9 Ingenious Ways Seemingly "Foolproof" Crimes Were Solved

Charles Sole, a savvy North Carolina detective, wondered what happened to contact lenses in a corpse's eyes. His morbid thought changed everything.

In 2005,Janet Abaroa, aged 26, was stabbed while her young child slept nearby. Her husband Raven's alibi—saying he played soccer and returned to find her body—did not satisfy investigators. Sole focused on one detail: no one found Janet's contact lenses.

Raven Abaroa claimed his wife watched TV while he played. The issue was Janet usually took out her lenses before sleeping. Sole called an ophthalmologist to check if identifying contact lenses from a body exhumed five years later was possible. The doctor said the lenses likely disintegrated, but trying was worthwhile.

Abaroa’s body was recovered. Though her lenses mostly disintegrated, remnants remained. This proved she had not removed them before bed.Prosecutors started to build on this idea.They assumed she had already died by the time her husband left. Abaroa pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2014, though he still claims he did not kill his wife.She had been dead when her husband left for the evening.Abaroa pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2014, but he maintains he did not kill his wife.

Serial killer David BerkowitzDavid BerkowitzBerkowitz escaped capture for over a year. His bizarre, strange letters to New York City newspapers confused investigators and the public.

The way the Brooklyn madman was caught was simple and clever. A tip finally cracked the case.The tip finally cracked the case.The tip came from a woman walking her dog during Berkowitz's final killing. She saw a young man walking strangely, like a cat, who leered at her. Minutes later, she heard shots and a car horn. She called police, describing the scene, and mentioned seeing a cream-colored car illegally parked near the murder site.

Berkowitz used his own registered car for escapes. The parking ticket he got that night, which had his home address on it, caught him.

In 1478,Giuliano de MediciGiuliano de Medici, co-ruler of Florence, faced an ambush. Knife-wielding assassins attacked him while he walked into the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flowers. His brother Lorenzo survived the attack. People widely blamed Francesco de Pazzi, the son of a rival family like the Montagues and Capulets, for Giuliano's death.

The assassination became known as 'the Pazzi conspiracy.' Historian Marcello Simonetta deciphered an encrypted letter found in a private archive in 2004.

According to theNew York TimesThe letter showed Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, a humanist nicknamed “The Light of Italy,” actually ordered the slaughter. The Duke wrote about his demand to remove the Medici brothers and his military role in the plot (550 soldiers and 50 knights).

This detective work impressed; the case looked solved for 530 years.

Killing a person is one thing. Tattooing the crime scene across your chest is another. This happened in a scenario echoing Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man."Gang member Anthony Garcia did exactly that.That's exactly what gang member Anthony Garcia did.

On January 23, 2004, Garcia shot rival gang member John Juarez outside a liquor store. Garcia then fled the scene. Afterward, he hired someone to meticulously ink the crime, showing Juarez's death in vivid pictures.Reports indicate...The scene included the Christmas lights on the liquor store roof, the direction Juarez fell, the street lamp across the way, and the street sign. The title RIVERA KILLS was written above everything, referencing the gang. A helicopter also hovered above, dropping bullets, pointing to Garcia's alias 'Chopper.'

Two observant detectives noticed Garcia's crime unless they looked through random photos of gang tattoos.Photos of gang...One tattoo matched the liquor store case. Seeing the tattoo's clear picture, the detective connected the dots. They arrested and sentenced Garcia for multiple "revenge murders," linking him through later investigations.

Jimmy Stewart told Kim Novak in Hitchcock's...VertigoYou should not keep souvenirs of a killing. Especially if that memorabilia is permanently etched into your body.

Detective Jerome Caminada is famous for inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. One memorable case involved a perpetrator called “The Music Thief.”

According to the book...The Real Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Story of Jerome CaminadaManchester's Free Trade Performance Hall once had a burglar who liked sheet music. The thief usually struck during shows, stealing songbooks while staff and musicians worked.

Caminada planned his stakeout oddly. He ordered a custom piano box, "large enough for a human to crouch inside, and full of specially placed eyeholes." He hid inside, crouched in the dark, waiting for the perpetrator.

Caminada saw the old librarian hobble into the room and grab the sheet music. Then, musicians returned after the show, piled instruments on the piano, blocking Caminada's exit. After they left, the famous detective found no way out.

The gasman was still there, turning off lights and locking up. Things got cinematic then. Unaware Caminada was in the box, he panicked, thinking he saw something supernatural when the detective asked for help.

In 2010, the Connecticut Department of Corrections started an experiment. They tested using playing cards as "Have You Seen Me?" milk cartons to find criminals.

Reports stateDecks are given out in prisons. They show crime details and suspect or victim photos. These cards generate many leads. They recently helped find the killer of Derrick Comrie, who shot him in the face while sitting in his car.

An inmate apparently read about Comrie on his Jack of Spades. He linked Comrie to another prisoner whose description of a murder he committed matched the card's account of Comrie's death. That prisoner's victim was indeed Comrie. The case solved after five years of failed searching.

The 1600s offered a golden time for intense, Shakespearean crimes and blood transfusion research. One murder mystery involved King Louis XIV's personal doctor.

In 1667, the royal doctorJean-Baptiste Denys made headlines.Denys somehow successfully transfused sheep's blood into a sick teenager's veins. Denys tried another animal-to-human transfusion soon after, and this one failed. He treated "Parisian madman" Antoine Mauroy with calf's blood, thinking its freshness would overcome the sickness and madness in Mauroy's veins.

The patient died. Denys faced arrest and murder charges. However, the transfusion did not kill Mauroy. Investigators saw the corpse did not match simple calf's blood contamination. They suspected another death method. Mauroy's wife, Perrine, was the real killer. She was found guilty of "poisoning her husband with arsenic draughts." Denys' rivals in medicine and science helped her. They wanted to blame the doctor's already-controversial experiments.

Through careful detective work,Mauroy was eventually found not guilty.Louis XIV's doctor stopped caring about blood transfusions. He left the medical business, and France banned transfusions soon after.

During the Cold War, America tested nuclear weapons above ground, preparing for a war with the Soviets. One byproduct was Carbon-14, an isotope that spread fast into the environment and people's tooth enamel. Thus, many people born then still have slightly radioactive teeth.

This makes dental record identification, called "radiocarbon dating," a useful way to find forensic facts like age-at-death or time-of-death. This method helps investigators solve cold cases.solve cold cases, identify victims of natural disasters, and solve more murder mysteries across the board.

In 1978, novelist, playwright, and "communist dissident" Georgi Markov was hit by a small flying object walking to work. He ignored it then. As the day went on, he developed a red, pimple-like bump on his leg. He then got sick and died days later.

In the hospital, the playwright recalled feeling a "little pinprick … similar to an insect bite" on his leg while walking. An autopsy showed a tiny pellet with a 0.2 milligram dose of the poison ricin embedded in the wound. How did they give it?

This is the answer, which turned out, was in the rain. On the day he got the "bite," Markov was also briefly hit by a passerby's falling umbrella. It was a windy day. The stranger stooped to grab his umbrella from the ground, mumbled, "I’m sorry," then quickly crossed the street and got into a taxi.

Investigators used this description to figure out the death-pellet was injected through a parasol that had "been adapted into a lethal killing machine with a poisoned tip." Years passed before the crime linked to the KGB. Two defecting agents later confirmed the Bulgarian government sought the Soviet organization's help to "eliminate" Markov. They also confirmed such an umbrella was specially made for dispatch.

Francesco Giullino was eventually found as the probable assassin/parasol dropper. Giullino now admits working for the Soviets but denies partaking in Markov's murder. No one knows for sure: when the Bulgarian Communist regime fell in 1989, almostAll their classified files were destroyed, including files that likely proved Giullino's guilt. The case closed officially in 2013.