The Skeleton Key Chronicles

14 hours ago

It’s been 56 years since an unidentified man was discovered in an abandoned house outside Cleveland. After all that time, investigators still don't know his name.

In August of 1970, when two boys playing near an abandoned two-story house on Forbes Road in Oakwood Village made the discovery inside. The house is long gone, and the property looks very different today, but this is the location where it once stood. Investigators believed the man had been there for roughly seven to ten days, but they couldn't figure out who he was.

There was, however, another strange piece to the story. About 1,000 feet from the house, investigators found a burned-out 1966 Cadillac sedan that had been reported stolen. Whether the car had anything to do with the unidentified man has never been publicly established, but more than five decades later, it's still an interesting part of the original investigation.

Investigators did have some clues about the man himself. He was Black, believed to be between 25 and 35 years old and about 5'7". He had medium-length black hair and was wearing a black cotton shirt, dark pants woven with multicolored threads and well-worn white canvas shoes with red and blue stripes. The shoes were also speckled with several colors of paint.

Today, he is still known as Oakwood Village John Doe. His case remains with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, where investigators are trying to determine whether DNA or other available evidence could finally help establish his identity.

Anyone with information that could help identify Oakwood Village John Doe can contact the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

Twenty-one years ago tonight, New Orleans was preparing for Katrina. Once the sun set on August 28th, 2005, the storm had grown into a Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf, with winds reaching 175 mph.

By the time the edges of Katrina began to reach the Louisiana coast, thousands of people who had nowhere else to go were making their way into the Superdome, which had become a designated shelter for the storm.

For anyone who remembers watching the coverage, it’s hard to forget the footage. The crowds inside the Superdome, people stranded on rooftops and overpasses, entire neighborhoods disappearing under water. And the stadium became a story all its own. Thousands of people ended up inside there for days as the power and air conditioning failed and temps soared into the upper 90's, Stories about the conditions inside began trickling in along with the first images, giving the rest of the country some idea of what people there were living through.

Communication was a mess, information was coming from everywhere, and sometimes nobody seemed entirely sure what was happening a few blocks away, much less across the city.

I went to New Orleans about a year after Katrina, and I can still remember entire blocks sitting empty. What really stayed with me were the big Xs still spray-painted on houses, left by the teams that had gone door to door after the storm. Each section of the X meant something, including when the house had been searched, who had searched it, what they encountered there and information about the number still inside. A year later, those marks were still everywhere. To this day, in certain areas there are still traces of those Katrina Xs.

It’s easy to forget just how massive Katrina was beyond the images we all remember. More than a million people were displaced across the Gulf Coast, hundreds of thousands of homes were affected, and its impact on New Orleans was so profound that Tulane offers a course devoted to understanding Katrina and how it changed the city.🕯 … See MoreSee Less

The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

A search is expanding today in Great Smoky Mountains National Park after a man disappeared from an area that anyone familiar with Gatlinburg will probably recognize.

Marcin Bachleda-Blaszczak was last seen around Sugarlands Visitor Center on August 22nd. His vehicle was later found in the visitor center parking lot, but Marcin wasn't reported missing until the evening of August 24th.

And the fact that his car was found at Sugarlands leaves a lot of possibilities for where Marcin could have gone from there. If you've ever driven in that area you probably are familar with the place. It's the visitors center that sits just a couple of miles outside downtown Gatlinburg, along the river right at one of the main gateways into the national park. There are trails all around it, trail maps and plenty of hiking information available inside.

Rangers initially established a search perimeter around the Sugarlands area. As of Friday, August 28th, that search is being expanded with help from other agencies. Anyone with information is being asked to contact Great Smoky Mountains National Park dispatch.

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