100 cases indexed
Amy Hillyard, 52, co-owner of Farley's Coffee, went missing from her Oakland home on March 25, 2026. She was last seen on surveillance video at Dimond Park around 4:30 p.m. that day. She left without her phone, wallet, and keys. Classified as at-risk due to a medical condition. As of April 14, 2026, she has not been found.
Nancy Ellen Guthrie, 84-year-old mother of NBC Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing from her Catalina Foothills, Arizona home on February 1, 2026. Doorbell camera footage captured a masked, armed individual on her property in the early hours of February 1, and blood confirmed as hers was found at the entrance. Pima County Sheriff's Department and the FBI are investigating the case as a kidnapping. As of April 7, 2026, Nancy has not been located and no suspect has been charged in connection with her disappearance.
On New Year's Day 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck into a crowd celebrating on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, resulting in the deaths of 14 people and injuring dozens more. The attack, inspired by ISIS, unfolded as revelers rang in the New Year, and Jabbar was subsequently killed in a shootout with police. The incident marked a violent start to the year and raised concerns about domestic terrorism.
On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside the New York Hilton Midtown in what prosecutors allege was a premeditated attack by Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate. Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a nationwide manhunt, and charged with second-degree murder in New York state court and stalking charges in federal court. As of April 2026, Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges; his state trial is scheduled to begin September 8, 2026, and his federal trial is set for October 2026, with a federal judge having ruled that prosecutors cannot seek the death penalty.
Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old mother of three in Cohasset, Massachusetts, was murdered by her husband Brian Walshe on New Year's Day 2023. Brian dismembered her body and disposed of the remains across multiple locations. He was convicted of first-degree murder in July 2024 and sentenced to life without parole.
On November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves (21), Madison Mogen (21), Xana Kernodle (20), and Ethan Chapin (20) — were stabbed to death at an off-campus residence in Moscow, Idaho, in the early morning hours. Bryan Christopher Kohberger, a 28-year-old criminology PhD student at nearby Washington State University, was identified through investigative genetic genealogy linking his DNA to a knife sheath left at the scene, corroborated by surveillance footage of his white Hyundai Elantra and cellphone location data. Kohberger was arrested on December 30, 2022, in Pennsylvania and ultimately pleaded guilty on July 2, 2025, to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary; he was sentenced on July 23, 2025, to four consecutive life terms without parole plus ten years for burglary.
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was convicted in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy after billions in customer funds were secretly funneled to his hedge fund Alameda Research. He was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in March 2024, capping one of the largest financial fraud cases in American history.
Karen Read, a financial analyst, was charged with the second-degree murder of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, who was found dead in the snow outside a fellow officer's Canton, Massachusetts home on January 29, 2022. After a first trial ended in a hung jury mistrial in July 2024, Read was acquitted of murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene at her retrial on June 18, 2025, but was convicted of operating under the influence. The case became a national flashpoint over allegations of a law enforcement cover-up, investigator misconduct, and deep community polarization.
On January 3, 2022, 911 reported that 66-year-old Sheila Fletcher and her husband Clay Fletcher of Slaughter, Louisiana, had found their 36-year-old daughter Lacey Ellen Fletcher dead on their couch. It was revealed that for at least 12 years, Fletcher had been neglected by her parents after becoming unable to leave her house due to a cognitive health decline. It was discovered that after this decline, Sheila and Clay had left their daughter on their couch to suffer, failing to get her medical care; she was covered in her own excrement, and insects ate at her body.
On October 21, 2021, at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Bonanza City, New Mexico, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot and director Joel Souza was injured on the set of the film Rust when a live round was discharged from a revolver that actor Alec Baldwin was using as a prop.
In September 2021, 22-year-old Gabrielle Petito was reported missing during a cross-country road trip with her fiance Brian Laundrie. Her remains were found in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and her death was ruled a homicide by manual strangulation. Laundrie, who had returned home to Florida alone, was later found dead by suicide; the FBI concluded he was solely responsible for her death.
Richard Alexander Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina attorney from a powerful legal dynasty, was convicted in March 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul at the family's hunting estate on June 7, 2021. Prosecutors argued the killings were motivated by Murdaugh's desperation to conceal years of financial crimes, including embezzling approximately $9 million from clients and his law firm. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole for the murders, 27 years for state financial crimes, and 40 years in federal prison for fraud and money laundering, with the South Carolina Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on his appeal in February 2026.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, on May 25, 2020, by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes during an arrest. Bystander Darnella Frazier's video of the killing sparked worldwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice. Chauvin was convicted on all three state charges -- second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter -- on April 20, 2021, and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. He later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges and received a concurrent 21-year federal sentence. Three other officers involved were also convicted of federal civil rights violations. The case prompted sweeping police reform efforts in Minneapolis, including a federal consent decree.
Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were convicted of murdering Lori's two youngest children, JJ Vallow (7) and Tylee Ryan (16), and conspiring to kill Chad's first wife, Tammy Daybell. The case involved apocalyptic religious beliefs, multiple suspicious deaths, and a months-long search for the missing children, whose remains were found buried on Chad Daybell's Idaho property in June 2020. Lori was sentenced to life without parole in Idaho (2023) and received additional life sentences in Arizona (2025) for conspiracy to murder her ex-husband Charles Vallow. Chad was sentenced to death in Idaho (2024).
Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, vanished from New Canaan, Connecticut in May 2019 during a contentious divorce. Her estranged husband Fotis Dulos was charged with murder but died by suicide before trial in January 2020. Her body has never been found.
On February 24, 2019, a boat driven by an intoxicated Paul Murdaugh crashed into a bridge piling near Parris Island, South Carolina, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. The case exposed the Murdaugh family's power and influence in the Lowcountry legal system.
On August 13, 2018, Christopher Lee Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann Watts, and their two young daughters, Bella (age 4) and Celeste (age 3), at the family's home in Frederick, Colorado, before disposing of their bodies at a remote oil work site operated by his employer, Anadarko Petroleum. After initially denying involvement and making a televised plea for his family's return, Watts confessed to the killings on August 15, 2018, and was arrested. On November 6, 2018, he pleaded guilty to nine counts including five counts of first-degree murder under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty, and on November 19, 2018, he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 84 years without the possibility of parole.
InfoWars host Alex Jones was found liable for defamation after years of claiming the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. Courts awarded nearly $1.5 billion to victims' families in 2022.
On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history and sparked a nationwide gun control movement.
On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock fired from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay into a concert crowd, killing 60 and wounding over 400. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
On February 13, 2017, teenagers Abigail Williams (13) and Liberty German (14) were murdered while hiking near the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Carroll County, Indiana. Liberty's smartphone captured video and audio of a man on the bridge, including the words "down the hill," which became central to the investigation. Their bodies were discovered the following day approximately one mile from the bridge. The case remained unsolved for over five years until Richard Allen, a local CVS pharmacy technician, was arrested on October 26, 2022. Allen was tried in Carroll County from October 18 to November 11, 2024, and convicted on all four murder counts. On December 20, 2024, Judge Fran Gull sentenced Allen to 130 years in prison, imposing two consecutive 65-year terms.
In November 2016, Sherri Papini of Redding, California staged her own kidnapping, disappearing for 22 days before reappearing with self-inflicted injuries while falsely claiming she had been abducted by two Hispanic women. DNA evidence later revealed she had spent the time with an ex-boyfriend. She pleaded guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to 18 months.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a victim of years of Munchausen syndrome by proxy abuse at the hands of her mother Clauddine 'Dee Dee' Blanchard, conspired with her online boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to murder Dee Dee in their Springfield, Missouri home on June 10, 2015. The killing was discovered days later after alarming Facebook posts from Dee Dee's account. Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was paroled on December 28, 2023, after serving approximately eight years. Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder in November 2018 and sentenced to life without parole.
Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina attorney, was found to have systematically stolen millions of dollars from clients, including vulnerable injury victims and the family of his deceased housekeeper, over a period spanning more than a decade. He was convicted of numerous financial fraud charges in addition to the murders of his wife and son.
Aaron Hernandez, a former New England Patriots tight end, was convicted of first-degree murder in April 2015 for the June 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd and sentenced to life without parole. He was acquitted of a separate 2012 double homicide on April 14, 2017, but was found dead by suicide in his prison cell five days later at age 27. A posthumous examination by Boston University researchers revealed he had Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the most severe case ever documented in someone his age.
On April 15, 2013, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated two homemade pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and injuring more than 260 others. The ensuing manhunt paralyzed metropolitan Boston for days, culminating in Tamerlan's death in a Watertown shootout and Dzhokhar's capture hiding in a dry-docked boat. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on all 30 federal charges and sentenced to death; the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in March 2022 after a lower court had vacated it.
On February 19, 2013, the body of 21-year-old Canadian tourist Elisa Lam was discovered inside a rooftop water tank at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Her death was ruled an accidental drowning with bipolar disorder as a contributing factor, but the circumstances — including bizarre elevator surveillance footage — remain deeply mysterious.
South African Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a locked bathroom door on Valentine's Day 2013. He claimed he mistook her for an intruder. Convicted of murder in 2015, sentenced to 13 years and 5 months. Released on parole in January 2024.
In May 2012, Canadian pornographic actor Luka Magnotta murdered Chinese international student Jun Lin in Montreal, dismembered the body, and mailed severed limbs to political party offices and schools. He fled to Europe and was captured in Berlin. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2014.
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder but was acquitted by a jury on July 13, 2013, after claiming self-defense. The case sparked nationwide protests, intensified debates over racial profiling and stand-your-ground laws, and is widely credited with catalyzing the Black Lives Matter movement.
Israel Keyes was a methodical serial killer active from approximately 2001 to 2012, known for burying "murder kits" years in advance across the United States. He confessed to multiple murders before dying by suicide in his Anchorage jail cell in December 2012.
Pam Hupp is a Missouri woman who benefited financially from the 2011 stabbing death of her friend Betsy Faria, allowed Betsy's husband to be wrongfully convicted, and in 2016 shot and killed a disabled man she had lured to her home in a scheme to frame the exonerated husband. She pleaded guilty to the second murder in 2019 and faces trial for the first.
Nursing student Holly Bobo was abducted from her home in Parsons, Tennessee in April 2011. Her remains were found in 2014. Zachary Adams was convicted of her kidnapping, rape, and murder in 2017.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings involved the murders of at least eight women whose remains were discovered along Ocean Parkway on Long Island, New York, beginning in December 2010. Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old Manhattan architect, was arrested on July 13, 2023, after DNA from discarded pizza crust linked him to evidence found with the victims. On April 8, 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted to an eighth, with sentencing scheduled for June 17, 2026.
In 2009, Dalia Dippolito was caught on hidden camera hiring an undercover officer to murder her husband Mike Dippolito in Boynton Beach, Florida. Police staged a fake crime scene. After two mistrials, she was convicted in 2017.
Five-year-old Haleigh Cummings disappeared from her Satsuma, Florida home on February 10, 2009, while in the care of her father's teenage girlfriend Misty Croslin. Despite an extensive investigation, Haleigh has never been found and no one has been charged with her disappearance or death, which police consider a likely homicide.
Casey Marie Anthony was charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of her two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, in Orlando, Florida. The child was last seen on June 16, 2008, and was not reported missing for 31 days. On July 5, 2011, a jury acquitted Anthony of murder, aggravated manslaughter, and aggravated child abuse, but convicted her on four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to law enforcement. The verdict was widely regarded as one of the most controversial in modern American criminal justice. Two of the four misdemeanor convictions were later overturned on appeal in January 2013.
Jodi Ann Arias was convicted of the first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Victor Alexander, who was found dead at his Mesa, Arizona home on June 9, 2008, having been stabbed 27 times, had his throat slashed, and shot in the forehead. Arias was found guilty on May 8, 2013, after a nationally televised trial during which she claimed self-defense. After two juries deadlocked on the death penalty, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015.
Amanda Knox, an American exchange student, was wrongfully convicted alongside her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the November 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. After nearly four years in prison, Knox was acquitted in 2011, reconvicted in absentia in 2014, and definitively acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation in March 2015. Rudy Guede, whose DNA and fingerprints were found at the crime scene, was separately convicted and sentenced to 16 years. A slander conviction against Knox for falsely accusing her employer Patrick Lumumba during a coercive police interrogation was upheld by Italy's highest court in January 2025. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that Italy violated Knox's rights during the interrogation, and as of 2025, the ECHR has accepted a further appeal related to the slander conviction.
Three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the evening of May 3, 2007, while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant. The case became the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history, spawning parallel investigations by Portuguese and British police. German convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner was identified as the prime suspect in 2020, but as of April 2026 he has never been charged in connection with Madeleine's disappearance, and the case remains unsolved.
In August 2006, John Mark Karr falsely confessed to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey while living in Bangkok. DNA evidence excluded him and all charges were dropped.
Steven Avery, wrongfully convicted of sexual assault in 1985 and exonerated by DNA evidence in 2003 after serving 18 years, was arrested in 2005 and convicted in 2007 for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. His nephew Brendan Dassey, then 16 years old with significant intellectual disabilities, was convicted separately based on a confession widely criticized as coerced. Their cases became the subject of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015), which raised worldwide questions about police misconduct, evidence planting, and the reliability of juvenile confessions, and prompted years of post-conviction legal battles that continue to this day.
Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to Aruba after being last seen leaving a nightclub with Joran van der Sloot and two other men. Despite extensive international searches, her body was never recovered, and she was declared legally dead in January 2012. In October 2023, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud charges in U.S. federal court and confessed to killing Holloway, receiving a 20-year sentence to run concurrently with the 28-year sentence he was already serving in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores.
Joran van der Sloot was the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. In 2012, he was convicted of murdering Stephany Flores in Peru. In 2024, he pleaded guilty to extorting the Holloway family.
Jeffrey Edward Epstein (1953-2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender who operated a sex trafficking network targeting underage girls. After a controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida that drew widespread criticism, he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges by the Southern District of New York in July 2019. He died in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019, with his death ruled a suicide by hanging. His longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on five federal sex trafficking charges in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual assault by over 80 women, sparking the #MeToo movement. He was convicted of rape in New York in 2020 and again in Los Angeles in 2022, though the New York conviction was overturned on appeal in 2024.
Former Bolingbrook, Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson became a national figure after his fourth wife Stacy Peterson disappeared in October 2007. He was subsequently charged and convicted of murdering his third wife Kathleen Savio, whose death had been ruled accidental in 2004.
Maura Murray, a 21-year-old nursing student at UMass Amherst, disappeared on February 9, 2004, after her car crashed on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire. She has never been found despite extensive searches. The case remains one of the most discussed missing person cases in the country.
Music producer Phil Spector, creator of the "Wall of Sound" recording technique and producer of legendary albums, was convicted in 2009 of the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra, California mansion. He died in prison in January 2021.
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, claiming to revolutionize blood testing with finger-prick technology. The company reached a $9 billion valuation before journalist John Carreyrou exposed its fraudulent claims in 2015. Holmes was charged by the SEC in 2018, indicted on federal wire fraud charges, convicted on 4 of 11 counts in January 2022, and sentenced to 11.25 years in prison. She reported to Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas on May 30, 2023. Her former COO Sunny Balwani was convicted on all 12 counts and sentenced to nearly 13 years.
Laci Peterson, 27 and eight months pregnant, disappeared from Modesto, California on Christmas Eve 2002. Her husband Scott Peterson was convicted of her murder in 2004 and sentenced to death, later reduced to life without parole.
Scott Lee Peterson was convicted in November 2004 of the first-degree murder of his pregnant wife, Laci Denise Peterson, and the second-degree murder of their unborn son, Conner, after Laci disappeared from their Modesto, California home on December 24, 2002. Originally sentenced to death in March 2005, his death sentence was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 2020, and he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December 2021. The Los Angeles Innocence Project took up his case in 2024, filing motions for DNA testing and a nearly 400-page habeas petition in April 2025, which was denied by the appeals court in June 2025.
Ariel Castro kidnapped three young women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight — between 2002 and 2004 and held them captive in his Cleveland, Ohio home for approximately a decade. The women escaped on May 6, 2013. Castro was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years and died by suicide in prison.
On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell, a self-proclaimed prophet who had previously worked as a handyman for the Smart family. Smart was held captive for approximately nine months by Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee before being rescued on March 12, 2003, in Sandy, Utah. Mitchell was convicted of federal kidnapping charges and sentenced to life in prison, while Barzee received a 15-year sentence; Smart has since become a prominent national advocate for missing children and sexual assault survivors.
Author Michael Peterson was convicted in 2003 of murdering his wife Kathleen, found dead at the bottom of their staircase in 2001. The case was the subject of the groundbreaking documentary "The Staircase." Peterson entered an Alford plea in 2017.
On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children in the bathtub of the family's Houston, Texas home while suffering from severe postpartum psychosis. She was convicted of murder in 2002, but her conviction was overturned; at retrial in 2006 she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Washington, D.C. intern Chandra Levy vanished in May 2001. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in 2002. Ingmar Guandique was convicted in 2010 but the conviction was vacated in 2016. The case remains officially unsolved.
Robert Durst, heir to a New York real estate empire, was convicted in 2021 of the first-degree murder of his close friend Susan Berman, who was killed in 2000 to prevent her from speaking to investigators about the 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie McCormack. Previously acquitted in the 2003 killing of neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas, Durst's decades of evading justice ended after the HBO documentary The Jinx captured him making incriminating statements on a hot microphone. He died in prison on January 10, 2022, at age 78, while serving a life sentence without parole.
On April 20, 1999, seniors Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Klebold (17) carried out a mass shooting at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, killing 12 students and teacher Dave Sanders and wounding 23 others before dying by suicide. The attack, planned for roughly a year and originally conceived as a bombing, became a watershed moment in American history that transformed school safety protocols, law enforcement response to active shooters, and the national gun control debate.
Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 of the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in Baltimore, Maryland. The case gained global attention through the 2014 Serial podcast and a 2019 HBO documentary. In September 2022, a judge vacated his conviction citing Brady violations and unreliable cell tower evidence. Charges were dropped in October 2022 after DNA testing excluded Syed. However, the Maryland Appellate Court reinstated his conviction in March 2023 over victim family notification rights, a decision upheld by the Maryland Supreme Court in August 2024. In March 2025, a judge resentenced Syed to time served plus probation under the Juvenile Restoration Act, allowing him to remain free despite his conviction standing.
On March 9, 1997, rapper Christopher Wallace — known as the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls — was shot and killed in a drive-by attack in Los Angeles, just six months after the murder of his rival Tupac Shakur. The case has never been solved and remains one of the most prominent cold cases in music history.
The unsolved 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado, one of the most scrutinized criminal investigations in American history, marked by a contaminated crime scene, a mysterious ransom note, a grand jury indictment the district attorney refused to sign, a controversial 2008 exoneration of the family, and ongoing DNA testing efforts nearly three decades later.
On September 7, 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by in Las Vegas and died six days later on September 13, 1996. The case remained unsolved for 27 years until a suspect was arrested in 2023, though significant questions about the full scope of the conspiracy remain.
Darlie Routier was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her five-year-old son Damon in Rowlett, Texas in June 1996. Her six-year-old son Devon was also killed. Routier has maintained her innocence for nearly three decades, and her case has attracted significant controversy.
Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart vanished in May 1996 after a party. Paul Flores, who walked her home that night, was convicted of her murder in 2022 after a 26-year investigation. Her body has never been found.
On March 31, 1995, Tejano music superstar Selena Quintanilla-Perez was fatally shot at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club and manager of her boutiques, who had been embezzling funds. Saldivar was convicted of first-degree murder in October 1995 and sentenced to life in prison; her first parole request was denied in March 2025.
On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith of Union, South Carolina, strapped her two young sons into their car seats and rolled her car into John D. Long Lake, drowning them. She falsely reported a carjacking, launching a national manhunt, before confessing nine days later. She was convicted of murder in 1995.
O.J. Simpson, a former NFL star and media personality, was charged with the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. After a televised criminal trial widely described as the 'trial of the century,' Simpson was acquitted on October 3, 1995. A subsequent civil jury found him liable in February 1997 and awarded the victims' families $33.5 million in damages. Simpson was later convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in a 2008 Las Vegas case, served nine years in prison, and was released on parole in 2017. He died of prostate cancer on April 10, 2024, at age 76.
Ghislaine Maxwell, British socialite and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking and conspiracy for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Epstein. She was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in June 2022.
R&B singer R. Kelly was convicted in 2021 of federal racketeering and sex trafficking in New York, and in 2022 of child pornography production in Chicago, after decades of sexual abuse allegations involving minors. He was sentenced to 30 years in the New York case and 20 years in the Chicago case, with most time running concurrently for a combined 31-year sentence. Kelly is incarcerated at FCC Butner in North Carolina with a projected release date of December 21, 2045.
Three teenagers — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley — were convicted in 1994 for the 1993 murders of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, largely on the basis of a coerced confession and moral panic about Satanism. They were released in 2011 after entering Alford pleas.
Two-year-old James Bulger was abducted from a shopping centre in Bootle, England on February 12, 1993, by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who tortured and murdered him. The case shocked Britain and raised profound questions about juvenile criminal responsibility.
Pamela Smart, a 22-year-old New Hampshire school administrator, manipulated her 15-year-old student lover and his friends into murdering her husband Gregg Smart in May 1990. Her trial was one of the first in the U.S. to be fully televised and inspired films and books about the case.
Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer who murdered seven men along Florida highways between late 1989 and late 1990 while working as a sex worker. Initially claiming self-defense, she was convicted of six murders, sentenced to death, and executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Her story was depicted in the Academy Award-winning 2003 film Monster, starring Charlize Theron.
Betty Broderick shot and killed her ex-husband Daniel Broderick and his new wife Linda Kolkena in their San Diego bedroom on November 5, 1989. After a first trial ended in a hung jury, she was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in 1991.
Lyle and Erik Menendez, then ages 21 and 18, shot and killed their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home on August 20, 1989. After two trials, they were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy in 1996 and sentenced to life without parole. In May 2025, a judge resentenced them to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole.
In 2024, renewed attention to the 1989 Menendez brothers case led to resentencing efforts after new evidence of sexual abuse by their father José emerged, including a letter and a corroborating witness.
On April 19, 1989, five Black and Latino teenagers — Korey Wise (16), Yusef Salaam (15), Antron McCray (15), Raymond Santana (14), and Kevin Richardson (14) — were arrested for the assault and rape of jogger Trisha Meili in Central Park. Police coerced false confessions from the boys during prolonged interrogations. All five were convicted in 1990 despite DNA evidence excluding them. In 2002, convicted serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to being the sole attacker, and DNA confirmed his guilt. All five convictions were vacated on December 19, 2002. The men received a $41 million settlement from New York City in 2014. Now known as the Exonerated Five, their case became a landmark example of wrongful conviction driven by coerced confessions and racial injustice.
Richard Ramirez terrorized the Los Angeles area from June 1984 to August 1985, committing at least 13 murders and numerous sexual assaults during nocturnal home invasions. He was captured by an angry mob of citizens, convicted of 13 murders in 1989, and died on death row in 2013.
Diane Downs shot her three children on a rural Oregon road on May 19, 1983, killing 7-year-old Cheryl and severely wounding Christie and Danny. She claimed a stranger attacked them, but was convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1984.
Gary Ridgway murdered at least 49 women in the Seattle-Tacoma area between 1982 and 1998, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. He avoided detection for two decades before DNA evidence led to his arrest in 2001 and a plea deal in 2003.
Acclaimed actress Natalie Wood drowned on November 29, 1981, near Catalina Island, California, while aboard a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. Initially ruled an accidental drowning, the case was reopened in 2011 amid new witness statements, with Wagner named a "person of interest."
On November 18, 1978, more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple cult died at their jungle commune in Guyana after cult leader Jim Jones ordered a mass poisoning, in the largest single loss of American civilian life before September 11, 2001. U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and four others were also murdered at a nearby airstrip.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (1960-1994), known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, was an American serial killer who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. His crimes involved drugging, strangling, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism. After his final intended victim Tracy Edwards escaped on July 22, 1991, police discovered human remains throughout Dahmer's Milwaukee apartment. Dahmer confessed, was convicted on 15 counts of first-degree murder in Wisconsin, and was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms on February 17, 1992. He pleaded guilty to an additional murder in Ohio. On November 28, 1994, fellow inmate Christopher Scarver beat Dahmer to death at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.
Ted Kaczynski, a former UC Berkeley mathematics professor, conducted a nationwide mail bombing campaign from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 23 others. He was identified after his brother recognized his writing style in a published manifesto and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (born 1945), a former California police officer, committed at least 13 murders, over 50 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986 under the monikers the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker. He evaded capture for over 40 years until investigators used forensic genealogy and the public DNA database GEDmatch to identify him in April 2018. DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 murders in June 2020 and was sentenced to multiple consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Dennis Rader, the self-named BTK (Bind Torture Kill) serial killer, murdered 10 people in the Wichita, Kansas area between 1974 and 1991. He was identified through a floppy disk and arrested in 2005.
Dennis Lynn Rader, known as the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill), murdered ten people in the Wichita, Kansas area between 1974 and 1991. Rader taunted police and media with letters for years before a floppy disk he sent to a TV station in 2005 was traced to his church computer, leading to his arrest. He pleaded guilty to all ten murders and was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms.
Dennis Rader, a church president and compliance officer from Wichita, Kansas, secretly murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991, calling himself BTK — "Bind, Torture, Kill." He evaded capture for thirty years before his DNA was identified through a floppy disk he sent to police, leading to his arrest in 2005.
Theodore Robert Bundy (1946-1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least 30 young women across multiple states between 1974 and 1978. Exploiting his charm and intelligence, Bundy evaded capture for years, escaped custody twice, and was ultimately convicted and executed by electric chair in Florida in 1989. His trial was the first to be nationally televised in the United States.
John Wayne Gacy, known as the "Killer Clown," murdered at least 33 young men and boys in the Chicago suburbs between 1972 and 1978, burying most of them in the crawl space beneath his house. He was convicted in 1980 and executed by lethal injection in 1994.
On November 24, 1971, a man using the alias Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 flying from Portland to Seattle. He claimed to have a bomb, demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, then jumped from the aircraft's rear stairs over southwestern Washington and was never seen again. Despite a 45-year FBI investigation examining over 1,000 suspects, the hijacker was never identified. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in U.S. commercial aviation history. The FBI officially suspended the active investigation in July 2016.
On November 9, 1971, accountant John List methodically murdered his mother, wife, and three children in their Westfield, New Jersey mansion, then vanished for 18 years. He was captured in 1989 after the TV show America's Most Wanted aired a forensic bust of his aged appearance.
In August 1969, members of the Manson Family, a cult led by Charles Manson, committed the Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles, killing seven people including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1971, though their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after California's Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972. Manson died in prison on November 19, 2017, at the age of 83, while several of his followers remain incarcerated.
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered at least five people and injured two others in Northern California between December 1968 and October 1969. The killer taunted police and newspapers with cryptic letters and ciphers, claimed responsibility for as many as 37 murders, and was never identified or apprehended. The case remains one of the most infamous unsolved serial murder investigations in American history.
Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer who committed ten murders in New York State between 1972 and 1980, plus a further ten murders in New Jersey between 1965 and 1980. He was nicknamed by media as the Torso Killer and the Times Square Ripper, since some of the murders he was convicted of included acts of mutilation and dismemberment.
Edmund Kemper murdered 10 people in California between 1964 and 1973, including his grandparents, six college students, his mother, and her friend. Standing 6'9" with a genius IQ, he turned himself in and has been in prison since 1973.
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after allegedly whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. His killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury but later confessed in a paid Look magazine interview. Till's murder and his mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral became a galvanizing moment for the civil rights movement, and his name was enshrined in the 2022 Emmett Till Antilynching Act.
Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress from Medford, Massachusetts, was found brutally murdered on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her body had been severed at the waist, drained of blood, and her face slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears. Despite one of the largest investigations in LAPD history, involving hundreds of officers and over 150 suspects, the case has never been solved and remains the department's most infamous cold case.
On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were axed to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. Their daughter Lizzie was charged with the double murder but was acquitted in 1893 after a trial that captivated Victorian America. The case has never been officially solved.