now-defunct Big Ear radio telescope constructed for SETI, researcher Jerry Ehman first noticed the call when he found a code that read "6EQUJ5" in the a printout from the telescope's computer.

The code meant that Big Ear had picked up a loud, narrowband signal from the constellation Sagittarius. The signal lasted for a solid 72 seconds and was never heard again. Ehman later said:

A few pages into the computer printout I was astonished to see the string (sequence) of numbers and characters ... I immediately highlighted those six characters and wrote the notation 'Wow!' in the left margin of the computer printout opposite them.

No one knows exactly what sent the signal, but researchers theorize that a comet could have caused the signal, but it's just as possible that the telescope experienced a glitch that created the sound. 

The Death of Charles C. Morgan is full of questions

When Charles C. Morgan was murdered in Tucson, Arizona, in 1977 he was a successful escrow agent, and a loving father and husband - but there was a darkness within him too. In March of '77 Morgan disappeared for three days before showing up at his family home bruised and clearly on drugs. He claimed that he was working undercover for the United States Treasury for about two years.

Two months later, Morgan up and disappeared again. His body was discovered near his vehicle 40 miles from Tuscon dressed in a ballistic best. He had been killed execution style by his own revolver but there were no incriminating fingerprints on the weapon. To make things all the more strange, two days before his body was discovered an unknown woman called the Morgan home and said, "Chuck is all right. Ecclesiastics 12, 1 through 8" before ending the call. She later spoke to the sheriff's department and claimed that Morgan was trying to pay off a hitman to keep from killing him.

The case continued to spiral into weirdness when a $2 bill was found pinned to Morgan's underwear with a map of the Arizona-Mexico border drawn on the back, along with several Spanish names, as well as the phrases "Ecclesiastes 12" and "1 through 8." Journalist Don Devereux reached out to the FBI for clarity on the case and they responded that they did not know and had never worked with Charles Morgan.

Raymond Washington was killed for trying to bring peace to the gangs of California

The original founder of the South Central Los Angeles gang that we now know as the Crips is the victim of one of the most heinously unsolved crimes of the 1970s. On August 9, 1979, Raymond Washington was killed in a drive-by shooting on the corner of East 64th Street and South San Pedro Street in South Central Los Angeles by an unknown assailant. It's believed that Washington was murdered for his desire to unite a group of gangs into something more peaceful, but with an inadequate investigation into his death there's no way to know who really pulled the trigger.

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

When 20-year-old Australian Frederick Valentich vanished while flying a single-engine Cessna 182L to King Island for a dinner date it was theorized that he was captured by a UFO. He was flying over the Bass Strait when he spoke to air traffic controllers and stated that an unidentified flying object was following his path.

Valentich kept in contact with air traffic control and claimed that the craft hovered directly above him. In his last transmission he reported trouble with his engine, but in the following weeks no search ever turned up results. There was no plane, no body, nada.

The Vela Satellite controversy is still making people scratch their heads

On September 22, 1979, the 12 unmanned reconnaissance satellites known as the Vela was monitoring radiation levels in the Earths atmosphere when they detected a double flash in the South Atlantic, which could mean that someone was testing a nuclear weapon. At the time authorities believes that Israel and South Africa may have been behind the flash, but if that was the case that would mean that they violated the peace treaty with Egypt brokered by President Carter.

In November of that year a panel of experts put their heads together and were unable to determine what caused the flash. Officially they stated that it was a "reflection of sunlight from a small meteoroid or a piece of space debris passing near the satellite."

Evidence about the case has since been declassified, and while the documents don't state which country was responsible it's pretty clear that the Vela system detected a nuclear blast.

Jeannette DePalma's death remains unsolved

One of the most chilling unsolved crimes of the 1970s continues to stir controversy into the modern era as New Jersey locals and investigative reporters attempt to solve the chilling death of Jeannette DePalma. On August 7, 1962, 16-year-old DePalma disappeared from Springfield Township, New Jersey while on her way to see a friend. Her remains was discovered six weeks later on a hillside cliff inside of Springfield's Houdaille Quarry.

At the time of the investigation police weren't able to establish a cause of death or turn up any promising leads. Within weeks of the discovery of DePalma's remains reports of occult paraphernalia, witches, and Satanist filled local papers, spurring on local whispers that the teen was the victim of a sacrifice. It wasn't until the early 2000s that DePalma's case picked up steam thanks to reporting by Weird NJ, and the book Death on the Devil's Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey by Jesse P. Pollack. Both of thee investigative reports helped separate fact from fiction while focusing on the ways in which local officials mishandled the case from moment one. DePalma's death remains unsolved, but 50 years on there's still hope that modern DNA testing will help bring her family comfort.

The Clinton Avenue Five Vanished in 1978

On August 20, 1978, five young men went missing from Newark, New Jersey. Melvin Pittman, Ernest Taylor, Alvin Turner, Randy Johnson, and Michael McDowell were all between the ages of 16 and 17 when they disappeared from Clinton Avenue, the unsettling case remained cold until November 2008 when Philander Hampton confessed to luring the boys to abandoned house with his cousin before holding them at gunpoint and setting the house ablaze. Investigators searched the grounds for human remains but nothing turned up. Both Hampton and his alleged accomplice went to trial for arson and murder, with Hampton pleading guilty and receiving ten years in prison while his cousin was acquitted. To this day the remains of the Five have not been recovered. 

The Val Johnson UFO Event has physical proof of a UFO... maybe

In 1979, Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson of Minnesota alleged that he had a run in with a UFO while alone on a darkened road. Johnson claimed that he was driving down the road in the middle of the night when a craft popped him with a harsh beam of light. He remembers waking up 40 minutes later with "welder" burns on his face. The windshield of his squad car was smashed, his antenna was bent, and the hood was dented. He noted that his watch and the clock in the squad car had both stopped for 14 minutes.

The Marshall County Sheriff's Office failed to to find conclusions one way or the other concerning Johnson's so-called run in with an alien, but you can visit the damaged patrol car the next time you visit Warren, Minnesota.

Did Sid Vicious kill Nancy Spungen?

On October 12, 1978, Nancy Spungen went from being the notorious girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassists Sid Vicious to a victim of a horrific stabbing in New York City's Chelsea Hotel. Spungen was only 20 when she and Vicious were partying with members of the local punk scene. A deluge of drugs and alcohol makes it impossible to know exactly what happened on the night of her death, but while Vicious was pinned with the murder it's theorized that a local drug dealer stabbed Spungen in the abdomen before fleeing the scene and leaving Vicious to take the wrap. Vicious never served time for the murder. He passed away from a drug overdose not long after Spungen's death.

The Travis Walton abduction remains unexplained

Travis Walton and his logging crew were working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests near Snowflake, Arizona on November 5, 1975, when he was allegedly knocked unconscious by a saucer shaped UFO that blasted him with a beam of light. His crew drove away in fear before they could see what happened to Walton. He claims that after the crew left he was abducted by a group of three short, bald creatures who experimented on him before dropping him off along the highway five days later.

Investigators initially believed that Walton's crew murdered him and made up a wacky story, but after all but one of them passed a polygraph test (the fifth test was inconclusive) and Walton turned up the UFO story suddenly became more plausible. Walton's abduction is still under debate, with the alleged abductee appearing on television, podcasts, and at conventions whenever he has a chance to discuss his case.

The 1972 UFO sightings in the eastern Cape remain are still mind boggling

The eastern Cape of South Africa has long been a hotspot of UFO activity, and on June 26, 1971, a farm owner named Bennie Smit saw a fireball streaking across the sky at nine in the morning. Smit claims to have fired eight shots at it with none of them causing any visible effect. The craft disappeared by noon, but Smit claims that he could hear the UFO all night. That's not the way that we want to fall asleep, but maybe some people are built differently.

The Circleville Letters are incredibly creepy and have never been explained

The Circleville Letters are absolutely bananas. How bananas? They are yellow, ripe, and they taste great in a smoothie. In 1976, residents began receiving terrifying anonymous letters featuring everything from accusations to threats, with the author claiming to know everything that was going in the town and threatening to expose the secrets of anyone who failed to meet his demands.

One letter from 1977 accused Mary Gillispie, a school bus driver of having an affair with the school superintendent, and the bus driver's husband, Ron, was threatened with death if he didn't stop the shenanigans between his wife and the superintendent. Ron later committed suicide, although officials ruled his death to be alcohol related.

Hundreds of letters continued to circulate until 1994, almost at random. Authorities have never learned who was behind the letters.

On October 11, 1973, 42-year-old Charles Hickson and 19-year-old Calvin Parker were fishing off a pier on the west bank of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when a large oval shaped craft with two flashing blue lights paralyzed them before a group of small creatures with "crab-like pincers" carried them aboard the craft. They later told the Jackson County, Mississippi Sheriff's office about their abduction but skeptics find this story questionable at best.

The 1978 Holiday Inn Fire That Claimed The Lives of 10 people

On November 26, 1978, 10 guests at the Holiday Inn in Greece, New York, were killed in a fire that whipped through the building. Initially, the Greece Police Department believed that the fire was accidental, but there were a few fishy facts about this fire. It's not clear if the fire alarms in the hotel went off during the blaze. First responders claim that they couldn't hear the bells when they arrived, although the hotel manager states that the alarms were ringing loud and clear.

Aside from the disagreement over the alarm, there were no smoke detectors or sprinklers in parts of the building, and the fire alarm system was not connected to the fire department. When John Stickevers, a New York City fire investigator was brought onto the case look into the blaze he found traces of a rare, very flammable liquid accelerant inside a storage cupboard beneath the first floor stairwell. No suspects were ever named in this truly chilling arson, and it wasn't until 2014 that the police identified two suspects.

The Burger Chef murders had almost no physical evidence

The Burger Chef restaurant outside Speedway, Indiana was the site of a chilling unsolved massacre on November 17, 1978, when four young employees disappeared from the premises without a word. Their bodies were discovered two days later, leading investigators to state that the victims were likely kidnapped by burglars before they executed. Even though there are theories as to who committed this heinous crime the lack of physical evidence has kept authorities from prosecuting any living suspects.

Victor Kilian was getting his life back on track before he was killed in his own home

Victor Killian was a character actor in Hollywood who got his start on the vaudeville circuit in the mid-1920s before making his way west to star on the big and small screens. Blacklisted due to McCarthyism in the 1950s, Killian made money by appearing on stage until blacklisting ended in the 1970s. Once he was allowed back in real deal productions his career resurgence was in full swing until March 11, 1979. On that day he was bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant in his apartment just blocks away from where a similar crime occurred days earlier. No arrests were ever made in this case and it's unclear just how much the authorities looked into the crime.

The Dechmont Woods Encounter was either a UFO encounter of an epileptic seizure

On November 9, 1979, a forester named Bob Taylor claims that he was abducted by a large spheroid object while he was parked along the M8 motorway. Taylor notes that the object was a "a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper" with a set of propellors. Along with the ship Taylor claims that he smelled an odor similar to that of "burning brakes" before passing out. When he awoke the craft was gone. In spite of an actual real deal criminal investigation into this sighting skeptics believe that Taylor simply suffered an epileptic seizure, but does that count for the propellor laced ships? We may never know if this story is science fiction or science fact.

Denise McGregor was physically harmed beyond recognition

This strange and horrific case may be too upsetting for some readers. 12-year-old Denise McGregor was abducted from the Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale on the night of March 20, 1978, after running errands. Her remains were discovered the next day and the injuries were so gruesome that pathologists noted that it looked like she had been in an accident, not attacked by a human. Murderer Robert Arthur Selby Lowe was suspected of McGregor's murder until he was eliminated by DNA evidence.

The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders are incredibly chilling

In a truly chilling crime, the remains of three young girls between the ages of 8 and 10 were found pummeled, raped, and strangled at Camp Scott, a Girl Scout camp near Locust Grove, Oklahoma on June 13, 1977. Officials initially believed that they had the case all sewn up after arresting Gene Leroy Hart, a local escapee known to be violent, but he was acquitted by a jury in March 1979.

To make things even more strange, two months before the murders a camp counselor discovered a horrific letter in a ransacked bunk that read:

We are on a mission to kill three girls in tent one.

The note was discarded, but it's likely that this was a warning of terrible events to come.

Carl Doser shot five people and he remains at large

During Pentecost weekend 1976, five people were shot with a Winchester rifle in a home near the Swiss village Seewen. Carl Doser, the owner of the rifle is the main suspect in this case, but he went missing pretty much immediately following the crimes. The rifle was discovered in Dosser's mother's apartment in 1996, and a witness claims that in 1990 she met Doser and he stated that "he couldn't go back to Switzerland" because he was "being chased for murder." Authorities have never been able to track down Doser or even authenticate the rumors of his existence, which keeps the case open to this day.

The Flat-Tire murders made good samaritans a thing of the past

Between February 1975 and January 1976 a series of gruesome unsolved murders occurred in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, Florida. Officials believe that the offender deflated the tires of his victims (at least 12 women but believed to be as many as 30) before offering his services as a regular guy who could help out before sexually assaulting and brutally killing the women. Some officials believe that the Flat-Tire murders extended to Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and California, but this claim has never been proven. To this day no one has been able to substantiate the identity of this vicious killer.

Atlanta Lover's Lane Murders were never solved thanks to a more high profile crime

From January to March 1977, couples across Atlanta feared for their lives as a killer with a .38 caliber pistol was roaming the city attacking young lovers who just wanted some alone time in their cars. All in all three couples were executed by the unknown assailant, and officials believe that he was operating on a three-week schedule. The second shooting happened 26 days after the first and the third shooting occurred 28 days after the second.

Operating on this theory the Atlanta authorities staked out Adams Park and West Manor Park in Atlanta on April 7th and 8th only to come up empty handed. The killer never struck again and the investigation went cold as soon at the Atlanta Child Murders broke out.

The Freeway Phantom gripped Washington D.C. in fear

The self proclaimed "Freeway Phantom" was an active serial killer in Washington D.C. from April 1971 to September 1972. In that time he claimed six victims - one of them was left with a note pinned to her jacket reading:

this is tAntAmount to my
insensititivity [sic] to people
especiAlly women.
I will Admit the others
wheN you cAtch me iF you cAn!
FRee-wAy PhanTom

There was a substantial investigation into the crimes of the Freeway Phantom, complete with a task force and a call in number; the FBI was even called in at one point, but no leads were ever generated in a way that a suspect could be pinpointed. The case is currently open, and a $150,000 reward is open to anyone who can help put an end to the Freeway Phantom's reign of terror.

The Gold Sock Killer only used gold socks twice

Known as the Gold Sock Killer for the color of socks he used to strange two of his victims, this creep was operating out of Broward County, Florida, between July and August 1973. The investigation into these gruesome strangulations saw officials question more than 200 people and take plaster samples of fingerprints and footprints from various crime scenes. One suspect was even known to have strangled a woman in 1974, but after questioning he was never charged for the Gold Sock murders.

Was the San Mateo Slasher a well known serial killer?

Known as the "San Meteo Slasher" in the media, these gruesome crimes claimed the lives of more than five victims in San Mateo County, California during early 1976. Each victim was a woman with brunette hair who had car trouble shortly before their deaths. They were all dropped in the woods after their deaths. With no witnesses or forensic evidence to speak of the case went cold, but it's believed that there were actually two perpetrators in these murders.

In 2014, Rodney Halbower was named a person of interest in the crimes, but charges against him were dismissed in 2014. Later that year he was charged with the murders of victims Paula Baxter and Veronica Cascio, two crimes of which he was found guilty in 2018. Halbower is likely to face trial in Nevada for the murder of Michelle Mitchell, but the murders of Tanya Blackwell and Carol Lee Booth remained unsolved.

The Highway of Tears has a history of unsolved murders

More than 80 victims have been found along the corridor of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada beginning in 1970 and continuing to this day. A large amount of indigenous women have been murdered, raped, and strewn along this highway, with no witnesses and little forensic evidence to speak out. An investigation into the myriad of murders along the Highway 16 didn't begin in earnest until 1998. Since the crimes have been investigated as linked murders three different serial killers have been implicated in these gruesome crimes, but that barely scratches the surface of the unsolved murders that have occurred up and down this barren stretch of road.

The Berwyn Mountain UFO incident may have been an earthquake

UFO incidents take on many shapes and sizes, and this incident that occurred on January 23, 1974, is a wild one. The Berwyn Mountains in Llandrillo, Merionethshire, Wales, was the site of loud noises, bright lights, and a possible UFO crash that was covered up by the British government. However, skeptics believe that the area simply suffered a 3.5 magnitude earthquake.

Later, declassified Ministry of Defence documents revealed that a meteor struck the area, only adding to theories about a possible UFO.

The Monster of the Mangones is the boogeyman of Columbia

Operating in Colombia throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the "Monster of the Mangones" is believed to have claimed between 30 and 38 victims, all adolescent and teenage boys. The Monster would jab needles into the heart and torsos of his victims to draw their blood before further torturing the boys and finally killing them. During his reign of terror authorities tried to quell rising fear by claiming that the bodies were actually dug up from a local cemetery and strewn around the city of Cali. The Monster of Mangones was never captured, and his story has become somewhat of a horrifying local myth.

The Münsterland murderer taunted authorities with his brazen crimes

The Münsterland murders were committed in the Münster and Bentheim areas of Germany from 1971 to 1974 by an unknown monster who focused specifically on young, petite dark-haired women who were known to hitchhike. Each victim was found strangled, with their bodies posed in strange positions. They were each robbed of all possessions, and in spite of a small amount of DNA found beneath the fingernails of one of the victims officials have never put a name or a face to these murders.

No one knows who the Oklahoma City Butcher really was

Between 1976 and 1986, an unidentified serial killer roamed the streets of Oklahoma City, claiming the lives of three women - all of them Native American. Each victim was dismembered and mutilated, all of them were beheaded and their sexual organs were removed and never found. Serial killer and drifter Henry Lee Lucas later claimed to be responsible for these crimes, but authorities have taken this with grain of salt as Lucas falsely confessed to hundreds of crimes while incarcerated.

The Petrozavodsk phenomenon could be seen across Europe

On September 20, 1977, multiple celestial events were seen in the skies from Copenhagen and Helsinki in the west to Vladivostok in the east. In Petrozavodsk, Russia, a glowing object was seen over the sky, casting a bright glow across the area. At least 48 UFOs were reported between 1:00 and 1:20 am UTC, and sightings continued to be reported throughout the wee hours of the morning. There have been a number of proposed explanations for this event with director of IZMIRAN Vladimir Migulin stating:

[The phenomenon occurred] due to a rare concourse of various circumstances, that is the launch of the satellite Kosmos-955, the strong magnetic perturbation due to solar flare and our scientific experiment of influencing the ionosphere with low frequency radio waves.

The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders only ended when the main suspect died

Sonoma County and Santa Rosa of the North Bay area of California ran red with blood between 1972 and 1973 as a serial killer focused on young women hitchhiking through Northern California. Each victim was found completely stripped in rural embankments or in creek beds.

There are a number of suspects, but they're all long shots. The Zodiac Killer is believed to be a suspect thanks to a symbol on his "Exorcist letter" and a soy barrel carried by victim Kim Allen. Ted Ted Bundy is also a suspect in the crime, although credit card statements show that Bundy was in Washington state on the date of many of the crimes.

One suspect, Fredric Manalli, a 41-year-old Santa Rosa Junior College creative writing instructor, was believed to be behind the crimes following his death when gruesome drawings of a former student and hitchhiker murders victim Kim Wendy Allen, were discovered among his belongings.

The 1976 Tehran UFO incident is one of the most well documented UFO cases ever

In the early morning of September 19, 1976, at least four civilians reported a shining object cruising through the sky above Tehran. Two officers were sent to investigate the craft in an F-4 Phantom II jet interceptor, but once they reached Tehran they lost all instrument communications and returned to their base. A second F-4 Phantom II was dispatched, and after achieving a radar lock on an object they were able to compare its size to a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. Major Parviz Jafari described the craft as “flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue lights so bright that I was not able to see its body," before the plane's communications system shut down.

Even though this is one of the most thoroughly documented UFO incidents of the 1970s skeptics are still unsure exactly what the pilots saw, although it's believed that a meteor shower is most likely to blame for the flashing lights.

One of the greatest (and fun) unsolved mysteries of the 1970s is the existence of Bigfoot, a cryptid who was seen all over the Pacific Northwest during this truly strange decade. Footage of Bigfoot popped up from time to time but was always debunked by one skeptic or another, but even with the fuddy duddies of the world putting the kibosh on Bigfoot there's still a large amount of truthers out there who believe in this creature. The fact that sightings of Bigfoot occur to this day means that there has to be some shred of truth behind this strange story.

The Stonehenge incident brought UFOs to New Jersey

As much as the actual Stonehenge monument is an alleged hotspot of UFO activity, this unsolved case involves the Stonehenge is a residential apartment building in North Bergen, New Jersey. So less druids and more people working on their Sunday sauce. On January 12, 1975, George O'Barski was driving home that night when he heard static on his radio before a disc shaped "spacecraft" zipped by and hovered over the ground. O'Barski claims that he saw ten hooded creatures get out of the craft, collect some soil in a bag before returning to the UFO and take off. He says that when he returned to the site the following day he found the holes dug by the humanoids. A doorman for Stonehenge claims that he also witnessed the craft, but no one has ever been able to nail down exactly what happened that night.

The Saw-Killer of Hanover's victims have never been identified

Between 1975 and 1977 some 13 body parts were discovered across the Hanover Germany area. None of the remains have ever been identified, but authorities are certain that they're connected thanks to they were chopped up with a saw or surgical instrument. Chief Detective Günter Nowatius states that the issue with solving this case is that the authorities had, "no crime scene, no time of the crime, and neither the perpetrator's nor the victim's identity."

While similar crimes of this brutal nature have been solved in Germany, this series of slayings has never been truly figured out.

The South County car bomber struck without warning

South St. Louis County, Missouri was rocked with a series of deadly car bombings in 1977, with the lives of Shirley Marie Flynn and Robert Curtis Jackson being claimed on October 18, 1977 and November 3, 1977, respectively. Another attack occurred on October 7, 1977, but the, victim Ronald Sterghos, survived. Authorities searched high and low for the perpetrator but they were never able to solve the seemingly random crimes that they believe were accomplished by a truly unhinged individual.

Was a farmer abducted by aliens in the 1970s?

On May 10, 1978, a farmer named Jan Wolski was driving a horse-drawn cart around his property when he claims to have been attacked by to "short, green-faced humanoid entities" that were about five-feet-tall. Wolski says that after jumping him the humanoids began speaking to him in a strange language, initially leading him to believe that he was speaking with someone from another country. It wasn't until he noticed a large bus-like craft hovering in a clearing that he realized that he was face to face with creatures from out of this world.

Without any way to prove his interaction with the humanoids this story has mostly been left a strange mystery, but a memorial is now sitting at the site of the alleged sighting.

The Kaikoura lights was seen by an entire airplane crew, but what were they?

In December 1978, New Zealand was the site of a series of mysterious flashing lights now known as the "Kaikoura Lights." The first sightings occurred on December 21 when the crew of a cargo plane observed a collection of lights around their Armstrong Whitworth AW.660 Argosy aircraft. The lights were followed by a craft with five white flashing lights.

Following the initial sightings by the cargo crew a joint operation between the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the police and the Carter Observatory in Wellington investigated the UFO, with the New Zealand Ministry of Defence stating hat the lights were reflections from squid boat lights reflected off clouds, or possibly lights from the planet Venus reflecting off of cars. In spite of this claim this is one of the most highly documented UFO encounters of the 20th century.