Cold Cases

Investigations that went quiet for years before a break.

63 cases

The Burning Barrel

On a July evening in 1981, Charlotte Grabbe never came back from the soybean fields of her family's Marshall, Illinois farm — her tractor parked in the shed, her lunch box untouched, and her divorce from the violent Fred Grabbe still unfinished.

A Doctor's Blood

On Halloween night 1992 in tiny Kipling, Saskatchewan, a distraught young mother sought help from the town's beloved Dr. John Schneeberger — and what she remembered from that examination room would pit her word against his DNA.

The Girl in the Barrel

During a final walkthrough before the sale of a Jericho, New York house in September 1999, the buyer insisted on removing a 355-pound barrel that had sat wedged in the crawlspace for decades — a barrel the seller had never once opened.

No Body, No Doubt

When Jamie Laiaddee disappeared from Arizona, prosecutor Juan Martinez — later famous for the Jodi Arias trial — took her boyfriend to court without a body, without physical evidence, and with a defendant who answered to two different names.

Models Inc.

On June 28, 2007, Paige Birgfeld drove home from a picnic with her high-school-sweetheart ex-husband and vanished — and the search for the Grand Junction, Colorado mother of three uncovered a secret life no one around her suspected.

The Green Chain Killer

When Pauline Lasham told police her son Robert Napper had confessed to a rape near Plumstead Common, they checked their records, found nothing, and let it go — while the attacks along London's Green Chain Walk were only beginning.

The Canal Killer

In February 2001, two boys fishing in London's Regent's Canal snagged a duffel bag weighted with bricks — the first of six bags divers would recover, holding a woman whose missing head, hands, and feet made her nearly impossible to identify.

The Tacoma Murders

In 1986, months apart, young Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian were murdered near Tacoma parks just three miles from each other — crimes so similar police assumed one killer, until DNA told a stranger story that took decades to finish.

The Copper Gulch Killer

Teenage prodigy Candace Hiltz was bound for Stanford Law when she was found shot dead in her family's remote Copper Gulch, Colorado home — a still-unsolved case that took a strange turn when a delinquent storage unit went up for auction.

The Alligator Theory

On the morning of his sixth wedding anniversary, Mike Williams set out alone to hunt ducks among the stumps of Lake Seminole and never returned — and with no body to recover, investigators reasoned the lake's alligators had left nothing to find.

Divine Justice

In a Pacific Northwest decade haunted by vanishing girls — several later confirmed as Ted Bundy victims — fourteen-year-old Kathy Devine's 1973 disappearance near Olympia sat unsolved for decades, filed under the wrong killer.

Cold Storage Killer

After a Morrissey concert in June 1991, Denise Huber's gray Honda Accord was found abandoned on the Corona del Mar highway with a flat rear tire, just miles from her Newport Beach home — and for three years there was no trace of her at all.

Murder in the Sacristy

On Holy Saturday 1980 — her seventy-second birthday — Sister Margaret Ann Pahl went early to prepare the chapel at Toledo's Mercy Hospital, intending to confront Father Gerald Robinson about his sermon; a bloodstained cloth on the chapel floor was the first sign something was wrong.

Dead in the Water

Jo Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christe left their Ohio dairy farm for their first real vacation, snapping photos from a hotel room overlooking Tampa Bay — days before the Coast Guard began pulling bodies, roped to concrete blocks, from the water.

The Mousse Can Killer

Robert Mark Edwards was raised on beatings and addiction and turned early to burglary — and when a woman was found beaten and strangled, the bloody can of hair styling mousse left on her bed became the case's strangest piece of evidence.

Like Mother, Like Son

In Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Cheryl Kunkle raised her son Greg Rowe on resentment and control. When sixteen-year-old Kristin Fisher refused the abortion Greg demanded and gave birth to baby Kaylee, mother and son came to share far more than a grudge.

The Musclebound Murderer

Signal box operator Gary Vinter stabbed co-worker Carl Edon thirty-seven times in a trackside workshop, then calmly returned to his post. Years later, released from prison a second time, the six-foot-seven Vinter had a new bride — one who already knew she'd made a terrible mistake.

Where is Heather?

Peering through his new high-powered telescope over the Ohio River, Tim Walthall watched a young woman set up her beach chair on the Kentucky shore — then witnessed something that sent him racing for the phone. The search for Heather Teague never truly ended.

Beyond Redemption

Sixteen-year-old Jason Sweeney saved every paycheck from his father's construction company to pay for military academy — his first step toward becoming a Navy SEAL. In Philadelphia's Fishtown, his lifelong best friend Eddie Batzig and the Coia brothers were growing jealous of every dollar.

The Count

Eighteen-year-old Lisa Mather spent a 1985 Saturday night dancing outside the clubs of the Sunset Strip. When police scattered the underage crowd, her friends lost her — she was last seen talking to a tall, skinny boy dressed all in black with teased 'rocker hair.'

A Sad Holiday Season

Sixteen-year-old Leanne Tiernan said goodbye to her best friend after a day of Christmas shopping in Leeds and took the unlit shortcut through Houghley Gill. Police searched 1,400 houses, drained three miles of canals, and questioned 140 men — and found no trace of her.

The Christmas Tree Farm Murders

Ed and Minnie Maurin, in their eighties and famous for the Christmas luncheon at their Ethel, Washington tree-farm home, were missing when friends arrived to set up the 1985 party. Inside the locked house, bank statements lay scattered across the bathroom floor.

Pretty in Pink

Eighteen-year-old artist Ezra McCandless fell for Jason Mengel, a National Guard medic nearly twice her age — then came Alex Woodworth, the barista they both knew from Racy's coffee shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The triangle could not hold.

The Screwdriver Killer

In 1957, Connecticut's George Davies answered a newspaper ad — 'French girl desires light housekeeping' — with devious intentions. Seventeen-year-old Gaetane Boivin left a note about a job opportunity and never came home; days later, nine-year-old Brenda Jane Doucette vanished walking to school.

The Ice Cream Killer

Since age seven, Esti Carranza had soothed herself with vivid fantasies of killing her abusive father. Years later, she and her husband Holger opened the Schleckeria, a Vienna ice cream shop with a cellar below — and a marriage curdling behind the counter.

Creepy White Van

Nineteen-year-old Kenia Monge planned to meet friends at a Denver nightclub called Lavish on a warm March night in 2011. She never made it inside — and suspicion soon fell on a stranger with a white van who had offered her a ride.

The South Side Strangler

A car left running all night on a quiet Richmond street led police to Debbie Davis's apartment in September 1987 — the first in a series of brutal stranglings across Virginia that would push detectives toward a brand-new forensic tool called DNA.

The Cape Coral Monster

Jan Cornell rushed home before her early-morning shift in May 1990 to find her Cape Coral townhouse silent — her eleven-year-old daughter Robin and roommate Lisa Story inside. The DNA left behind would wait twenty-six years for a match.

An Easy Target

Eighteen-year-old Kelsey Smith dashed into a Target in Overland Park, Kansas, on June 2, 2007, to grab a last-minute anniversary gift for her boyfriend. Store cameras recorded her leaving — and what happened in the seconds after she reached her car.

Apartment 9

Mindy Morgenstern, a farm-raised North Dakota college student adopted from Colombia, was found murdered in her Valley City apartment in September 2006. The DNA under her fingernails pointed somewhere unthinkable: a corrections officer living in her own building.

Sacred Trust

Thirteen-year-old Danny Croteau was found dead along the Chicopee River in 1972, and suspicion quickly settled on a family friend no one dared accuse: Father Richard Lavigne, the parish priest. The case would stay open for nearly fifty years.

The Krug Park Killers

A jogger's trembling 911 call one October morning in 2016 reported a body on a trail in St. Joseph, Missouri's Krug Park. Seventeen-year-old Kaytlin Root had been lured there by a Facebook message from someone calling herself 'Amanda Panda.'

The Bedroom Basher

While Marine Kevin Green stepped out for late-night food in September 1979, someone entered his Tustin, California apartment and savagely beat his pregnant wife, Dianna. She survived with shattered memories — and what she remembered would cost Kevin sixteen years.

Five Fatal Minutes

When nineteen-year-old Natalie Bollinger disappeared from Broomfield, Colorado, in December 2017, everyone pointed to the homeless man she had taken out a restraining order against. Then investigators found the Craigslist ad Natalie herself had posted.

The Night Shift

Nineteen-year-old Katie Poirier was working the late shift alone at D.J.'s Expressway Conoco in Moose Lake, Minnesota, in the spring of 1999 when a man walked in before closing. A grainy security tape captured what happened next — and launched a desperate search.

The Killer Poet

For twenty years, Chicago knew J.J. Jameson as a beloved poet, church historian, and community fixture. When state troopers walked into the Third Unitarian Church in 2005, they knew him as someone else: Norman Porter, a double murderer who had escaped a Massachusetts prison.

Shared Psychosis

Swedish twins Ursula and Sabina Eriksson lived quiet, unremarkable lives an ocean apart for forty years. Then, in May 2008, within hours of reuniting in Ireland, something shifted — setting off one of the most bizarre and baffling cases ever caught on camera.

The Stanford Cold Case

'Hey, we've got a stiff in here.' Security guard Stephen Crawford's oddly detached radio call summoned police to Stanford Memorial Church at dawn in October 1974, where newlywed Arlis Perry lay dead beneath the stained glass. The hunt for her killer would span forty-four years.

The Greek Pilot

Helicopter pilot Babis Anagnostopoulos wooed teenage Caroline Crouch on the idyllic Greek island of Alonnisos, buzzing her schoolyard to impress her. Years later, he would tell police a harrowing story about a home invasion — a story technology would put to the test.

Count to Three

A security camera caught sixteen-year-old Skylar Neese slipping out her bedroom window at 12:30 a.m. and climbing into a waiting car in Star City, West Virginia. She knew the people inside — which made what happened next all the more incomprehensible.

The Pink Notebook

Tracey Richter told the 911 dispatcher that two intruders had attacked her in her Early, Iowa home and that she had shot one to save her children. The dead man was a quiet twenty-year-old neighbor — and a pink notebook would tell a far stranger story.

The Forbidden Closet

For years, Michele Kalina kept one closet in the family's Reading, Pennsylvania apartment locked, forbidding her daughter ever to look inside. In July 2010, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth finally opened it — and called 911 about what she found in a cooler.

The Reno Predator

Nineteen-year-old Brianna Denison fell asleep on a friend's couch near the University of Nevada, Reno campus in January 2008, a teddy bear tucked under her head. By morning she was gone — and police realized a predator had been stalking the university district for months.

The Long Walk Home

Seventeen-year-old Mary Quigley never made it home from a back-to-school keg party in Santa Clara, California, in September 1977. For decades the question of who followed her into the night went unanswered — until DNA pointed to a name: Richard Archibeque.