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Colin Pitchfork is an English child-murderer and child-rapist. He was the first person convicted of rape and murder using DNA profiling after he murdered two girls in neighbouring Leicestershire villages: Lynda Mann in Narborough in November 1983 and Dawn Ashworth in Enderby in July 1986. He was arrested on 19 September 1987 and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 January 1988 after pleading guilty to both murders. The sentencing judge gave him a 30-year minimum term.
Marcia Virginia Trimble was a nine-year-old girl who disappeared on February 25, 1975, while delivering Girl Scout Cookies in the affluent Green Hills area of Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Her body was discovered 33 days later on Easter Sunday near the Trimble family home. She had been sexually assaulted. During the early years of their inquiry into the assault and murder, the police persisted in investigating one particular suspect, finally charging him in 1979 but he was released in 1980 for lack of evidence.
The Wanda Beach Murders, also known simply as "Wanda", were the unsolved murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock at Wanda Beach near Cronulla in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 11 January 1965. The victims, both aged 15, were best friends and neighbours from the suburb of West Ryde, and their partially buried bodies were discovered the next day. The brutal nature of the slayings and the fact that they occurred on a deserted, windswept beach brought massive publicity to the case. By April 1966, police had interviewed some 7,000 people, making it the largest investigation in Australian history. It remains one of the most infamous unsolved Australian murder cases of the 1960s, and New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide case.
Christopher Bernard Wilder, also known as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer, was an Australian-American serial killer who abducted at least twelve young women and girls, killing eight of them during a six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States in early 1984. Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York. Wilder victimized attractive young women, most of whom he would entice by promising to take their pictures. After subduing them, he would torture and rape them before shooting, stabbing with a knife, or strangling them to death. Two or more of his victims were electrocuted using a makeshift electrical cord.
The murders of Eve Stratford and Lynne Weedon, two young women from London, England, occurred in separate, sexually motivated attacks by the same unidentified individual during 1975. Stratford was a bunny girl and Weedon was a schoolgirl who was killed almost six months later, on the other side of London. After Weedon's cold case was re-opened in 2004, new DNA techniques revealed that she and Stratford had been murdered by the same person. Stratford's case was re-opened in 2007, but neither case has been solved. A £40,000 reward for information leading to the killer remains on offer.
The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Robertson Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. Coincidentally, he died on the same day the BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders.
Lindsay Jo Rimer was a 13-year-old British girl from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire who disappeared on the evening of 7 November 1994. The following year, her body was found in the Rochdale Canal outside the town; she had been strangled.
Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979. He also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 25 years to life for two further murders committed in New York and was also indicted for a murder in Wyoming, although charges were dropped due to a technicality. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be as high as 130.
Bobby Jack Fowler was an American rapist and suspected serial killer who was active in the United States and Canada from 1973 to 1995. He died in prison of lung cancer during a 16-year sentence following a conviction for rape, kidnapping and attempted rape in Newport, Oregon, in 1996.
The Flat-Tire murders were a series of unsolved murders in Broward and Dade County, Florida, occurring between February 1975 and January 1976. The name originated from the investigators' belief that, when the offender committed two of the murders, he had deflated the tires of the victims' cars. The list of suspected victims ultimately included twelve girls and women whose bodies were discovered in or near South Florida canals.
Charlene Elizabeth Caroline Downes disappeared on 1 November 2003, when she was 14, from her home town of Blackpool, a seaside town in north-west England. Downes was last seen in an area of the town centre that contained several takeaway and fast-food units. Lancashire Constabulary, the police force investigating her disappearance, believe that she was murdered within hours of the last sighting.
Marcia Lenore Sossoman King was a 21-year-old Arkansas woman who was murdered in April 1981 and whose body was discovered in Troy, Ohio approximately 48 hours after her murder. Her body remained unidentified for almost 37 years before being identified via DNA analysis and genetic genealogy in April 2018. King was one of the first unidentified decedents to be identified via this method of forensic investigation.
Tammy Corrine Terrell was an American murder victim from Roswell, New Mexico. Her body was discovered on October 5, 1980, in Henderson, Nevada, and remained unidentified until December 2021. Her case has been the subject of extensive efforts by investigators and has been highlighted as inspiring other work to solve cold cases of unidentified murder victims.
DNA phenotyping is the process of predicting an organism's phenotype using only genetic information collected from genotyping or DNA sequencing. This term, also known as molecular photofitting, is primarily used to refer to the prediction of a person's physical appearance and/or biogeographic ancestry for forensic purposes.
The murder of Angela Samota occurred on October 13, 1984, when she was attacked while in her apartment, raped and killed. The case remained unsolved until DNA evidence surfaced in the 2000s, following which charges were brought against a convicted rapist, Donald Andrew Bess Jr., who was subsequently tried and received a death sentence. He died of natural causes while awaiting execution in October 2022.
The Pittsburg serial murders refers to the killings of one man and four women in Pittsburg, California, in late 1998 and early 1999. At the time of the killings, the city had a high crime rate, which coupled with the recent murders of several people, culminated in public outcry from both the public and the media for a resolution to the situation and capture of the supposed serial killer. Despite an investigation by the FBI and a financial reward for the killer(s)'s capture being offered by the then-Governor of California Gray Davis, none of the murders were ever solved.
On February 28, 1999, the body of 13-year-old Minerliz "Minnie" Soriano was found bound and wrapped inside a garbage bag, dumped inside a garbage dumpster behind a video store in Co-op City section of the Bronx, New York City. She had been strangled and sexually abused, and missing for three days after leaving her middle school. Her case went unsolved for twenty-two years, until Police used advanced DNA technology to help them arrest a suspect in November 2021.
Jacqueline Susan Ansell-Lamb and Barbara Janet Mayo were two young women who were murdered in separate incidents in 1970. Both women were last seen hitch-hiking along motorways in England, and both were sexually assaulted before being strangled to death.
Alun Kyte, known as the Midlands Ripper, is an English double murderer, serial rapist, child rapist, paedophile and suspected serial killer. He was convicted in 2000 of the murders of two sex workers, 20-year-old Samo Paull and 30-year-old Tracey Turner, whom he killed in December 1993 and March 1994 respectively. After his conviction, investigators announced their suspicions that Kyte could have been behind a number of other unsolved murders of sex workers across Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. He was apprehended due to the ground-breaking investigations of a wider police inquiry named Operation Enigma, which was launched in 1996 in response to the murders of Paull, Turner and of a large number of other sex workers. Kyte was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment for the murders of Paull and Turner.
References
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- 1 2 3 4 "Timeline: Dickinson inquiry". BBC World News. June 28, 2005. Retrieved May 1, 2009.
- 1 2 McGreevy, Ronan (June 14, 2004). "Profile: Francisco Arce Montes". The Times. London. Retrieved May 1, 2009.[ dead link ]
- 1 2 Milmo, Cahal (June 11, 2004). "Tearful Montes tells family: ' I know you cannot forgive me'". The Independent. Retrieved May 1, 2009.
- 1 2 3 O'Neill, Sean (June 15, 2001). "Swiss seek Montes over school sex attacks". The Telegraph. Retrieved May 1, 2009.