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'Unsolved Mysteries' Is Coming To Amazon With Updates To Old Cases
Perhaps you used to watch Unsolved Mysteries in the '90s, which was a fantastic way to nurture a hearty mistrust of strangers that would follow you like a shadow into adulthood. Or maybe that’s just me. At any rate, Amazon intends to bring Unsolved Mysteries back to viewers next year, but not as a reboot. They’re offering the original episodes hosted by late actor Robert Stack, with updated information to the old cases, the Wrap reports. From its foreboding synth opening to its grainy dramatic re-enactments, Unsolved Mysteries was a portent to the kind of true crime content modern audiences are heartily consuming today, like Serial, The Jinx and Making a Murderer. Unsolved Mysteries debuted in 1987 on NBC, and ended up on Spike through spring of 2010. The show featured a variety of hosts over its multiple iterations, but actor Robert Stack was the probably best known of the bunch.
FilmRise has acquired distribution rights to those original episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, and plans to offer them to Amazon viewers complete with pertinent updates and developments in the cases depicted. FilmRise did not confirm if that means some of the cases have been solved. Episodes from the most recent revival of the series, which aired from 2008 to 2010 on Spike and featured host Dennis Farina, are available on Amazon now, according to the A.V. Club. They, too, feature updates to the original cases. You can also read about updated and solved cases on a very robust Unsolved Mysteries wiki page here.
At least one case featured on the show was solved in Los Angeles last summer. The FBI and LAPD managed to capture former elementary school teacher Frank Joseph Montenegro, Jr. after 14 years spent on the lam. Montenegro was accused of molesting two boys who attended a summer school program in San Diego, but disappeared shortly after he was questioned. It was later discovered that he had convinced a friend into helping him rent a car. That car was found abandoned in Las Paz, Mexico, but Montenegro was nowhere to be found. He was apprehended in Brooklyn Heights after authorities received a tip indicating he had been living under a false name. An episode of Unsolved Mysteries featuring Montenegro's case aired in 2002.
Now, let that dramatic theme song take you back.
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