Unsolved Mysteries Rewind · Unsolved Mysteries Rewind

The Strange and Mysterious Death of Tommy Burkett

August 29, 2023·1 hr 9 min·4 clips

Muddy footprints led from the Burkett back door to a ravine where an ambulance stopped and left quietly.

Mark opens by noting they are back in Virginia, this time in Herndon. Amy follows along, and the two settle into a case they covered briefly before but never really opened up. They say it deserves more attention because the more they look, the more there is to find, and the case keeps branching into new rabbit holes. A lot of the discussion centers on what happened after the call at the house. They describe how the call came in at 6:12 and, by shortly after 7, everyone was gone except one officer down the street. They point out that there were no crime scene photos, no tape, and no sign that anyone retrieved the slug from the wall or did any ballistics work. The result is a scene that feels treated like cleanup instead of a real investigation. Mark and Amy keep circling the same basic question: how does a death scene in 1991 get handled this loosely. They do not prove what happened, but they keep showing how little was preserved to rule anything out. Even the idea that someone could have entered, shot Tommy, and left muddy footprints toward the ravine is left hanging as a possibility because so little was documented. They also talk about the body being sent to the wrong morgue at first because of a code mix-up. The code apparently sent it to a military hospital instead of the nearest hospital, and then, about an hour and a half later, Tommy ended up where he was supposed to be. It is another strange turn in a case already full of them. The family comes up too. Tommy had a sister, who was pregnant at the time, and she came over to comfort her parents. Mark and Amy do not stay there long, but they do note how much this kind of event changes a family. Still, they keep returning to the handling of the scene and the gaps in the investigation. As the episode goes on, they admit that nothing about the case really surprises them anymore. The weirdness is not one twist but the pileup of missed steps, loose procedures, and unanswered questions. That is what gives the episode its shape: not a clean conclusion, but a steady reminder of how many chances there were to do better. They also note that suicide is often where people land when they do not have a better explanation. They do not present it as settled. They present it as the kind of answer people reach for when the work has not really been done. The tone stays skeptical throughout, and that skepticism is the point. The episode closes in familiar Unsolved Mysteries Rewind fashion, with the hosts reminding listeners to subscribe, join the Facebook group, leave a review, and send in questions or ideas. By then, the shape of the episode is clear: it is a revisit that turns into an audit, and the audit keeps pointing to the same conclusion, that the case was strange, the response was thin, and the record left behind is frustratingly incomplete.

As heard by us

A Herndon, Virginia case gets sharper when Mark and Amy stay on what the investigation missed.

Mark and Amy revisit a Herndon, Virginia case and keep coming back to how badly the scene seems to have been handled. The episode lands best when it stays on the practical failures that come up over and over: the wrong morgue, no crime scene photos, no tape, and no ballistics…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want a weird Virginia case recap that keeps uncovering more rabbit holes?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Unsolved Mysteries Rewind