The fate of MH370 remains a deep mystery.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• On March 8, MH370 veered off course and vanished from radar en route to Beijing

• Millions of square kilometers of ocean surface have been searched

• The deepest parts of the sea will be the next place searchers send their equipment

• Family members of the 239 people on the plane have been left still seeking answers

 

Six months ago, the story began as a puzzling news bulletin. A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 239 people on board had vanished from radar screens as it was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The disappearance was quite the mystery. Was it a terrorist attack? Was there a mechanical failure that led to a crash? Did the plane go down over land or water? Were there any survivors?

We all figured the answers would come after searchers found the aircraft or its wreckage.

Half a year later, it remains a deep mystery. No part of the plane has been discovered. Not one speck of debris.

A Boeing 777-200ER just disappeared. With 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, it just vanished.

Authorities are convinced the plane crashed March 8 in the southern Indian Ocean. Satellite data and radar information indicate the plane turned off course and most likely went down about the time it would have run out of fuel.

Officials don't know why it flew off course

Looking for debris yielded nothing but garbage

Airplanes and ships searched the surface of the ocean for nearly two months, with each report of debris turning out to be a false lead or flotsam from another source. To date, more than 4.5 million square kilometers of sea have been scoured.

An underwater drone with sonar took the search beneath the waves in mid-April and looked for the source of four underwater pings picked up by devices towed by ships.

The pulses were encouraging because they were of a frequency close to that used by the locator beacons on the plane. The four signals were within 30 kilometers of one another.

More days of searching followed. Dozens of underwater missions over hundreds of kilometers. Still nothing.

Heartbroken family members of the people on board the plane have been left still seeking answers.

Deciphering the noise

Recently, Australian researchers said they had recovered another underwater sound recorder that was in the ocean when MH370 vanished. They found a signal similar to one they noticed on recordings from other devices pulled from the water. It could be a noise made by the plane crashing.

As with many possible clues in this strange case, there is a big but.

The researchers at Curtin University believe the sound or sounds came from an area thousands of kilometers to the northwest of the search area.

The signal seems to have originated close to the tip of India, near a geologically active ridge -- meaning the recordings are most likely those of a seismic event.

Experts poring over data

The latest clue comes from a failed satellite phone call from the airline's staff on the morning the plane disappeared. Subsequent analysis of the failed call has given experts a better idea of the aircraft's position and where it was traveling, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said August 28.

And that data indicates the missing passenger jet may have turned south slightly earlier than previously thought.

The next phase of the search for the remains of the plane and the people on board is primarily focused on a 60,000-square-kilometer area, roughly the size of West Virginia, in the southern Indian Ocean.

Forbidding undersea terrain

A deepwater search that will involve three ships is expected to start in the area in late September, using a range of sophisticated sonar equipment. The process is forecast to take as long as a year and cost $48 million, officials have said.

hips have already been mapping the undersea terrain in the isolated swath of ocean to help the searchers. Much of the geography of the area was previously unknown before MH370's disappearance drew attention there.

And some of it will be very, very difficult to search, with the mapping survey showing undersea volcanoes and steep ridges.

The latest analysis of the data indicates that southern areas of the huge search grid may be of high interest, Australian officials have said, suggesting that the zone is likely to be further adjusted.

Job cuts at airline

The loss of MH370 and the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July have contributed to 6,000 people at the airline losing their jobs because of heavy financial losses.

The carrier reported in late August that it lost $97.4 million in the second quarter.

Malaysia Airlines was once a symbol of national pride. But the airline was in big financial trouble before the twin disasters of Flight 370 and Flight 17 claimed the lives of 537 people.

Australia: MH370 may have turned south earlier than previously thought

The Loch Ness Monster

Although accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland's Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface." The story of the "monster" (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.

Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain; the body of water reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and a length of about 23 miles. Scholars of the Loch Ness Monster find a dozen references to "Nessie" in Scottish history, dating back to around A.D. 500, when local Picts carved a strange aquatic creature into standing stones near Loch Ness. The earliest written reference to a monster in Loch Ness is a 7th-century biography of Saint Columba, the Irish missionary who introduced Christianity to Scotland. In 565, according to the biographer, Columba was on his way to visit the king of the northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped at Loch Ness to confront a beast that had been killing people in the lake. Seeing a large beast about to attack another man, Columba intervened, invoking the name of God and commanding the creature to "go back with all speed." The monster retreated and never killed another man.

In 1933, a new road was completed along Loch Ness' shore, affording drivers a clear view of the loch. After an April 1933 sighting was reported in the local paper on May 2, interest steadily grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the beast on land, crossing the shore road. Several British newspapers sent reporters to Scotland, including London's Daily Mail, which hired big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to capture the beast. After a few days searching the loch, Wetherell reported finding footprints of a large four-legged animal. In response, the Daily Mail carried the dramatic headline: "MONSTER OF LOCH NESS IS NOT LEGEND BUT A FACT." Scores of tourists descended on Loch Ness and sat in boats or decks chairs waiting for an appearance by the beast. Plaster casts of the footprints were sent to the British Natural History Museum, which reported that the tracks were that of a hippopotamus, specifically one hippopotamus foot, probably stuffed. The hoax temporarily deflated Loch Ness Monster mania, but stories of sightings continued.

A famous 1934 photograph seemed to show a dinosaur-like creature with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters, leading some to speculate that "Nessie" was a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs. The aquatic plesiosaurs were thought to have died off with the rest of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Loch Ness was frozen solid during the recent ice ages, however, so this creature would have had to have made its way up the River Ness from the sea in the past 10,000 years. And the plesiosaurs, believed to be cold-blooded, would not long survive in the frigid waters of Loch Ness. More likely, others suggested, it was an archeocyte, a primitive whale with a serpentine neck that is thought to have been extinct for 18 million years. Skeptics argued that what people were seeing in Loch Ness were "seiches"--oscillations in the water surface caused by the inflow of cold river water into the slightly warmer loch.

Amateur investigators kept an almost constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched expeditions to Loch Ness, using sonar to search the deep. Nothing conclusive was found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected large, moving underwater objects they could not explain. In 1975, Boston's Academy of Applied Science combined sonar and underwater photography in an expedition to Loch Ness. A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature. Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in more tantalizing, if inconclusive, readings. Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo was a hoax hardly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists and professional and amateur investigators to the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.

the time traveller mystery.

Modern man at 1941 bridge opening[edit]

"The Time Traveling Hipster"

A photograph from 1941 of genuine authenticity of the re-opening of the South Fork Bridge in Gold Bridge, British Columbia, was alleged to show a time traveler.^[18] It was claimed that his clothing and sunglasses were modern and not of the styles worn in the 1940s.^[19][20] The photo originated from the Bralorne Pioneer Museum, and was featured in their virtual exhibit Their Past Lives Here, produced and hosted through investment by the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC).^[21]

Further research suggests that the modern appearance of the man may not have been so modern. The style of sunglasses first appeared in the 1920s. On first glance the man is taken by many to be wearing a modern printed T-shirt, but on closer inspection it seems to be a sweater with a sewn-on emblem, the kind of clothing often worn by sports teams of the period. The shirt is very similar to the one that was used by the Montreal Maroons, a hockey team from that era. The remainder of his clothing would appear to have been available at the time, though his clothes are far more casual than those worn by the other individuals in the photograph.^[22]

Debate centers on whether the image genuinely shows a time traveler, has been photomanipulated, or is simply being mistaken as anachronistic.^[22] The “Time TravelingHipster” became a case study in viral Internet phenomena in museums which was presented at the Museums and the Web 2011 conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[23]

1928 cell phone user[edit]

A still from The Circus

In October 2010, Northern Irish filmmaker George Clarke uploaded a video clip entitled "Chaplin's Time Traveler" to YouTube. The clip analyzes bonus material in a DVD of the Charlie Chaplinfilm The Circus. Included in the DVD is footage from the film's Los Angeles premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1928. At one point, a woman is seen walking by, holding up an object to her ear. Clarke said that, on closer examination, she was talking into a thin, black device that had appeared to be a "phone."^[24] Clarke concluded that the woman was possibly a time traveler.^[20]The clip received millions of hits and was the subject of televised news stories.^[25]

Nicholas Jackson, associate editor for The Atlantic, says the most likely answer is that she was using a portable hearing aid, a technology that was just being developed at the time.^[20] Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis, thought that the woman might have been holding a rectangular-shaped ear trumpet.^[26] New York Daily News writer Michael Sheridan said the device was probably an early hearing aid, perhaps manufactured by Acousticon.

Proof of time travel can be found in many historical records and photographs.  Lets starts our CIS investigation with the steam punk time traveller. (Above)

When: 1905 Who: a punk rocker. This guy was clearly a total amateur. He doesn’t look anything like anyone else in the photo! He’s got the Mohawk haircut (and whoever heard of Mohawks on white guys before 1970?), plus he’s wearing a white short sleeved shirt and everyone else is in long sleeves and jackets and hats. Given the popularity of the haircut in the 1970s, actually, we’d argue that this time traveler probably traveled to 1905 from the 1970s.  Who knew they had time travel back then? Personally, though, we’re more concerned about that guy who is kind of in front of him and more in the foreground. He’s wearing a hat but his hair looks like it’s got a big vein in it, like he’s got a giant head with huge veins that he is concealing with a hat. To us, he looks like a Talosian, those guys from the Star trek.

The Unsolved Mystery Of Bermuda Triangle

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The "Mystery" of the Bermuda Triangle

The five avengers lost on December 5th, 1945 are sometimes known as "The Lost Squadron." (Copyright Lee Krystek, 2011)

The Bermuda Triangle (sometimes also referred to as the Devil's Triangle) is a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by a line from Florida to the islands of Bermuda, to Puerto Rico and then back to Florida. It is one of the biggest mysteries of our time - that perhaps isn't really a mystery.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first used in an article written by Vincent H. Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964. In the article, Gaddis claimed that in this strange sea a number of ships and planes had disappeared without explanation. Gaddis wasn't the first one to come to this conclusion, either. As early as 1952, George X. Sands, in a report in Fate magazine, noted what seemed like an unusually large number of strange accidents in that region.

In 1969 John Wallace Spencer wrote a book called Limbo of the Lost specifically about the Triangle and, two years later, a feature documentary on the subject, The Devil's Triangle, was released. These, along with the bestseller The Bermuda Triangle, published in 1974, permanently registered the legend of the "Hoodoo Sea" within popular culture.

Why do ships and planes seem to go missing in the region? Some authors suggested it may be due to a strange magnetic anomaly that affects compass readings (in fact they claim Columbus noted this when he sailed through the area in 1492). Others theorize that methane eruptions from the ocean floor may suddenly be turning the sea into a froth that can't support a ship's weight so it sinks (though there is no evidence of this type of thing happening in the Triangle for the past 15,000 years). Several books have gone as far as conjecturing that the disappearances are due to an intelligent, technologically advanced race living in space or under the sea.

Kusche's Theory

In 1975 Larry Kusche, a librarian at Arizona State University, reached a totally different conclusion. Kusche decided to investigate the claims made by these articles and books. What he found he published in his own book entitled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved. Kusche had carefully dug into records other writers had neglected. He found that many of the strange accidents were not so strange after all. Often a Triangle writer had noted a ship or plane had disappeared in "calms seas" when the record showed a raging storm had been in progress. Others said ships had "mysteriously vanished" when their remains had actually been found and the cause of their sinking explained. In one case a ship listed missing in the Triangle actually had disappeared in the Pacific Ocean some 3,000 miles away! The author had confused the name of the Pacific port the ship had left with a city of the same name on the Atlantic coast.

More significantly, a check of Lloyd's of London's accident records by the editor of Fate in 1975 showed that the Trianglewas no more dangerous than any other part of the ocean. U.S. Coast Guard records confirmed this and since that time no good arguments have ever been made to refute those statistics. So many argue that the Bermuda Triangle mystery has disappeared, in the same way many of its supposed victims vanished.

Even though the Bermuda Triangle isn't a true mystery, this region of the sea certainly has had its share of marine tragedy. This region is one of the heaviest traveled areas of ocean in the world. Both small boats and commercial ships ply its waters along with airliners, military aircraft and private planes as they come to and from both the islands and more distant ports in Europe, South America and Africa. The weather in this region can make traveling hazardous also. The summer brings hurricanes while the warm waters of the Gulf Stream promote sudden storms. With this much activity in a relatively small region it isn't surprising that a large number of accidents occur. Some of the ones commonly connected to the Triangle story are:

The USS Cyclops Sinking

One of the first stories connected to the Triangle legend and the most famous ship lost in the region was the USS Cyclops which disappeared in 1918. The 542 foot long Cyclopswas launched in 1910 and served as a collier ( a ship that carries coal) for the U.S. Navy during World War I. The vessel was on its way from Bahia, Salvador, to Baltimore, Maryland, but never arrived. After it had made an unscheduled stop at Barbados on March 3rd and 4th to take on additional supplies, it disappeared without a trace. No wreckage from the ship was ever found and no distress signal was received. The deaths of the 306 crew and passengers of the USS Cyclops remains the single largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history not directly involving combat.

The USS Cyclops in a 1911 photograph. (USN Photo)

While the sinking of theCyclops remains a mystery, the incident could have happened anywhere between Barbados and Baltimore, not necessarily in the Bermuda Triangle. Proponents of the Bermuda Triangle theory point to the lack of a distress call as evidence of a paranormal end for the vessel, but the truth is that wireless communications in 1918 were unreliable and it would not have been unusual for a rapidly-sinking vessel to not have had a chance to send a successful distress call before going under.

SS Marine Sulphur Queen Vanishes

The SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a tanker ship carrying molten sulphur, disappeared off the southern coast of Florida in 1963. The crew of 39 was all lost and no wreckage from the tanker was ever found. While the disappearance of the ship is mentioned in several books about the Triangle, authors don't always include that the Coast Guard concluded that the vessel was in deplorable shape and should have never gone to sea at all. Fires erupted with regularity on the ship. Also, this class of vessel was known to have a "weak back", which means the keel would split when weakened by corrosion causing the ship to break in two. The ship's structure had been further compromised by a conversion from its original mission as an oil tanker to carrying molten sulphur. The conversion had left the vessel with an extremely high center of gravity, increasing the chance that it would capsize. The SS Marine Sulphur Queen was all-in-all a disaster waiting to happen and it seems unfair to blame its demise on the Bermuda Triangle.

.

A Douglas DC-3 airliner of the same type as NC16002 (Wikipedia Commons)

The Disappearance of NC16002

NC16002 was a DC-3 passenger plane that vanished on the night of December 28, 1948, during a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida. The weather was fine with high visibility and the flight was, according to the pilot, within 50 miles of Miami when it disappeared with its three crew members and twenty-nine passengers. Though no probable cause for the loss was determined by the official investigation, it is known that the plane's batteries were not fully charged on takeoff and this may have interfered with communications during the flight. A message from Miami to the plane that the direction of the wind had changed may have not been received by the pilot, causing him to fly up to fifty miles off course.

The Fate of Flight 19

The tale of Flight 19 started on December 5th, 1945. Five Avenger torpedo bombers lifted into the air from the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 2:10 in the afternoon. It was a routine practice mission and the flight was composed of all students except for the Commander, a Lt. Charles Taylor.

The mission called for Taylor and his group of 13 men to fly due east 56 miles to Hens and Chicken Shoals to conduct practice bombing runs. When they had completed that objective, the flight plan called for them to fly an additional 67 miles east, and then turn north for 73 miles and finally straight back to base, a distance of 120 miles. This course would take them on a triangular path over the sea.

Video: The Fate of Flight 19

About an hour and a half after the flight had left, Lt. Robert Cox at the base picked up a radio transmission from Taylor. Taylor indicated that his compasses were not working, but he believed himself to be somewhere over the Florida Keys (the Keys are a long chain of islands south of the Florida mainland). Cox urged him to fly north toward Miami; if Taylor was sure the flight was over the Keys.

Planes today have a number of ways that they can check their current position including listening to a set of GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) in orbit around the earth. It is almost impossible for a pilot to get lost if he has the right equipment and uses it properly. In 1945, though, planes flying over water had to depend on knowing their starting point, how long and fast they had flown, and in what direction. If a pilot made a mistake with any of these figures, he was lost. Over the ocean there were no landmarks to set him right.

Navigational Confusion

Apparently Taylor had become confused at some point in the flight. He was an experienced pilot, but hadn't spent a lot of time flying east toward the Bahamas which was where he was going on that day. For some reason Taylor apparently thought the flight had started out in the wrong direction and had headed south toward the Keys, instead of east. This thought was to color his decisions throughout the rest of the flight with deadly results.

The more Taylor took his flight north to try to get out of the Keys, the further out to sea the Avengers actually traveled. As time went on, snatches of transmissions were picked up on the mainland indicating the other Flight 19 pilots were trying to get Taylor to change course. "If we would just fly west," one student told another, "we would get home." He was right

By 4:45 P.M. it was obvious to the people on the ground that Taylor was hopelessly lost. He was urged to turn control of the flight over to one of his students, but apparently he didn't. As it grew dark, communications deteriorated. From the few words that did get through it was apparent Taylor was still flying north and east, the wrong direction.

At 5:50 P.M. the ComGulf Sea Frontier Evaluation Center managed get a fix on Flight 19's weakening signals. It was apparently east of New Smyrna Beach, Florida. By then communications were so poor that this information could not be passed to the lost planes.

At 6:20 a Dumbo flying boat was dispatched to try and find Flight 19 and guide it back. Within the hour two more planes, Martin Mariners, joined the search. Hope was rapidly fading for Flight 19 by then. The weather was getting rough and the Avengers were very low on fuel.

Two Martin Mariners were supposed to rendezvous at the search zone. The second one, designated Training 49, never showed up, joining the 5 Avengers as "missing."

The last transmission from Flight 19 was heard at 7:04 P.M. Planes searched the area through the night and the next day. There was no sign of the Avengers.

Nor did the authorities really expect to find much. The Avengers, crashing when their fuel was exhausted, would have been sent to the bottom in seconds by the 50 foot waves of the storm. As one of Taylor's colleagues noted, "...they didn't call those planes 'Iron Birds' for nothing. They weighed 14,000 pounds empty. So when they ditched, they went down pretty fast."

A Mariner similar to Training 49 (USN Photo)

What happened to the missing Martin Mariner? Well, the crew of the SS Gaines Mill observed an explosion over the water shortly after the Mariner had taken off. They headed toward the site and there they saw what looked like oil and airplane debris floating on the surface. None of it was recovered because of the bad weather, but there seems little doubt this was the remains of the Mariner. The plane had a reputation as being a "flying bomb" which would burst into flame from even a single, small spark. Speculation is that one of 22 men on board, unaware that the unpressurized cabin contained gas fumes, lit a cigarette, causing the explosion.

Missing Avengers become the Triangle's "Lost Squadron"

So how did this tragedy turn into a Bermuda Triangle mystery? The Navy's original investigation concluded the accident had been caused by Taylor's navigational confusion. According to those that knew him he was a good pilot, but often navigated "flying by the seat of his pants" and had gotten lost in the past. Taylor's mother refused to accept that and finally got the Navy to change the report to read that the disaster was for "causes or reasons unknown." This may have spared the woman's feelings, but blurred the actual facts.

The saga of Flight 19 is probably the most repeated story about the Bermuda Triangle. Vincent Gaddis put the tale into the same Argosy magazine article where he coined the term "Bermuda Triangle" in 1964 and thetwo have been connected ever since. The planes and their pilots even found their way into the science fiction film classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Where is Flight 19 now? Well, in 1991 five Avengers were found in 750 feet of water off the coast of Florida by the salvage ship Deep Sea. Examination of the plane's ID numbers, however, showed that they were not from Flight 19 (as many as 139 Avengers were thought to have gone into the water off the coast of Florida during the war). It seems the final resting place of the lost squadron and their crews is still a real Bermuda Triangle mystery.

A sister tanker to SS Marine Sulphur Queen which suffered a failure of the keel and split in two.

Real unsolved mystery

The Babushka Lady is a nickname for an unknown woman present during the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy who might have photographed the events that occurred in Dallas' Dealey Plaza at the time President John F. Kennedy was shot. Her nickname arose from the headscarf she wore similar to scarves worn by elderly Russian women.

The Babushka Lady was seen to be holding a camera by eyewitnesses and was also seen in film accounts of the assassination.^[1][2] She was observed standing on the grass between Elm and Main streets and she can be seen in the Zapruder film as well as in the films of Orville Nix,^[3] Marie Muchmore, and Mark Bell^[4] (44 seconds and 49 seconds into the Bell film: even though the shooting had already taken place and most of her surrounding witnesses took cover, she can be seen still standing with the camera at her face). After the shooting, she crossed Elm Street and joined the crowd that went up the grassy knoll in search of a gunman. She is last seen in photographs walking east on Elm Street and neither she nor the film she may have taken have been positively identified.

 the hours and days following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, investigators would rely heavily on statements by spectators of the motorcade and, more importantly, those persons who were filming or photographing JFK when the shots were fired.

Once the movies and films were developed, law enforcement would use the subsequent images to try to piece together exactly what happened on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.

The photos and films were not necessarily of the best quality. In the excitement following the shooting, bystanders fled for cover and confusion reigned. As it was not immediately clear which direction the shots came from, people ran in every direction, running in to each other and fleeing towards whatever “safe” places they could find.

The days following the assassination were a whirlwind for investigators. There was clearly too much conflicting information and too many witnesses to wade through — but the outraged public were demanding immediate answers. The shooting of the main suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, just added to the confusion.

Eventually, as the photographs and films were developed, yet another mystery of an already puzzling crime surfaced. Clearly shown in several photographs is a woman with what appears to be a camera of some kind in front of her face, pointing at the president’s motorcade when the shots were fired. She is standing somewhat close to the street, a very good vantage point for capturing the events surrounding the shooting. Over her hair she is wearing a scarf of a tan or light brown color — the headscarf earning her the nickname of the “Babushka Lady,” a reference to a similar Russian scarf. While she appears in several photos, probably the best and closest image of the woman is from a movie taken by Marie Muchmore, a spectator of the motorcade. Unfortunately, the mystery woman has her back to Muchmore, obscuring a clear identification. She appears in several other photographs, but never clearly enough to make some kind of identification.

The Babushka Lady

The investigating officials were intrigued. If the Babushka Lady had been so close and had taken photos or movies, the law was eager to see them. Also intriguing is the fact that photographic evidence shows that instead of running away after the shots were fired, as many people did, the Babushka Lady continued filming the procession.

A call went out from the FBI to everyone who had been in the vicinity of the assassination and had been taking photos or movies.

The Babuska lady never came forward, despite evidence showing that she was capturing the tragedy in some way from a relatively good position.

Interestingly, a Dallas film developer later told FBI agents that he had developed a single color slide brought in by an unknown woman. The slide was somewhat blurry, but from the developer’s description, it matched up as being taken from the spot the Babushka Lady was standing — or very close to it.

The trail of the mystery woman seemed to come to a dead end until 1970, when a certain Beverly Oliver claimed to be the Babushka Lady. Oliver claimed that her camera had been confiscated by the FBI on the day of the assassination and never returned. At first this seemed to be the solution to the mystery, until Oliver identified the camera she had used, which was a model that had not been in production until several years after the assassination. Similarly, witnesses who had been standing near the Babushka Lady stated Oliver was not nearby. Additionally, analysis of the photos that included the Babushka Lady seem to indicate a woman much older and heavier than Oliver, who was 17 and slim in 1963.

Why hasn’t this enigmatic woman come forward? What does she have to hide? Could it be, as one theory suggests, that the object she was holding was not a camera but a set of binoculars and so she did not realize that the authorities were looking for her?

It is most likely too late for the Babushka Lady to step forward, even if she is still alive.

Over the subsequent years, countless theories and “facts” about the events connected to the assassination have surfaced. Grainy images of the Babushka Lady on film are just another puzzle in a very mysterious Dallas afternoon.