The complete archive
34 cases, every one reported in full and sourced from the public record. Browse the newest below, or start with a section.
Reported in full
Eight-year-old April Tinsley was abducted and killed in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1988. Her case stayed cold for thirty years, until forensic genetic genealogy finally identified her killer in 2018.
How investigators identified the Wichita serial killer who called himself BTK after a floppy disk he mailed in 2005 revealed hidden metadata pointing to a man named Dennis and a local church, ending a manhunt that spanned three decades.
The 1998 killing of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard near Laramie became a national catalyst for hate-crime law, culminating in the 2009 federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
The 1964 murder of Catherine 'Kitty' Genovese in Queens and the disputed '38 witnesses' narrative that gave rise to bystander-effect research, examined against the later corrections by The New York Times and scholars.
How the 1994 murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, by a twice-convicted neighbor led to Megan's Law and nationwide sex-offender community notification.
Twelve-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted at knifepoint from a Petaluma slumber party in 1993. Her case helped pass California's Three Strikes law and reshaped how the nation searches for missing children.
How investigative genetic genealogy and a citizen sleuth finally gave names to four victims found in barrels in New Hampshire's Bear Brook State Park, decades after their deaths.
How investigators, volunteers, and forensic genealogists spent 65 years restoring a name to Philadelphia's 'Boy in the Box,' identified in 2022 as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. His identity is now known; his murder is not.
In 1986, nursing director Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in her Los Angeles condominium, and police wrote it off as a botched burglary. More than two decades later, a preserved swab of DNA identified the killer as a serving LAPD detective.
How the 1983 murder of Lynda Mann and the 1986 murder of Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire became the first case ever solved by DNA fingerprinting, clearing an innocent man and convicting Colin Pitchfork.
In December 2002, Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, vanished from Modesto, California. The recovery of Laci and her unborn son, Conner, and the conviction of her husband helped shape the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, known as Laci and Conner's Law.
The Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969 and taunted newspapers with ciphers. One was cracked by a schoolteacher couple in 1969; another defeated experts until amateur codebreakers solved it in 2020. The case is still unsolved.
Brandon Swanson, a 19-year-old Minnesota college student, vanished on May 14, 2008, after his car went off a rural road and his late-night phone call to his parents cut off mid-sentence. He was never found, and his case led Minnesota to enact Brandon's Law.
On Australia Day 1966, siblings Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont vanished from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide and were never found. Six decades on, it remains one of Australia's most influential and haunting cold cases.
The 2000 disappearance of nine-year-old Asha Degree, who walked alone from her Shelby, North Carolina home into a rainstorm and vanished, and the forensic evidence that decades later reopened the case as a suspected homicide.
On June 7, 1992, three women vanished overnight from a home in Springfield, Missouri, leaving their cars, purses, and pets behind. Decades later, the disappearance of Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall remains unsolved.
In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. The killer was never identified, but the case rewrote how every sealed product is sold.
Maura Murray, a 21-year-old UMass Amherst nursing student, crashed her car on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire on February 9, 2004, and vanished before police arrived. She has never been found, and her case became a defining early test of online sleuthing.
In late March 1922, six people on the isolated Hinterkaifeck farmstead in Bavaria were killed with a mattock. Strange events preceded the crime, the killer apparently lingered for days, and the case remains unsolved a century later.
Six-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted in 1981 from a Florida department store. His parents turned grief into a national missing-children movement and a federal law that still bears his name.
In September 1922, Episcopal priest Edward Wheeler Hall and choir singer Eleanor Mills were found shot dead near New Brunswick, New Jersey. The case became a national press sensation; a 1926 trial ended in acquittals, and it was never solved.
In 1974, 17-year-old Carla Walker was abducted from a Fort Worth bowling-alley parking lot and murdered. The case went cold for 46 years until forensic-grade genome sequencing by the Texas lab Othram identified Glen Samuel McCurley, who pleaded guilty in 2021.
In 1981 a young woman in a buckskin poncho was found murdered near Troy, Ohio, and went unnamed for 37 years. In 2018 the DNA Doe Project used investigative genetic genealogy to restore her name: Marcia Lenore King. Her killer is still unknown.
In January 1947, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was found murdered in Los Angeles. The press named her the Black Dahlia, and the case became one of America's most famous unsolved crimes.
On the night before Thanksgiving in 1971, a calm, well-dressed man hijacked a jetliner over the Pacific Northwest, parachuted into the dark with $200,000, and vanished, the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.
The 1948 Tamam Shud case: an unidentified man dead on an Adelaide beach, a cryptic scrap of poetry, and a seventy-year hunt for his name.
A long-running serial-murder investigation around Seattle and the Green River, beginning in 1982 and closed two decades later when DNA evidence identified the killer.
How online animal-cruelty sleuths spent two years chasing the man who would murder Montreal student Jun Lin, and what their hunt did and did not accomplish.
In 1932 the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was taken from his crib near Hopewell, New Jersey. The case ended in a conviction still debated today and created federal kidnapping law.
Twelve-year-old Jonelle Matthews vanished from her Greeley, Colorado home in 1984. Her remains surfaced in 2019, and a former neighbor was convicted of her murder.
An evidence-led look at the Atlanta Child Murders and the 1982 trial of Wayne Williams, where rare textile fibers, including a distinctive 'English Olive' Luxaire carpet fiber, became the prosecution's silent witness.
How a two-and-a-half-page handwritten ransom note became the most scrutinized piece of evidence in the unsolved 1996 killing of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado.
How the public ended the Night Stalker's reign: a released mug shot, a recognized face, and East Los Angeles residents who chased down and held Richard Ramirez until police arrived on August 31, 1985.
How investigators used investigative genetic genealogy and the GEDmatch database to identify the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer hidden in plain sight for four decades.
Browse the index
Files that sat untouched for years, sometimes decades, and the DNA, dogged detectives, or single overlooked detail that finally broke them open.
Review the fileThe cases that escaped the file and entered the culture, names you already half-remember, examined past the headlines and the myth.
Read the recordsPeople who stepped out of an ordinary day and never came back. Disappearances, unidentified remains, and the questions still left open.
Follow the trailA note, a fiber, a phone record. These cases turn on the smallest details, what the evidence said, and what it took to finally read it.
Enter the archiveBefore investigators closed in, ordinary people were already looking. The tips, forums, and quiet obsessions that moved real cases forward.
Explore the casesSome crimes end in a verdict. These ended in new rules, for packaging, for policing, for safety, for the rest of us.
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