3 Terrifying Unsolved Cases of People Who Were Buried Alive
3. Gautam Jaisinghani
In March 1980, Gautam Jaisinghani was nineteen years old, and he was in his final year of school in New Delhi, India. One day in early March, he was heading from home to school, and his cousin dropped him off at a busy bus stop. But Jaisinghani never made it to class. The next day his parents received a note. It was a ransom note, and in the note they mentioned an area of New Delhi that was on the outskirts of the city. On March 7th his parents filed a police report, and they handed over the note to the police. The police didn't take the disappearance of Jaisinghani seriously. They claimed they had officers search the area mentioned in the note, and they said they didn't find anything.
The police told his family that he had just run away, and he would be coming home at any time. About two weeks after Jaisinghani went missing, the police received a phone call. The caller told an officer that Jaisinghani had been involved in a sexual relationship with a mother and her daughter. The mother and daughter were also having an affair with a man who owned a hotel in Bombay, and the man was involved in smuggling. The caller said that Jaisinghani was dead and told the officer where to find the body. To prove he knew intimate details about the murder, the caller said that when they found the body only one of the feet would be wearing a sock.
The police went to the area where the caller said the body could be found. It was a little more than half a mile away from the area mentioned in the ransom note. They found Jaisinghani's body and his feet were sticking out of a shallow grave. There was a sock on only one of his feet. He was exhumed and brought in for an autopsy. His hands had been tied behind his back and there were signs that he had been tortured. Several ribs on his left side had been broken. He was then pushed face down into the shallow grave with his hands tied behind his back so he couldn't escape, and then dirt was piled on top of him.
There was mud found in his throat, nose and ears, and the official cause of death is listed as suffocation. The way his legs were sticking up out of the dirt shows that he tried to escape from being buried alive. People in New Delhi were highly critical of the police or the handling of Jaisinghani's disappearance. Unfortunately the performance of the police did not improve when it came to his murder investigation. What little information the police did provide was that they thought that Jaisinghani was probably lured away from the bus stop. The bus stop was busy and someone would have noticed him being physically forced away. The police have not ruled the possibility that a female. Possibly one known to him, was the one who lured him away from the bus stop.
They also said that jealousy was a possible motive. But beyond that, not much progress has ever been made on the case and it's considered cold. The police's failure to act on the case led many people to believe that the police were paid to ignore the murder. Sadly, Gautam Jaisinghani's brutal murder wasn't the only tragedy that his family experienced that made national headlines in India. Barely a year and a half earlier, Jaisinghani's cousins, 16-year-old Geeta, and 14-year-old Sanjay Chopra were going from their home to a local radio station. But they never made it there. Their bodies were found two days later by a farmer.
Both brother and sister had been tortured and stabbed to death. Geeta had been sexually assaulted. A stolen Fiat was found crashed nearby and had hairs and blood in it. The police were able to match the hairs to the victims. The police were able to trace the stolen car back to two men, Kuljeet Singh, whose nickname was "Ranga", and Jasbir Singh, aka "Billa". Both men were described as hardened criminals, and they had just recently been released from prison. The two men tried to flee, but they were arrested when they accidentally boarded a train car that was meant for military personnel only. At their trials they testified against each other. They said that they kidnapped the brother and sister and planned to ask for a ransom.
Then they found out that their father was a high-ranking member of the Navy and they thought was probably just better to kill them and run. They killed Sanjay first by stabbing him at least 19 times. They told Geeta that Sanjay was still alive but they said they wouldn't hurt him if she didn't stop them from sexually assaulting her. After she was assaulted, Geeta was stabbed at least six times. Both Kuljeet Singh and Jasbir Singh were found guilty, and they were sentenced to death. They were hanged less than four years after the double murder on January 30th, 1982.
2. Alexandra Wiwcharuk
Alexandra Wiwcharuk was born in 1939 in the small town of Endeavour, Saskatchewan, Canada. The town had a population of only about 200 people. After high school, she moved to nearby Yorkton, Saskatchewan. In 1961, when she was 21 years old, she was voted queen of the skating carnival in Yorkton and she was her region's representative in a province-wide beauty contest. Later that same year she moved to Saskatoon, which was the second-largest city in Saskatchewan. She worked as a nurse and lived in a basement apartment with three other nurses. Not long after moving to Saskatoon, a radio station announced that they were holding a beauty contest to promote an upcoming Johnny Cash concert. Wiwcharuk entered the contest and she won. Her prize for winning was that Johnny Cash brought her onstage in front of a crowd of 1500 people and sang a song to her that he wrote called "The Girl in Saskatoon".
The song even references her tiny hometown, Endeavour. Several months later, on May 18th 1962, Wiwcharuk was scheduled to work a night shift at the hospital. At around 8:00 pm she told her roommates that she was going to mail two letters, and then she was going for a walk. Sometime between 9:00 and 9:45 pm Wiwcharuk was seen strolling near the banks of the Saskatchewan River. That night she didn't show up for work, and she didn't come home either, so she was reported missing. Two weeks later some children were playing on the river banks and a boy saw a hand sticking out of the dirt. The police were called in the body was identified as 23-year-old Alexandra Wiwcharuk.
The medical examiner concluded that she had been sexually assaulted and her skull had been fractured. She had been struck in the head with a cement block. At first the blow to the head was thought to be the cause of death, but the medical examiner found dirt in her air passages. He concluded that Wiwcharuk had been buried alive, and she suffocated to death. A massive investigation was launched, but it wasn't long before the case became cold. Over the decades the case has haunted the people of Saskatchewan. One person who never forgot the murder was Ed Yakubowski, who was a beat cop in Saskatoon at the time of the murder. After getting a promotion, Yakubowski investigated the murder, but unfortunately he retired without making an arrest. But even in his retirement, he fought and advocated for resources to be put into investigating the murder.
This resulted in the formation of a cold-case squad in 1998, and they re-examined Wiwcharuk's case. Someone else who never forgot Wiwcharuk's murder was Sharon Butala who attended high school with Wiwcharuk and later became a best-selling an award-winning author. Butala was able to use her status as an author to get the case more exposure and she eventually wrote a book about the case. In 2004, thanks apart to Yakubowski's and Butala's efforts, Wiwcharuk's body was exhumed and amazingly, a hair that didn't belong to her was found on her body. The police are certain that the hair belongs to the killer.
In 2008 the police had a list of 15 possible suspects. Using DNA pulled from the hair they eliminated 12 suspects. Out of the three remaining suspects, two are alive and one is dead. Their names have never been made public but the police said that one of the remaining suspects is well known to the public. It has been over 56 years since Alexandra Wiwcharuk was beaten and buried alive and no one has been arrested for the crime. Supposedly, after hearing about the murder, Johnny Cash never performed "The Girl in Saskatoon" at another concert.
1. Nevaeh Buchanan
In the spring of 2009, Nevaeh Buchanan was five years old and she lived with her mother Jennifer and her grandmother, who was Nevaeh's legal guardian, in an apartment complex in Monroe, Michigan. Nevaeh, whose name is 'heaven' spelled backwards, was just in kindergarten, but even at that young age she had developed a love for motorcycles. At around 6:30 on the evening of May 24th Jennifer thought that Nevaeh was playing at a friend's apartment, which was on the floor above them. She went to get her daughter and discovered that she wasn't at her friend's apartment. The little girl that lived there said that Nevaeh went down to the u-shaped driveway to ride her tricycle. Jennifer rushed to the driveway and saw the tricycle, but Nevaeh was gone. Jennifer and her mother looked for Nevaeh throughout the neighborhood, but couldn't find her.
At around 8:00 pm they called the police. Within hours an Amber Alert was issued, and massive land and air searches were conducted, but Nevaeh couldn't be found. The next day two registered sex offenders that were friends with Jennifer were taken into custody. Both men knew and spent time with Nevaeh, but Jennifer said that they were never alone with her. The motel where one of the men was staying was searched and the police found a bloody towel and some tools with some blood on them. The blood was compared to Nevaeh's DNA, and it was not a match. The search was continued for several days and still no trace of the five-year-old was found. Ten days after she went missing, a man and his 15-year-old son were fishing on the banks of the Raisin River, about 10 miles away from Nevaeh's home.
First they noticed an awful smell that they said they will never forget. Then they saw where the odor might be coming from. Along the riverbank was a strange patch of concrete. When the man chipped some of the concrete away, he knew what the smell was. It was a decomposing human body. The police were called, and based on the clothing the body was identified as Nevaeh's. DNA tests later confirmed this. Nevaeh had been buried in a shallow grave and then concrete was poured over her. The medical examiner said that Nevaeh had inhaled dirt and suffocated to death, meaning that she was probably buried alive. When Jennifer was informed that Nevaeh's body was found, she broke down and howled in grief. While the police continued to investigate the murder, a funeral was held for Nevaeh and over 700 people attended.
One of the two registered sex offenders who had been arrested looked like a promising suspect. He worked with concrete not far from where the body was found. Both men were sent back to prison for just knowing Nevaeh because that was a violation of their parole. However, both were eventually dropped as suspects. Jennifer was questioned by the police, and they wouldn't confirm or deny if she was a suspect. Jennifer swears that she had nothing to do with her daughter's murder. She says that since the murder, people in the community have treated her poorly because they don't believe her and think that she was involved in the murder, or at the very least she was a negligent mother. If progress has been made on the case, that information has not been made public. The police have not given an official update on the case since 2012.
In May 2014, several investigators (who wouldn't give their names) told a newspaper in Monroe that they think they know who killed Nevaeh. They did not name him, but they did say he was not a suspect earlier in the investigation. They said that he is currently in prison for an unspecified felony. They said that they don't have enough evidence to charge him. Unfortunately, until they do, the murder of Nevaeh buchanan will remain cold.
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