Holly Kristen Piirainen was a 10-year-old American murder victim from Grafton, Massachusetts. She and her brother had been visiting their grandparents in Sturbridge, Massachusetts when Holly was murdered. Her murder remains unsolved.
On December 19, 1959, Christine and Cliff Walker and their two children were murdered at their home in Osprey, Florida. The case is unsolved.
Dawn Olanick, previously known as Princess Doe, was an unidentified American teenage decedent from Bohemia, New York, who was found murdered in Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown Township, New Jersey on July 15, 1982. Her face had been bludgeoned beyond recognition. She was the first unidentified decedent to be entered in the National Crime Information Center. Olanick was publicly identified on the 40th anniversary of her discovery.
Ruth Marie Terry, also known as Lady of the Dunes, was a formerly unidentified murder victim found on July 26, 1974, in the Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States. Her body was exhumed in 1980, 2000, and 2013 in efforts to identify her. On October 31, 2022, the FBI field office in Boston announced that Terry had been officially identified. Her husband, Guy Muldavin, was officially named as her killer on August 28, 2023.
Tammy A. Vincent was a teenage runaway who was murdered in September, 1979. Her body was not identified until 2007, twenty-eight years after her death. It was previously believed she may have been a victim of the notorious Green River killings. Vincent's case has not been officially solved. NCIS cast member Pauley Perrette collaborated with the popular television show America's Most Wanted in 2009 to work on solving the case.
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.
Gwenn Marie Story was a 19-year-old American woman who was murdered in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 14, 1979. Her body remained unidentified for 44 years before being identified via DNA analysis and genetic genealogy in December 2023. Prior to her 2023 identification, Story was nicknamed "Sahara Sue" and "Jane Las Vegas Doe" because her body was found near the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, at the intersection of Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard. Developments indicated she may have used the name "Shawna" or "Shauna" when she was alive, though this proved unfounded.
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.
CeCe Moore is an American genetic genealogist who has been described as the country's foremost such entrepreneur. She has appeared on many TV shows and worked as a genetic genealogy researcher for others such as Finding Your Roots. She has reportedly helped law enforcement agencies in identifying suspects in over 300 cold cases using DNA and genetic genealogy. In May 2020, she began appearing in a prime time ABC television series called The Genetic Detective in which each episode recounts a cold case she helped solve. In addition to her television work, she is known for pioneering the genetic genealogy methodologies used by adoptees and others of unknown origin for identifying biological family.
Deanna Lee Criswell was an American girl from Washington state who was murdered by firearm at age 16 and remained unidentified for 27 years. Criswell's body was found on November 25, 1987, in Marana, Arizona, near Tucson. The Marana Police Department announced her identification on February 11, 2015, aided by the sophisticated technology of forensic facial reconstruction and DNA analysis, and by websites set up by amateurs to help identify missing and unidentified persons.
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.
David Arthur Stack was an American man who was murdered while hitchhiking from his home in Broomfield, Colorado to California. Stack was murdered by an unknown assailant or assailants in Wendover, Utah. His body was found approximately one day after his murder in a landfill in rural Tooele County, although he remained an unidentified decedent for 39 years until 2015 when his body was identified via a comparison of both dental records and genetic testing.
The Norfolk headless body case relates to a woman who was murdered around the first or second week of August 1974. Her decapitated body was found near Swaffham, Norfolk, England on 27 August 1974. Her head has never been found. Although the woman has never been identified, one theory being investigated is that she was a sex worker known as "The Duchess" who worked the Great Yarmouth docks under that pseudonym prior to her disappearance in mid-1974.
Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. is a company based in Reston, Virginia, that develops nanopharmaceuticals and provides DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement organizations.
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.
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 offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
Joseph William Kappen, also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who committed the rape and murder of three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his home town of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.
Ruth Belle Waymire, formerly known as Millie Doe, was a formerly unidentified female murder victim whose dismembered body was found in Spokane, Washington in 1984. Her body was recovered from the Spokane River on June 20, 1984, and was missing the hands, feet, and head. Fourteen years later, in 1998, a skull was found elsewhere in Spokane that was later determined as belonging to Waymire. While transporting the skull for forensic analysis, the detective responsible for the case was accompanied by his young daughter, who said, "Since we have another person in the room, we should name her. Let's call her Millie". She was identified on March 29, 2023 by Othram.
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.
