Unforgotten Casebook — One case. Every angle. One place.

Unforgotten Casebook

Unforgotten Casebook

One case. Every angle. One place.

Explore books, movies, podcasts, news coverage, and court records—organized by true crime case and real-life story, together in one place.

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THE CASE LIBRARY

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464 cases in the collection

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U.S. cases, plus the Bernardo–Homolka case in Canada.

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Showing 1–24 of 24
CASE 141West Virginia & Pennsylvania

2012

Skylar Neese

Skylar Neese left her West Virginia home with friends Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy in 2012 and did not return. Investigators eventually learned the two had killed her in Pennsylvania. Their guilty pleas exposed a planned murder behind months of misleading accounts about her disappearance.

CASE 425Woodbridge, New Jersey; Virginia coast

2004

William “Bill” McGuire

William “Bill” McGuire disappeared from Woodbridge in April 2004. The discovery of his remains along the Virginia coast brought investigators in two states into the case. His wife, Melanie McGuire, was convicted of murder and related offenses in 2007 and sentenced to life plus an additional term for perjury. New Jersey’s appellate court upheld the verdict and sentence in 2011. The linked prosecution announcement and court opinion document the findings behind the widely televised case.

CASE 416Richmond and Chesterfield area, Virginia

2002

Unsolved homicide

Carrie Ann Williams

Carrie Ann Williams, 26, was found shot to death in the Richmond area in 2002 after finishing work at Hooters. Her boyfriend Raleigh Campbell was charged, but a jury acquitted him. The case appears in The Hooters Murders: Deadly Shift. The 2026 coverage describes the killing as unresolved; the acquittal must remain clear when reading older accounts of the investigation.

CASE 449Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

2002

The D.C.-area sniper victims

Ten people were killed and three others critically wounded in the Washington-area sniper attacks of October 2002. A multiagency investigation led to the arrest of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo and subsequent prosecutions. The book 23 Days of Terror and the documentary I, Sniper explore the victims’ experiences, the investigation and the relationship between the perpetrators.

CASE 415Roanoke, Virginia

2001

Tina Louise Foster

Tina Louise Foster, 20, disappeared in Roanoke in January 2001 after meeting a man who offered to photograph her for modeling. She was later found dead in her car. Christopher Haynes pleaded guilty to her murder in January 2002 and was sentenced to life imprisonment that March. Contemporary local television reports preserve the investigation and sentencing coverage; the 2026 Hooters documentary revisits her story alongside four other cases.

CASE 220Virginia and the Appalachian region

1996–2007

Appalachian communities & the opioid crisis

Patients, families, clinicians and investigators confronted a growing opioid crisis as prescription painkillers spread through communities. Beth Macy’s reporting follows the human consequences and the practices of the pharmaceutical industry. Dopesick dramatizes the history through a mixture of real events and composite characters.

CASE 427Maryland; Loudoun County, Virginia

1996–2009

Jasper “Jack” Watkins

Jasper “Jack” Watkins was killed in 1996, but authorities did not identify his remains until 2003. That identification helped expose a financial scheme involving Nancy Siegel, who had used his identity and continued collecting his benefits after his death. A federal jury convicted her of second-degree murder-witness tampering and multiple fraud offenses in 2009, and she received a 400-month sentence. Snapped follows the investigation; the federal announcements document the verdict and punishment.

CASE 151Manassas, Virginia

1993

Lorena Bobbitt

Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband John’s penis in Virginia in 1993 and described years of abuse during the ensuing proceedings. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. The heavily sensationalized coverage later became the subject of documentaries examining domestic violence and media treatment.

CASE 059Virginia, United States

1985

Derek & Nancy Haysom

Derek and Nancy Haysom were stabbed to death in their Virginia home in 1985. Their daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Jens Soering fled abroad before being arrested. Elizabeth pleaded guilty as an accessory, and Soering was convicted of murder. His later challenges to the case fueled a long-running dispute over responsibility and evidence.

CASE 452Doswell, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; Elmont, New York

1968–1973

Penny Chenery & Secretariat

Penny Chenery took over the family’s Meadow Stable as her father’s health declined. In 1973, Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes, becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. The film Secretariat dramatizes Chenery’s role, while racing-history sources document the horse’s performances.

CASE 197Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi

1961

The Freedom Riders

Mae Frances Moultrie
Mae Frances MoultrieFreedom Rider at the burned bus, 1961
Photo creditFederal Bureau of Investigation / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.

Interracial groups rode buses through the South to challenge segregation in interstate travel. Riders endured mob attacks, arrests and imprisonment while demanding enforcement of existing court rulings. The campaign helped force federal action against segregated interstate bus facilities.

CASE 186Caroline County, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

1958–1967

Mildred & Richard Loving

Mildred & Richard Loving
Mildred & Richard LovingTogether in 1967
Photo creditUnited Press International / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.

Mildred and Richard Loving were prosecuted under Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage after marrying in Washington, D.C. Their challenge reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1967, Loving v. Virginia struck down state bans on interracial marriage, changing constitutional protections for couples nationwide.

CASE 193Topeka, Kansas; South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware

1951–1954

The families behind Brown v. Board of Education

Families and NAACP lawyers challenged segregated public schooling through cases that reached the Supreme Court together. Brown v. Board of Education rejected racial segregation in public schools in 1954. Simple Justice follows the legal strategy and the people behind that constitutional decision.

CASE 188Hampton, Virginia

1943–1969

Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson & NASA’s Hidden Figures

Katherine Johnson
Katherine JohnsonNASA portrait, 1983
Photo creditNASA / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.
Dorothy Vaughan
Dorothy VaughanNASA archive portrait
Photo creditNASA on The Commons / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.
Mary Jackson
Mary JacksonNASA portrait, 1979
Photo creditAdam Cuerden / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.

Black women mathematicians and engineers at Langley contributed to American aviation and the space program while working within racial and gender barriers. Hidden Figures brings together the stories of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and their colleagues; the film focuses on a smaller group and shorter period.

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