Volume 25

Jessica Heeringa was closing the Norton Shores Exxon alone on an April night in 2013 when a silver minivan backed up to the rear door, headlights off. The station had no security cameras — and Jessica was never seen again. Read the full story →

The neighbors on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia had complained for years about the fortified house at 6221, home to John Africa and his followers. In May 1985, the city's answer arrived from a police helicopter. Read the full story →

Born on a Brazilian farm with a dent in his skull from his father's boot, Pedro Rodrigues Filho — 'Pedrinho Matador' — grew into a killer who claimed his victims deserved it, and whose count defied belief. Read the full story →

Nineteen-year-old psychology student Özgecan Aslan boarded a minibus home from campus in Mersin, Turkey — a ride that would end in the hills and ignite protests across the entire country. Read the full story →

Bank president Raymond Scheublin came home to Bedford, Massachusetts, in June 1971 to find his wife Natalie bound and dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. The case would sit cold for half a century. Read the full story →

A Springfield pastor called police with a chilling arithmetic: two members of the Staudte family were already dead and cremated, a third was failing fast in intensive care — and the mother at the center of it all did not seem afraid. Read the full story →

Gladys Hensley, 62, was a quiet fixture of her Eugene, Oregon, senior apartment complex until someone sliced through her window screen in the night. Finding the stranger who climbed in would take decades. Read the full story →

Terry Peroni was last seen walking into the Oregon woods with Marcus Sanfratello after a Fourth of July party in 1983. What searchers eventually found along the Illinois River kept the case alive for forty years. Read the full story →

An Arizona trooper checking a darkened big rig on I-10 in 1990 found a naked woman chained inside the sleeper cab — and driver Robert Ben Rhoades calmly insisted it was all a misunderstanding. Read the full story →

Retired Austin TV executive Steven Beard called 911 unable to explain why his stomach had 'blown out' as he slept. The shotgun shell at the foot of his bed pointed toward his young wife Celeste — and her friend Tracey Tarlton. Read the full story →

For two years a predator the papers called the Beast of Buckland stalked the women of Portsmouth after dark. Then 24-year-old barmaid Linda Cook took the short way home — and police fixed on the wrong man. Read the full story →

Hours after toasting a real estate deal with a Moscow Mule mixed by his wife Kouri, Eric Richins was found cold on his bedroom floor in Kamas, Utah — no blood, no struggle, and no obvious reason a healthy 39-year-old should be dead. Read the full story →