1.
Pepper A woman named Pepper was kidnapped at the
age of four and raised by a woman named Shirley Berthelot along with another girl, a little
older, named Renee.
She remembered a few details from her previous life.
Her name was Rhonda (before Shirley changed it to Pepper) and her parents named Barbara
and Bob.
Barbara had a big blonde bouffant hairstyle and she had a yellow canopy bed.
Pepper always knew Berthelot was not her grandmother, and begged her to tell her who her real family
was.
But even up until her last gasp Berthelot continued to torture them and repaid their
kindness by refusing to put the girls out of their misery and she took her secret to
her grave.
Which left pepper without a social security number or birth certificate.
So pepper began her search for her real family at the hall of records in Los Angeles.
Frustratingly, wherever she looked, she discovered that she simply did not feature in any official
records.
Pepper had all but given up hope of finding her birth parents before a fluke breakthrough
in 2009 when a church friend offered to adopt her in order to get her an official identity.
During the adoption process a government official came across her original adoptive birth certificate.
On it, her name was Rhonda Patricia Christie, with Barbara and Bob Christie listed as her
parents She found Barbara and Bob , who were elderly
by that point.
As it turns out, Bob and Bobby were her adoptive parents and it was Shirley, the woman who
kidnapped her, who initially brought Pepper to their doorstep when she was 3 months old.
According to her adoptive parents, Shirley told them the child's mother was a drug addicted
prostitute who couldn't care for the child.
Bob and Bobby legally adopted the child and had her for four years when Shirley showed
up with Renee and suggested the girls have a sleepover.
The girls had played together before, so they agreed.
As it turns out, Renee was actually the biological sister to Pepper.
At some point, Renee told Shirley she wished she had a sister...so Shirley made it happen.
She left town with Pepper in the middle of the night.
Their story was covered by NBC in a Dateline episode called The Girl Who Didn't Exist,
which aired in March 2011.
In it Pepper and Renee are seen reuniting with the Christies.
After seeing the episode, the biological mother for Pepper and Renee named Jehri Coleman came
forward with another crazy claim: the children were kidnapped not once, but twice.
And she has more news: they have a brother too.
Jehri claims that she had employed a babysitter named Shirley Berthelot to look after Pepper
and Renee in a motel in nearby Gardena, while she was in hospital with complications following
the birth of their little brother Raymond.
According to Jehri when she was discharged, her children, and their babysitter, had simply
vanished.
Berthelot, for reasons that are not all together clear and their mother cannot even today fully
explain - had given Pepper to Bob and Bobby .
Berthelot then handed Ray to another couple, but kept Renee to herself.
Again, why she did this, nobody has ever been able to answer.
Eventually that couple couldn't care for Ray and he ended up in foster care.
Dateline tracked him down and everyone was reunited.
Pepper, Renee, the adult brother, and their biological mother.
Now this is where things start to get fuzzy.
Pepper really was kidnapped from Bob and Bobby, That much seems to add up.
But the claims that whole brood was kidnapped from jehri by Shirley right after the son's
birth is problematic.
You see pepper was adopted by Bob and Bobby when she was 3 months old and jehri claimed
the brother is a couple years younger than pepper.
So how is it possible then that pepper was legally adopted by bob and barbara at age 3 months if raymond was few years younger than her.
It possible that jehri was a drug addict and willingly gave the children to Shirley.
Nonetheless, the family has now reconciled and, Pepper (who changed
her name back to Rhonique, her birth name), had been legally adopted by her birth mother.
2.The murder of Dorothy Donovan
At around midnight on June 22, 1991, factory worker Charles Holden was leaving a fast food
restaurant when a stranger came to his truck, asking for a ride.
The stranger said that his sister was having a baby and that he needed to get to the hospital.
Charles first said he couldn't because he lived just a few blocks away but eventually
changed his mind and took the man .
But a few minutes after being picking up the stranger, Charles stopped at an intersection
where he would normally turn to drive home, and the stranger attacked him, demanding his
money as well as his truck.
Charles ran to a store to get help, but the stranger, armed with a screwdriver, raced
after him, at which point Charles said he would take the violent man wherever wanted
to go.
However, as the stranger went around to enter the passenger side of the truck, Charles sped
off and the stranger tried to run after him but gave up quickly.
Charles then began to drive around a bit trying to shake off his experience at almost being
car-jacked . When Charles finally started to return home, he noticed the stranger was
lurking around his house and he promptly drove away again to call the police from a pay phone.
A police officer went with him to his home
and that of his mother, Dorothy Donovan, who lived in the main house behind his.
They found that the back door window had been broken and there was blood inside the house.
They then went up the stairs to her bedroom and found her dead.
She had been stabbed to death.
Nothing had been stolen from the house, and authorities suspected that Charles was the
one who was responsible, until physical evidence was found that did not belong to him.
The stranger remained unidentified.
At first, the police suspected Charles of the murder given the complexity of the crime,
but they soon found witnesses at the fast food restaurant who confirmed that the stranger
asking for a ride did exist, and Police also found a bloody palm print on a banister and
DNA evidence that did not match Charles and he was cleared.
The stranger is described as being in his late 20s or early 30s, 5'8", with a slender
build and pock-marked complexion, he was also described as having worn plastic framed glasses
with over-sized lenses.
Authorities believe that he may have been on drugs at the time of the murder.
In February 2006, DNA evidence at the scene along with the bloody palm print on the banister
identified Dorothy's killer as Gilbert E. Cannon of Delmar, Maryland, who was arrested
and charged with first degree murder.
He told authorities that he was on drugs at the time of the murder and was looking for
a place to stay.
Furthermore, the killer said he chose Dorothy's house because it was the first one he could
find that didn't have any lights on, and not because of any connection to man he had just
attempted to car-jack.
He pled guilty to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
of parole.
3.Murder of Elise Makdessi Shortly before 10pm on May 14, 1996, emergency
services in Virginia Beach receive a call from Eddie Makdessi, screaming that his wife
Elise is being raped and stabbed by an intruder.
The paramedics arrive at their house to find Elise tied to the bed in critical condition
and another man lying dead on the floor having been shot.
At the hospital, Elise dies of her injuries.
Elise's husband told the police that he and his wife were entering their apartment
when he was struck from behind.
He lost consciousness, and when he came to, he saw a man raping his wife.
Makdessi claims that the man then stabbed his wife before attacking him.
Makdessi claimed he shot him dead in self-defense.
Eddie's injuries seem to back up his story.
The dead man is identified as Quincy Brown, a man who worked with Elise in the air traffic
control base in the navy.
The police searched the apartment and found a videotape of Elise in which she tearfully
recounts that she was sexually assaulted and raped multiple times while serving in the
Navy.
She claimed that these assaults happened when she was on duty at the Naval Air Station,
Oceana.
Elise kept a list of the people who assaulted her, and Quincy Brown's name was included.
Though the police say that they felt something was wrong, they checked the scene of the crime
and seemed to believe Eddie Makdessi's version of events.
One month before this double homicide, Makdessi took out a $500,000 life insurance policy
on his wife.
Makdessi also collected Elise's $200,000 Navy life insurance policy, and then left
the United States.
He went to Russia, remarried, and settled down into a new life.
Makdessi thought the case was closed, but the police continued to investigate it.
Police begin to doubt Eddie's story-it seems odd that he just came back into consciousness,
then had the presence of mind to get his gun and accurately shoot Quincy.
Friends begin to report that he was controlling of Elise.
Blood spatter analysts find that Quincy had been on his knees when he was shot.
Also, it is found that on the night of the murder, Eddie and Elise had gone out for dinner.
That night, Elise had made a lengthy phone call to Quincy from a pay phone.
Also, although Eddie insists that Quincy was in their house when they got home, Quincy
was found to have made a cell phone call to the Makdessis' house that evening, so they
must have been at the house before he was.
There is no evidence of forced entry.
They finally reached the conclusion that Makdessi and his wife conspired to extract money from
the Navy and murdered Brown as part of their plan.
According to police, Makdessi and Elise lured Brown to their apartment to have sex with
Elise.
Brown tied Elise up and without Brown realizing, Makdessi shot him dead.
Then Makdessi double-crossed his own wife and stabbed her to death.
Elise made this videotape of false accusations as part of their plan to defraud the Navy.
He hurt himself to make it appear that Quincy invaded the house, knocked him out, raped
and killed Elise, and then he awoke from unconsciousness and shot the intruder.
Eddie staged the crime scene and he almost got away with it.
But investigators figured out this was a 'set up' based on the crime scene evidence, interviews
with Elise's co-workers, the video tape, and the large insurance policy.
They also Found that Elise's sexual harassment and sexual assault claims were in fact fabricated.
All the men she accused of sex crimes in the video passed a polygraph examination and her
supervisors testified that Elise never reported sexual harassment or sexual assault like she
claimed in her video testimony.
Eddie Makdessi was arrested when he landed in the States, and in 2006 was convicted of
the double murder of Elise Makdessi and Quincy Brown.
4.The Murder Of Baby Hope On July 23, 1991, construction workers found
what looked to be a normal cooler, the kind people use to carry food, ice and cold drinks
for camping or picnicking.
When they opened the cooler, they found the decomposing body of a child.
The child would go unrecognized for 22 years, though her headstone bore the name "Baby Hope".
Baby Hope was malnourished and after being examined and tested, it was shown that she
had suffered sexual abuse and her cause of death was asphyxia.
No claims of missing children had been filed and her body was so badly decomposed that
it was hard to make out her facial features.
Baby Hope was naked except for a hair tie with yellow baubles attached to it.
Over a week before the discovery, a witness had seen a Hispanic couple walking alongside
the Parkway with a cooler.
Since the child's identity was unknown, authorities appealed to the public for information.
Police made every effort to find out who this little Angel was and their attempts failed.
Baby Hope was buried two years later with the Police of the 34th Precinct coming together
to raise the money to give her a proper burial.
Baby Hope was wearing a white communion dress when she was buried and her gravestone bore
the name she had been given by those who seemed to have cared about her more than anyone who
actually knew her.
Complete strangers gave her a headstone with the inscription: "Because We Care"
During the summer of 2013, the Baby Hope case was reopened and re-publicized.
Shortly thereafter, authorities received information leading them to a woman named Margarita Castillo,
who claimed that her four-year-old daughter, Anjelica, had gone missing two decades earlier.
According to Margarita, Anjelica's father had taken off with the child in 1991, but
she was never reported missing.
DNA samples extracted from Baby Hope's body were compared with Margarita's DNA, and
they proved to be a perfect match.In October, the investigation led to Margarita's cousin,
Conrado Juarez, a 52-year-old dishwasher from Manhattan.
After being questioned by police, Juarez confessed to sexually abusing Anjelica before smothering
her to death.
With the help of one of his sisters, he then placed the child's body in a cooler and
left it alongside the Parkway.
Juarez was indicted for the murder and is currently awaiting trial.
After 22 years, Baby Hope was finally laid to rest under her real name, Anjelica Castillo.
5.Benjaman Kyle One of the most mysterious amnesia cases of
all time involved an individual known as "Benjaman Kyle."
On August 31, 2004 at 5:00 am a beaten naked man was found unconscious behind the dumpster
of a Burger King.
The man had no driver's license, wallet or any other identification.
After waking up at the hospital from being unconscious, the hospital staff asked for
his name.
He could not remember his name or social security number.
The man suffered from cataracts on both eyes which he was able to operate 9 months after
a charity raised the money.
Upon seeing himself in the mirror, he was surprised to see he was 20 years older he
thought he was.
Doctors determined that he was suffering from retrograde amnesia.
He took the name 'Benjaman Kyle' due to it having the same initials as Burger King
and he believed 'Benjaman' might be his first name.
He was certain that he had lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, and in Boulder, Colorado.
He had memories of a state fair in Indianapolis, a cemetery, and the downtown area as it had
looked years before.
He also remembered the University of Colorado library and a specific seat he used there,
and a restaurant he frequently visited.
Benjaman spent many years between shelters and hospitals.
With no identification or social security he was unable to obtain legal employment or
a place to stay.
He was the only person on the missing database that was not missing.
In 2007 he was diagnosed with dissociative amnesia which he suffered since 2004.
Benjaman was featured in Dr.Phil, Jeff Probst and even on a segment of News4Jax.
In 2011 he caught a big break when he was asked to be featured in a short documentary
named "Finding Benjaman".
The purpose was meant to help his situation from a legal standpoint and perhaps even find
his family.
Despite the many efforts to get the word out nobody came forward.
DNA testing and fingerprint checks turned up empty, and even though Benjaman's story
received a lot of media coverage, no one seemed to recognize him.
Finally, in September 2015, Benjaman publicly announced that CeCe Moore of theDNAdetectives.com
had used his DNA samples to match him with his biological family.
He was originally from Indiana and had apparently broken off all contact with his family, who
had not seen him since 1976.
The former Benjaman Kyle has since tracked down his original birth certificate and Social
Security records and used them to obtain a new identification card under his real name.
He did not release any further details at this time for privacy reasons.
On November 21, 2016 Benjaman Kyle's true name was revealed to be William Burgess Powell.
It was also reported that he found his family.
The case of benjamin kyle was finally solved after 11 years.
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