UNSOLVED - List of unsolved murders

Unsolved murders

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1800–1899

• Benjamin Bathurst, a British diplomatic envoy who disappeared on or around 25 November 1809 in the town 
  of Perleberg, Germany, and who was likely murdered.^[1][2]
• Mary Rogers, also known as the "Beautiful Cigar Girl". Her body was found in the Hudson River on July 28,
  1841. The story became a national sensation and inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write "The Mystery of Marie
  Rogêt" in 1842.
• Thomas C. Hindman, an American politician assassinated by one or more unknown assailants on 27
  September 1868. The assassins fired through his parlor window while he was reading his newspaper with
  his children in Helena, Arkansas, United States.^[3]
• John M. Clayton, American politician, shot and killed instantly by an unknown assailant on the evening of
  29 January 1889 in Plumerville, Arkansas, after starting an investigation into the possible fraud of an election
  he took part in. After his death he was declared the winner of the election but his assassin was never found.
• Andrew Jackson Borden and Abby Durfee Borden, father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden, both killed in
  their family house in Fall River, Massachusetts on the morning of 4 August 1892, by blows from a hatchet.
  In the case of Andrew Borden, the hatchet blows not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball.
  Lizzie was later arrested and charged for the murders, because she and a maid were the only ones in the
  house at the time of the killings, but she was acquitted by a jury, and the case remains technically unsolved.^[5]
• The Gatton murders occurred 1.5 miles from the rural Australian town of Gatton, Queensland on December
  26, 1898. Siblings Michael, Norah and Ellen Murphy were found deceased the morning after they left home
  to attend a dance in the town hall which had been cancelled. The bodies were arranged with the feet pointing
  west and both women had their hands tied with handkerchiefs. This signature aspect has never been
  repeated in Australian crime and to date remains a mystery.^[6]

1900–1924

• William Goebel, an American politician who was shot and mortally wounded on the morning of 30 January
  1900 by an unknown assailant in Frankfort, Kentucky, one day before being sworn in as Governor of
  Kentucky. The next day the dying Goebel was sworn in and, despite the best efforts of eighteen physicians
  attending him, died on the afternoon of 3 February 1900. Goebel remains the only state Governor in the
  United States to die by assassination while in office.^[7]
• Rose Harsent, a six-months-pregnant maid who was stabbed to death on 1 June 1902 in Suffolk, England
  by an unknown assailant. At the time it was alleged that the murderer was a preacher of the Primitive
  Methodist Chapel named William Gardiner, who was having an affair with the victim. Gardiner was tried
  twice for the murder but each time the jury failed to reach a verdict.^[8][9] The case has been investigated in
  BBC One's Julian Fellowes Investigates.^[10]
• Elsie Paroubek, five-year-old daughter of Czech immigrants, either wandered away from her home or was
  kidnapped in Chicago on April 8, 1911. Her disappearance was the subject of intense police investigation
  over three states, with massive newspaper coverage. Her body was found a month later. Elsie, under the
  name "Annie Aronburg" became one of the principal characters in Henry Darger's immense novel The Story
  of the Vivian Girls in the Realms of the Unreal.
• Joseph Wilson, the sixty-year-old stationmaster, shot dead at Lintz Green railway station, in the North East
  of England, on 7 October 1911. His murder sparked one of the largest murder investigations in the North
  East.
• Chrissie Venn, a thirteen-year-old girl murdered on or around 21 February 1921 near the township of North
  Motton, near Ulverstone, Tasmania.
• William Desmond Taylor, popular American actor and director of silent movies. Killed by a shot in the back
  on 1 February 1922 inside his bungalow. His murder, along with other Hollywood scandals, such as the
  Roscoe Arbuckle trial, led to a frenzy of sensational and often fabricated newspaper reports, and a deathbed
  confession but doubted.
• The Hinterkaifeck murders. Hinterkaifeck, a small farmstead between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and
  Schrobenhausen (approximately 70 km north of Munich), was the scene of one of the most puzzling crimes
  in German history. On the evening of 31 March 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a
  pickaxe, and the murder is still unsolved.
• The Janet Smith case. On July 26, 1924, the 22-year-old Scottish nursemaid was found dead of a gunshot
  wound to the temple in a home in an exclusive neighborhood ofVancouver, Canada. Although she was
  initially labeled a suicide (despite much evidence to the contrary), her friends were able to get the case
  reopened and deemed a murder. The initial suspect, Chinese houseboy Wong Foon Sing, was kidnapped
  and tortured for weeks in an unsuccessful attempt to extract a confession, causing a major scandal when
  it was discovered that various police officials and respected members of society were directly involved.
  Wong was eventually tried and acquitted for lack of evidence. A law was proposed, banning the
  employment of Orientals and white women in the same household, but failed to pass.

1925–1949

• The Wallace Case was the unsolved murder of Liverpool housewife Julia Wallace on 20 January 1931. Her
  husband, William Herbert Wallace, was convicted and sentenced to hang, but the verdict was overturned on
  appeal - the first such instance in British legal history. The chess-like quality of the puzzle has attracted a
  host of crime writers.Raymond Chandler said, ‘The Wallace case is the nonpareil of all murder mysteries ...
  I call it the impossible murder because Wallace couldn’t have done it, and neither could anyone else. ...
  The Wallace case is unbeatable; it will always be unbeatable.’
• Vampire Murder Case is the nickname given to the case of an unknown assailant who committed the
  unsolved murder of a prostitute who was found dead with a crushed skull in her apartment on 4 May 1932
  in Stockholm, Sweden. Police noted that someone had drunk her blood.
• Sir Harry Oakes, an American-born British gold-mine owner and philanthropist who was found murdered in
  his mansion in Nassau, Bahamas on 8 July 1943. His murder became the subject of worldwide press
  coverage at the time as well as several books, films, and documentaries.^[12]
• Georgette Bauerdorf, a 20-year-old oil heiress who was found face down in a bathtub in her home at West
  Hollywood, California on 12 October 1944. She had been strangled with a piece of towel stuffed down her
  throat, and although there was a large roll of $2 bills and thousands of dollars worth of sterling silver lying in
  an open trunk, Bauerdorf's jewelry and other valuables were not stolen. The police believe her murderer had
  unscrewed an automatic night light over the outside entrance of the apartment so it would not come on and
  lain in wait for her.^[13]
• The Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short), a 22-year-old woman who was found severely mutilated and her body
  cut in half in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California on 15 January 1947. Her unsolved murder has been the
  source of several books, films, and widespread speculation.^[14]
• Emily Armstrong, found in a dry cleaner's shop in London, England on 14 April 1949, about an hour after
  she had been murdered. An autopsy showed she was beaten to death and her skull shattered by at least
  22 blows from a blunt object, believed to be a claw hammer.^[15]

1950–1974

• La Crosse, Wisconsin. 15-year-old Evelyn Hartley was babysitting for Professor Viggo Rasmusen on the
  evening of October 24th, 1953 when she was kidnapped. That was the night of the La Crosse football game
  and attendance was high. There were signs of a struggle in the living room where her broken glasses were
  left. In the basement there was blood and an open window where the kidnapper came in and took Evelyn out.
  Though her body was never found, weeks later bloody undergarments resembling hers were discovered on
  Highway 14, two miles south of La Crosse. There was a fifteen-minute window between the Rasmusens's
  leaving and her disappearance.^[16]
• Marilyn Reese Sheppard, wife of Sam Sheppard, attacked and killed in her home in Bay Village, Ohio,
  United States, on 4 July 1954. Sam Sheppard was later convicted of killing his pregnant wife, but this was
  overturned in 1966, and he was acquitted in a new trial. He claimed his wife was killed by a bushy-haired
  man who also attacked him and knocked him unconscious twice. Their son slept through the night, just
  down the hall from the bedroom in which his mother was murdered. The trial of Sam Sheppard received
  extensive publicity and was called "carnival atmosphere" by the U.S. Supreme Court.^[17] The Sheppard
  case was a large part of the inspiration for the television series and later movie The Fugitive.
• Barbara and Patricia Grimes disappeared on 28 December 1956, in Chicago, Illinois after going to a cinema
  to watch an Elvis Presley movie. Their disappearance launched one of the biggest missing-persons hunts in
  Chicago history. However, police were not able to determine what happened to the Grimes sisters.^[18] On
  January 22, 1957 their naked bodies were found off a road near Willow Springs, Illinois. The corpses
  contained various bruises and marks (for example puncture wounds in the chest that may have come from
  an ice pick) that were never fully explained.
• Boy in the Box, sometimes known as "America's Unknown Child" is a name given to an unidentified murder
  victim, approximately 4 to 6 years old. The body of the boy was found battered and naked inside a cardboard
  box on 25 February 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The case received massive media attention and
  pictures of the boy were placed in every gas bill in Philadelphia. It has been featured on the America's Most
  Wanted television series, but despite all attention the case remains unsolved and the boy's identity unknown.
• Geneva "Jean" Hilliker Ellroy, a 43-year-old divorced nurse, was found strangled to death near Arroyo High
  School in El Monte, California on 22 June 1958. No promising suspects were ever produced, though she was
  seen with an unknown man and woman in the hours before her death. The case received only superficial
  notice from the media, possibly due to the recent homicide of Johnny Stompanato. The victim's ten-year-old
  son James Ellroy, (then Lee Earle Ellroy), would become a bestselling crime novelist later in life and would
  revisit his mother's murder in his 1996 memoir, My Dark Places.^[20]
• Lynne Harper, 12 years old, was last seen alive on 9 June 1959 riding on the handlebars of her friend
  Steven Truscott's bike near an air force base which is now Vanastra, Ontario, Canada. Two days later her
  body was discovered in a nearby farm woodlot. She had been raped and strangled with her own blouse.
  Fourteen-year-old Steven Murray Truscott was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder, becoming
  Canada's youngest person to be sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
  Truscott was held in custody for 10 years: in 2007 his conviction was ruled a miscarriage of justice, although
  he was not declared innocent.^[21]
• The Lake Bodom murders were an infamous multiple homicide that took place in Finland on 5 June 1960.
  That night four teenagers were camping on the shores of the lake when between 4 am and 6 am, they were
  attacked by an unknown individual or individuals with a knife and a blunt object. Three of them died, and the
  fourth one was wounded but survived. Although the sole survivor became a suspect for some time in 2004,
  the case remains unsolved and the killer(s) identity unknown.^[22]
• Mary Meyer, a socialite from Washington, D.C., and close friend of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.^[23]
  Shot to death on 12 October 1964 by an unknown assailant after finishing a painting and going for a walk.
  She was heard screaming for help by a mechanic on a nearby road who also heard two gunshots and saw
  an unidentified man standing over her body. Her murder would later stir speculation relating to the Kennedy
  assassination.^[24]
• Betsy Aardsma was a 22-year-old woman from Holland, Michigan, United States and a graduate student at
  Penn State University, who was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the stacks of Pattee Library on Penn
  State's campus on 28 November 1969. She was stabbed a single time through the heart with a single-edged
  small knife. Approximately one minute later two men came from Betsy's location and told a desk clerk,
  "Somebody better help that girl," and then exited the library. The men were never identified. 25–35 minutes
  later Betsy arrived at a hospital where she was pronounced dead. She had been wearing a red dress, and
  since there was only a small amount of blood visible, no one immediately realized that she had been
  stabbed.

1975–1999

• Barbara Colby, an American actress from Venice, California, United States, was shot to death while walking
  with a colleague to his car on 24 July 1975. She died instantly from her wounds but her colleague was able
  to describe the shooting to the police before he also died from his wounds. He said the shooting occurred
  without reason or provocation and said that there were two gunmen whom he did not recognize. There had
  been no attempt to rob the two, and the killers and their motivation are still unknown.^[26]
• Seewen murder case: 5 people were shot during Pentecost weekend 1976 in a weekend house near the
  Swiss village Seewen. Although the weapon was found in 1996, the murderer remains unknown.
• Bob Crane, an American actor best known for his role in Hogan's Heroes, was discovered bludgeoned to
  death with a weapon that was never found (but was believed by police to be a camera tripod) at the Winfield
  Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Ariz., on June 29, 1978. Crane had allegedly called his friend John Henry
  Carpenterthe night before to tell him their friendship was over. Crane was involved in the underground sexual
  scene and filmed his numerous escapades with the help of Carpenter, who was an audio-visual expert.
  Police reportedly found blood smears in Carpenter's car that matched Crane's blood type, but no charges
  were filed against Carpenter for more than a decade. When he was charged in 1994, he was acquitted.
  Carpenter maintained his innocence until his death in 1998, and the case is now officially cold.^[31]
• William Anthony Kagdis, On August 1st, 1982 at approximately 11:50 AM Sheriff’s deputies responded to
  the Johnson Motel located at 9533 James Madison Highway, Fauquier County, VA, on a report that a guest
  had been found deceased in his rented room. Upon arrival at the Johnson Motel deputies were directed to
  room no.17 where they discovered the apparently dead body of a white male laying on one of the beds in the
  room. The victim was found lying face down in a large pool of blood. The room showed signs of a struggle
  having taken place. The victim was identified as William Anthony Kagdis, an aeronautical engineer with
  NASA, who checked into the room at the Johnson Motel the evening before. An autopsy revealed Mr.
  Kagdis’ death was due to the numerous blunt force injuries he received to his head. Mr. Kagdis had been
  traveling from his home in Baltimore, MD to Tennessee on business.
• Raymond Nels Nelson, Administrative Assistant to Senator Claiborne Pell and former bureau chief of The
  Providence Journal, Rhode Island. He was found bludgeoned to death with a typewriter in his Washington,
  D.C. apartment on June 1, 1981.
• Raymond Washington, original founder of the notorious South Central Los Angeles street gang that came to
  be known as the Crips. Washington was shot dead at the age of 25 when he walked up to a car on the
  corner of 64th and San Pedro Streets in Los Angeles. At the time of his death, Washington no longer had
  any real control over the gang he originally founded. He wanted to unite warring gangs in peace and had
  always opposed guns. Different theories exist on why he was killed and who did it but no one was ever
  arrested for his murder.
• Óscar Romero, the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, was killed by a shot to the heart on 24
  March 1980 while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital. It is believed, but never proven,
  that the assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads. During the funeral ceremony, a bomb
  exploded on the Cathedral square and shots were fired. Many people were killed during the subsequent
  mass panic.
• The Keddie Murders, in which four people were found dead in Keddie, California in 1981.
• Peter Ivers, television host and musician, was found bludgeoned to death in his Los Angeles apartment in
  1983. The murder was never solved, although on the basis of new information found in the book In Heaven
  Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre (2008) by
  Josh Frank and Charlie Buckholtz, the Los Angeles Police Department has reopened their investigation
  into Ivers' death.
• Catrine da Costa, Swedish prostitute. Parts of her dismembered body were found in Solna, just outside of
  Stockholm, during the summer of 1984.
• Christine Jessop, an eight-year-old girl of Queensville, Ontario, was raped and murdered in October 1984.
  Her next-door neighbour, Guy Paul Morin, was wrongly convicted of the crime in 1992 but DNA testing led
  to a subsequent overturning of this verdict in 1995.
• Dian Fossey, an American zoologist who observed and studied gorilla groups over a period of 18 years in
  Rwanda. She was brutally murdered in the bedroom of her cabin on 26 December 1985. Her skull had been
  split by a native panga, which she had confiscated from poachers years earlier and hung as a decoration on
  the wall of her cabin. Fossey was found dead beside her bed, two meters away from a hole that was cut into
  the wall of her cabin on the day of her murder.^[34]
• Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden and the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party was shot in
  the back while walking home from a cinema together with his wife shortly after 11 pm on 28 February 1986
  in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Alejandro Gonzalez Malave, Puerto Rican who was involved in the Cerro Maravilla murders case, was shot
  at his mother's home on April 29, 1986. The assailants were never apprehended.
• Julie Ward, murdered in Kenya in 1988 while on safari in the Masai Mara game reserve. Her burned and
  dismembered body was found a week after she went missing. The original statement by Kenyan officials
  was that she had been eaten by lions and struck by lightning but this was later revised to say she was
  murdered.
• Sidney Leithman, a criminal lawyer from Montreal whose clients included Colombian drug cartels and the
  West End Gang^[37] was cut off while driving to work, whereupon the person who cut him off fired six shots
  into his Saab convertible, four of which hit Leithman. It has been speculated that this was a settling of
  accounts by a disgruntled client, but no suspects have ever been identified.^[38][39][40]
• Inokashira Park dismemberment incident in Japan, April 23, 1994.
• Deanna Cremin, a 17-year-old girl from Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, was found behind a
  senior housing complex. An autopsy revealed she had been strangled. She was last seen alive by her
  boyfriend who, unlike on other occasions when he would walk her to the door, walked her only half way
  and she continued on her own toward her house. Her murder remains unsolved.
• Anne Barber Dunlap was found murdered in the trunk of her car in Minneapolis on 1 January 1996. Her
  husband Brad Dunlap was suspected but never charged, and he sued the insurance company to collect
  $1 million from a recently established policy. The case is notable because the U.S. District Court ruled
  that the police had to share with Brad Dunlap any information they shared with the insurance company.
• Amber Hagerman, victim of an abduction and murder. On 13 January 1996, the 10-year old girl was
  kidnapped while riding her bike near her grandparents' home in Arlington, Texas. Four days later, a man
  walking his dog found her body in a creek bed. An autopsy revealed that her throat had been cut. Although
  a $75,000 reward was offered for information leading to Hagerman's killer, the perpetrator was never found.
  Her murder would later inspire the creation of the AMBER Alert system.
• Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Wife of French filmmaker Daniel Toscan du Plantier, found beaten to death
  outside her home in Toormore near Schull in County Cork, Ireland, on the morning of the 23 December 1996.
  Former French President Jacques Chirac was a friend of the couple and gave the case national attention.
  The main suspect, Ian Bailey, has been questioned 2 times by the Irish Authorities in relation to the murder,
  but the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) decided not to prosecute. In early April, 2010 the French
  authorities issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Bailey. On 24th, April, 2010 the Gardaí in Ireland arrested Ian
  Bailey and brought him in front of the High Court in Dublin to appeal his extradition. This case is ongoing
  and is expected to take many months.
• JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old American girl who had competed in child beauty pageants, was made
  famous by her Christmastime murder and the subsequent media coverage. She was found dead in the
  basement of her parents' home in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26, 1996, nearly eight hours after she
  was reported missing. The official cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation associated with
  craniocerebral trauma. After several grand jury hearings, the case is still unsolved. Her parents were
  suspects and remain so despite a past DA "clearing" them erroneously.
• Tupac Shakur, a top-selling American Rapper who was shot four times in a drive-by shooting on 7
  September 1996, in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. He died six days later of respiratory failure and
  cardiac arrest at the University Medical Center.
• The Notorious B.I.G., a famous Brooklyn rapper killed by an unknown assailant in a drive-by shooting on 9
  March 1997, in Los Angeles, California, United States. Even though acomposite sketch of the perpetrator
  was made, the case is still unsolved.
• Ita Martadinata Haryono, an Indonesian human rights activist, found dead on 9 October 1998 in her bedroom
  in Central Jakarta, Indonesia. She was stabbed ten times and her neck had been slashed. The murder
  occurred just three days after a Jakarta press conference held by the human rights organizations she had
  been involved with.
• Big L, a Harlem rapper, was shot multiple times in the head and chest near his Harlem home on 15
  February 1999.
• Jill Dando, an English journalist and television presenter who worked for the BBC for 14 years. She was
  killed by a single gunshot wound to the head on 26 April 1999, after leaving the home of her fiancé. Her
  death sparked "Operation Oxborough", the biggest murder inquiry and largest criminal investigation since
  the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.
• Suzanne Jovin, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University, was found stabbed to death in 1998 on the campus
  of Yale.^[50] Allegations that her thesis advisor was a suspect led to the end of his career at Yale, but the
  crime remains unsolved.
• Ashley Ouellette, a fifteen-year-old female from Saco, Maine, was found lying in the middle of Pine Point
  Road in Scarborough, Maine, by passing motorists on 10 February 1999 at 3:57am. Ouellette was last
  seen alive at approximately 2:00am at Earl Sanborn Jr. and Muriel Sanborn residence in Saco. She was
  allowed to spend the night there, however, by morning Ashley had disappeared from the residence.
  Ouellette was not seen again until found in the road.
• Raonaid Murray, an Irish young woman stabbed to death at the age of 17 within a few hundred metres of
  her home in Glenageary, Co. Dublin, in the early hours of Saturday morning, 4 September 1999.
• Ricky McCormick whose body was found in a field by sheriff's officers in St. Charles County, Missouri,
  on June 30, 1999. The only clues to the mystery are two notes in his pockets, apparently written in a
  complex cipher.

2000–2010

• Jill-Lyn Euto, an 18 year old student, was found stabbed to death in her sixth-floor apartment at 600 James
  St, Syracuse, NY on 28 January 2001. No arrests have been made.
• Evelyn Hernandez, and her 5-year-old son Alex, last heard from on 1 May 2002 at her residence in San
  Francisco, California. Her wallet was found several days later, in South San Francisco. Hernandez was nine
  months pregnant at the time and on 24 July 2002 her torso was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Her
  unborn child and her son Alex have not been found. The case was profiled twice on America's Most Wanted
  during the summer of 2003.^[53]
• Rashawn Brazell, disappeared after leaving his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, United States, on
  the morning of 14 February 2005. His dismembered body parts were later found in garbage bags. America's
  Most Wanted profiled the case three times, on 29 September 2005, 1 April 2006, and 9 December 2006.
• Robert Wone, age 32, was murdered on August 2, 2006, in his friend's Washington, D.C., apartment. He
  was "restrained, incapacitated, and sexually assaulted" prior to his death. The only individuals present in
  the apartment at the time were its three residents, all friends of Wone. They have denied involvement and
  insisted that an intruder committed the crime. Authorities claim that there was no evidence of a break-in:
  the apartment appeared to be washed and cleaned, the three residents appeared freshly showered, and the
  evidence was not consistent with the residents' accounts. In addition, the residents tampered with the
  crime scene, waited an inordinate amount of time to call 911, and exhibited strange behavior when
  paramedics and police arrived. Authorities believe that either some or all of the three house-mates murdered
  Wone and engaged in a cover-up.
• Lane Bryant shooting – on February 2, 2008, a gunman trying to rob a Lane Bryant store killed five women
  (a manager and four customers). The shooter has not been apprehended, although police do not consider it
  a "cold case" yet.
• Mallory Manning, a formerly drug-addicted prostitute was picked up by a supposed client on her usual
  corner in an inner city street in Christchurch, New Zealand on 18 December 2008. She was taken to a
  property and brutally murdered before being dumped in a nearby river where she was discovered the next
  day.
• Thomas C. Wales (b:1952) was an American federal prosecutor and gun control advocate. On October 11,
  2001, he was killed by a bullet fired through the window of his basement home-office in Seattle, Washington.
  No suspects have been charged, and the investigation continues.