John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the British and American legal system and aside generally in the United Kingdom and the United States when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or cannot be confirmed. These names are also often used to refer to a hypothetical "everyman" in other contexts, like John Q. Public or "Joe Public". There are many variants to the above names, including John /Jane Roe, John/Jane Smith, John/Jane Bloggs, and Johnie/Janie Doe or just Baby Doe for children. A. N. Other is also a placeholder name, mainly used in the United Kingdom — which is gender neutral — alongside Joe/Jo Bloggs and the now occasional use of the "John" and "Jane Doe" names.
Gary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders committed between the early 1980s and late 1990s. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second-most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders.
The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of thirteen known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, the murderer was never apprehended. In 2024, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office teamed up with the DNA Doe Project to exhume some of the victims and use investigative genetic genealogy to identify them.
Harvey Murray Glatman was an American serial killer and rapist during the late 1950s known as the Lonely Hearts Killer or the Glamour Girl Slayer. He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modeling career.
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.
Tammy Jo Alexander was an American teenage girl who was found murdered in the village of Caledonia, New York, on November 10, 1979. She had been fatally shot twice and left in a field just off U.S. Route 20 near the Genesee River after running away from her home in Brooksville, Florida, earlier that year. For more than three decades, she remained unidentified under the names Caledonia Jane Doe or Cali Doe until January 26, 2015, when police in Livingston County, New York, announced her identity 35 years after her death.
Douglas Daniel Clark was an American serial killer and necrophile. Clark and his accomplice, Carol Mary Bundy, were collectively known as the Sunset Strip Killers and were responsible for the deaths of at least seven individuals although they are considered suspects in the deaths of several other women and young girls. Clark was charged with six murders in Los Angeles, California and was convicted in 1983. Clark's victims were typically young prostitutes or teenage runaways and his victims were decapitated and their severed heads kept as mementos.
The Doodler is an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for between six and sixteen murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, United States, between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname was given due to the perpetrator's habit of sketching his victims prior to stabbing them to death. The perpetrator met his victims at gay nightclubs, bars and restaurants.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings were part of a series of murders spanning from the early 1990s until 2011. Many of the victims' remains were found over a period of months in 2010 and 2011 during a police search of the area along Ocean Parkway, a road near the remote beach town of Gilgo on Long Island in Suffolk County, New York. The search was prompted by the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, who, like many of the known victims, worked as an escort and advertised on Craigslist. The perpetrator in the case is known as the Long Island Serial Killer.
The Bear Brook murders are female American murder victims, two discovered in 1985 and two in 2000, at Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, United States. All four of the victims were either partially or completely skeletonized; they were believed to have died between 1977 and 1981.
Peaches is an unidentified female whose torso was discovered on June 28, 1997, in Lakeview, New York, near Hempstead Lake State Park. The cause of the woman's death is listed as homicide, due to decapitation. As of 2025, she remains unidentified, and her skull has yet to be found. The woman had a tattoo on her left breast depicting a heart-shaped peach with a bite taken out of it and two drops falling from its core, which resulted in her nickname. By December 2016, additional skeletal remains found on Long Island in 2011 had been positively identified as belonging to Peaches, along with the remains of her child. As a result, Peaches is now linked to the Long Island serial killer as a potential victim.
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.
Carol Ann Cole was a 17-year-old American homicide victim whose body was discovered in early 1981 in Bellevue, Bossier Parish, Louisiana. The victim remained unidentified until 2015, when DNA tests confirmed her identity. Cole, native to Kalamazoo, Michigan, had been missing from San Antonio, Texas since 1980. Cole's killing remains unsolved, although the investigation is continuing.
Reet Silvia Jurvetson was an Estonian-Canadian woman who was murdered in California in November 1969 at age 19. Her body remained unidentified for 46 years, until an online mortuary photograph was recognized by her family and friends in 2015. Prior to her identification, Jurvetson's body had been informally known as "Sherry Doe" and officially as "Jane Doe 59."
Terry Peder Rasmussen was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who was convicted of one murder, and linked to at least five more in a series of crimes that stretched across the contiguous United States between 1978 and 2002. Due to his use of many aliases, most notably "Bob Evans", Rasmussen is known as the Chameleon Killer.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who was convicted of eight murders and confessed to committing 93 murders between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program has confirmed his involvement in at least 60 murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in American history. Little provided sketches for twenty-six of his victims although not all have been linked to known murders.
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.
The Great Basin Murders is the name given to a series of murders of at least nine women committed between 1983 and 1997 across the states of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. It derives its name from the Great Basin geographical area, as most of the victims had their bodies dumped near interstate highways that transverse it.
