Unforgotten Casebook — One case. Every angle. One place.THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
The stories across generations.
Ordered by the beginning of each case’s cataloged period. A period can span events, investigations, litigation, and later reforms; decade labels are approximate. Open a case for its reporting and records.
464 of 464 cases
Tuscumbia, Alabama, and Massachusetts
Helen Keller and teacher Anne Sullivan developed ways for Keller to access language and education as a deafblind child. Keller’s autobiography describes her learning and relationships. The Miracle Worker concentrates on the early teaching relationship, rather than Keller’s later career as a writer and advocate.
Explore this case →Illinois & other U.S. states
H. H. Holmes used fraud and deception while committing murders in the 1890s, including the killing of Benjamin Pitezel. Investigators also traced the deaths of Pitezel’s children to him. Sensational stories about a Chicago “murder castle” often mix documented crimes with disputed or exaggerated claims.
Explore this case →Fall River, Massachusetts
Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in their Fall River home in 1892. Andrew’s daughter Lizzie was tried and acquitted the following year. The case remains unresolved; later books and films offer competing interpretations rather than an established identification of the killer.
Explore this case →New York City, New York
A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 people, many of them young immigrant women. Inadequate escape routes and unsafe working conditions made the disaster a turning point in public debate over industrial safety. Investigations helped bring changes to factory regulation in New York.
1911 · New York Factory Investigating Commission
Explore this case →Orange, New Jersey, and Ottawa, Illinois
Young women painting luminous watch and instrument dials ingested radium while following workplace instructions. Severe illness led workers to challenge employers who disputed responsibility. Their struggles became an important chapter in occupational health and workers’ access to compensation. The film uses fictionalized characters inspired by that history.
Explore this case →New York
Albert Fish abducted Grace Budd after approaching her family in 1928. Years later, a letter describing her death helped investigators track him down. He was convicted of her murder; accounts of other killings include claims that were not all independently established.
Explore this case →Several U.S. states
Nannie Doss came under suspicion after her husband Samuel died in Oklahoma in 1954. She admitted poisoning him and described other family deaths. Her cheerful manner during coverage produced the nickname Giggling Granny; reported admissions should be distinguished from the murder for which she was convicted.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Fred Oesterreich was found shot while his wife Dolly was locked in a closet. The investigation eventually revealed another man secretly living in the household and a concealed relationship.
Explore this case →Rosewood, Florida
A white mob destroyed the predominantly Black community of Rosewood in 1923, killing residents and forcing survivors to flee. Decades later, survivors sought public recognition and compensation from Florida. Like Judgment Day investigates the history; Rosewood dramatizes it with invented characters and events.
1994 · Florida’s Rosewood compensation act
Explore this case →Chicago, Illinois
Bobby Franks was kidnapped and murdered in Chicago in 1924. The investigation focused on students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, and the prosecution became a major public debate about punishment.
Explore this case →Dayton, Tennessee
Teacher John Scopes was prosecuted under Tennessee’s prohibition on teaching human evolution in public schools. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan helped turn the trial into a national media event. The later play and film Inherit the Wind fictionalize it; Summer for the Gods distinguishes history from that retelling.
Explore this case →Denver, Colorado
Ten-year-old Leona O’Loughlin disappeared while her father became seriously ill in 1930. Investigators examined evidence that both had been poisoned and that the danger came from within their home.
Explore this case →Honolulu, Hawaii
An assault allegation in Honolulu was followed by a retaliatory killing and a major criminal trial. The case exposed racial prejudice and unequal power in territorial Hawaii.
Explore this case →Scottsboro and Decatur, Alabama
Nine Black teenagers were accused of rape after a confrontation aboard a freight train in Alabama. Rushed trials, inadequate representation and racial exclusion from juries turned the prosecutions into a national struggle over justice. Supreme Court decisions arising from the cases addressed counsel and jury discrimination.
1935 · Norris v. Alabama: racial exclusion from juries
Explore this case →Macon County, Alabama
Black men in a U.S. Public Health Service study were misled about its purpose and denied adequate treatment for syphilis. Public exposure of the study in 1972 intensified demands for research safeguards. Bad Blood investigates the history; Miss Evers’ Boys uses fictionalized characters to dramatize it.
1974 · National Research Act and research protections
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Eric Madison's death in 1934 led to the prosecution of his wife Nellie May. Her case drew attention to domestic abuse and to how the justice system treated women facing capital punishment.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Veronica Gedeon and two other people were found murdered over Easter weekend in 1937. The investigation examined people around the model and connections to the city's art world.
Explore this case →Durham, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; New York
Lawyer, writer and activist Pauli Murray challenged racial and sex discrimination and developed legal arguments that influenced other civil rights advocates. Murray’s life also crossed boundaries of gender, faith and professional access. The memoir and documentary restore context to a figure often left out of familiar accounts.
Explore this case →Bronx, New York
A killing in the Bronx led investigators to examine a series of attacks on women. Survivors' accounts helped connect the incidents and identify George Joseph Cvek.
Explore this case →Manzanar, California
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was a child when her family was forcibly removed and incarcerated at Manzanar during World War II. Her memoir follows family life inside the camp and the experience of returning afterward. Its television adaptation helped bring Japanese American incarceration to a wider audience.
1988 · Civil Liberties Act
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Elizabeth Short’s body was found in Los Angeles in January 1947. Newspapers called her the Black Dahlia, and the unsolved killing generated decades of theories and fictional treatments. No later book’s proposed suspect should be treated as an officially established killer.
Explore this case →Brooklyn, New York
Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and broke Major League Baseball’s modern color barrier. He faced racist abuse while succeeding on the field, then continued advocating for civil rights. His autobiography covers more of that life than 42, which concentrates on his entry into the major leagues.
Explore this case →Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Eight of Marie Noe’s infants died under circumstances once attributed to unexplained natural causes. Decades later, investigators reopened the Philadelphia case and obtained admissions. Noe pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder in 1999 under an agreement that included probation and psychiatric evaluation.
Explore this case →Southern California
Harvey Glatman used photography and introductions to gain access to women in Southern California. He killed Judith Dull, Ruth Mercado and Shirley Bridgeford; survivor Lorraine Vigil helped expose him.
Explore this case →Baltimore, Maryland
Cells taken during Henrietta Lacks’s cancer treatment in 1951 became a widely used research cell line without her knowledge or consent. Her family’s search for answers exposed the human story behind HeLa and prompted scrutiny of research consent, privacy and access to genetic information.
2013 · NIH–Lacks family genome-data agreement
Explore this case →Topeka, Kansas; South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware
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.
1954 · Brown v. Board of Education
Explore this case →Live Oak, Florida
The 1952 shooting of physician C. Leroy Adams led to the prosecution of Ruby McCollum. The case raised questions about race, power, and whose testimony could be heard in segregated Florida.
Explore this case →Kansas City, Missouri
Bobby Greenlease was abducted in 1953, and his family paid a large ransom. The money did not bring him home; investigators traced the kidnapping, his killing, and the missing ransom funds.
Explore this case →Plainfield, Wisconsin
The disappearance of shopkeeper Bernice Worden in 1957 led police to Ed Gein’s Wisconsin home, where they found her remains and evidence of grave robbing. He was also linked to Mary Hogan’s death. His case inspired horror fiction, which should be distinguished from factual accounts.
Explore this case →Bay Village, Ohio
Marilyn Sheppard was killed in her bedroom in 1954. Her husband Sam was convicted, but the proceedings later became a landmark example of prejudicial publicity; he was acquitted at a retrial.
Explore this case →New York
Billy Woodward was shot by his wife Ann in 1955. Her account of mistaking him for an intruder and the couple's prominence made the death a lasting subject of reporting and debate.
Explore this case →West Palm Beach, Florida
Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife disappeared after a dinner gathering in 1955. The investigation uncovered a murder plot involving corruption within the community's legal establishment.
Explore this case →Chicago, Illinois; Money and Sumner, Mississippi
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and murdered while visiting Mississippi. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted that the public confront what had happened to him and became an advocate for justice. Her memoir and the film Till center a family’s loss and its place in civil rights history.
2022 · Emmett Till Antilynching Act
Explore this case →Montgomery, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan
Rosa Parks’s arrest after refusing to surrender her bus seat became a catalyst for Montgomery’s organized bus boycott. Her activism extended far beyond that moment, including decades of civil rights work in Alabama and Michigan. The biography and documentary challenge the idea that her protest was accidental.
1956 · Montgomery buses desegregated
Explore this case →Berkeley, California
Fourteen-year-old Stephanie Bryan disappeared in 1955. A search involving investigators, local reporting, and physical evidence led to the discovery of her remains and the prosecution of Burton Abbott.
Explore this case →Denver, Colorado
United Airlines Flight 629 exploded after leaving Denver in 1955, killing everyone aboard. Investigators established that a bomb, rather than an aircraft malfunction, had destroyed the flight.
Explore this case →Nebraska & Wyoming
Charles Starkweather killed eleven people during a series of attacks ending in 1958. Fourteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate accompanied him during much of the violence and was convicted as an accomplice. She maintained that she had been held hostage, a dispute explored in later accounts.
Explore this case →Coalwood, West Virginia
Inspired by the space race, Homer Hickam and his friends began building rockets in a West Virginia coal town. Their experiments offered a path toward education beyond the mines. Rocket Boys recounts the group’s work and community relationships; October Sky reshapes that memoir for the screen.
Explore this case →Little Rock, Arkansas
Nine Black students attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. State resistance and mob hostility led to federal intervention. Their first school year brought sustained harassment even after troops escorted them inside; their accounts document the human cost of enforcing desegregation.
1957 · Federal protection for school desegregation
Explore this case →Caroline County, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
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.
1967 · Constitutional ruling: Loving v. Virginia
Explore this case →Holcomb, Kansas
Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their children Nancy and Kenyon were murdered at home in Kansas in 1959. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith had gone there expecting to find money. Their convictions and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood made the case a landmark in crime writing.
Explore this case →San Joaquin Valley and Stockton, California; Houston, Texas; Kennedy Space Center, Florida
José Hernández grew up in a migrant farmworker family and pursued electrical engineering before joining NASA. After years of applications, he was selected for astronaut training in 2004 and flew aboard Discovery’s STS-128 mission in 2009. His memoir and A Million Miles Away explore the family support and persistence behind that journey.
Explore this case →Macon, Georgia
Mary Burge was found strangled in bed in 1960. Investigators examined her marriage and a network of local relationships as an unusual murder prosecution unfolded in Macon.
Explore this case →New Orleans, Louisiana
At six, Ruby Bridges entered William Frantz Elementary School under federal protection as New Orleans began school desegregation. She faced hostile crowds and an almost empty classroom. Her memoir and the Disney television film recount a child’s experience of a major civil rights struggle.
Explore this case →Massachusetts, Arizona and Colorado
Temple Grandin developed a career in animal science and livestock-handling design while explaining her experience as an autistic person. Her writing and public work challenged assumptions about how people think and learn. The HBO film draws on her accounts of education, family support and early professional life.
Explore this case →Odessa, Texas
High-school student Betty Williams disappeared in 1961. Investigators initially considered whether she had run away before information circulating among classmates shifted the inquiry toward murder.
Explore this case →Panama City, Florida
Unable to afford a lawyer, Clarence Earl Gideon defended himself against a Florida felony charge. His handwritten challenge reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that the constitutional right to counsel applies to indigent defendants in state felony prosecutions. He was acquitted at his retrial with a lawyer.
1963 · Gideon v. Wainwright
Explore this case →Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi
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.
1961 · Interstate bus desegregation rules
Explore this case →Massachusetts
Albert DeSalvo confessed to the Boston Strangler killings but was never tried for those murders. DNA evidence later linked him to Mary Sullivan’s 1964 death. His responsibility for the other killings has remained a subject of disagreement in reporting and books.
Explore this case →Delano and Sacramento, California
Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and farmworkers organized strikes, boycotts and a union campaign to improve agricultural working conditions. Their story includes collective action by Mexican American and Filipino workers. Books and films explore both the movement’s achievements and tensions within its leadership.
1975 · California Agricultural Labor Relations Act
Explore this case →Silver Spring, Maryland, and Pennsylvania
Biologist and writer Rachel Carson investigated how pesticide use harmed wildlife and ecosystems. Silent Spring challenged assumptions about chemical safety and brought the issue to a wide audience. Her work helped stimulate public demands for stronger environmental oversight, although later regulatory decisions involved many people and scientific reviews.
1972 · EPA cancellation of general DDT use
Explore this case →New York, New York; Washington, D.C.
Bayard Rustin coordinated the logistics of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, drawing on years of nonviolent organizing. Racism and hostility toward his sexuality often pushed his work out of public view. The biography Lost Prophet and the film Rustin explore the man behind one of the civil rights movement’s defining events.
Explore this case →Minnesota
Carol Thompson reached a neighbor's home gravely injured in 1963. Investigators uncovered evidence of a planned attack behind the outward appearance of a stable family life.
Explore this case →Los Angeles and Kern County, California
Los Angeles officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger were abducted during a traffic stop in March 1963 and driven to a rural field. Campbell was killed; Hettinger escaped. Joseph Wambaugh’s nonfiction book examines the crime, the prosecutions and the lasting effects on the surviving officer.
Explore this case →Jackson, Mississippi
Civil rights organizer Medgar Evers was shot outside his Jackson home in June 1963. Two early trials failed to produce a verdict, but renewed investigation and his family’s persistence brought Byron De La Beckwith’s murder conviction in 1994. Ghosts of Mississippi follows the case across those three decades.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Two young women were murdered in an Upper East Side apartment in 1963. Public pressure on investigators contributed to a notorious false-confession case before the investigation identified another suspect.
Explore this case →Key Biscayne, Florida
Jacques Mossler was found stabbed in 1964. Investigators focused on family relationships and money, and the resulting prosecution of Candy Mossler and her nephew became a sensational public trial.
Explore this case →California
Edmund Kemper killed his grandparents as a teenager and was later released from psychiatric custody. In the early 1970s he murdered six young women, his mother, and her friend before surrendering. Interviews with him became part of later discussions of criminal profiling.
Explore this case →Queens, New York
Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her Queens apartment building in 1964. The widely repeated story that dozens of witnesses did nothing became a subject of later correction and debate about bystander behavior.
Explore this case →San Bernardino, California
Cork Miller died in a car fire in 1964. Investigators examined whether the fire was accidental or deliberately set, leading to a murder prosecution involving his wife Lucille.
Explore this case →Detroit, Michigan
Inventor Robert Kearns fought automakers over the use of his intermittent windshield-wiper technology. His long patent dispute placed an individual inventor against large manufacturers. Flash of Genius dramatizes the litigation and its strain on his family; John Seabrook’s collection includes the reporting behind the film.
Explore this case →Queens, New York
The deaths of Eddie and Missy Crimmins led to a highly publicized investigation of their mother, Alice. The case involved repeated proceedings and intense scrutiny of her private life alongside disputed evidence.
Explore this case →Tucson, Arizona
Sisters Gretchen and Wendy Fritz failed to return from a trip to the movies in 1965. The investigation into their deaths exposed violence concealed within a group of Tucson teenagers.
Explore this case →Selma and Montgomery, Alabama
John Lewis and other voting-rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement on Bloody Sunday in Selma. Images of the violence drew national attention to Black Americans’ exclusion from voting. Lewis’s memoir and documentary place Selma within his longer commitment to nonviolent organizing and public service.
1965 · Voting Rights Act
Explore this case →New York
Five of Waneta Hoyt’s children died between 1965 and 1971, with their deaths initially associated with sudden infant death syndrome. A renewed investigation produced a confession she later recanted. She was convicted in 1995, and the case prompted scrutiny of the earlier medical conclusions.
Explore this case →Chicago, Illinois
Richard Speck attacked a Chicago townhouse occupied by student nurses in 1966, killing eight women. Corazon Amurao survived by hiding beneath a bed and later identified him. Her testimony and the investigation brought the case to trial and national attention.
Explore this case →Austin, Texas
Gunfire from the University of Texas tower killed and injured people on and around the Austin campus in August 1966. The episode examines the attack and the investigation into Charles Whitman.
Explore this case →New York City, New York
New York police officer Frank Serpico reported corruption within his department despite resistance from colleagues and superiors. His testimony and public disclosures became part of a wider reckoning with police misconduct. Peter Maas’s account and the film follow the personal costs of speaking out.
Explore this case →Gaffney, South Carolina
A caller claiming responsibility for killings contacted a South Carolina reporter and described where bodies could be found. The investigation identified Lee Roy Martin in a series of murders of young women.
Explore this case →Southeastern Michigan
A series of killings of young women in southeastern Michigan spread fear between 1967 and 1969. The investigation connected several communities and generated extensive reporting about the offender called the Co-Ed Killer.
Explore this case →Los Angeles County, California
Cheryl Perveler was found shot in her car in 1968. The investigation into her death exposed a wider plot and other violence connected to people close to her.
Explore this case →Doswell, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; Elmont, New York
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.
Explore this case →Brooklyn, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress and later sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Her campaign challenged assumptions about who could seek national office. Her writing and the film Shirley explore the independence, coalition-building and resistance that shaped that effort.
Explore this case →Northern California
The Zodiac attacked people in Northern California in the late 1960s and sent threatening letters and ciphers to newspapers. Five deaths are commonly attributed to the confirmed attacks. The killer’s identity remains unresolved, despite decades of suspects, books, films, and amateur investigations.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
In August 1969, followers of Charles Manson murdered Sharon Tate and others at her home, then killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the following night. Manson and several followers were convicted. The extensive media coverage often examines how he directed and controlled the group.
Explore this case →Massachusetts
Fifteen-year-old John McCabe was killed after a dance. Decades later, investigators revisited suspicions involving people who knew him, and the case produced different outcomes for the men tried.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Reet Jurvetson was killed in Los Angeles in 1969 and remained unidentified for decades as Jane Doe #59. A later DNA match established the Canadian teenager’s identity; the crime occurred in the United States.
Explore this case →Greenwich Village, New York City, New York
A police raid on the Stonewall Inn sparked resistance and several nights of unrest in Greenwich Village. The uprising became a rallying point for LGBTQ organizing, building on activism that already existed. David Carter’s history and the documentary examine witnesses’ accounts and the broader setting.
Explore this case →Kennedy Space Center, Florida; Houston, Texas
An oxygen-tank failure forced Apollo 13’s crew and ground teams to abandon a lunar landing and improvise a way home. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise survived the emergency. The book and film trace the teamwork, engineering and decisions behind the return to Earth.
1970 · Oxygen-system redesign after the accident review
Explore this case →Idaho
Family acquaintance Robert Berchtold abducted Jan Broberg twice during the 1970s. He manipulated Jan and her parents, using threats and elaborate stories to conceal sexual abuse. Her family’s accounts and later documentaries examine the grooming that allowed the abuse to continue.
Explore this case →Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Colette MacDonald and her daughters Kimberly and Kristen were killed at Fort Bragg in 1970. Jeffrey MacDonald said intruders attacked the family, but he was convicted of the murders in 1979. Books and television accounts take sharply different positions on the evidence.
Explore this case →California
Joseph James DeAngelo committed murders, rapes, and burglaries across California under several names used by investigators and the media. Genetic genealogy helped identify the former police officer in 2018. He pleaded guilty to 13 murders in 2020 and admitted numerous other offenses.
Explore this case →New York and San Francisco, California
Judy Heumann challenged exclusion from education and employment and helped organize the 1977 Section 504 sit-in. Her memoir and Crip Camp connect personal experience to collective action for accessibility and civil rights. The story includes the community that formed around a summer camp for disabled young people.
1977 · Section 504 regulations signed
Explore this case →Several U.S. states
Samuel Little was convicted of three Los Angeles murders before confessing to scores of killings across the country. Investigators used his accounts and drawings to identify victims whose deaths had sometimes gone unrecognized as homicides. Confessed, corroborated, and legally proven totals are different measures.
Explore this case →Santa Cruz, California
Members of the Ohta household were found murdered at their Santa Cruz home in 1970. Investigators pursued evidence linking the killings to John Linley Frazier.
Explore this case →North Carolina
Velma Barfield poisoned Stuart Taylor with arsenic in North Carolina in 1978. The investigation led to admissions about other deaths connected to her. Books and reporting examine the killings, her trial, and the debate surrounding her execution in 1984.
Explore this case →Durham, North Carolina
Civil rights organizer Ann Atwater and Ku Klux Klan leader C. P. Ellis were brought together during a community process over school desegregation in Durham. Their unlikely relationship and Ellis’s eventual break with the Klan became the subject of The Best of Enemies.
Explore this case →Washington, D.C., New York and Massachusetts
Daniel Ellsberg supplied newspapers with a classified study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. The disclosures set off a struggle over government secrecy and press freedom. His memoir and documentary examine the decision to leak the papers, the legal response and the people involved.
1971 · The Pentagon Papers press-freedom decision
Explore this case →Westfield, New Jersey
John List killed his mother, wife, and three children in their New Jersey home in 1971, then disappeared and established a new identity. A television appeal and an age-progressed sculpture helped lead to his arrest in 1989. He was subsequently convicted of the five murders.
Explore this case →Florida
Judy Buenoano poisoned her husband, drowned her son, and attempted to kill a fiancé with a car bomb. Investigators connected events that had initially been treated separately. Her prosecutions in Florida led to widespread use of the media label Black Widow.
Explore this case →California and New York
Rodney Alcala appeared on The Dating Game in 1978 while committing crimes against women and girls. He was ultimately convicted of five California murders and pleaded guilty to two New York murders. Woman of the Hour dramatizes encounters around the television appearance; its invented scenes should be read separately from the documented cases.
Explore this case →New York; Denver, Colorado; Washington, D.C.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg challenged laws that treated people differently because of sex, developing a litigation strategy before her Supreme Court appointment. On the Basis of Sex dramatizes an early tax case involving a male caregiver; her collected writings offer a wider view of her legal career.
Explore this case →Attica, New York
Prisoners at Attica took hostages during a September 1971 uprising over prison conditions. The state’s armed retaking killed prisoners and hostages and was followed by decades of disputes over accountability and compensation. Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water investigates the uprising and the experiences of survivors and families.
Explore this case →Illinois
John Wayne Gacy murdered 33 boys and young men in Illinois. The disappearance of Robert Piest in 1978 led investigators to Gacy’s home, where many victims had been buried beneath the house. His respectable public persona contrasted with the crimes uncovered during the search.
Explore this case →California
Steven Stayner was abducted at seven by Kenneth Parnell in 1972 and held for more than seven years. In 1980 he escaped with another kidnapped child, Timmy White, and sought help. His return and the difficulties afterward inspired I Know My First Name Is Steven.
Explore this case →Washington, D.C.
A break-in at Democratic Party headquarters led to investigations of political espionage and a White House cover-up. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting was one part of a much larger process involving courts, Congress and investigators. Their book and film focus on the newsroom pursuit of the story.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas, and New York
Billie Jean King used her position in professional tennis to press for equal opportunities and pay. Her televised match against Bobby Riggs in Houston became a widely watched confrontation over women’s abilities. All In recounts her broader life; Battle of the Sexes dramatizes the 1973 match and its context.
1973 · Equal prize money at the US Open
Explore this case →Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
Textile worker Crystal Lee Sutton became a visible participant in the effort to unionize J. P. Stevens workers. Her protest and the wider organizing campaign inspired Norma Rae. The film fictionalizes her life, so the nonfiction account helps separate Sutton’s experience from the screen heroine.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Teacher Roseann Quinn was murdered in 1973. Investigators retraced her movements through New York's nightlife, while public discussion often focused on her social life instead of the violence committed against her.
Explore this case →Kansas
Dennis Rader murdered ten people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991 while maintaining a family and working life. Calling himself BTK in communications about the crimes, he resurfaced after years of silence. Investigators traced a computer disk to him before his 2005 arrest and guilty pleas.
Explore this case →Crescent, Oklahoma
Nuclear worker and union activist Karen Silkwood raised concerns about safety at a Kerr-McGee facility and experienced plutonium contamination. She died in a car crash while pursuing those concerns. Litigation over contamination reached the Supreme Court; the circumstances of her death remain separate from that civil case.
1984 · Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee
Explore this case →Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles, California
Nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 and later appeared in its bank-robbery surveillance footage. Her prosecution examined her participation alongside her account of coercion and abuse. She was convicted, then received a sentence commutation and later a presidential pardon; American Heiress revisits the events and their political setting.
Explore this case →Several U.S. states
Ted Bundy abducted and murdered young women across several states during the 1970s, sometimes pretending to need help to approach them. After escaping custody, he attacked women in Florida. His trials, survivors’ accounts, and the investigation became the subjects of books and screen adaptations.
Explore this case →Alabama, United States
Audrey Marie Hilley poisoned her husband, Frank, with arsenic and later poisoned her daughter, Carol, who survived. Medical testing helped expose the Alabama crimes. Hilley fled while awaiting trial and lived under false identities before being caught. The case became known for both the family poisonings and the elaborate deception that followed.
Explore this case →Wheaton, Maryland; Bedford County, Virginia
Sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon disappeared after visiting Wheaton Plaza in Maryland in March 1975. A renewed investigation decades later led to Lloyd Lee Welch’s guilty pleas to their murders in 2017. Mark Bowden’s The Last Stone follows the cold-case detectives and the difficult work of testing Welch’s accounts.
Explore this case →Eveleth, Minnesota
Women working at an iron mine in northern Minnesota challenged sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. Lois Jenson became a central plaintiff in the landmark class action. The book Class Action documents the litigation; North Country loosely reimagines it through fictionalized characters.
1997 · Court ruling: Eighth Circuit appellate opinion
Explore this case →Greenwich, Connecticut
Fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley was killed with a golf club in Connecticut in 1975. Michael Skakel was convicted decades later, but his conviction was overturned and the charge eventually dismissed. The case’s books and documentaries span different stages of that changing legal history.
Explore this case →Cedar Falls, Iowa
Four members of the Mark family were killed at their home in 1975. The investigation focused on a family connection; the resulting conviction and later challenges remained disputed by the defendant.
Explore this case →New York
David Berkowitz killed six people and wounded others in shootings that frightened New York in 1976 and 1977. Letters using the name Son of Sam intensified the coverage. He pleaded guilty after his arrest; later media theories about accomplices go beyond those convictions.
Explore this case →California
Colleen Stan was abducted while hitchhiking in 1977 by Cameron and Janice Hooker. She endured seven years of captivity, threats, and abuse before escaping. Books and screen adaptations examine how coercion helped keep her trapped even when she was sometimes outside the house.
Explore this case →Michigan, United States
After years of domestic violence, Francine Hughes set fire to the bed where her former husband, James Hughes, was sleeping in their Michigan home. She took her children out of the house and surrendered to police. Her 1977 trial ended in an acquittal by reason of temporary insanity and drew national attention to battered women’s experiences.
Explore this case →San Francisco, California
Harvey Milk built a political base in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood and won election to the Board of Supervisors as an openly gay candidate. He advocated against discrimination before he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978. His organizing and death became defining events in LGBTQ political history.
Explore this case →Salt Lake City, Utah
Franklin Bradshaw was found murdered at his auto-parts business in 1978. Investigators traced the killing to a plot involving family relationships and expectations of inheritance.
Explore this case →Wisconsin & Ohio
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. When Tracy Edwards escaped his Milwaukee apartment, police discovered evidence of the killings. Reporting and documentaries have also examined missed opportunities to intervene and the experiences of victims’ families.
Explore this case →Atlanta, Georgia
The killings and disappearances of Black children and young adults shook Atlanta from 1979 to 1981. Wayne Williams was convicted of murdering two adults; authorities attributed other deaths to him without separate trials. Families, journalists, and filmmakers have continued to question aspects of the investigation.
Explore this case →San Diego, California
Sixteen-year-old Brenda Spencer fired at an elementary school from her San Diego home in 1979, killing two staff members and injuring children and a police officer. Her remark about disliking Mondays became notorious. The victims’ experiences form an essential part of the case beyond that phrase.
Explore this case →California
College student Catina Rose Salarno was killed by her former boyfriend Steven Burns. Her family’s continuing efforts concerning his imprisonment are a focus of the linked reporting.
Explore this case →Woburn, Massachusetts
Families in Woburn sought answers about childhood leukemia and contaminated municipal drinking-water wells. Their civil lawsuit became the subject of Jonathan Harr’s book and the film A Civil Action. Separate federal Superfund proceedings addressed cleanup of the Wells G&H site.
1990 · Environmental remedy: cleanup settlement
Explore this case →Wylie, Texas
Betty Gore was killed with an axe in her Texas home in 1980. Candy Montgomery, who had had an affair with Betty’s husband, admitted the killing but said she acted in self-defense. A jury acquitted her. The contrast between suburban family life and the violence brought extraordinary attention to the trial.
Explore this case →North Carolina, United States
Blanche Taylor Moore’s husband became seriously ill with arsenic poisoning shortly after their wedding. The discovery prompted investigators to examine earlier deaths, including that of her boyfriend Raymond Reid. Moore was convicted of Reid’s murder in North Carolina. Suspicions about other deaths became part of the coverage, but were distinct from that conviction.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Dorothy Stratten, a model and actress beginning a film career, was killed in 1980 by her estranged husband Paul Snider, who then killed himself. Books, reporting, and dramatizations have examined his controlling behavior and the pressures surrounding her rise to fame.
Explore this case →Washington
Gary Ridgway killed women and girls in Washington, many of whom were vulnerable or working in the sex trade. Advances in DNA testing helped investigators arrest him in 2001. His guilty pleas resolved dozens of murders associated with the Green River investigation.
Explore this case →Colorado
Twenty-one-year-old Helene Pruszynski was murdered in Colorado. The investigation remained unresolved for decades before a later investigative approach led detectives to her killer.
Explore this case →Massachusetts
Kenneth Waters was wrongly convicted of killing Katharina Brow in Massachusetts. His sister Betty Anne became a lawyer while working to overturn the conviction. DNA testing helped establish his innocence in 2001, and their campaign became the basis of the film Conviction.
Explore this case →Minnesota
Paul Michael Stephani attacked women in Minnesota and made anonymous calls to police about his crimes. Survivors and the identification following an attack helped investigators connect him to the violence.
Explore this case →Pinellas County, Florida
Paul Skalnik’s history as a conman and jailhouse informant became the subject of investigative reporting. The case raises questions about the incentives and reliability of informant testimony in Florida prosecutions.
Explore this case →Lopez Island, Washington
Retired ship’s pilot Rolf Neslund disappeared from Washington’s Lopez Island in 1980. His wife Ruth offered explanations for his absence, but investigators assembled evidence that she had killed him and disposed of his remains. She was convicted even without a recovered body, ending years of uncertainty surrounding his disappearance.
Explore this case →Lake Placid, New York
Herb Brooks coached the U.S. men’s hockey team to a 4–3 victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The Americans then defeated Finland 4–2 to secure the gold medal. Miracle dramatizes the team’s preparation, and the 2026 documentary Miracle: The Boys of ’80 adds archival footage and players’ recollections.
Explore this case →Hollywood, Florida
Six-year-old Adam Walsh disappeared from a department store in Hollywood, Florida, in 1981 and was found murdered. His parents, John and Revé Walsh, became advocates for missing children. The case became the subject of the television drama Adam and John Walsh’s memoir.
Explore this case →Texas, United States
Investigators searching Betty Lou Beets’s Texas property found the remains of two of her husbands, Doyle Wayne Barker and Jimmy Don Beets, buried near the home. Prosecutors said financial gain motivated Jimmy Don’s killing. Beets was convicted of his capital murder; the discovery of both bodies turned a missing-person investigation into a widely reported case.
Explore this case →Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Christine Schultz was killed in her Milwaukee home in 1981. Laurie Bembenek, who had married Schultz’s former husband, was convicted of the murder but disputed the evidence. Her 1990 prison escape and capture in Canada fueled national coverage. Later proceedings produced a no-contest plea to a reduced murder charge, rather than an exoneration.
Explore this case →Sacramento, California
Police searching Dorothea Puente’s Sacramento boarding house in 1988 found bodies buried in the yard. Puente had been collecting benefit checks belonging to vulnerable tenants, some of whom had disappeared. The discoveries contradicted her image as a caring landlady. She was ultimately convicted of three murders.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas
James and Virginia Campbell were shot while asleep in their Houston home in 1982. Their daughter Cynthia Campbell Ray and her former boyfriend David West were implicated in the killings. West testified about their plan, and Ray was convicted. The crime revealed a murder plot originating within the victims’ own family.
Explore this case →New York, California & Texas
Robert Durst became the focus of investigations involving his missing wife Kathie, his friend Susan Berman, and neighbor Morris Black. He was acquitted in Black’s death after claiming self-defense, but convicted of Berman’s murder in 2021. The Jinx brought renewed attention to the overlapping cases.
Explore this case →Prince George’s County, Maryland
Twenty-two-year-old Stephanie Roper was abducted and murdered in Maryland in 1982. Her parents’ experience of the criminal proceedings led them to campaign for a voice for victims and families in court. Their work grew into the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center.
Explore this case →Chicago area, Illinois
Seven people in the Chicago area died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1982. The killings brought a vast investigation and changes to product-tampering law, but no murder conviction. Netflix’s Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders revisits the evidence; September 2026 reporting describes a possible Idaho connection that authorities had not established as a solution.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Actress Theresa Saldana survived a stalker’s stabbing attack in Los Angeles in 1982 after a passerby intervened. Arthur Jackson was convicted. Saldana later wrote about the experience and advocated for crime victims, including through a television dramatization in which she portrayed herself.
Explore this case →Oregon, United States
Diane Downs drove her three wounded children to an Oregon hospital in 1983, claiming a stranger had shot them beside the road. Cheryl died; Christie and Danny survived serious injuries. Investigators challenged their mother’s account, and Christie testified against her. Downs was convicted of murder and the attempted murders of her surviving children.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas
Karla Faye Tucker and Danny Garrett killed Jerry Dean and Deborah Thornton during a 1983 attack in Houston. Tucker was convicted of capital murder. Her later religious conversion and requests for clemency brought international attention to the case before her 1998 execution, while the victims’ families faced renewed public scrutiny of their losses.
Explore this case →Texas, United States
Rozanne Gailiunas was attacked in her Texas home in 1983 and died from her injuries. Investigators eventually uncovered a murder-for-hire plot connected to Joy Aylor, whose husband had been involved with Rozanne. Aylor fled overseas before being brought back to face justice, extending the case across years and international borders.
Explore this case →Torrington, Connecticut
Tracey Thurman survived a severe attack by her husband in Connecticut in 1983 after seeking police protection. Her civil lawsuit challenged the police response to domestic violence and resulted in a landmark verdict. A Cry for Help dramatizes her experience and fight for accountability.
Explore this case →San Jose, California
Doreen Erbert was killed at her California home on Halloween in 1984 by her former husband William Michael Dennis, who arrived in disguise. Her pregnancy also ended in the attack, while her daughter survived by hiding. Dennis was convicted in the case.
Explore this case →Northport, New York
Seventeen-year-old Gary Lauwers was killed in the woods in Northport, New York, in 1984. Ricky Kasso was arrested, and accounts connected the attack to a dispute within a drug-using teenage group. Reports of occult references fueled a national “Satanic panic.” Kasso died by suicide before his case could go to trial.
Explore this case →South Pasadena, California
A 1984 hardware-store fire killed four people in South Pasadena. Fire investigator John Orr was later convicted of murder and arson. Reporting, books, a podcast, and dramatizations examine how an investigator came to be identified as the arsonist.
Explore this case →Orinda, California
Fifteen-year-old Kirsten Costas was stabbed to death by schoolmate Bernadette Protti in Orinda, California, in 1984. The attack followed an evening outing and months of resentment over social acceptance. Protti’s involvement emerged after a lengthy investigation. The killing brought national attention to teenage jealousy, status, and violence in an affluent community.
Explore this case →Tampa, Florida
Lisa McVey survived an abduction and assault by Bobby Joe Long in Florida in 1984. After her release, her detailed observations helped investigators identify him. Her account and the Lifetime film Believe Me emphasize both her survival and the importance of being believed.
Explore this case →New Jersey, United States
Maria Marshall was shot dead at a New Jersey roadside stop in 1984. Her husband, Robert, claimed they had been attacked during a robbery. Investigators instead uncovered a plan to have Maria killed for insurance money. Robert Marshall was convicted, and the case exposed the murder plot beneath the family’s prosperous public image.
Explore this case →California
Richard Ramirez entered homes across California during a series of murders, sexual assaults, and other attacks in 1984 and 1985. Public identification helped end the manhunt. The crimes and the investigation became widely known through reporting about the Night Stalker.
Explore this case →Annapolis, Maryland
Robert and Kathryn Swartz were killed in their home near Annapolis in January 1984. Their adopted son Larry pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The family history became the subject of Leslie Walker’s book Sudden Fury and a television adaptation.
Explore this case →Kokomo and Cicero, Indiana
Diagnosed with AIDS at 13 in 1984 after receiving contaminated blood products for hemophilia, Ryan White faced exclusion from school and widespread fear of HIV. His effort to return to the classroom made him a national advocate against stigma. He died in 1990; the federal HIV care program named for him began that year.
1990 · Federal law: Ryan White CARE Act
Explore this case →New Jersey, United States
Teresa Taylor was killed by her husband, dentist Kenneth Taylor, in 1984. Her death left their infant son, Andrew, caught between relatives in a bitter custody struggle. Kenneth was convicted of murder, but the legal fight over the child continued, making the family’s ordeal a national story as well as a homicide case.
Explore this case →North Carolina & Kentucky
A series of killings struck the extended Lynch and Newsom families in Kentucky and North Carolina in 1984 and 1985. The investigation centered on Susie Lynch and her cousin Fred Klenner amid family conflict and a custody dispute. The violence ended during a police pursuit with an explosion that also killed Lynch’s two children.
Explore this case →California, United States
Suesan and Sheila Knorr died in separate incidents in California after prolonged abuse by their mother, Theresa Knorr. Other children in the household were drawn into concealing the crimes. Their surviving sister Terry later helped bring the deaths to investigators’ attention. Theresa pleaded guilty to murdering both daughters.
Explore this case →Detroit, Michigan
Detroit psychologist Alan Canty disappeared in 1985 while concealing a second life from his wife. Investigators uncovered his involvement with a young woman and her violent associate, John “Lucky” Fry. Canty had been murdered, and the discovery forced his family to confront both the killing and the deception that preceded it.
Explore this case →Washington, United States
Twelve-year-old Brenda Gere disappeared from her family’s Washington home in September 1985. The search devastated her parents and drew investigators toward Michael Kay Green, a man with a history of violence. The case followed the family’s struggle to learn what had happened after an ordinary afternoon became their daughter’s disappearance.
Explore this case →Virginia, United States
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.
Explore this case →Pueblo, Colorado
Narcotics detective Dennis Yaklich was shot in December 1985. The investigation examined the circumstances of the attack and the role of his wife Donna amid accounts of violence within the marriage.
Explore this case →California, United States
Fourteen-year-old Cinnamon Brown shot her stepmother, Linda, in California in 1985 and initially took responsibility. Investigators later uncovered a plot directed by Cinnamon’s father, David Brown, who stood to benefit financially. The case revealed how he manipulated his daughter into killing and accepting the blame, leading to further convictions.
Explore this case →California, United States
Seventeen-year-old Michele “Missy” Avila was lured into the Angeles National Forest and drowned in 1985. Her friends Karen Severson and Laura Doyle were eventually convicted of killing her. The case was especially disturbing because the killers remained close to Missy’s grieving family while the crime was still being investigated.
Explore this case →Fayetteville, North Carolina
Kathryn Eastburn and her daughters Kara and Erin were killed in North Carolina in 1985; another daughter survived. Timothy Hennis was first convicted, then acquitted at a retrial. Later DNA evidence led to a military prosecution and another conviction, making the case unusual for its sequence of civilian and military trials.
Explore this case →Oregon, United States
Cheryl Keeton was found dead in her van in Oregon in 1986 during a bitter dispute with former husband Bradly Cunningham. The case remained unresolved for years before investigators assembled the evidence that led to his murder conviction. Her death left three children at the center of a long struggle for answers and custody.
Explore this case →Newtown, Connecticut
Flight attendant Helle Crafts disappeared from Connecticut in 1986, and her husband Richard offered explanations for her absence. Investigators recovered tiny human remains and other evidence connected to a wood chipper. The forensic work showed that she had been killed and her body destroyed. Richard Crafts was convicted of murder.
Explore this case →Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Nineteen-year-old Jeanne Clery was sexually assaulted and murdered in her Lehigh University dormitory in 1986. Her parents challenged campus security practices and the lack of public crime information. Their advocacy helped establish national campus-safety disclosure requirements.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Eighteen-year-old Jennifer Levin was found strangled in New York’s Central Park in 1986. Robert Chambers, who had left a bar with her, claimed she died during a sexual encounter. He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The “Preppy Murder” coverage became notorious for scrutiny of Jennifer’s private life and treatment of the victim.
Explore this case →Miami, Florida
Stanley Cohen was killed at his Miami home in 1986. His wife Joyce reported intruders, and investigators examined the account alongside evidence of a planned killing.
Explore this case →Illinois
Paula Sims reported that masked kidnappers had taken two of her infant daughters in separate incidents in 1986 and 1989. Both children were found dead. The investigation led to her conviction in Heather’s death and later admissions concerning both daughters.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Sherri Rasmussen was killed in her Los Angeles home in 1986. Investigators initially treated the attack as a burglary, but preserved DNA evidence eventually pointed to police detective Stephanie Lazarus, a former girlfriend of Rasmussen’s husband. Lazarus was arrested more than two decades after the crime and convicted of murder.
Explore this case →Washington, United States
Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow died after taking cyanide-laced Excedrin in Washington in 1986. Investigators determined that Bruce’s wife, Stella Nickell, poisoned him and placed tampered bottles in stores to disguise his death as part of a random product attack. Her scheme killed a second person and led to a federal conviction.
Explore this case →Kennedy Space Center, Florida; Houston, Texas
Seven crew members died when Challenger broke apart shortly after launch in January 1986. Investigators examined technical failure, engineering warnings and NASA’s decision-making. The book and documentary series revisit the crew’s lives and the institutional choices behind the disaster.
1986 · Rogers Commission findings and corrective actions
Explore this case →Monroeville, Alabama
Walter McMillian was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. Bryan Stevenson and his colleagues challenged the prosecution’s evidence and helped secure his release. Just Mercy follows that case within Stevenson’s wider work defending people facing wrongful convictions and extreme punishment.
1993 · McMillian’s conviction overturned and charges dismissed
Explore this case →New York City, New York, and Washington, D.C.
People confronting AIDS organized protests, studied medical research and challenged government agencies over access to treatment. ACT UP and the Treatment Action Group helped reshape relationships between patients, researchers and regulators. How to Survive a Plague follows activists through illness, disagreement, loss and scientific progress.
Explore this case →New Jersey and Pennsylvania
Nurse Charles Cullen killed patients while working in New Jersey and Pennsylvania hospitals. His colleague Amy Loughren helped investigators uncover what was happening. A reported book, a dramatized film and a companion documentary explore the murders and questions about how hospitals handled warning signs.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California; New York, New York
Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee’s business success was followed by murder-for-hire plots, including the killing of choreographer Nick De Noia. Deadly Dance and its television adaptation examine the rivalry; reporting helps separate the documented investigation from dramatic invention.
Explore this case →Durham, North Carolina
Barbara Stager said her husband Russ’s fatal shooting in their North Carolina bedroom in 1988 was an accident. Investigators questioned her account and examined the earlier shooting death of her first husband. Russ had recorded concerns about his safety before his death. Barbara was convicted of his murder.
Explore this case →Louisville, Kentucky
Brenda Sue Schaefer disappeared in Kentucky in 1988. Mel Ignatow was acquitted of her murder, but photographs discovered afterward showed the crime and corroborated an accomplice’s account. Double-jeopardy protections prevented another murder trial. The case became notorious for the gap between later evidence of guilt and the finality of an acquittal.
Explore this case →California, United States
Carol Montecalvo was killed in California in 1988. Her husband Dan said burglars had attacked them, but investigators accused him of murdering her for financial gain, and he was convicted. A later burglary confession raised questions about the case; prosecutors rejected that account, leaving sharply conflicting versions of what happened.
Explore this case →St. Louis, Missouri
Ellen Boehm killed her young sons David and Steven in St. Louis in 1988 and 1989 and also attacked her daughter, who survived. Insurance and financial evidence helped expose the pattern behind the children’s deaths. She pleaded guilty in 1992.
Explore this case →Winnetka, Illinois
Laurie Dann entered an elementary school in Winnetka, Illinois, in 1988 and opened fire, killing eight-year-old Nicholas Corwin and wounding other children. The shooting was part of a day of violence that also involved fires and poisoned food. Dann later died by suicide, leaving investigators and families to reconstruct the warning signs and attacks.
Explore this case →Washington, North Carolina
Lieth von Stein was killed and his wife, Bonnie, seriously wounded in their North Carolina home in 1988. Investigators traced the attack to a plan involving Bonnie’s son, Chris Pritchard, and accomplices. Money and inheritance were central to the prosecution. Coverage also focused on the young defendants’ social circle and role-playing interests.
Explore this case →Florida
Aileen Wuornos shot and killed seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. She gave differing accounts of the encounters, including claims of self-defense. Convicted of six murders, she became the subject of documentaries, biographies, and the dramatized film Monster.
Explore this case →Bay Village, Ohio
Ten-year-old Amy Mihaljevic was persuaded by a caller to meet him at an Ohio shopping center in 1989, supposedly to help buy a gift for her mother. She disappeared, and her body was found months later. The deceptive phone call became a central clue in the investigation into her abduction and murder.
Explore this case →San Diego, California
Betty Broderick entered the home of her former husband, Dan Broderick, and shot him and his new wife, Linda, as they lay in bed in 1989. The killings followed a bitter divorce and years of conflict. Her televised court proceedings divided public opinion; a jury convicted her of two counts of second-degree murder.
Explore this case →Boston, Massachusetts
Charles Stuart shot his pregnant wife, Carol, in Boston in 1989 and blamed a Black carjacker. Carol died, and their prematurely delivered baby also died. The false account triggered an aggressive police search in Black neighborhoods. Charles’s brother later exposed the plot, and Charles died by suicide as suspicion turned toward him.
Explore this case →Westchester County, New York
Betty Jean Solomon was shot in her home in January 1989. Investigators examined her husband's relationship with Carolyn Warmus and traced evidence involving a firearm and ammunition.
Explore this case →Cincinnati, Ohio
Dana Beatty survived an assault by a masked attacker in her Cincinnati home. Decades later, her daughter Andra helped renew efforts to identify the assailant and obtain justice.
Explore this case →St. Joseph, Minnesota
Eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted while returning from a store with his brother and a friend in 1989. In 2016, Danny Heinrich admitted abducting and killing him and led investigators to his remains. The admission came through a federal plea agreement, rather than a murder conviction.
Explore this case →Beverly Hills, California
Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of killing their parents, José and Kitty, in Beverly Hills in 1989. Their sentences were reduced to 50 years to life in May 2025, but both were denied parole that August. September 18, 2026 reporting gives tentative new hearing dates of February 23 and 24, 2027; parole has not been granted.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was shot at her Los Angeles door in 1989 by stalker Robert Bardo. He had obtained her address through a private investigator. Her death drew attention to access to personal records and became a prominent case in the campaign for stronger anti-stalking protections.
Explore this case →Poughkeepsie, New York
Brian Britton shot his parents, Dennis and Marlene, his brother Jason, and his sister Sherry in March 1989. Sherry survived. Evil Lives Here presents her account of the family killings and the lasting effects of the attack.
Explore this case →New York
Five teenagers were wrongly convicted after the 1989 assault of jogger Trisha Meili in Central Park. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another man confessed and DNA supported his account. Documentary and dramatic treatments examine the interrogations, racialized coverage, and consequences for the five.
Explore this case →Wyandotte, Michigan
Brian, Melissa, Kathryn, and Emily DeLisle drowned when the family car entered the Detroit River in 1989. Their father Larry was convicted of murder. The Confession Tapes examines the disputed interrogation and his account that the crash was accidental.
Explore this case →Starkville, Mississippi
Betty Jones and Kathryn Crigler were attacked at a Mississippi home on Labor Day in 1990. The investigation continued for decades, with renewed attention from podcast reporting and advances in DNA analysis.
Explore this case →Stony Brook, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts
Brooke Ellison was paralyzed after being struck by a car in 1990 at age eleven. With her mother Jean’s support, she continued her education and graduated from Harvard in 2000. Their jointly written memoir describes daily life, family care and access to education; Christopher Reeve later directed its television adaptation.
Explore this case →Texas
Jerry Sternadel became gravely ill and died in 1990. An autopsy found arsenic, leading investigators to examine his financial and personal relationships and the actions of bookkeeper Debra Baker.
Explore this case →Northampton, Massachusetts
Veterans Affairs nurse Kristen Gilbert caused medical emergencies by injecting patients with epinephrine at a Massachusetts hospital. Coworkers noticed a troubling pattern around her shifts. She was convicted in 2001 of four murders and other offenses arising from the attacks.
Explore this case →Bronx and Manhattan, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts
Liz Murray experienced homelessness as a teenager in New York, returned to school and completed high school in two years. A scholarship helped her attend Harvard, where she graduated in 2009. Her memoir Breaking Night and the earlier television film recount her childhood, family relationships and pursuit of education.
Explore this case →Washington
Teacher Mary Kay Letourneau sexually abused her student Vili Fualaau when he was a child. Her 1997 conviction and violation of a no-contact order drew extensive coverage. Later accounts examine the abuse, the children they had, and their eventual adult marriage without erasing his age when it began.
Explore this case →Derry, New Hampshire
Gregg Smart was shot dead in his New Hampshire home in 1990 in what initially appeared to be a burglary. The investigation uncovered his wife Pamela’s sexual relationship with teenage student Billy Flynn and a plan involving Flynn and other teenagers. Pamela Smart was convicted for her role in arranging her husband’s murder.
Explore this case →Ontario, Canada
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka abducted, sexually assaulted, and killed teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in Ontario. Homolka also helped drug her younger sister Tammy, who died after being assaulted. Bernardo was convicted of murder; Homolka received a twelve-year manslaughter sentence under a plea agreement that became controversial when videotapes revealed her involvement.
Explore this case →Washington, D.C.
Anita Hill testified that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her when she worked for him. Thomas denied her allegations and was confirmed. The nationally televised hearings brought workplace sexual harassment and the treatment of people reporting it into sustained public debate.
Explore this case →California, United States
Jaycee Dugard was abducted at age eleven on her way to school in California in 1991. Phillip and Nancy Garrido held her captive for eighteen years, during which she gave birth to two daughters. Her discovery in 2009 exposed both the long confinement and missed opportunities to uncover it.
Explore this case →Sanford, Florida
Jayne Miller discovered that her husband, David, had another wife. She confronted his deception and was fatally shot in Florida in 1991. The investigation exposed his double life, including claims about secret government work. The case turned a seemingly successful marriage into a story of bigamy, fabricated identities, and murder.
Explore this case →Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Sixteen-year-old Laurie Show was attacked and killed in her Pennsylvania home in 1991. Investigators uncovered hostility and harassment connected to a teenage relationship. Lisa Michelle Lambert and Tabitha Buck were convicted of murder. The case later generated extensive litigation over the evidence and the conduct of the investigation.
Explore this case →Dallas, Texas
Nancy Dillard Lyon died from arsenic poisoning in Dallas in January 1991. The investigation examined her marriage and the origin of the poison. Her husband Richard was convicted, and the case inspired both a nonfiction book and a television drama.
Explore this case →Daytona Beach, Florida
Dentist Norman Larzelere was shot at his practice in March 1991. Investigators examined an insurance motive and allegations of a family plot; Virginia was convicted, while her son was acquitted in a separate trial.
Explore this case →Channelview, Texas
Wanda Holloway tried to arrange the killing of the mother of a girl competing with her daughter for a cheerleading position. She believed the death would keep the rival out of competition. The man she approached contacted authorities, and recordings exposed the 1991 Texas plot before anyone was killed.
Explore this case →Long Island, New York
Seventeen-year-old Amy Fisher went to Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s Long Island home in 1992 and shot her in the head. Fisher had been involved with Mary Jo’s husband, Joey. Mary Jo survived, and the assault became an intensely covered tabloid story. Fisher pleaded guilty to attempted murder; the publicity often overshadowed the victim’s recovery.
Explore this case →Southern California
Jennifer Asbenson escaped after being abducted and attacked by Andrew Urdiales in Southern California in 1992. Her account later helped identify him as the man who had held her. Memoir and screen treatments describe the escape and the difficulties she faced afterward.
Explore this case →Long Island, New York
Nine-year-old Katie Beers was abducted by family acquaintance John Esposito on Long Island in 1992. He imprisoned her in an underground space beneath his property while a search was underway. She was rescued after seventeen days. Her survival exposed the hidden confinement and the abuse and neglect she had already endured.
Explore this case →New York
Laurie Kellogg was convicted of arranging the 1992 killing of her husband Bruce at a New York vacation property. Teenagers participated in the plot and shooting. Her account of an abusive marriage and the prosecution’s murder-for-hire case became the basis of Lies of the Heart.
Explore this case →Peru, Indiana
Attorney Jimmy Grund was shot in his home in August 1992. The investigation focused on his wife Susan and the circumstances inside the household before his death.
Explore this case →Fresno, California
Dale and Glee Ewell and their daughter Tiffany were shot dead in their California home in 1992. Their surviving son, Dana, stood to inherit the family fortune. Investigators uncovered a murder plot involving Dana and a friend, and both were convicted. The apparent family tragedy became a case about a son arranging his relatives’ deaths for money.
Explore this case →Springfield, Missouri
Sherrill Levitt, her daughter Suzie Streeter, and Suzie’s friend Stacy McCall vanished from a Springfield, Missouri, home in 1992 after graduation celebrations. Their cars and personal belongings were left behind. With no clear explanation for all three women’s disappearance, the case became one of the region’s most closely followed mysteries.
Explore this case →Florida, United States
Bobby Kent was lured to a secluded area in Florida and murdered in 1993 by a group of young people who knew him. Accounts of bullying and abuse within the group became central to the case. The investigation exposed how conversations about stopping Kent escalated into a coordinated plan to kill him.
Explore this case →Humboldt, Nebraska
Brandon Teena, Lisa Lambert, and Philip DeVine were killed in a Nebraska farmhouse in 1993. Brandon had reported a sexual assault by John Lotter and Tom Nissen before the murders. Both men were convicted in connection with the killings. The case drew attention to anti-transgender violence and the authorities’ treatment of Brandon’s assault report.
Explore this case →Hinkley, California
Residents of Hinkley challenged Pacific Gas and Electric over chromium contamination of groundwater. Erin Brockovich helped investigate residents’ accounts and assemble the legal case that resulted in a 1996 settlement. California regulators’ cleanup work is a separate, continuing part of this environmental history.
1996 · Civil settlement: Hinkley residents’ litigation
Explore this case →Middle River / Baltimore County, Maryland
Gina Marie Nueslein, 22, was found shot to death in Gunpowder State Park in January 1993. Baltimore police sergeant James Allen Kulbicki, with whom she had a child, was convicted of her murder at a 1995 retrial. Later proceedings challenged the forensic evidence: in 2020, a Maryland appellate court directed that a writ of actual innocence be issued and the case returned for further proceedings.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas
Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña were attacked and murdered while taking a shortcut home in Houston in 1993. A group of gang members participated in the crimes. Their deaths led to multiple trials and years of reporting about the victims and the defendants’ sentences.
Explore this case →Manassas, Virginia
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.
Explore this case →Near Waco, Texas
A failed federal firearms raid on the Branch Davidian community near Waco in February 1993 began a 51-day standoff. It ended in fire during an FBI operation, with children and adults among the dead. Waco: American Apocalypse and official reviews examine negotiations, tactical decisions and the experiences of those caught inside.
Explore this case →Florida & Ohio
Eddie Lee Sexton’s family fled Ohio for Florida while authorities were investigating abuse. In 1993, an infant in the family died, and Sexton later directed his son to kill Joel Good, the baby’s father. Prosecutors said the killing was intended to keep Good from revealing the family’s crimes and whereabouts.
Explore this case →Long Island, New York, USA
The discovery of victims near Gilgo Beach exposed killings across Long Island and years of unanswered questions. Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty in April 2026 to seven murders and also admitted killing Karen Vergata. In June, he received life imprisonment without parole plus additional terms. The prosecution does not resolve every death associated with the wider investigation.
Explore this case →West Memphis, Arkansas
Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were murdered in Arkansas in 1993. Three teenagers were convicted amid disputed evidence and allegations of satanic activity. In 2011 they entered Alford pleas and were released; that outcome was not an exoneration.
Explore this case →Harrison and Fayetteville, Arkansas
Brandon Burlsworth joined the University of Arkansas football team as a walk-on in 1994 and developed into an All-American. The Indianapolis Colts selected him in the 1999 draft, but he died in a car crash eleven days later. Greater dramatizes his college years; his family’s foundation documents the community programs that carry his name.
Explore this case →Wisconsin
Diane Borchardt recruited teenagers, including students she knew through school, to kill her husband Ruben in Wisconsin in 1994. The promised reward and the teenagers’ accounts helped reveal the plot. The case became the basis of the television drama Seduced by Madness.
Explore this case →Baltimore, Maryland
Joe Metheny killed Catherine Magaziner and Kimberly Spicer in Baltimore, concealing their remains on the grounds of the pallet business where he worked. The investigation exposed violence against women living in vulnerable circumstances. His sensational claims about additional crimes attracted headlines, but those claims should not be confused with the murders established in court.
Explore this case →Las Vegas, Nevada
Ron Rudin disappeared in December 1994 and was found murdered. Margaret Rudin was convicted in 2001, but a federal court vacated that conviction in 2022. The murder charge was dismissed in 2024; older television accounts predate those developments.
Explore this case →Hamilton Township, New Jersey
Seven-year-old Megan Kanka was sexually assaulted and murdered by her neighbor Jesse Timmendequas in July 1994. Her parents’ campaign for community notification about convicted sex offenders led to state legislation and a federal law bearing her name.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were stabbed to death in Los Angeles in 1994. O. J. Simpson was acquitted in the criminal trial and later found liable for their deaths in a civil case. Books and documentaries examine the evidence, the proceedings, and their different outcomes.
Explore this case →Union, South Carolina
Susan Smith told police that a carjacker had driven away with her two sons, three-year-old Michael and one-year-old Alex. After nine days of televised appeals in 1994, she admitted letting her car roll into a South Carolina lake with the boys inside. Both children drowned. She was convicted of their murders.
Explore this case →Texas, United States
Sixteen-year-old Adrianne Jones was murdered in Texas in 1995. Investigators eventually identified David Graham and Diane Zamora, whose promising military-academy futures made the case national news. Prosecutors described jealousy and a plan to eliminate a perceived romantic rival. Both were convicted of murder.
Explore this case →Knoxville, Tennessee
Christa Pike was convicted of the January 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville, Tennessee. Slemmer was lured to the University of Tennessee agricultural campus and killed. Pike received a death sentence in 1996; the case is covered in books, television episodes, podcasts and public court records.
Explore this case →Prairie Village, Kansas
A 1995 fire at Debora Green’s Kansas home killed two of her children; another daughter escaped. Investigators determined the fire had been deliberately set and also investigated the poisoning of Green’s estranged husband. Green entered no-contest pleas to murder and attempted-murder charges in a case that exposed violence within a family of physicians.
Explore this case →Somerville, Massachusetts
Janet Downing was killed in her Massachusetts home. Teenager Eddie O’Brien was convicted; attorney and author Margo Nash challenges that conviction. Her position is presented as advocacy, not as an exoneration.
Explore this case →Mason City, Iowa
Television news anchor Jodi Huisentruit disappeared outside her Mason City, Iowa, apartment in 1995 while preparing to leave for work. Personal items near her car suggested a struggle. Her unexplained disappearance generated decades of reporting and appeals for information, with no established account of who took her or what happened afterward.
Explore this case →Austin, Texas
Regina Hartwell was murdered in Austin in 1995, and her body was left in a burned vehicle. The investigation connected her death to Justin Thomas and a circle involving drugs, money, and complicated personal relationships. Thomas was convicted of murder, while testimony exposed the events leading to the killing and its concealment.
Explore this case →California, United States
Sally McNeil shot her husband, bodybuilder Ray McNeil, on Valentine’s Day in 1995. She said she acted in self-defense during a violent confrontation; prosecutors argued that the killing was murder. A jury convicted her of second-degree murder. The case centered on sharply competing accounts of domestic abuse and the shooting.
Explore this case →Corpus Christi, Texas
Singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was shot by former fan-club president Yolanda Saldívar in 1995 during a dispute involving their business relationship. Saldívar was convicted of murder. Biographical films and reporting also document Selena’s career and the impact of her death on fans and family.
Explore this case →Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
A truck bomb destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Investigators traced the attack to Timothy McVeigh and his associates. The American Experience documentary places the crime alongside survivor accounts and the antigovernment extremism that preceded it.
Explore this case →Michigan, United States
Michigan college student Tina Biggar disappeared in 1995 while keeping her work as an escort secret from people close to her. Investigators discovered that she had been murdered. The search exposed the hidden part of her life and the circumstances that brought her into contact with her killer, devastating her family and friends.
Explore this case →Arlington, Texas
Nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, in January 1996 and was found murdered. Her case inspired a local broadcast-alert effort that grew into the AMBER Alert system for abducted children.
Explore this case →Idaho Falls, Idaho
Eighteen-year-old Angie Dodge was killed in her Idaho Falls apartment in 1996. Christopher Tapp was convicted, but DNA evidence and years of scrutiny eventually helped clear him. Genetic genealogy led investigators to Brian Dripps, whose DNA matched evidence from the crime scene. Tapp was exonerated in 2019. Dripps pleaded guilty to murder and rape and received a sentence of twenty years to life in 2021, bringing a different legal outcome after decades of investigation.
Explore this case →Wilmington, Delaware
Anne Marie Fahey disappeared after dinner with lawyer Thomas Capano in 1996. Investigators uncovered their relationship and evidence that Capano had killed her and disposed of her body at sea. His brother’s testimony helped reconstruct the disposal. Capano was convicted of murder in a case that drew intense attention to Delaware’s political and legal circles.
Explore this case →Virginia and the Appalachian region
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.
Explore this case →Louisiana
Crystal Champagne’s death led to a confession and death sentence for her cousin Damon Thibodeaux. His conviction was later overturned after reinvestigation. The case raises questions about confessions and wrongful convictions.
Explore this case →Rowlett, Texas
Six-year-old Devon and five-year-old Damon Routier were stabbed to death in their Texas home in 1996. Their injured mother, Darlie, said an intruder had attacked them. Prosecutors rejected that account, and she was convicted of Damon’s murder. Disputes over the physical evidence and interpretation of her behavior sustained public debate about the case.
Explore this case →Maryland; Loudoun County, Virginia
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.
Explore this case →Boulder, Colorado
Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in her family’s Boulder home in December 1996 after a ransom note was discovered. The investigation and public speculation placed her family under intense scrutiny. The killing remains unresolved; media allegations are not findings of guilt.
Explore this case →San Luis Obispo, California
Nineteen-year-old college student Kristin Smart disappeared after a party in San Luis Obispo in 1996. Paul Flores, who had walked with her that night, remained central to the investigation for years. He was convicted of her murder in 2022, following renewed scrutiny of evidence and a long campaign by Kristin’s family.
Explore this case →Colorado
Manuela Garcia killed her husband with an axe in July 1996. The case examined the breakdown of their marriage after she had moved from Germany to Colorado.
Explore this case →Atlanta, Georgia
Security guard Richard Jewell spotted a suspicious backpack at Centennial Olympic Park and helped move people away before a bomb exploded. He then became the focus of an investigation and intense media suspicion, though he was never charged. The Suspect examines the evidence and the damage caused by the rush to judgment.
Explore this case →New York / New Jersey
Yakov Gluzman's killing came to light when investigators encountered the disposal of his remains in New Jersey. The case examined Rita Gluzman's role in arranging the attack with a relative.
Explore this case →McKeesport, Pennsylvania
Tanya Kach disappeared at 14 in 1996 and spent ten years under the control of school security guard Thomas Hose. In 2006 she disclosed her identity and was reunited with her family. Her memoir and a Lifetime dramatization describe the coercion behind the prolonged disappearance.
Explore this case →Las Vegas, Nevada
Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Las Vegas in September 1996. Decades later, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was prosecuted for his role in arranging the killing. A jury convicted Davis on August 31, 2026, and he received 40 years to life on October 13. Contemporary reporting says his defense intends to appeal.
Explore this case →Ringgold, Georgia
Alvin Ridley was prosecuted after his wife Virginia died at home. A Georgia jury acquitted him in 1999. His defense lawyer later wrote about the evidence and the consequences of treating unfamiliar behavior as guilt.
Explore this case →Washington, United States
Dawn Hacheney died in a Washington house fire in 1997 that initially appeared accidental. Investigators later concluded that her husband, minister Nick Hacheney, had killed her and used the fire to conceal the crime. His affairs and claims of religious authority became part of the evidence leading to his murder conviction.
Explore this case →Fayette County, West Virginia
Twelve-year-old Jeremy Bell died during a trip with his elementary-school principal. His family’s search for answers and the later investigation exposed serious questions about school oversight and the handling of evidence.
Explore this case →Potomac, Maryland
An undercover investigation recorded politician Ruthann Aron's attempt to arrange the deaths of her husband and an attorney. After a hung jury, she entered a no-contest plea.
Explore this case →Sarasota, Florida
Sheila Bellush was murdered in her Florida home in 1997 while her young quadruplets were there. Her teenage daughter discovered the scene. Investigators traced the hired killing to Sheila’s former husband, Allen Blackthorne, and a chain of intermediaries. The prosecution showed that the attack was an arranged murder, not a random intrusion.
Explore this case →Port Richey, Florida
Tanya Hillerud, a Hooters employee, was shot and killed at her Port Richey home in 1997. Her boyfriend Vincent Rizzi was convicted of first-degree murder in 1999 and received a life sentence. Her story is one of five included in the 2026 documentary The Hooters Murders: Deadly Shift. The film connects separate cases through the women’s employment; it does not describe a single offender or coordinated series of crimes.
Explore this case →Tennessee
Vidar and Delfina Lillelid and their daughter Tabitha were killed during a 1997 carjacking in Tennessee. Their young son Peter survived being shot. Six teenagers traveling together were prosecuted, and the case generated continuing questions about their individual roles and sentences.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Wealthy New York homeowner Irene Silverman disappeared in 1998. Sante Kimes and her son Kenneth had targeted her property through an elaborate fraud scheme. They were convicted of her murder and related crimes even though her body had not been recovered. The investigation revealed plans to take control of her home using forged documents.
Explore this case →Jasper, Texas
Forty-nine-year-old James Byrd Jr. was murdered in Jasper, Texas, in June 1998 after three white men chained him to a pickup truck and dragged him along a road. The killing and subsequent trials exposed racial divisions and helped spur hate-crime reforms.
Explore this case →Maryland Eastern Shore
Stephen Hricko died during a Valentine's weekend hotel stay in 1998. Findings inconsistent with accidental smoke inhalation led investigators to examine poisoning, a room fire, and his wife Kimberly's actions.
Explore this case →Laramie, Wyoming
Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard was attacked near Laramie in October 1998 and died from his injuries. His killing became a focus of national debate about anti-gay violence. His family’s advocacy helped build support for a federal hate-crime law named for him and James Byrd Jr.
Explore this case →Parkersburg, West Virginia, and the Ohio River valley, Ohio
Attorney Robert Bilott began representing a West Virginia farmer in 1998 and uncovered records concerning PFOA contamination near DuPont’s Washington Works plant. The wider litigation and environmental enforcement brought scrutiny to drinking-water exposure and the reporting of chemical risks. His work is dramatized in Dark Waters.
2005 · Environmental enforcement: EPA settlement
Explore this case →Washington, United States
Former Washington state trooper Ronda Reynolds was found shot in her home in 1998. Authorities initially treated her death as suicide, but her mother challenged that conclusion and pressed for further investigation. Conflicting evidence and later proceedings made the manner of death a prolonged public controversy rather than a straightforward, resolved murder case.
Explore this case →Welch, Oklahoma
Sixteen-year-olds Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible disappeared after a fire at the Freeman family’s Oklahoma home in 1999. Ashley’s parents, Danny and Kathy, had been killed, and the girls were missing from the scene. The investigation became a prolonged search for the teenagers alongside efforts to establish who carried out the killings.
Explore this case →Orion Township, Michigan
Martha Gail Fulton was leaving her job at the Orion Township Public Library when she was killed in October 1999. Investigators traced the shooting to a plot involving Donna Trapani, who had been involved with Fulton’s husband, and people recruited from Florida. Separate juries convicted Trapani and Sybil Padgett of first-degree murder and conspiracy. Michigan’s Court of Appeals affirmed those convictions in 2003. The federal habeas decision provides another detailed record of Trapani’s unsuccessful challenge.
Explore this case →Austin, Texas
Retired television executive Steven Beard was shot in his Texas home in 1999 and later died from complications. Investigators uncovered a plot involving his wife, Celeste, and Tracey Tarlton, who fired the shot. Tarlton testified against Celeste, and the prosecution argued that the killing was arranged for financial gain.
Explore this case →Jefferson County, Colorado
Twelve students and teacher Dave Sanders were killed at Columbine High School in April 1999. The attack left survivors and families facing lasting trauma and generated a large public investigative record. Dave Cullen’s Columbine revisits the evidence and challenges several narratives that spread during the first days of coverage.
Explore this case →California, United States
Carole Sund, her teenage daughter Juli, and family friend Silvina Pelosso disappeared during a Yosemite-area trip in 1999 and were found murdered. The later killing of park naturalist Joie Armstrong led investigators to Cary Stayner, a motel worker. Stayner was convicted in the killings that had frightened visitors and devastated four families.
Explore this case →Mesa and Tempe, Arizona
Anthony Robles, who was born without his right leg, began wrestling in high school and became an Arizona state champion. At Arizona State University he went on to win the 2011 NCAA wrestling championship. His memoir Unstoppable and its film adaptation follow his athletic development and the family pressures surrounding it.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Borys Kiejliches disappeared in 2000, and his remains were recovered in Queens. Investigators shifted their attention from an initial organized-crime theory to his wife Elena and her relationship with another man.
Explore this case →Ahwatukee, Phoenix, Arizona
Joseph “Joe” Andriano was living with a serious cancer diagnosis when he was killed in the family’s Ahwatukee apartment in October 2000. The investigation examined poisoning evidence, emergency calls and Wendi Andriano’s account of the night. She claimed self-defense at trial; a jury convicted her of first-degree murder in 2004. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed her conviction and death sentence in 2007. The linked opinion separates the evidence, defense arguments and appellate findings.
Explore this case →San Diego, California
Greg de Villers was found dead in 2000, surrounded by rose petals. Toxicology findings prompted an investigation into fentanyl and the access his wife Kristin Rossum had through her work.
Explore this case →Warren, Massachusetts
Sixteen-year-old Molly Bish disappeared from her Massachusetts lifeguard job in 2000. Her remains were discovered in 2003. The investigation has considered multiple leads, but the case remains unresolved; media discussion of suspects does not establish responsibility for her death.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California; New York, New York
Molly Bloom organized high-stakes poker games in Los Angeles and New York. She pleaded guilty to a gambling charge in 2013. Her memoir Molly’s Game became Aaron Sorkin’s film, offering a personal account and a dramatized interpretation of the events.
Explore this case →Long Island, New York
Alex Algeri was shot outside a gym in January 2001. Investigators concluded that he had been mistaken for his business partner in a murder plot involving Lee Ann Reidel and Ralph Salierno.
Explore this case →Washington, D.C.
Washington intern Chandra Levy disappeared in 2001, and her remains were found in a park the next year. Public attention initially centered on her relationship with a congressman. Another man’s murder conviction was later overturned and the charges dropped, leaving the killing unresolved.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas
Enron’s collapse exposed misleading accounting and business practices while employees and investors faced serious losses. Reporters and investigators examined the company’s culture, leadership and financial claims. The Smartest Guys in the Room follows the rise and failure of a business once celebrated as an innovator.
2002 · Sarbanes–Oxley Act
Explore this case →Akron, Ohio
Jeff Zack was killed at an Akron gas station in June 2001. John Zaffino was convicted of the murder, and his conviction survived appeal. Investigators also pursued Cynthia George, who had been romantically involved with both men. Her conviction for complicity was reversed in 2007 because the appellate court found insufficient evidence that she solicited or procured the killing. This case guide keeps those different outcomes explicit and pairs the Killer Couples episode with the reversal and subsequent reporting.
Explore this case →Durham, North Carolina
Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in 2001. Her husband Michael’s murder conviction was followed by a new-trial order and, in 2017, an Alford plea to manslaughter. He maintained his innocence while accepting the plea’s legal consequences.
Explore this case →Columbia, Missouri
Sports editor Kent Heitholt was killed outside the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri in 2001. Ryan Ferguson was convicted after his friend Charles Erickson implicated him, but witnesses later withdrew key testimony. An appeals court overturned Ferguson’s conviction in 2013 because prosecutors had withheld evidence, and the charges were dropped. Erickson, who had pleaded guilty and later challenged his confession, was released on parole in 2023. Their different legal outcomes are central to understanding the case.
Explore this case →Sacramento, California
Attorney Larry McNabney's body was found at a Sacramento-area winery. Investigators examined the circumstances of his disappearance and the role of his wife, who used the name Elisa.
Explore this case →Roanoke, Virginia
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.
Explore this case →Hoover, Alabama; Rutledge, Georgia
Alan Bates and his wife, Terra, were killed in February 2002 during a custody dispute involving Alan’s daughters. The killings took place at the Hoover home of his former wife, Jessica McCord, and her husband, Jeff; the victims’ remains were later found in Georgia. Jessica was convicted in 2003 and received life without parole. Jeff also received life sentences. Snapped examines the case, while reporting traces the investigation and its impact on the victims’ families.
Explore this case →Cleveland, Ohio
Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus in Cleveland and held them for years inside his house. Berry’s escape in 2013 led to the rescue of the other women and her daughter. Their accounts describe both captivity and life after rescue.
Explore this case →Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pathologist Bennet Omalu examined the brain of former professional football player Mike Webster and helped bring attention to chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football. His findings and the resistance surrounding them became the subject of reporting and the film Concussion. The story explores sports, medical evidence and institutional responsibility.
Explore this case →Long Beach, California
High-school football player Brian Banks lost years of his life after a wrongful conviction. New evidence and assistance from the California Innocence Project led to his exoneration. His memoir and the film follow the struggle to clear his name and rebuild a future.
2012 · Wrongful conviction dismissed
Explore this case →Richmond and Chesterfield area, Virginia
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.
Explore this case →Iowa
Dixie Shanahan shot her husband and concealed his body in a bedroom for more than a year. The eventual discovery led to a prosecution and public discussion of prolonged domestic abuse.
Explore this case →Utah
Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Utah bedroom at age 14 in 2002. Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee held her captive for nine months before she was found. Her own books and interviews describe surviving the abuse and rebuilding her life.
Explore this case →Ocean City, Maryland
A vacationing couple was killed in Ocean City in May 2002. The investigation led to charges against Erika and Benjamin Sifrit and examined evidence recovered after an unrelated police encounter.
Explore this case →Modesto, California
Laci Peterson disappeared from Modesto in December 2002 while pregnant with her son, Conner. Their remains were recovered in 2003, and Scott Peterson was convicted in 2004. According to the district attorney’s May 2026 statement, his third habeas petition was denied on April 27. A July 2026 documentary examines disputed defense claims without changing the conviction.
Explore this case →Tempe, Arizona
Businessman Rick Chance was shot in a hotel room in Tempe. The investigation used hotel surveillance to identify the people connected to his final hours.
Explore this case →Missouri
Shawn Hornbeck was abducted in Missouri in 2002. Four years later, the investigation into Ben Ownby’s abduction led police to Michael Devlin’s apartment, where both boys were found in January 2007. The rescue connected two missing-child cases that had initially seemed unrelated.
Explore this case →Bakersfield, California
Prosecutor Steve Tauzer was killed in his garage. Investigators examined his relationship with former colleague Chris Hillis, who later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
Explore this case →Boston, Massachusetts
Survivors and journalists exposed sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and failures by church leaders to protect children. The Boston Globe’s investigation brought documents and survivor accounts to a wider audience. Betrayal collects the reporting, while Spotlight dramatizes how the newsroom pursued the evidence.
Explore this case →Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
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.
Explore this case →Bellevue, Idaho
Alan and Diane Johnson were shot in their Idaho home in 2003. Their teenage daughter Sarah was convicted after an investigation involving physical evidence and conflict over her relationship with an older boyfriend. Her denials and later legal challenges have also received coverage.
Explore this case →Palo Alto, California
Theranos promised to transform blood testing, attracting investors and commercial partners. Reporting exposed problems with its technology and claims. Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of investor fraud and conspiracy in 2022; the book Bad Blood and the scripted series The Dropout examine the rise and collapse from different perspectives.
Explore this case →California
Teenager Justine Vanderschoot was killed in 2003. Her family continues to advocate for her, including at proceedings concerning the men convicted of her murder.
Explore this case →Alhambra, California
Lana Clarkson died from a gunshot at music producer Phil Spector’s home in 2003. After an initial trial ended without a verdict, Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009. Reporting and films examine the evidence and the power imbalance surrounding the case.
Explore this case →Florida
Sandra Rozzo was shot in July 2003. Investigators focused on Ashley Humphrey and her husband as they examined the planning behind the bartender's murder.
Explore this case →Houston, Texas
Jeff Wright's disappearance led police to his body buried behind the family home. Susan Wright admitted killing him but claimed self-defense; prosecutors disputed that account at her trial.
Explore this case →La Cygne, Kansas
Alonzo Brooks disappeared after a party near La Cygne in April 2004. His family found his body a month later. The FBI continues to seek information about the homicide.
Explore this case →Montgomery, Vermont
Brianna Maitland disappeared after leaving work in Vermont in March 2004. Her car was found backed into an abandoned building, but she was gone. Her family and investigators have continued seeking information, while documentaries and podcasts revisit the circumstances without an established solution.
Explore this case →Bolingbrook, Illinois
Kathleen Savio’s 2004 bathtub death was initially treated as an accident. Investigators reexamined it after Stacy Peterson, the next wife of former officer Drew Peterson, disappeared in 2007. Drew was convicted of Kathleen’s murder; Stacy’s disappearance is a separate, unresolved case.
Explore this case →Haverhill, New Hampshire
Maura Murray disappeared after a car crash in New Hampshire in February 2004, before police reached the scene. The uncertain timeline and absence of a confirmed explanation have generated extensive coverage. Podcast and book theories remain theories rather than a resolution of the case.
Explore this case →Cumming, Georgia
Patrice Endres disappeared from her hair salon in April 2004. Her remains were identified after their discovery in Dawson County in 2005. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation lists her death as an unsolved homicide.
Explore this case →Woodbridge, New Jersey; Virginia coast
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.
Explore this case →Morgantown, West Virginia
James “Jimmy” Michael died at the couple’s Morgantown home in November 2005. A house fire initially shaped the investigation, but toxicology evidence led investigators to examine a drug his wife, nurse Michelle Michael, could access at work. A jury convicted her of murder and arson in 2007. She maintained her innocence. In 2023, she sought a new trial over her lawyer’s performance. Snapped and John Glatt’s book revisit the evidence and competing accounts.
Explore this case →Homosassa, Florida
Nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford was abducted from her home and murdered in 2005. John Couey was convicted in 2007. Her father Mark campaigned for stronger child-protection measures, and Florida enacted legislation bearing Jessica’s name.
Explore this case →Las Vegas, Nevada
Melissa James, 28, worked as a personal assistant to bodybuilding competitors Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan in Las Vegas. Her death in December 2005 led to an investigation that followed the couple across the country. They entered different guilty pleas in 2008: Titus admitted second-degree murder, kidnapping and arson, while Ryan pleaded guilty to arson and battery. The distinction matters when reading accounts that describe them together. Killer Couples revisits the case; contemporary reporting records their separate sentences.
Explore this case →Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles columnist Steve Lopez met musician Nathaniel Ayers in 2005 while Ayers was living on the streets. Their relationship became the subject of Lopez’s reporting, the book The Soloist and a film adaptation. The story examines music, friendship, mental illness and the limits of one person’s efforts to help another.
Explore this case →New York
Stacey Castor poisoned her husband David with antifreeze and later tried to kill her daughter Ashley while framing her for the death. Ashley survived. Investigators challenged the supposed suicide accounts, and Castor’s prosecution became the subject of a Lifetime dramatization and crime reporting.
Explore this case →Wisconsin
Steven Avery was exonerated of an earlier sexual-assault conviction before being convicted of Teresa Halbach’s 2005 murder. His nephew Brendan Dassey was also convicted. Making a Murderer brought international attention to disputed evidence and Dassey’s interrogation, while the convictions remained the subject of legal challenges.
Explore this case →New York and California
A group of investors questioned the mortgage market’s apparent strength and bet against securities tied to risky home loans. Their perspective became one way to examine the housing crash and the failures of financial institutions. The story also sits within a crisis that cost many Americans homes and livelihoods.
Explore this case →Shreveport, Louisiana
Tosha Lampkin vanished during a late-night food trip while visiting family in Shreveport. Her burned rental car and remains were later found; security recordings became an important investigative lead.
Explore this case →Dumas, Arkansas
Seventeen-year-old Casey Crowder vanished after her car ran out of gas near Dumas. Investigators searched for surveillance recordings that could help establish what happened to the missing teenager.
Explore this case →Pocatello, Idaho
Cassie Jo Stoddart was killed while house-sitting in Idaho in 2006. Classmates Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik had recorded their plans and discussed horror films before the attack. Both were convicted of murder, and the recordings became central to later accounts.
Explore this case →Lugoff, South Carolina
Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Shoaf was abducted in South Carolina in 2006 by Vinson Filyaw, who posed as a police officer. While held in an underground enclosure, she obtained access to his phone and contacted her family. Her messages helped bring about her rescue.
Explore this case →Orlando, Florida
Jennifer Kesse disappeared from Orlando in January 2006. Her car was found elsewhere, and surveillance captured a person whose face was obscured by a fence. Her family’s search and efforts to obtain investigative records have become central to coverage of the unresolved disappearance.
Explore this case →Selmer, Tennessee
Matthew Winkler, a minister at Selmer’s Fourth Street Church of Christ, was fatally shot in March 2006. His wife, Mary, was found with their three children in Alabama the following day. At trial, she alleged abuse and said the shooting was accidental; prosecutors disputed that account and sought a murder conviction. The jury instead found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter in 2007. The linked reporting and book explore the trial without treating contested testimony as established fact.
Explore this case →North Carolina
Michelle Young was killed in her North Carolina home in 2006 while pregnant, with her young daughter in the house. The investigation examined her husband Jason’s travel and conduct. He was convicted of murder in 2012 after an earlier trial ended with a hung jury.
Explore this case →Clemson, South Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia
While playing football and studying at Clemson, Ray McElrathbey took responsibility for his eleven-year-old brother Fahmarr in 2006 amid difficulties at home. Teammates and the wider community helped him manage school, football and caregiving. Safety dramatizes the brothers’ experience, with Clemson’s historical reporting offering a separate account.
Explore this case →Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Five girls were killed and five others wounded when a gunman attacked the West Nickel Mines Amish School in October 2006. Families and neighbors’ response to the loss drew attention to Amish understandings of forgiveness. The nonfiction book Amish Grace examines that response; the similarly titled film is a dramatization with fictionalized characters.
Explore this case →Las Vegas, Nevada
Poker player Bill Rockcastle was stabbed in a Las Vegas condominium in April 2007. The investigation examined the actions of his wife Jill and the events preceding the fatal encounter.
Explore this case →Edmond, Oklahoma
Shirley Shell was found murdered at home in June 2007. Her death led investigators to examine surveillance recordings as they searched for the person responsible.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Bernard Madoff’s investment operation concealed a Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2008, causing devastating losses to investors and charities. The Wizard of Lies follows the fraud and its consequences; its HBO adaptation and a Netflix documentary series offer different screen treatments.
Explore this case →Orlando, Florida
Two-year-old Caylee Anthony disappeared in Florida in 2008, and her remains were found months later. Her mother Casey’s false statements drew intense scrutiny. In 2011, a jury acquitted Casey of murder and the other major charges, while convicting her of lying to investigators.
Explore this case →San Antonio, Texas
Christopher Duncan left his San Antonio apartment in February 2008 and did not return. Surveillance footage became a key lead as police investigated his disappearance and killing.
Explore this case →Mesa, Arizona
Travis Alexander was killed in his Arizona home in 2008. Photographs recovered from a camera and changing accounts became central to the investigation of his former girlfriend Jodi Arias. She was convicted of first-degree murder after a closely watched trial in 2013.
Explore this case →Lynnwood, Washington; Colorado
A young woman identified in reporting as Marie reported a rape in Washington in 2008, but police doubted her account. A later investigation in Colorado uncovered evidence supporting her report. Investigative journalism, the book A False Report and Netflix’s Unbelievable explore the failures and breakthroughs.
Explore this case →Festus, Missouri
Tom and Jill Estes were found dead behind a dumpster in June 2008. A receipt led investigators to surveillance recordings and evidence connecting the deaths to a wider series of killings.
Explore this case →Nashville, Tennessee
Ben Goeser was shot and killed in a Nashville bar in 2009. His wife Nikki witnessed the attack by a man who had been stalking her. Her account appears in Obsession: Dark Desires and in her public testimony about stalking.
Explore this case →Glendale, Arizona
Cynthia Langrall was shot while jogging in Glendale's Hillcrest Ranch neighborhood. Residential security footage helped investigators identify a vehicle linked to the shooting.
Explore this case →Buena Park, California
Jasmine Fiore's remains were discovered in a suitcase in a Buena Park dumpster. Security footage helped investigators examine the model's disappearance and the circumstances of her death.
Explore this case →Cedar Park, Texas
Jessika Kalaher, 27, was found strangled in her car in September 2009. Her missing wallet and keys prompted investigators to examine security recordings for evidence of her final movements.
Explore this case →Boston, Massachusetts
Julissa Brisman was found shot and bound in a Boston hotel room in 2009. Hotel security recordings helped investigators trace an attacker connected to a series of encounters arranged online.
Explore this case →Virginia
Morgan Harrington disappeared after a concert in 2009, and Hannah Graham disappeared after a night out in 2014. DNA and other evidence connected their Virginia murders to Jesse Matthew. He pleaded guilty in 2016, linking investigations that had initially unfolded years apart.
Explore this case →Lenoir, North Carolina
A dispute between neighbors Roland Younce and Tony Moore escalated into gunfire. Moore, his daughter, and responding officers were injured; Younce was killed when officers returned fire. Fear Thy Neighbor examines the conflict and its consequences.
Explore this case →Pinellas Park, Florida
Rachel Wade stabbed Sarah Ludemann during a confrontation in Florida in 2009. Their conflict over a boyfriend had escalated through messages and threats. Wade was convicted of second-degree murder in a case widely described through its social-media rivalry.
Explore this case →Columbia, Illinois
Sheri Coleman and her sons Garett and Gavin were strangled in their Illinois home in 2009. Her husband Chris, a ministry security employee, had reported threatening messages. Investigators concluded the threats were staged, and he was convicted of all three murders.
Explore this case →West Valley City, Utah
Susan Cox Powell disappeared from Utah in December 2009. Her husband Josh said he had taken their young sons camping that night, but he was never tried over her disappearance. In 2012 he killed the boys and himself, leaving major questions about Susan unanswered.
Explore this case →Skyway, Washington
Twelve-year-old Alajawan Brown was shot outside a convenience store in April 2010. Investigators examined nearby shootings and security recordings to establish how he became a victim.
Explore this case →Orange County and Merritt Island, Florida
Alissa Blanton, 23, was killed outside her Orange County workplace in February 2010. Roger Troy, a man she had met while working at Hooters, shot her and then himself. Days earlier, Blanton had asked a court for an emergency protective order; it was declined on the information presented. Reporting examines the warning signs and her family’s subsequent calls for stalking awareness. Her case is a major thread in The Hooters Murders: Deadly Shift.
Explore this case →Huntsville, Alabama
Amy Bishop opened fire during a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2010, killing three colleagues and injuring three others. The attack followed a tenure dispute. She pleaded guilty, and reporting also revisited an earlier shooting involving her brother.
Explore this case →San Juan Capistrano, California
California entrepreneur Chris Smith’s family received emails suggesting he had left his business behind to travel. Investigators later found that his business partner, Edward Shin, had killed him in their San Juan Capistrano office in June 2010 and impersonated him afterward. An Orange County jury convicted Shin of murder for financial gain in 2018. Dateline later interviewed Shin after his life sentence, examining the business relationship and the messages that had misled Smith’s loved ones.
Explore this case →Florida
Diane Kyne was found dead in her bedroom. Conflicting accounts from two men close to her complicated the investigation and became the focus of Dateline’s True Lies.
Explore this case →St. Paul, Minnesota
Heidi Firkus died in her St. Paul home in April 2010 after an emergency call reporting an attempted break-in. Her husband Nicholas told police an intruder had shot them both. The investigation examined that account alongside the couple’s financial circumstances. A jury convicted Nicholas of premeditated murder in 2023, and he received life imprisonment without release. Minnesota’s Supreme Court upheld the conviction in February 2026, concluding that the circumstantial evidence supported the verdict.
Explore this case →Las Vegas and Boulder City area, Nevada
Prisma Contreras, 21, was abducted after leaving work at the Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas in January 2010. Her body was found in her vehicle near Boulder City. Gregory Hover was convicted and sentenced to death in 2013. Richard Freeman pleaded guilty to two murders, including hers. Contemporary sentencing coverage and the later documentary trace how investigators connected the offenses. The separate defendants’ legal outcomes should not be treated as interchangeable.
Explore this case →Coral Springs, Florida
Surya Toha disappeared after taking her sons to school in Coral Springs. Investigators used surveillance recordings to trace what happened after that ordinary morning journey.
Explore this case →New York, New York
Fashion designer Sylvie Cachay was found dead in a bathtub at Soho House in New York. Investigators reconstructed her final hours and the circumstances involving her boyfriend, Nicholas Brooks.
Explore this case →Darden, Tennessee
Nursing student Holly Bobo disappeared from her Tennessee home in April 2011; her remains were found more than three years later. Zachary Adams was convicted in 2017, while two other defendants resolved their cases through pleas. Subsequent reporting examined a key witness’s recantation and Adams’s efforts to obtain another trial. A July 2026 ruling denied a renewed request. The case’s source record includes the original prosecution and later challenges, which should be read in their procedural context.
Explore this case →Bloomington, Indiana
Indiana University student Lauren Spierer disappeared after a night out in Bloomington in June 2011. Investigators reconstructed her movements, but no account has established what happened to her. Books, podcasts, and reporting revisit the timeline and her family’s continuing search for answers.
Explore this case →Durham, North Carolina
Reginald Daye died after being stabbed during an argument with Crystal Mangum in 2011. She claimed self-defense but was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013. The case was covered by Wives with Knives and Snapped.
Explore this case →Summerfield, Florida
Fifteen-year-old Seath Jackson was lured to a Florida house in 2011 and killed by a group that included people he knew. The effort to conceal his remains did not prevent arrests. The case produced multiple prosecutions involving teenagers and young adults.
Explore this case →Gainesville, Florida
University of Florida freshman Christian Aguilar disappeared in 2012. Video evidence helped investigators examine his last movements and the accounts of people close to him.
Explore this case →Springfield, Missouri
Diane Staudte and her daughter Rachel used antifreeze to poison members of their Missouri family. Mark and Shaun Staudte died, while Sarah survived a later poisoning. The investigation exposed a deliberate plan behind illnesses that had initially appeared unrelated.
Explore this case →Pennsylvania
DJ Ervin Holton was shot on a friend's porch in November 2012. Investigators located a nearby business camera facing the scene as they worked to identify his killer.
Explore this case →Texas
Michelle Warner vanished while living with her former boyfriend Mark Castellano. His televised interview with Dr. Phil and a later account to police became part of the reporting on her disappearance and death.
Explore this case →Pensacola, Florida
The disappearance of reporter Sean Dugas led Pensacola police into an investigation connected to gaming and valuable collectibles. Surveillance evidence forms part of the account presented in See No Evil.
Explore this case →West Virginia & Pennsylvania
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.
Explore this case →Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta entrepreneur Terry Porter was found shot outside his home in November 2012. With little evidence at the scene, investigators searched for security footage that could identify the people involved.
Explore this case →Lovingston, Virginia
Alexis Murphy disappeared in Virginia in 2013 after being recorded at a gas station. Surveillance and physical evidence led to Randy Taylor’s conviction for her murder in 2014. Her remains were recovered years later, bringing an answer about her whereabouts to her family.
Explore this case →Cleveland, Ohio
Aliza Sherman was fatally stabbed in 2013. Her divorce attorney Gregory Moore was later charged with her murder. The linked reporting examines the prosecution’s allegations and defense motions, not an established verdict.
Explore this case →Boston, Massachusetts
Amy Lord, 24, was found stabbed to death. Investigators reconstructed her movements through recordings from five Boston ATMs, using the images to investigate her abduction and killing.
Explore this case →Manhattan, New York
Using the name Anna Delvey, Anna Sorokin presented herself as a wealthy heiress while pursuing a private arts club in New York. A Manhattan jury convicted her in 2019 of eight offenses, including grand larceny and theft of services, and acquitted her on two counts. Reporting, a former friend’s memoir, and the scripted series Inventing Anna offer different perspectives on the case.
Explore this case →Columbus, Ohio
Shopkeeper Imran Ashgar was shot at his Columbus store in July 2013. The attack was recorded, providing investigators with evidence as they searched for the people involved.
Explore this case →Honolulu, Hawaii
Ivanice Harris disappeared during a Hawaii trip in 2013. Investigators followed her movements to a Waikiki hotel and examined its cameras while searching for answers.
Explore this case →Appleton, Wisconsin
Josh Richards was shot at the Luna Lounge nightclub in December 2013. Investigators looked to security footage inside and around the venue to identify the gunman.
Explore this case →Marshall, Texas
Kari Hunt was killed by her estranged husband in a Marshall motel room in 2013. Her daughter tried to call 911 but the telephone system required an outside-line prefix. Her family’s campaign helped change emergency dialing requirements for covered multiline phone systems.
Explore this case →Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Kelly Dwyer disappeared after a night out in Milwaukee. The investigation examined her last visit to her boyfriend’s apartment and security footage that challenged his account of her departure. Kris Zocco was convicted of her homicide in 2018.
Explore this case →Bloomington, Minnesota
Kira Steger disappeared after an evening at the Mall of America with her husband in 2013. Investigators turned to mall surveillance as concerns about her disappearance grew.
Explore this case →Tacoma, Washington
Larry Howse was shot in the parking garage of his apartment building in August 2013. Surveillance footage showed two people connected to the attack and became central to the investigation.
Explore this case →Orange, California
Army veteran Maribel Ramos disappeared from her apartment in May 2013. Investigators used surveillance evidence and a targeted investigative strategy to establish what had happened to her.
Explore this case →Texarkana, Arkansas
Patricia “Patti” Wheelington was killed at her Texarkana home in December 2013. The investigation focused on Virginia Hyatt, whose husband had been involved with Wheelington, and tested her account against surveillance and other circumstantial evidence. A Miller County jury convicted Hyatt of capital murder in 2016, bringing a life-without-parole sentence. Arkansas’s Supreme Court affirmed in 2018, with two justices dissenting. The opinion and local coverage allow readers to examine both the ruling and the disputed evidence.
Explore this case →Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Carlesha Freeland-Gaither was abducted from a Philadelphia street in November 2014. Surveillance recorded the attack, and investigators found her alive in Maryland three days later. See No Evil examines the search and the camera evidence.
Explore this case →Silver City, New Mexico
Cassy Farrington, a young mother and nurse, was found dead in a bathtub. Her family pressed for answers as investigators reconsidered the circumstances of her death.
Explore this case →Plano, Texas
Christina Morris, 23, disappeared during a night out with friends in Plano. Surveillance recordings helped investigators reconstruct her movements and investigate what happened after she left the group.
Explore this case →Tallahassee, Florida
Florida State University law professor Dan Markel was killed at his Tallahassee home in July 2014. The investigation uncovered a murder-for-hire plot and led to several prosecutions. His former brother-in-law Charlie Adelson was convicted in 2023; former mother-in-law Donna Adelson was convicted in 2025 and sentenced to life imprisonment that October. Reporting, court coverage and his mother Ruth Markel’s memoir document the criminal proceedings alongside the family’s grief and efforts to maintain relationships with his children.
Explore this case →Clarkston, Washington
Ina Clare Richardson, 69, was found murdered in a Clarkston park in November 2014. Video from the surrounding area helped investigators reconstruct her movements before her death.
Explore this case →Massachusetts
Michelle Carter encouraged Conrad Roy to take his own life through messages and conversations before his death in 2014. Her involuntary-manslaughter trial raised questions about responsibility for conduct carried out through a phone. Documentaries and dramatizations revisit the messages and the court’s reasoning.
Explore this case →Bloomington, Illinois
Pamela Zimmerman, a financial planner and mother of three, was killed in her Bloomington, Illinois, office in 2014. Prosecutors charged her former husband Kirk Zimmerman, arguing that financial conflict provided a motive. His defense challenged the investigation and argued that other leads had been neglected. A jury found him not guilty in May 2019. Dateline’s later report and local trial coverage offer different entry points into a case where an accusation must not be presented as a conviction.
Explore this case →Buffalo area, New York
Graduate student Tequila Suter was stabbed to death at her home near Buffalo in 2014. Investigators reconstructed movements across the area using surveillance recordings.
Explore this case →Iowa
Student Tong Shao was found murdered after disappearing in 2014. Surveillance recordings helped investigators examine her final movements as the search for a suspect extended beyond the United States.
Explore this case →Loveland, Colorado
Veteran and grandfather Billy Connole was shot while walking in Loveland in 2015. Investigators examined footage of an older pickup truck as they searched for his killer.
Explore this case →St. Augustine, Florida
Carl Starke was shot near his St. Augustine home. Witnesses heard gunfire but did not see the attack; investigators used the estimated time of the shooting to search surveillance recordings.
Explore this case →Seattle, Washington
Celina Petersen's body was found in an alley in Seattle's South Park neighborhood in February 2015. Investigators pieced together recordings from the surrounding neighborhood to examine her killing.
Explore this case →Springfield, Missouri
Dee Dee Blanchard presented her daughter Gypsy Rose as seriously ill and dependent, concealing a history of medical abuse. In 2015, Nicholas Godejohn killed Dee Dee in a plan involving Gypsy. Both were convicted, and later media explored the abuse as well as the murder.
Explore this case →South Dakota
Edward Lowry was found beaten and stabbed in a parking lot on September 17, 2015. Investigators used nearby cameras to reconstruct the movements surrounding his death.
Explore this case →Montgomery County, Texas
Texas boxing trainer Ramon Sosa worked with investigators after learning of a plot to kill him. A staged death scene became part of the operation documented in 48 Hours.
Explore this case →Orlando, Florida
Sasha Samsudean was murdered in her apartment after returning from a night out in Orlando. Investigators examined building surveillance to determine who had access to her and what happened after she arrived.
Explore this case →San Antonio, Texas
Care worker Torrance Cheeves was found stabbed in his San Antonio home in August 2015. Investigators searched neighborhood security cameras while working through conflicting clues.
Explore this case →San Antonio, Texas
Bianca Carrasco, a nurse and mother of three, disappeared from her San Antonio home in May 2016. Her family continues to seek answers about what happened to her.
Explore this case →Anchorage, Alaska
Brianna Foisy and Jason Netter were killed on an Anchorage path in 2016. Investigators examined similarities with other attacks and used surveillance evidence while investigating the series.
Explore this case →Knoxville, Tennessee
Sixteen-year-old Emma Walker was killed by a shot fired through her bedroom wall in Tennessee in 2016. Her former boyfriend Riley Gaul was prosecuted after investigators examined his conduct before and after the shooting. He was convicted of first-degree murder.
Explore this case →Michigan City, Indiana
Car salesman Hufracio Arteaga was found stabbed in his office in April 2016. Cameras at an adjacent building provided a way to investigate activity around the business.
Explore this case →California
Michelle Hadley was arrested after accusations involving threatening emails and an alleged assault plot. Investigators later uncovered that she had been framed, transforming the case into an investigation of cyber-revenge.
Explore this case →Neptune City, New Jersey
Sarah Stern disappeared from New Jersey in 2016, and her car was left near a bridge. Investigators learned that Liam McAtasney had killed her for money and that Preston Taylor helped conceal the crime. A secretly recorded conversation became important evidence at trial.
Explore this case →Redding, California
Sherri Papini claimed she had been kidnapped in California in 2016 and blamed two Latina women. Investigators later determined she had stayed with a former boyfriend. She pleaded guilty in 2022 to mail fraud and making false statements, after years of public concern over the supposed abduction.
Explore this case →Delphi, Indiana, USA
Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, were killed near Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017. Richard Allen was convicted in November 2024 and sentenced to 130 years. The Indiana Court of Appeals heard his challenge on September 21, 2026, including arguments over the search warrant, custodial statements and excluded evidence.
Explore this case →Madison, Wisconsin
Andrew Nesbitt was found dead in his apartment on his 46th birthday in March 2017. Investigators used recordings from bars, taxis, and streets to reconstruct his last night.
Explore this case →Harris County, Texas
Assistant Chief Deputy Clint Greenwood was shot outside a Harris County courthouse in April 2017. Security cameras helped investigators follow the movements connected to the attack.
Explore this case →Louisa, Virginia
Dawn Meade was found dead outside an apartment complex in 2017. Investigators examined security footage to determine whether the circumstances pointed to an accident or a deliberate act.
Explore this case →San Diego, California
Musician Omar Medina disappeared in 2017. His body was later found inside a barrel in San Diego Bay, and investigators examined surveillance evidence while tracing those involved.
Explore this case →New York and California
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey investigated allegations of sexual abuse and harassment by Harvey Weinstein, along with settlements and institutional silence. Women who spoke with reporters took substantial personal risks. The book and film follow the reporting process that helped fuel a wider reckoning over workplace abuse.
2022 · Speak Out Act
Explore this case →Urbana, Illinois
Visiting scholar Yingying Zhang disappeared from the University of Illinois campus. Police and the FBI used surveillance footage to investigate her abduction and the events leading to her murder.
Explore this case →Beckley, West Virginia
Restaurant worker Joshua Webb was shot outside a Beckley apartment building in 2018. Investigators followed a trail of security recordings to test conflicting accounts and identify those involved.
Explore this case →Woodland Park, Colorado
Flight instructor and mother Kelsey Berreth disappeared from Woodland Park, Colorado, on Thanksgiving in 2018. Investigators examined her fiancé Patrick Frazee’s account and evidence supplied by Krystal Lee, who testified about the killing and its concealment. A jury convicted Frazee in 2019 of murder and related offenses. He received life without parole plus additional years. Colorado’s appeals court upheld the conviction in December 2022, a ruling reported by local newsrooms the following month.
Explore this case →Brooklyn, Iowa
Mollie Tibbetts disappeared during an evening run in Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018. The search drew attention to surveillance footage showing her route and a nearby car. Investigators eventually questioned Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who led them to her remains. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in 2021. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in 2023, addressing challenges to his police statements and the rejection of a request for a new trial.
Explore this case →Florida
Pamela Hutchinson was found dead in her Florida condominium in 2018. A woman seen on surveillance became a focus of the investigation, which connected Hutchinson's death to another killing.
Explore this case →Colorado
Chris Watts killed his pregnant wife Shanann and their daughters Bella and Celeste in Colorado in 2018. He initially appeared in public appeals for their return. His guilty pleas and the discovery of the victims revealed that the disappearance story had concealed a family murder.
Explore this case →North Carolina
Stacy Hunsucker’s death became a poisoning investigation. Her husband Joshua was accused of killing her; dated 2026 reporting covers additional charges and the continuing prosecution. Allegations require proof in court.
Explore this case →Austin, Texas
A series of package explosions in Austin killed Anthony House and teenager Draylen Mason in 2018. Investigators used security footage to identify and pursue the person placing the devices.
Explore this case →Colts Neck, New Jersey
Keith and Jennifer Caneiro and their two children were found dead after a fire at their home. Investigators determined that they had been killed before the blaze and examined a connection to another fire.
Explore this case →New Canaan, Connecticut
Jennifer Dulos vanished in Connecticut in 2019 during a contentious divorce. Her estranged husband Fotis was charged but died before trial. Michelle Troconis was convicted in 2024 of conspiring to murder Jennifer and related offenses; reporting distinguishes her trial from the untried charges against Fotis.
Explore this case →Idaho & Arizona
The disappearance of Tylee Ryan and J. J. Vallow led investigators to remains buried on Chad Daybell’s Idaho property. The investigation also encompassed the death of his wife Tammy. Lori Vallow and Daybell were convicted in separate trials arising from the killings and related conspiracies.
Explore this case →Columbia, South Carolina
Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina senior preparing for law school, disappeared after leaving Columbia’s Five Points district in March 2019. She entered a car she believed was her requested ride and was killed. Investigators used vehicle evidence, surveillance and forensic testing to build the case against Nathaniel Rowland. A jury convicted him in 2021, and he received a life sentence. South Carolina’s appeals court upheld the convictions in 2024 and subsequently declined rehearing.
Explore this case →New Jersey
A gunman posing as a delivery driver attacked the home of federal judge Esther Salas. Her son Daniel was killed and her husband Mark was seriously wounded.
Explore this case →Hamilton County, Indiana
David Fouts’s body was found beside a rural Indiana road. Detectives investigated a possible poisoning and examined evidence involving his wife Katrina.
Explore this case →Washington
Dioneth Lopez disappeared during a trip in 2020 and was later found dead in Washington woodland. Surveillance recordings helped investigators identify her and reconstruct her final movements.
Explore this case →Salida and Moffat, Colorado, USA
Suzanne Morphew disappeared from the Salida area on Mother’s Day in 2020. Her remains were found in Colorado in 2023. Her husband, Barry Morphew, was charged again in 2025 after an earlier prosecution was dismissed. He has pleaded not guilty; September 2026 reporting covers a bond increase while the renewed case proceeds.
Explore this case →Michigan
Dee Warner disappeared from her Michigan farm. Her family and investigators pursued answers for years before the discovery of her remains changed the case against her husband Dale.
Explore this case →Alabama
Hannah Pettey, a young mother in Alabama, survived serious lead poisoning. Investigators examined people close to her; 48 Hours reports that her husband Brian was responsible.
Explore this case →West Virginia
High-school football player KJ Taylor was killed in a drive-by shooting outside a convenience store in 2021. Investigators used recordings to trace a truck seen following his group before the attack.
Explore this case →South Carolina
Maggie Murdaugh and her son Paul were shot and killed at the family’s South Carolina property in June 2021. Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 murder convictions were set aside in May 2026 and a retrial was ordered. At the October 16, 2026 hearing, the court allowed additional defense DNA testing ahead of the scheduled April 2027 retrial. His separate financial-crime sentences remain in effect.
Explore this case →Indiana
Harold Allen’s death was initially attributed to natural causes. Information uncovered during a later burglary investigation led authorities to examine a poisoning plot involving his wife and stepdaughter.
Explore this case →Florida
Jared Bridegan was shot and killed in Florida. The investigation developed into a murder-for-hire prosecution involving people connected to his former marriage; dated reporting follows the separate defendants and proceedings.
Explore this case →Canton, Massachusetts, USA
Boston police officer John O’Keefe was found dead outside a Canton home in January 2022. Karen Read’s first trial ended without a verdict in 2024. At her June 2025 retrial, a jury acquitted her of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a fatal incident, and convicted her of drunken driving.
Explore this case →Strongsville, Ohio
Seventeen-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla drove into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio, on July 31, 2022, killing her boyfriend Dominic Russo and their friend Davion Flanagan. She survived. After examining video and other evidence, a judge found that she had deliberately caused the crash and convicted her of murder in 2023.
Explore this case →Georgia
A woman found dead in Georgia woods was eventually identified as Mindi Kassotis. The identification conflicted with what friends had been told about her, leading to a wider investigation.
Explore this case →Moscow, Idaho
Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty in 2025 and received four consecutive life sentences without parole. October 2026 reporting covers his post-conviction petition and effort to disqualify the sentencing judge; canceled hearing dates did not reverse the convictions.
Explore this case →South Carolina
Davis McClendon died after being struck by a vehicle. Investigators examined the driver’s relationship to McClendon’s partner and used vehicle data and other evidence to reconstruct the killing.
Explore this case →Council Bluffs, Iowa
Ilene Gowan, 60, disappeared from Council Bluffs. Investigators used security recordings to retrace her movements and test the account of someone close to her.
Explore this case →Oregon
Kenny Fandrich was killed in an Oregon parking garage. Security video helped investigators reconstruct the crime and examine the involvement of veterinarian Steven Milner.
Explore this case →New Haven, Indiana
Kevin Davis was found fatally injured at the bottom of stairs in his Indiana home. His wife Alison disputed the accusation that she murdered him. The linked investigation examines the competing explanations. A jury acquitted Alison.
Explore this case →Duxbury, Massachusetts
The deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy led to murder charges against their mother, Lindsay. The 2026 trial examined criminal responsibility and mental health; September reporting describes a mistrial rather than a conviction.
Explore this case →Oklahoma
Makayla Meave’s disappearance in Oklahoma led to a homicide investigation. Reporting follows detective and tracker Dakota Black’s work to establish what happened.
Explore this case →Florida
Attorney Steven Cozzi disappeared in Florida in 2023. An October 2026 report discusses the evidence and trial that resulted in Tomasz Kosowski’s conviction for his murder.
Explore this case →New York, New York
The killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson led to federal and state proceedings involving Luigi Mangione. Dated reporting distinguishes a federal guilty plea from the separate state murder proceedings.
Explore this case →Virginia
Nurse and mother Mamta Kafle Bhatt disappeared in Virginia in 2024. Her husband Naresh Bhatt was accused of killing her; the linked reports cover the evidence and trial proceedings. Charges are allegations, not proof of guilt.
Explore this case →Utah
Matt Restelli was shot at his mother-in-law’s home after traveling from California to Utah. Investigators questioned an initial self-defense account and examined a family plot.
Explore this case →Ohio
Ashley Flynn’s death prompted an investigation into an alleged home invasion. October 2026 reporting describes her husband Caleb Flynn’s murder conviction and sentence, and the evidence presented at trial.
Explore this case →Las Vegas, Nevada
Police found Brookey Lee West's mother's remains inside a container in a Las Vegas storage unit. The discovery led investigators to examine the mother-daughter relationship and the circumstances of the death.
Explore this case →Groton, Vermont
Christopher Gray, a young man with a developmental disability, disappeared after leaving work in Groton. Investigators used security recordings to reconstruct his movements and uncover what had happened.
Explore this case →Kanawha County, West Virginia
Cindy Mudd, 71, disappeared in Kanawha County. Investigators followed a sequence of surveillance recordings while searching for her and examining the people involved.
Explore this case →Cleveland, Texas
Conbino Crasto was shot during a gas-station robbery in Cleveland, Texas. Surveillance video helped investigators search for three masked people connected to the attack.
Explore this case →Dalton, Georgia
Convenience-store clerk Dahyabhai Kalidas Chaudhari was stabbed at work in Dalton. Security footage gave investigators a way to identify the person responsible for the attack.
Explore this case →Baltimore, Maryland
Dion Smith, a 24-year-old father and youth worker, was found shot in a Baltimore home. Recordings outside the residence helped investigators examine a visitor's movements and the accounts of other occupants.
Explore this case →Fargo, North Dakota
Gabriel Perez, 20, was shot at a Fargo fast-food restaurant. Investigators used surveillance recordings to reconstruct the encounter and identify the gunman.
Explore this case →Kinston, North Carolina
Jack Davis was found with a severe head injury at home in Kinston. Cameras at his property and a neighboring home helped investigators follow the people connected to the attack.
Explore this case →Lemon Grove, California
Jennifer Krajnak was shot after a night out at a Lemon Grove bar. Investigators examined several possible suspects before using surveillance recordings to narrow the investigation.
Explore this case →Alabama
Johnny Soekhies was murdered in Alabama. Investigators followed security recordings of a vehicle taking him toward the scene and a person seen nearby.
Explore this case →Fernandina Beach, Florida
Hair stylist Joleen Cummings disappeared after work at Tangles Salon. Her vehicle appeared on surveillance in a parking lot, providing investigators with a lead into her disappearance.
Explore this case →Sebring / Tampa, Florida
Laura Pietscher's body was found in a Tampa dumpster far from her Sebring home. Investigators used security recordings to trace the journey preceding her death.
Explore this case →Texas
Mandi Gordon, a mother of two, disappeared in Texas. Investigators followed security recordings and inconsistent accounts to a remote ranch as they searched for her.
Explore this case →Utah / Idaho
Merrilee Cox-Lafferty disappeared in Utah, and her car was later found in Idaho. Investigators used security footage to trace her movements and examine new persons of interest.
Explore this case →Alexandria, Virginia
Nancy Dunning, Ronald Kirby, and Ruthanne Lodato were shot at their homes in Alexandria. Investigators examined surveillance footage while looking for connections between the separate killings.
Explore this case →Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Reggie Ward was shot at a Cedar Rapids gas station. Investigators combined surveillance recordings with location evidence while attempting to identify the shooter.
Explore this case →