10 Times Pop Culture Solved Real Life Crimes

3. A Dutch Author Accidentally Pens A Confession

In most cases when popular culture manages to crack a case, it's by providing new evidence that overturns a previous wrong conviction or it provides answers to crimes that have long since been given up on. In the case of crime author Richard Klinkhamer, and his book Woensdag, Gehaktdag (a Dutch saying which translates as Wednesday, Mince Day), he was definitely providing new evidence.

It's just that, in this particular case, it was Klinkhamer who wound up being convicted of murder“ effectively penning a confession and sealing his own fate. In 1991 his wife went missing, and was never found.

Ten years later he wrote another of his murder mysteries, about "seven ways to kill your spouse" - with some details which appeared to be profoundly accurate. One suggestion involved burying them in your back garden afterwards and, sure enough, two weeks after the book's publication investigators took a digger to the concrete beneath a shed in an old Klinkhamer family home and found the remains of Hanny Klinkhamer.

Her husband was finally arrested and confessed, thanks to information found in his own book.