Dark Side Of a Reddit Murder Confession
By: Ayush Jain
Tags: Mystery, True Story, True Crime, Crime, History

Dark Side Of a Reddit Murder Confession

A Reddit Confession Nearly Solved a 28-year-old Cold Case

It was 6th August, Saturday, the last day for Coverdell elementary school pupils. The day was a bit dark. Clouds have covered the sky. Scott came home from his school, changed his clothes, and went to play outside around 4 pm. St. Charles has had a neighborhood full of kids, approximately 100.

Scott was wearing a black t-shirt that said “Rude Dog,” khaki pants, and red and black high-top sneakers. Scott’s blue eyes and brown hair gave him a remarkable personality as a 9-year-old.

His elder sister saw Scott at approximately 5:00 pm in his hometown of St. Charles, Missouri. He had left his home on Leverenz Drive and was walking down towards West at the time.

Suddenly around 6:00 pm, St. Charles got affected by a massive storm. It was late, and Scott didn’t return home. At home, everybody thought that Scott would be in the neighborhood at one of his friend’s houses. They knocked on every door but didn’t hear what they wanted to. None of his friends has seen him. It was 6th August 1988, and Scott was never seen again.

Bloodhounds tracked Scott’s scent for about five miles northeast, then lost the trail. It was believed that the storm could have weakened his smell.

Authorities searched numerous human-made tunnels and caves in the area and also dredged streams to locate Scott. Some people believe he drowned in a flash flood that affected the region after the massive storm, but authorities and his family members believe he was abducted.

Missingkids.org

Authorities tried to find some parties of interest for the abduction but could not link them to the crime. Initially, they suspected a man named Michael J. Devlin. He was linked to some other missing child cases and formed a multi-jurisdictional task force to investigate this theory. In October 2007, 20 years later, the task force dissolved, as it could not find any evidence that linked Devlin to Scott's disappearances.

The case fell cold until…

In 2016 a comment on the subreddit blew up. The post was, ‘To those who have accidentally killed someone, what went wrong?’ This Reddit thread got over 6800 upvotes and over 10.1k comments. But the comment that caught everyone’s attention was from a deleted Reddit user.

He commented this on the post, “This still haunts me to this day. As kids, we had a hideout in this dirt cliff/cove … There was a neighborhood kid who, in hindsight, was probably mentally handicapped in some way, but to us, he was just the weird/creepy kid (this was the eighties, and we weren’t exactly raised politically correct). Three of us were headed to our base and found a creepy kid sitting at the top in our ‘guard chair.’ We yelled at him to get out, and he said something like ‘make me’ and started lobbing dirt clods and sticks down at us. We all ran around the side to make our way up. It gets pretty fuzzy here, but all I remember is he fell. I still remember the sound. When we got back down to check on him, he was in a very awkward position with blood coming out of his mouth. We all just freaked out and ran home, and as far as I know, no one has spoken a word of this to anyone. We didn’t go back for over a month and never said a word of it between us. Again, this was the eighties, so media wasn’t like today. Chances are it got a small article in the newspaper B-section: ‘missing mentally disabled child found dead after fall’ or something like that.” and this photo was attached to the post.

Author: Reddit.com

In the above comment, he wrote, “It gets pretty fuzzy here,” does this mean someone had pushed him? People started to suspect.

Within an hour, another Reddit user commented, are you talking about “Scott Kleeschulte’s Case from Missouri.” Internet being the internet, other users started digging his profile and older posts he had commented to, trying to find out a clue about his location and to find if it is a legit comment or someone trying to get attention. Within a few minutes, someone found a comment in which he has mentioned a T.V show which was only aired in St. Charles, where the incident took place.

Author: Reddit

As soon as things started getting a bit serious, the user has deleted the account.

Maybe someone did this to get some attention and earn some Reddit Points(Which you get when your post receives a lot of upvotes and comments). This theory was soon dismissed as his previous posts were quite reasonable and never seemed trying to get any attention. If he just wanted to get attention, he would have done it again and again.

Also, things start to make sense here. Scott went out to play. He was seen wandering off and going towards the hills down towards West, which was half-a-mile away from the place where he was last seen and a mile away from his home. He was at the mountain, and these boys came, and this accident happened. As soon as this activity took place, St. Charles got hit by a massive storm and a landslide, which may have covered Scott’s body over.

A user was able to find out the age of the confessor from one of his previous posts, and it came out to be 39, which made him 11 years old at the time of this incident.

As the account got deleted, there was not any way to link this Redditor(the confessor), who commented on the post.

But, if this story was true, how bloodhounds were able to track Scott’s scent for about five miles northeast, which contradicts the Redditor’s story. We cant check the viability of a comment on the internet.

There can be two possibilities about this case-

Someone came across the St.Charles project case and decided to bring that up just for fun, get attention and earn some Reddit points, and things started to get out of hand and deleted the account or He was telling the truth.

Scott’s parents still live in the house they resided in when he disappeared, and they hope for closure in his case. His disappearance still remains a mystery…