Wyoming’s Weirdest Unsolved Mystery: The Curious Case of Gabby’s Bones
In 1986, a man in Thermopolis, Wyoming, dropped off a old trunk in his friend's shed. Three decades later, the contents of that trunk remain one of Wyoming's most puzzling unsolved mysteries.
According to a man simply identified as Gabby, he had picked up the old trunk years earlier and never bothered to open it. After it sat in his shed for six years, Gabby's friend Newell Sessions made a gruesome discovery.
When Sessions opened the trunk, he noticed it contained what appeared to be human bones. Sure enough, a police examination pointed to the remains of a middle aged caucasian man who was shot in the head. They estimated the killing probably took place sometime in the early 1900s.
Gabby, who claimed he had no idea what was inside the trunk, was exonerated when police discovered that the lock on the trunk dated back to the 1930s.
Local authorites then commisioned a reconstruction of the bones by the Wyoming State Crime Lab. Their results indicated the man was killed sometime after 1908. They also traced back the trunk to a United States armed service member, sometime between World War I and War War II.
Although the state crime lab was able to create a 3-D reproduction of the dead man's facial features, the identity of the man in the trunk, and his killler, remains unknown.