On the 17th August 1980, the Chamberlain family was camping at Uluru in Australia's Northern Territory, when at around eight o'clock at night, they heard a cry from the tent where their ten week old baby girl and four year old son were sleeping. Rushing to the tent, the mother of the child, Lindy saw a dingo near the tent's entrance and upon entering, realised with horror that her baby daughter Azaria, was missing and all that remained was a pool of blood on the floor. The police arrived and a search was organized but no traces of the baby were found.

The Chamberlains were interviewed the next morning and only some of the bloodstained items were removed from the tent, with many being left behind. The family was interviewed again later on that same day, by a different officer who thought the Chamberlains' recounts of the previous night were suspicious. A week passed and no new evidence was found, that is, until a tourist found Azaria's vest and jumpsuit. But despite this new piece of evidence, the crime scene was not sealed off and a full examination of the clothing was never conducted. This lack of proper crime scene and evidence analysis led the police to believe that Lindy Chamberlain was lying about her story. The lack of dingo bite marks and saliva on Azaria's jumpsuit and the fact that the baby's shoes were still tied inside the jumpsuit while the vest was inside out, heightened the police's suspicion even further. In 1981, it was however, concluded that Azaria was indeed taken by a dingo, allowing Lindy and Michael Chamberlain to at last get over the accusations after the tragic loss of their child and move on with everyday life.

This was however, not to be the case, because after a later analysis of the baby's clothing, it was found that there was a bloody handprint in the shape of a women's hand, reopening the case in 1982. Analysis of the Chamberlains' car also revealed a pair of scissors, baby's blood and some experts claimed that the rip marks on the baby's clothing were actually scissor stab marks. And so it was with this new evidence that another court case was held on the 2nd February, 1982. The case concluded for what was thought to be the last time, when Lindy was convicted with murder of her daughter and sentenced to life in prison. After serving six years in prison, there was a turn in the case when baby Azaria's jacket was unbelievably, found partly buried at Uluru. Just five days later, Lindy was immediately released from prison, but to this day, nobody knows the exact truth and we'll probably never know.

Jack the Ripper

In England, 1888, it was no longer safe to be walking the streets of London's Whitechapel. A killer, given the nickname of 'Jack the Ripper', was stalking and murdering prostitutes in the area - five to begin with, between late August and early November, 1888, but would eventually kill a total number of seven women. 'Jack the Ripper' would murder the women, before partially dissecting them and leaving their bodies to be found by passing people. This case was the first case that psychological profiling was used in an attempt to catch a serial killer. A police surgeon by the name of George B. Phillips first noticed that each of the murdered victims had their organs removed with precision that could only be achieved by someone with training in the medical or butchery industry. Despite following these observations and the fact that the police received several taunting notes signed 'Jack the Ripper', the killer was never caught. Some notable suspects that later investigations led to included Walter Sickert, an Impressionist painter who released paintings of murdered prostitutes 20 years later, Robert Stephenson, the army surgeon/occultist/magician and another man by the name of Thomas Cutbush. But to this day, the identity of Jack remains a mystery.

OJ Simpson

On the night of the 12th of June 1994, Orenthal James Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman, were discovered murdered at Nicole's Beverly Hills abode by her next door neighbour. The police were notified and arrived immediately at the horrific scene to find Nicole's severed body almost decapitated and her friend's body, evidently fallen victim to a hysterical stabbing attack. Upon further investigation of the scene, a bloodstained left-hand glove was discovered and her two sons were still inside the house, asleep in spite of the night's events.

Homicide experts were called in and other officers made their way to Simpson's house, a five minute drive away, where they then discovered that he had taken a night flight to Chicago. The police noticed blood all over Simpson's
car, which was parked outside the house. They also saw a trail of blood drops leading from Simpson's car to the front door of the house, where they discovered another bloodstained glove identical to the one found near Nicole's body. Simpson was contacted by police at his hotel in Chicago and although he sounded distraught about his ex-wife's death, he didn't sound curious to find out what happened. He caught the next plane home and the police interviewed him on the same day. He had a bandaged hand which he claimed was cut some time ago and the wound had reopened when he accidentally cut it on some glass. His hand was photographed, blood samples taken and fingerprints recorded, then after all of this, he was free to go. The search of his house was videotaped and by the afternoon of the same day, all of the evidence needed was removed, recorded and taken to a laboratory along with evidence taken from Simpson himself.

Simpson was put on trial, one of the most highly publicised trials in history, and all of the evidence seemed to point to him being responsible for the murder. He had no alibi, DNA analysis showed his blood was present on a sock found in Nicole's room, both gloves were stained with blood from both his victims and the trail of blood leading from the car to his house seemed to heighten all suspicions. The case, however, was turned around with Simpson's expert lawyers claiming that a certain police officer present at the initial scene, was racist against black people and that the officer had plenty of time to 'set' the scene up while Simpson was in Chicago. The recorded tape of the investigation of Simpson's house also revealed a large number of mistakes such as unsterile swabbing methods and unnoticed vital
clues. Because of these claims from Simpsons laywers, the jury was convinced that Simpson was innocent and after a nine-month trial, Simpson was cleared of murder charges and that was that.

On the morning of the 27th December 1996, Patsy Ramsey called the police to report her 5-year-old daughter, Jon Benet Ramsey, missing. The little girl had disappeared from her bedroom and a ransom note demanding one hundred and eighty thousand dollars (exactly the amount John Ramsay, her father, had received as a bonus at work just days before), had been left behind. It was only hours later, that Mr Ramsey found his daughter's strangled and battered body in the basement of their home in Boulder, Colorado. Immediately after the accidental discovery of Jon Benet's body, the parents fell under the suspicion of the police, because a lack evidence was found that an intruder had entered and killed the little girl. In fact, no proper search was conducted when the Ramseys first reported the case and friends were allowed to freely enter and leave the house.

The Ramseys hired an attorney, publicist and investigators to defend their case, when they and their son, Burke (9 at the time of Jon Benet's death), were interviewed by the police. In separate rooms, all three members of the Ramsey family were interviewed. After the interview, it was suspected that Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note herself, as the note was written from pen and paper found in Patsy's own writing corner. The evidence found in the basement however, bore all the classic signs of a murder by an intruder, including an open basement window, an unidentified boot print outside the house, a hand made strangling device and a possible sexual assault on the child.

At the time, police were confident that the case would be successfully solved using the DNA as evidence, but almost nine years later, the police have still not solved the case, no new leads have been found and none of the members of the Ramsey family have admitted to the murder. To this day, police are still attempting to find the person responsible for the murder of Jon Benet and the case remains unsolved.

At the end of world war two, the plane carrying Hitler's private archives crashed, apparently destroying the archives for good. However, it was never proven that all the archives were destroyed and that some may have miraculously survived. It was this fact that lured Gerd Heidemann to purchase the first volume of Hitler's diary from a man who claimed he acquired them from an East German general trying to smuggle the scripts over the border dividing the then, East and West Germany. Heidemann's boss then offered to buy the volumes from him for the equivalent of what would now be $3.7 million. The diary entries were then published in a magazine and named as a 'historic sensation', without even being checked for authenticity.

Debates began to arise between historians all over the world before the diaries were finally analysed for their validity. Handwriting analysis and a careful examination of the paper, ink and diaries itself were undertaken. After the investigation, it was found that the diaries had to be forged, as some of the entries were very close to a book, written in 1962, called "Hitler's Speeches and Proclamations" and curiously, the diary contained entries only for the dates in the book. The labels on the diary, supposedly meant to have been typed in 1943, were dated only to have been written 9 years earlier. The diary's binding contained polyester threads which were not first manufactured until 1953 and the paper also contained a type of fluorescent brightener that was not introduced until 1954. The forger of the diary and Gerd Heidemann were both sentenced to four and a half years in jail for their part in the illegal creation of a diary to one of history's most infamous figures, Adolf Hitler.