10 Criminal Investigations That Went Horribly WRONG
10 Criminal Investigations That Went Horribly Wrong
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at infamous cases of investigative errors by law enforcement that yielded serious consequences.
Centennial Olympic Park Incident
Security guard Richard Jewell was initially praised for discovering a bagful of pipe bombs and helping to evacuate Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park in 1996. His presence and profile nonetheless made him a person of interest in the bomb’s planting. After pressure on the FBI led to this information being leaked to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the public turned on Jewell. He was eventually cleared, with no other suspects, until anti-government terrorist Eric Rudolph was captured after two more bombings in ‘98. This “trial by media” would become a cautionary tale in the potential human cost of law enforcement and the public rushing to judgment. Ten years after the bombing, the State of Georgia formally declared Jewell a hero.
The West Memphis Three
Cases like the Central Park Five show the tragedy of bringing prejudice into an investigation. But at least Matias Reyes eventually confessed to the assault pinned on those teenagers. There would be no justice for three children who were gruesomely murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. The investigation suffered from poor crime scene handling, cursory examinations, and information leaks. Speculations of a Satanic ritual caused authorities to lean on teenage outsiders Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley Jr. A coerced confession sealed their fates, but overwhelming evidence suggested that the public was desperate for closure, and that the police were unwilling to face their mistakes. Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley were released from prison in 2011, but the real killers were never caught.
Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
A 2007 holiday in Lagos turned tragic for British couple Kate and Gerry McCann, who reported their three-year-old daughter Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3. But Portuguese authorities failed to immediately secure the scene and notify Interpol. The McCanns would later learn that police suspected them of staging the abduction themselves. In the years following their exoneration, leads based on limited evidence and mistaken witness statements have consistently fallen through. In 2023, Portuguese police finally apologized to the McCans for their poor initial response and communication with tourists in a particularly high-pressure situation. Law enforcement in multiple countries are still trying to find out what happened to Madeleine.
Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson & Ron Goldman
The 1994 killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman set up one of the most shocking trials in modern American history. The investigation was immediately hampered by first responders’ disoriented handling of an unsecured crime scene. Public pressure certainly became overwhelming as police charged Brown’s superstar ex-husband O. J. Simpson. The evidence was essentially conclusive, but the defendant’s team effectively argued that sloppy policework and Detective Mark Fuhrman’s conduct opened the possibility of corruption. Simpson’s acquittal is widely believed to be a miscarriage of justice, influenced by L.A.’s contemporary racial tensions. But the argument for jury bias would have been stronger if not for the failings of a seemingly open-shut investigation.
Murder of JonBenét Ramsey
The day after Christmas 1996, child model JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her affluent family's Colorado home. Media attention on this shocking tragedy escalated as Boulder PD focused their investigation on a cover-up by the family. But the case was found to be compromised by a failure to immediately interview them, and to secure the scene from visitors who contaminated the scene. Crucial evidence was either lost or shared with the suspected family. And the investigators’ tunnel vision was ultimately undermined by false confessions and clashes with the District Attorney’s office. With the Ramseys cleared by ambiguous DNA evidence in 2008, the circumstances of JonBenét’s death may be too muddied for the case to ever be reliably closed.
Evans Family Tragedy
London police knew that there was no time to waste after Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine were murdered in 1949. They observed the violent history of the victims’ patriarch Timothy, and got him to confess to possibly poisoning his wife to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. But he changed his story even before learning that the victims were strangled. Evans was nonetheless convicted and later executed on the eyewitness testimony of neighbor John Christie. Three years later, Christie confessed to murdering Beryl, as well as four women after them. This miscarriage of justice was a key factor in the abolition of the death penalty in the UK, but could have been avoided if police were less prejudiced and more scrupulous.
The Night Stalker
In 1985, Los Angeles was gripped in fear of the serial killer known as the Night Stalker. San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein was hoping to comfort the public with a press conference to address him striking in their city. But the broadcast inadvertently notified the killer that police were aware of his gun and rare Avia sneakers. This information was meant to be held from the public, but the scope of the manhunt strained communication among law enforcement agencies. Richard Ramirez threw his shoes off of the Golden Gate Bridge, but was thankfully not able to kill again before he was apprehended by civilians who recognized his description. Law enforcement officials would credit them with resolving one of the largest manhunts in California history.
The Unabomber
The highly intelligent eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski evaded capture for 17 years. In that time, he delivered 16 bombs by various methods, leading police to treat some of the attacks as isolated incidents. It was even theorized that there were multiple bombers. But authorities weren't just actively outwitted by the Unabomber, named for his initial targeting of universities and airlines. The UNABOM task force thus focused on college-age suspects, until the materials of the bombs shifted the profile to an older blue-collar man. An academic aged somewhere in between, Kaczynski was finally arrested in 1996 after his brother David recognized the mannerisms in his published manifesto. Even when the big picture is so far off, the finer points in an investigation are crucial.
The Yorkshire Ripper
A year after Peter Sutcliffe’s arrest, Constabulary Inspector Lawrence Byford wrote a report about how the Yorkshire Ripper could have been caught much sooner. Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times during his five-year spree, yet police didn’t note small descriptions of the suspect that he matched. They even downplayed his implication in an anonymous letter that a friend quickly took credit for. But long before the Home Office released the Byford report in 2006, everyone knew about “Wearside Jack.” John Samuel Humble’s false tapes and letters misdirected the investigation for over a year. Sutcliffe ultimately admitted to being the Ripper during his 1981 interview, putting an end to one of the most infamously flawed major investigations in UK history.
Atlanta Murders
The murders of two adults and 28 children were linked to a spree in Atlanta between 1979 and ‘81. But police didn’t seriously investigate the links until a year in. It’s understood that racial bias impeded efforts to solve these crimes within the city’s Black community. Even after a task force was formed, it took civilian pressure to spark federal involvement. Wayne Williams was ultimately convicted of killing the two adults, then linked to most of the child abductions. The string ended with his downfall, though many feel he was a scapegoat for a possible conspiracy or social crisis. Williams himself has tried to appeal his case on the grounds that the police cared more about catching the “Atlanta Boogeyman” than looking deeper.
What are some other miscarriages of justice brought on by flimsy investigating? Testify in the comments below.
