Netflix's reboot of Unsolved Mysteries may be burning up the streaming charts, but the original series is still helping to solve cold cases. Originally running from 1987 to 2002, Unsolved Mysteries became a truly iconic program, especially its darkly sinister theme song and deadly serious host Robert Stack. While many other shows have served to spotlight and investigate real life criminal cases, Unsolved Mysteries changed things up by also offering viewers a taste of the paranormal and supernatural.
After Stack's death in 2003, Unsolved Mysteries ended, but was revived from 2008 to 2010 on Spike TV, with actor Dennis Farina as the new host. Recently, Unsolved Mysteries was rebooted for Netflix, and to say the response to its initial episodes has been positive would be an understatement. That's partially due to the return of original creators John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer, as while some major aspects of the show have changed - there's no host, and no reenactments of events by actors - it still feels like Unsolved Mysteries.
However, just because there's a reboot happening, doesn't mean the legacy of the original series isn't still expanding. It turns out that a past episode of Unsolved Mysteries is still helping investigators working on a long-term case.
Unsolved Mysteries: How The Original Series Is Still Solving Cases
During an interview with Variety in July 2020, Unsolved Mysteries co-creator Terry Dunn Muerer revealed how the original series is still helping solve cases. According to Muerer, a 30-year-old cold case once covered on the show has been heating up, and might be solved within the next month or so. It involves an unidentified young man who died by suicide in an Idaho church in 1982, who used the alias William L. Toomey. The man had poisoned himself using cyanide tablets. He wasn't a parishioner of the church, and no one had any idea who he was. He left a suicide note signed using the Toomey alias, but no records of a person with that name could be found.
The Toomey case aired as part of a March 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries. According to Muerer, a new investigator is now attempting to solve the case, and included in the case file was a VHS copy of the old episode. The investigator then contacted Muerer to ask if he had any further materials about the case in the Unsolved Mysteries archives, and he did, including the suicide note. In the last few weeks, the investigator believes he may have finally been able to identify this nearly 40-year-old John Doe. One assumes if and when an identity has been firmly established, the new Unsolved Mysteries will cover what happened since the original 1990 broadcast.