Jennifer Joyce Kesse is an American woman from Orlando, Florida, who has been missing since January 23, 2006. Shortly after she vanished, Kesse's car was discovered parked around a mile from her home. Security footage recorded a person parking Kesse's car and walking away; the person could not be identified due to poor camera quality and the absence of any visible distinguishing physical features. The case received local and national press attention.
Crystal Gail Mangum is an American former exotic dancer from Durham, North Carolina, United States, who has been incarcerated for murder since 2013. In 2006, she came to attention in national news reports for having made false allegations of rape against lacrosse players in the Duke lacrosse case. Mangum's work in the sex industry as a black woman while the young men she accused were white generated extensive media interest and academic debate about race, class, gender, and the politicization of the justice system.
James Paul Freund and Pamela Mae Buckley, commonly known as the Sumter County Does, Jock Doe and Jane Doe respectively, were two previously unidentified American murder victims found in Sumter County, South Carolina, on August 9, 1976. They had apparently traveled through various places in the United States before being murdered in South Carolina. This was inferred from some of their belongings.
Tammy Lynn Leppert was an American actress, model and beauty queen who went missing under mysterious circumstances at the age of 18.
The Edgecombe County serial killer is an unidentified serial killer in the surroundings of Edgecombe and Halifax counties in North Carolina, United States. There are ten suspected victims, all African-American women, and the remains of eight have been recovered. Because some of the victims had been found near the Seven Bridges Road in Rocky Mount, the culprit has also been called The Seven Bridges Killer. All the victims were black, engaged in prostitution and had problems with drug addiction at various times.
Sherri Ann Jarvis was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder, and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.
Jason Patrick Callahan, previously known as Grateful Doe and Jason Doe, was an American man who was killed in a car accident on June 26, 1995, in Emporia, Greensville County, Virginia. His body remained nameless until December 9, 2015. Earlier in 2015, photographs of an unknown male surfaced on a Facebook page for the John Doe. DNA testing later confirmed Callahan to be the unidentified man.
Unidentified decedent, or unidentified person, is a corpse of a person whose identity cannot be established by police and medical examiners. In many cases, it is several years before the identities of some UIDs are found, while in some cases, they are never identified. A UID may remain unidentified due to lack of evidence as well as absence of personal identification such as a driver's license. Where the remains have deteriorated or been mutilated to the point that the body is not easily recognized, a UID's face may be reconstructed to show what they had looked like before death. UIDs are often referred to by the placeholder names "John Doe" or "Jane Doe". In a database maintained by the Ontario Provincial Police, 371 unidentified decedents were found between 1964 and 2015.
The Redhead murders is the media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded females in the United States between October 1978 and 1992, believed to have been committed by an unidentified male serial killer. The murders believed to be related have occurred in states including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The murders may have continued until 1992. The victims, many remaining unidentified for years, were usually women with reddish hair, whose bodies were abandoned along major highways in the United States. Officials believe that the women were likely hitchhiking or may have engaged in prostitution.
Michelle Angela Garvey was an American teenage girl murdered in Texas within a month of running away from her home in Connecticut. Her body was quickly found but remained unidentified until a 2014 DNA test, after an amateur Internet researcher suggested a match between the Texas unidentified decedent and Connecticut missing-person data.
Brenda Marie Gerow, previously known as Pima County Jane Doe, was a formerly unidentified American murder victim whose body was found on April 8, 1981. In late 2014, a photograph of a facial reconstruction of the victim was made public that led to Gerow's identification the next year. She had been buried under a headstone with the placeholder name of "Jane Doe" with the phrase "UNK – 1981". Gerow's body remained unidentified for 34 years until it was announced that her remains had positively been identified.
Sharon Lee Gallegos was a formerly unidentified American murder victim known as Little Miss Nobody whose body was found in Congress, Yavapai County, Arizona on July 31, 1960. Her remains were estimated to have been discovered within one to two weeks of the date of her murder. Due to the advanced state of decomposition of the child's remains, the specific cause of death of Gallegos has never been established, although her death has always been considered to be a homicide.
Martha Marie Morrison was a 17-year-old American girl who was murdered in 1974, and whose remains went unidentified for over 40 years after their discovery.
Cynthia "Cindy" Gastelle was a formerly unidentified American murder victim who disappeared on April 3, 1980. Her body was found two years later, but remained unidentified for 30 years before the matching of mitochondrial DNA entered into the national DNA database provided her identity.
On January 29, 2011, Bethany Anne Decker left her grandparents' home and returned to her apartment in Ashburn, Virginia. Her then-boyfriend, Ronald Roldan, claimed he saw her there later that day. She has not been seen since.
DNA Doe Project is an American nonprofit volunteer organization formed to identify unidentified deceased persons using forensic genealogy. Volunteers identify victims of automobile accidents, homicide, and unusual circumstances and persons who committed suicide under an alias. The group was founded in 2017 by Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press.
Robert "Bobby" Adam Whitt and Myoung Hwa Cho were two formerly unidentified murder victims who were killed in 1998. They remained unidentified until they were both identified using GEDmatch in early 2019. While unidentified, Whitt was nicknamed Mebane Child and the Boy Under the Billboard.
The 1996 Raleigh murders were a series of six murders and several rapes targeted towards female residents of the Raleigh, North Carolina area occurring from January to December 1996. Authorities, at the time, believed the killings to be the work of a serial killer, and the cases were investigated under that belief. During the investigation a homeless drifter named John Williams Jr. was arrested for two of the murders, for which he was later tried and convicted, and authorities declared him the prime suspect in the other cases. As other evidence emerged, it was revealed that multiple people perpetrated the murders as Leaman Evans was convicted for the sole murder of Dewanna Burt. The other three murders of Dawn Grandy, Cynthia Brown and Patricia Woods are still unsolved sadly.
Harold Dean Clouse Jr. and Tina Linn Clouse, formerly known as the Harris County Does, were a pair of formerly unidentified murder victims found outside of Houston, Texas in January, 1981. After moving in the summer of 1980 with their infant daughter, Holly Marie, from Volusia County, Florida to Lewisville, Texas, the Clouses stopped contacting their families in October, 1980. Their remains were found in a wooded area north of Houston on January 12, 1981. The bodies were found within feet of each other, both significantly decomposed, with a post-mortem interval of approximately two months. Dean Clouse had been bound and beaten to death, and Tina Clouse was strangled. Holly Marie’s remains were not found with or near her parents' remains. After the two bodies were not identified and the case grew cold, they were buried in anonymous graves, where they remained unidentified for 41 years. In 2011, the Clouses’ bodies were exhumed for genetic testing. In 2021, forensic genealogists positively identified the Harris County Does as Dean and Tina Clouse, however, Holly Marie’s whereabouts remained unaccounted for. In 2022, Holly Marie was located alive in Oklahoma, with no memory of the traumatic events of her infancy.
Linda Marie Pagano, formerly known as Strongsville Jane Doe, was an American murder victim from Akron, Ohio who was an unidentified decedent for 44 years. Following an argument with her stepfather on September 1, 1974, Pagano left her stepfather's apartment and was never seen again. On February 5, 1975, partial skeletal remains of a white female were found by three boys in a park in Strongsville, Ohio. After remaining unidentified, the bones were buried in an unmarked grave. Due to a clerical error, the bones were never entered into databases of unidentified decedents, and the case was largely forgotten about. In 2016, a college student doing genealogy research of her own family rediscovered the unidentified body. After posting about it online, the case gained the attention of Carl Koppelman, a forensic sketch artist. The new attention to the case led to a connection being made by the Akron police, and in June 2018 the remains were conclusively identified as Linda Pagano.
