Cold cases are investigations that have gone dormant due to exhausted leads, lack of evidence, or jurisdictional challenges, but they are never truly closed. Advances in forensic technology, particularly DNA analysis and genetic genealogy, have breathed new life into cases that were once considered unsolvable. Some of the most notorious cold cases in American history have been cracked decades after the original crime thanks to persistent investigators and new scientific methods. CaseSleuth catalogs these cases with comprehensive timelines, evidence summaries, and profiles of persons of interest. Many cold cases involve victims whose families have waited years for answers, and public awareness remains one of the most powerful tools for generating new leads and bringing closure.
20 cases found
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.