The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings. He targeted three young couples and a lone male cab driver. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history", and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives.
Leonard Thomas Lake, also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American serial killer. During the mid-1980s, he and his accomplice, British Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, located 150 miles east of San Francisco. After his 1985 arrest on unrelated charges, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes, and journals found at Lake's cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.
John David Gosch was a paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa, who disappeared between 6 and 7 a.m. on September 5, 1982. He is presumed to have been kidnapped. Gosch's picture was among the first to be featured on milk cartons as part of a campaign to find missing children. As of 2024, there have been no arrests made and the case is now considered cold, but remains open.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, burglar, peeping tom, former police officer and mechanic who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. He is responsible for three known separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
Thor Nis Christiansen was a Danish-American serial killer and necrophile from Solvang, California. He committed his first three murders in late 1976 and early 1977, killing young women of similar appearance from nearby Isla Vista. His crimes motivated large demonstrations opposed to violence against women, and in favor of better transportation for the young people residing in Isla Vista. In 1979, he killed a young woman from Los Angeles. A fifth intended victim escaped with a bullet in her head, and later identified him in a Los Angeles bar.
Stephen Peter Morin was an American serial killer who was suspected of being responsible for at least forty murders of young girls and women and 7 men in the period from 1969 to 1981. Since Morin led a transient lifestyle and constantly moved around the country, the exact number of his victims is uncertain, but he is suspected of a total 48 violent crimes across the United States. In the early 1980s, he was pursued by the federal authorities. Morin had created multiple aliases. These names included Rich Clark, Robert Fred Generoso, Thomas David Hones, Ray Constantino, and Constatine. The court found Morin sane and sentenced him to death by lethal injection. In 1985, he was executed by Texas after waiving his appeals.
On 21 March 2002, Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, was reported missing by her parents after failing to return home from school and not being seen since walking along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, that afternoon. Following an extensive search, her remains were discovered in Yateley Heath Woods in Yateley, Hampshire, on 18 September.
The Springfield Three refers to an unsolved missing persons case that began on June 7, 1992, when friends Suzanne "Suzie" Streeter and Stacy McCall, and Streeter's mother, Sherrill Levitt, went missing from Levitt's home in Springfield, Missouri, United States. All of their personal belongings, including cars and purses, were left behind. There were no signs of a struggle except a broken porch light globe; there was also a message on the answering machine that police believe might have provided a clue about the disappearances, but it was inadvertently erased.
Maura Murray is an American woman who disappeared on the evening of February 9, 2004, after a car crash on Route 112 near Woodsville, New Hampshire, a village in the town of Haverhill. Her whereabouts remain unknown. Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student completing her junior year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the time of her disappearance.
Pranknet, also known as Prank University, was an anonymous prank calling virtual community that was involved in a string of malicious pranks and instances of telephone harassment, especially during 2009–2011. Their pranks were coordinated through an online chat room, and convinced others to cause damage to hotels and fast food restaurants of more than $60,000. The group was founded by a man who later referred to himself as "Dex1x1", later identified as a Canadian named Tariq Malik. The group has been linked to nearly 60 separate incidents.
The disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick occurred on New Year's Day 2008. At 10pm on that day, 15-year-old Irish girl Amy Fitzpatrick said goodbye to her friend Ashley Rose, with whom she had been babysitting Ashley's brother at a house in Mijas Costa in Málaga, Spain. Fitzpatrick should have arrived at her home a few minutes later, as it was only a short walk away. She never arrived home and has not been heard from or seen since that night.
Carol Jenkins was an African-American woman who was murdered on September 16, 1968, by two white men in a sundown town in Indiana. Her murder remained unsolved for over thirty years until a tip led investigators to one of her alleged killers in the early 2000s. Her alleged killer, Kenneth Clay Richmond, who was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, was declared incompetent to stand trial and died of bladder cancer in 2002. His accomplice was never identified
Etta H. Riel was an American woman who disappeared from Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1934. Her missing person case remains unsolved.
Laureen Ann Rahn is an American teenager who vanished under mysterious circumstances from her home in Manchester, New Hampshire. On the night of her disappearance, Rahn was accompanied by a male and female friend at the apartment she shared with her mother, Judith, who was out on a date with her boyfriend.
Nyleen Kay Marshall is an American girl who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the Elkhorn Mountains in the Helena National Forest near Helena, Montana. Two years after her disappearance, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, other missing person non-profits, as well as Marshall's family, received phone calls and letters from an anonymous man claiming to have abducted Marshall. In the letters and phone calls, the man detailed sexual abuse but alleged that Marshall was safe and had traveled the world with him. The identity of the anonymous caller and writer is unknown.
Katheryne Scott Eggleston is an American woman who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Portland, Oregon, United States. Her disappearance was profiled extensively in The Last Time We Saw Her, a 2012 nonfiction book by Robert Scott chronicling the murder of Brooke Wilberger as well as several other Oregon missing person cases. Eggleston's disappearance is considered one of the most notorious cold cases in Portland history.
In the predawn hours of August 23, 2009, Toni Sharpless and her friend Crystal Johns left a party at the home of Philadelphia 76er Willie Green in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, United States. Not long after leaving, Johns suggested to Sharpless, whose erratic and combative behavior had led Green to ask that they leave, that she was not sober enough to drive; in response, Sharpless pulled over and told Johns to get out, which she did, and then drove off. Sharpless has not been seen since then.
On January 5, 1935, a man who had given his name as Roland T. Owen, later identified as Artemus Ogletree, died at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, United States from beating and stabbing injuries. His death was preceded by a two-day stay in Room 1046 at the Hotel President in what is now the city's Power & Light District marked by communication with someone named "Don", and unusual behavior and incidents noted by the hotel's staff, before he was found wounded in his room the morning of his death. When no next of kin could be located, leading to suspicions that his name was an alias, his body was stored in a local funeral parlor for almost two months. A planned burial in the city's potter's field was averted when an anonymous donor provided funds for a funeral and a floral arrangement signed by the name "Louise".
Reginald Perkins was an American serial killer and sex offender who was executed in Texas for the December 2000 murder of his stepmother. He was also linked with DNA to the murders of two women in Fort Worth in 1991, and he is suspected of killing a further three women in Ohio in the early 1980s.
Cynthia Elizabeth James was a Canadian nurse who disappeared from Richmond, British Columbia, on May 25, 1989. She was found deceased approximately two weeks later in the yard of an abandoned house, hogtied and with a nylon stocking wrapped around her throat. An autopsy indicated that she had died of an overdose of morphine, diazepam, and flurazepam. James's death was notable as she had made numerous reports to authorities dating back to 1982, alleging that she had been a victim of various acts of stalking, harassment, vandalism, home invasions, and physical attacks perpetrated by an unknown assailant.
