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This article may present fringe theories, without giving appropriate weight to the mainstream view and explaining the responses to the fringe theories.(August 2015) |
This list of unsolved deaths includes well-known cases where:
Cases where there are unofficial alternative theories about deaths – the most common theory being that the death was a homicide – can be found under: Death conspiracy theories.
A presumption of death occurs when a person is believed to be dead, despite the absence of direct proof of the person's death, such as the finding of remains attributable to that person. Such a presumption is typically made by an individual when a person has been missing for an extended period and in the absence of any evidence that person is still alive—or after a shorter period, but where the circumstances surrounding a person's disappearance overwhelmingly support the belief that the person is dead. The presumption becomes certainty if the person has not been located for a period of time that has exceeded their probable life span, such as in the case of Amelia Earhart or Jack the Ripper.
Molly Anne Bish was a sixteen-year-old American girl from rural Worcester County, Massachusetts, who disappeared while working as a lifeguard in her hometown of Warren, Massachusetts. Her remains were found three years later in neighboring Hampden County after what became the largest search in the state's history. Police believe Bish was the victim of a homicide and several suspects have been publicly identified, but the case remains officially unresolved as of 2024.
"Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?" is a graffito that appeared in 1944 following the 1943 discovery by four teenagers of the skeletonised remains of a woman inside a wych elm in Worcestershire, England. The phrase, or a variant with the preposition "in" and/or the spelling "Witch", is also used to refer to the unsolved case of the circumstances of her death. The woman—whose death is estimated to have occurred in 1941—remains unidentified, and the current location of her skeleton and autopsy report is unknown.
John Brennan Crutchley was an American convicted kidnapper, rapist, and possible serial killer who was suspected of murdering up to thirty women but was never tried for nor convicted of murder. He was called the Vampire Rapist because he drained the blood of his one confirmed victim almost to the point of death while he repeatedly raped her.
The Connecticut River Valley Killer, also known as the Valley Killer, is moniker for an unidentified American serial killer believed to be responsible for at least seven murders of young women in the Connecticut River Valley of the Northeastern United States between 1978 and 1988.
Debra Louise Jackson, informally known as "Orange Socks" when unidentified, was an American murder victim who went unidentified for nearly 40 years before being identified through a DNA match with her surviving sister in 2019. Her murder is believed to have taken place on October 30 or 31, 1979 in Georgetown, Texas. Her body was found naked except for the pair of orange socks from which the nickname was derived. She had been strangled and was believed to have died only hours before the discovery.
The Jamison family deaths occurred on or after October 8, 2009, when the Jamison family of Eufaula, Oklahoma, United States – Bobby Jamison, his wife Sherilynn, and daughter Madyson – mysteriously disappeared. The family was reportedly considering the purchase of a 40-acre plot of land near Red Oak, about 30 mi (48 km) from Eufaula, at the time that they vanished. Their suspected remains were found in November 2013 and positively identified by the Oklahoma medical examiner on July 3, 2014. No cause of death was determined, and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance remain unknown.
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.
Bella Neveah Amoroso Bond, previously known as the Deer Island Jane Doe and "Baby Doe", was an American child whose body was found in a plastic bag on the shore of Deer Island in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 25, 2015.
Neal Martin Falls was an American suspected serial killer who was shot and killed in self-defense by Heather Saul, a woman in Charleston, West Virginia. Falls had been stopped by police in over twenty states during his life but did not incur any serious criminal charges. Only after his death did police discover evidence possibly tying Falls to other crimes.
Crimes That Shook Britain is a television series first aired in 2008 on Crime & Investigation UK, focusing on uncovering the truth behind crimes that shocked the nation. Some episodes were also rebroadcast in random episode order from 2014 to 2019, on Channel 5 originally under the title Britain's Worst Crimes.
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.
Jessie Earl was a 22-year-old student who disappeared from Eastbourne, England in May 1980. It was not until 1989 that her remains were discovered in thick undergrowth on Beachy Head, where she would regularly take walks. The inquest into her death was criticised and attracted considerable controversy in the long term after it was concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" to determine whether she had been murdered, despite the fact that she had been found with her bra tied around her wrists and without any of her other clothes or belongings. Her parents insisted she must have been murdered, but the inquest into her death recorded an open verdict, leading to the key forensic evidence being destroyed in 1997 since the case had not been classed as murder. Despite this, in 2000 Sussex Police opened a murder investigation after further forensic, scene, witness and pathology inquiries, saying that they believed she was murdered.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company also offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, both closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
Shaina Ashley Kirkpatrick and her sister, Shausha Latine Henson, are two missing American children who vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2001 from Portland, Oregon, United States. The siblings accompanied their mother, Kimyala Henson, on a road trip with Kimyala's childhood friend, Christina Noel Mayer, and Mayer's boyfriend, Frank Lee Oehring. The group had intended to travel to Canada, but first drove to California, where Kimyala obtained her birth certificate.
Media related to Unsolved deaths at Wikimedia Commons