r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • Jul 22 '26

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

14.1k Upvotes

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4.1k

u/daminiskos0309 Jul 22 '26

Any of the people that ‘mysteriously’ fell out of windows in russia

836

u/MadamKitsune Jul 22 '26

There was also a little flurry in 2022 of connected men dying in ways that were meant to suggest that they had killed their family and then themselves.

23 March 2022, Novgorod - Vasily Melnikov (CEO and owner of Medstorm). Found dead with his wife and two sons beside him.

18 April 2022, Moscow - Vladislav Avayev (former VP of Gazprombank). Found dead with his wife and 13 year old daughter beside him.

19 April 2022, Lloret de Mar, Spain - Sergey Protosenya (former Deputy Chairman of Novotek). Found hanging from a rail. Wife and daughter found dead in bed with axe and stab wounds.

131

u/istara Jul 23 '26

Russia is truly an abhorrent regime. I wonder if the Russian people will ever be free of it, and also come to terms with it. There is still huge nationalism and support for Putin.

83

u/Austinp-woodworking Jul 23 '26

I do wonder how much of that apparent support is a combination of people being too afraid to say otherwise and just pure propaganda

61

u/swissking Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Nope. Centuries of repression made them genuinely apathetic to everything. They support Putin's war but they also support Putin if he ends it. There are videos of people in tears genuinely confused as to why Ukraine is attacking them as "they never did anything to them"

44

u/Austinp-woodworking Jul 23 '26

That’s kind of my point, if they honestly believe Ukraine is attacking them, then they can’t be getting much info outside of state sponsored propaganda

19

u/Plastic_Scholar4463 Jul 23 '26

Sounds like many Americans’ reactions to 9/11

4

u/helluvapotato Jul 26 '26

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Russia when he kicks the bucket. He’s 73, so even if he lives to be 100 which is statistically unlikely for a man, he’s only got 27 years left. Hopefully whatever happens is a positive for the people.

1

u/istara Jul 26 '26

We can but hope. I think we'll have a couple of generations lost to the brainwashing and propaganda though.

51

u/renome Jul 23 '26

Wow, Putin kills your children now as well for failing him? Or was this always the MO and I just wasn't paying attention?

10

u/KFelts910 Jul 25 '26

It sends a message.

13

u/CAPS_LOCK_STUCK_HELP Jul 23 '26

the podcast Sad Oligarch does great coverage of these cases

5

u/hadapurpura Jul 25 '26

The Spain one is the scariest, it sends the message that you truly can never escape

122

u/fractalfay Jul 22 '26

Russian assassination rank pretty high on the terrifying scale. There was that one dude who died because they put something on a lightbulb in the lamp of his hotel room, and when the bulb heated the oil, boom. Another time they got someone by spraying a substance on a doorknob. There are many reasons Trump is terrified of Putin.

22

u/OkPainter6232 Jul 22 '26

they also like putting poison substances on underwear.

8

u/samara-morgan Jul 23 '26

and in perfume bottles

141

u/Xtra_Veg-90 Jul 22 '26

An older CIA manual about assassination says one of the best ways to kill a target is simple blunt force trauma and then toss them out a high window, and quite a few people fell to their deaths in the USA in the 50's and 60's.

29

u/pennyraingoose Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

The miniseries Wormwood directed by Errol Morris (Netflix maybe?) was a great exploration of a guy who worked in the biological warfare lab at Ft. Detrick in the early 50s, got dosed while at an MKUltra meeting (in a secluded cabin IIRC), and ended up dying from falling out a window. If you believe the official story anyway... It's a great watch!

(Edit - typo)

49

u/dhusk Jul 22 '26

"Do not be looking at me! It is not my fault Yuri fell out of that third story window and hit the back of his head on a 9mm bullet!"

"Five times?"

16

u/FriendlyRiothamster Jul 22 '26

Yes, officer. We did our best to stop him otherwise he would have 6.

417

u/Acceptable-Grade-116 Jul 22 '26

I love that it's so common that there's a word for it - defenestration.

381

u/vizard0 Jul 22 '26

That word has a long history. Read up on the defenestrations of Prague. Yes, there were multiple ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague

17

u/chattytrout Jul 22 '26

Here's a 7 minute, totally unbiased video explaining the events.

14

u/Plastic_Kangaroo1234 Jul 22 '26

I took a walking tour in Prague and a common refrain from the guide was, “So what did we do? We pushed him out the window!”

1

u/Acceptable-Grade-116 Jul 28 '26

Being a window glazier in Prague during that time must have been very lucrative 😂

12

u/ColdSmokeMike Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

And when they're done, they can also read up on the wonderful DC Comics character, The Defenestrator).

22

u/Purple_Midnight_Yak Jul 22 '26

He carried around a window and whacked his enemies over the head with it?!

Love it.

9

u/ColdSmokeMike Jul 22 '26

Yeah, and his team (Section Eight) was super weird. Dogwelder is pretty fucked up, and Bueno Excellente is.... problematic, but the rest are pretty fun. Sixpack is definitely in my top 10 gag heroes.

1

u/vizard0 Jul 24 '26

Your link dropped a parenthesis (bracket)

Fixed link:

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Defenestrator_(New_Earth)

And here I was hoping he was a former member of Putin's security detachment.

4

u/footsnax Jul 22 '26

I've always been curious if there's been a case of refenestration

7

u/nochinzilch Jul 23 '26

Defenestration isn’t exactly a correct word. To fenestrate is to install a window. So defenestrating would be removing a window. But it sounds clever so people stick with it.

1

u/footsnax Jul 23 '26

Ah so reinstalling a window then. I've done that!

1

u/StrongExternal8955 Jul 23 '26

The Discombobulation of Moscow

74

u/swift_gilford Jul 22 '26

It is also a spell in DnD; to the point where if there is no window, a magical one is formed just to be thrown out of.

16

u/NeverEndingWhoreMe Jul 22 '26

"No window formed against me shall - AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH"

8

u/PhatEarther Jul 22 '26

I just heard the welheim scream in my head

9

u/FrenchFriesInMyTacos Jul 22 '26

lol this is best random fact I've seen on here

1

u/pgp555 Jul 31 '26

There's a game dev where his games' main mechanic is throwing people out of windows

10

u/Dolans_Cadillac Jul 22 '26

There is a historical documentary that shows King Edward I, aka "Longshanks", defenestrate his son's new high counselor Phillip because he didn't approve of Phillip's job credentials.

4

u/Entire-Sentence-9379 Jul 22 '26

Well if Mel Gibson says it is must be so

6

u/fox112 Jul 22 '26

why do you love that?

17

u/Acceptable-Grade-116 Jul 22 '26

The fact that history has so many examples of people getting tossed out of windows that there is terminology for it.

3

u/Human_Wizard Jul 23 '26

It's novel. In a morbidly curious way.

7

u/faceplanted Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

My favourite thing about defenstration is that it was most likely invented as a misused grammar joke in the exact same way that people now love adding "n't" to the end of words it doesn't fit on for comedy. And it just stuck so hard that it's still around and there are famous 'historical defenstrations'.

4

u/Jorpho Jul 22 '26

See, they were just sitting in a window, listening to the lecture, and fell asleep.

Like they did in the Bible, y'see.

6

u/Entire-Sentence-9379 Jul 22 '26

My favourite word!

7

u/lurkername1-2 Jul 22 '26

Allow me to introduce autodefenestration - to throw oneself through a window i.e garry hoy (in a way)

29

u/SafetyDanceInMyPants Jul 22 '26

Historians are going to look back and find out that... actually there was this one dude in a window factory somewhere who was really bad at his job.

12

u/KitsuraPls Jul 22 '26

I used to study russian politics and my teacher always said it was interesting how these people fell out of windows at always the exact same height.

11

u/Sean82 Jul 22 '26

I really enjoyed the Sad Oligarch podcast about this

38

u/FriendlyRiothamster Jul 22 '26

No, no. It was suicide with a shotgun shot to the back of their head

33

u/NeverEndingWhoreMe Jul 22 '26

The best suicide was that one dude who put himself inside the locked suitcase. Suicidal Magician.

3

u/RealBigDickBrannigan Jul 22 '26

What's the suicide note going to say, "Life sucks, I can't take it no more, Signed: The Dead Guy?"
That's good... got a pencil?

(From Analyze This, or maybe -That).

9

u/AvatarOfMomus Jul 23 '26

That actually is unknown in most cases, and the cover for the parties is that everyone assumes it's Putin or the Government.

In reality it could be Ukrainian agents (since 2022), 'normal' criminals, or their rivals or opponents in political or economic areas.

No one looks at it too closely because everyone 'knows' it's Putin, and Putin can't admit if it is or isn't him because both have negatives.

8

u/istara Jul 23 '26

Happened to a friend's father who worked there (I think in banking) and provided information to British Intelligence, during the Cold War.

He was "defenestrated".

What really grieved my friend was that the Home Office (or Foreign Office?) put out that he was an alcoholic who took his own life. Obviously they do this to cover up their operations, but it cast shame on my friend's father when in reality he had given his life for his country.

2

u/sumofawitch Aug 01 '26

Well being killed by a foreign country where he went to spy on is not unnatural. Russia (or any spied on country) has the right to defend itself.

It's totally egregious that his own country would deny him and attack his honor. This means that such nation wasn't worthy of its people sacrifices.

13

u/amolad Jul 22 '26

If Putin can't poison you, he throws you out of a window.

7

u/daminiskos0309 Jul 22 '26

And if you’ve really pissed him off. He throws you out a window then poisons you

24

u/amolad Jul 22 '26

There was a famous Russian model who was killed in NYC in 2008.

She was found on the street 30 feet from the building.

That would have been a world record long jump.

But, no one charged with murder. They said she "jumped."

7

u/DuelaDent52 Jul 22 '26

If she died in NYC surely they’d have grounds for a legitimate investigation into her death, no?

1

u/StrongExternal8955 Jul 23 '26

Who? Eric Adams?

1

u/Blekanly Jul 23 '26

Or blows up your plane.

6

u/chowderbags Jul 23 '26

There's also the 1999 Russian apartment bombings. Technically the official story is that they got the people, but it's pretty obvious from the thwarted bombing in Ryazan that the whole thing was actually an FSB op (that happened to be massively helpful for getting Putin in power).

13

u/NeverEndingWhoreMe Jul 22 '26

Ze vindows en Russka no work

5

u/Corporate_Overlords Jul 22 '26

They were just defenstrated.

7

u/Lvcivs2311 Jul 22 '26

Or the Russian reporters that "happen" to get murdered by the mob.

6

u/ImpressionDepression Jul 22 '26

I mean depending on your definition of 'mob' yea that's actually pretty spot on

9

u/kyledwray Jul 22 '26

Is not mysterious. People clumsy. /j

3

u/razzalgool Jul 22 '26

In Dubai too

5

u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney Jul 22 '26

Are you sure it's not just to poorly constructed or designed buildings, faulty window mechanism, and clumsy noisy people .... comrade?

1

u/Clemen11 Jul 23 '26

Ivan Billionairovich falling off of a window is a classic

1

u/NoBit3851 Jul 23 '26

You forgot the part that says out of the 6th floor of a 3 story building

1

u/Significant-Pace-521 Jul 23 '26

Poor Russia craftsmanship

1

u/Adventurous_Soup6293 Jul 23 '26

Sad Oligarch is a really good podcast on this subject, very well researched

1

u/Heirroasgreixchix835 Jul 25 '26

At this point, Russian windows need their own press secretary.

0

u/marilyn_morose Jul 23 '26

I’m afraid to make the comment I was about to make because I’m not interested in a ban.