Top 30 Unsolved Murder Mysteries

Top 30 Unsolved Murder Mysteries

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most mysterious murder cases that have puzzled law enforcement to this day.

#30: The Icebox Murders
On June 23rd 1965, two Houston, Texas officers visited the residence of Fred and Edwina Rogers for a welfare check. After entering the noticeably empty house, one officer stumbled upon what appeared to be stacks of hog meat in the refrigerator. However, upon closer examination, he realized they were, in fact, the body parts of the elderly couple. A key suspect quickly emerged: Charles Rogers, the reclusive middle-aged son who also lived in the house. Although the crime scene had been thoroughly cleaned, a bloodstained saw was discovered in Rogers’ bedroom. But police never got the chance to question him, as he disappeared and was never heard from again. 10 years later, Rogers was declared dead in absentia, leaving the case unresolved.

#29: The Villisca Axe Murders
In June 1912, the quiet town of Villisca, Iowa experienced a shocking tragedy with a set of horrific murders. Josiah and Sarah Moore, as well as their four children and two visiting girls were found dead in their home by a neighbor. All eight victims had been killed with an axe. Early on, authorities fumbled the investigation by allowing unauthorized access to the crime scene, leading to contamination of the area and the murder weapon. Nevertheless, multiple suspects soon emerged, including a visiting reverend named George Kelly. Kelly was tried twice for the crime. The first ended in a hung jury, while the second yielded a not guilty verdict. Over a century later, nobody knows who committed the Villisca Axe murders.

#28: The Murder of the Grimes Sisters
In Cook County, Illinois, a construction worker driving through a rural area came across what looked like mannequins strewn by the roadside. It soon became evident that the figures were actually the bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes. The sisters had disappeared a few weeks earlier, on December 28th 1956, after leaving home for a movie screening. A large-scale investigation was launched and police found their prime suspect in Edward Bedwell, a drifter seen with two girls resembling the Grimes sisters. Bedwell even confessed after a lengthy interrogation, but he was released when evidence surfaced contradicting his account. Few other suspects subsequently emerged, however, none were charged due to insufficient evidence. As such, the case gradually went cold.

#27: The Fatal Poisoning of Charles Bravo
Four months into his marriage to a wealthy divorcee, Charles Bravo, a British lawyer, was poisoned with antimony. Rather than an immediate conclusion, Bravo’s death unfolded painfully over a span of two to three days. The case was particularly puzzling, because in all that time, Bravo never revealed who or what exactly had caused his condition. As a result, various theories have emerged to explain the poisoning. Some believe that marital tensions led his wife, Florence, to poison him. Others posit that Bravo accidentally poisoned himself in a failed attempt to murder Florence. Following two sensational inquests, a coroner ultimately deemed it a case of willful murder, but no one ever faced any charges for the crime.

#26: The Keddie Quadruple Homicide
Between April 11th and 12th, 1981, an unusual set of murders occurred at a resort in Keddie, California. Sheila Sharp returned home on the morning of the 12th to a grim discovery: the bodies of her mother, Sue, her brother, John, and his friend Dana. In a different part of the house, she found her two younger brothers and their friend unharmed. However, her sister, Tina, was missing. It would take three years for Tina’s remains to be discovered. Despite countless hours of investigation, law enforcement were unable to charge any suspect. With new evidence being discovered in recent years, there is a possibility the case may be solved one day. But for now, it remains a perplexing mystery.

#25: The Death of Gareth Williams
This case is the stuff of Hollywood espionage thrillers. Gareth Williams was a Welsh mathematician who worked as an MI6 agent. In August 2010, Williams was found dead in the bathroom of his London safe house. Bizarrely, his remains were inside a bag that was padlocked from the outside. The key to the padlock was discovered inside the bag beneath his body. Even more peculiar, no fingerprints were found on the bag, the padlock or on the rim of the bath. Although the Metropolitan Police concluded that it was likely an accident, Williams’ involvement in secret intelligence work has led to speculation that he might have been assassinated by Russian agents.

#24: The Mysterious Murder of Mary Rogers
Dubbed the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” Mary Rogers was a young New Yorker who worked in a tobacco store and gained fame for her striking appearance. Rogers first disappeared in 1838, but this was later reported to be a hoax, as she returned home soon after. Three years later, she disappeared again. This time, tragically, for good. On July 28th 1841, her body was found floating in the Hudson River. Given her reputation in New York, Rogers’ murder became national news. While the evidence pointed towards foul play, some believed her death resulted from a failed abortion. The perplexing case inspired “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, who also died under mysterious circumstances.

#23: The YOGTZE Case
German food engineer Günther Stoll suffered from paranoia and was convinced that an unknown group was after him. On October 25th 1984, Stoll scribbled the letters ‘YOGTZE’ on a sheet of paper. He then left for a pub, triggering a series of bizarre events that culminated in him being discovered naked and severely injured in his vehicle. Stoll disclosed that four men had been in the car with him, but they fled before he was found. Sadly, he died on the way to the hospital. Police investigation determined that he had been struck by another vehicle, placed in his own car, then driven to where he was found. However, mystery persists around the cryptic letters, the four men and the assailant who struck Stoll.

#22: The Murder of Dorothy Jane Scott
In the months leading up to her abduction, Dorothy Jane Scott received unsettling calls from an anonymous man. The caller repeatedly professed his love for her, but also threatened her life. Those threats seemingly became a reality on May 28th 1980, when she was abducted in her own car after driving two co-workers to the hospital. Hours later, Scott’s vehicle was discovered in an alley where it had been set on fire, but she was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until about two months later that a construction worker stumbled upon her remains. It is believed that the anonymous caller orchestrated Scott’s abduction and murder, but efforts to identify him have proved futile.

#21: The Texarkana Moonlight Murders
In 1946, a series of murders in the Texarkana region of the U.S. sent shockwaves across the country. The unidentified perpetrator, referred to as the Phantom Killer, attacked young couples in the area, claiming five lives and instilling fear in the community. Despite an extensive investigation that involved officers from the local to the federal levels, the Phantom Killer remained elusive. One major suspect eventually emerged. Youell Swinney, a car thief and counterfeiter, came on to police radar after his wife confessed that he was the Phantom Killer. However, she later recanted her confession and Swinney was never conclusively linked to the murders. Decades later, this remains one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American criminal history.

#20: The Killing of Ken Rex McElroy
Ken Rex McElroy was by no means the nicest man. In fact, this local tyrant from Skidmore, Missouri was indicted 21 times in his life, including for arson, assault and animal cruelty. In 1980, he shot and injured 70-year-old grocer Ernest Bowenkamp, but was able to appeal the conviction. He immediately went back and threatened to kill Bowenkamp, but he never got the chance. On July 10th, 1981, while sitting in his pickup truck with his wife, McElroy was shot twice, from two different guns. A crowd of up to 46 people looked on; no one called an ambulance, and everyone except his wife claimed not to have seen the shooters. In the end, no one was charged.

#19: The Lake Bodom Murders
Our next entry is like something out of a horror movie. On June 5th, 1960, two teenage couples were camping near Finland’s Lake Bodom. Three of them were stabbed to death, while the fourth, Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson, survived with extensive injuries. There were several suspects, including kiosk keeper Karl Valdemar Gyllström, who had exhibited violent behavior in the past. In 1969, Gyllström drowned in the same lake. Another was a man named Hans Assmann, who'd turned up at a hospital the day after the murders with bloody clothes. In 2004, police arrested the lone survivor, Gustafsson, but he was later acquitted. The case fascinates Finns to this day, with heavy metal band Children of Bodom naming themselves after the mystery.

#18: The Lizzie Borden Axe Murders
On the morning of August 4th, 1892, Lizzie Borden discovered that both her parents had been murdered. Her father and stepmother had been repeatedly struck in the head with a sharp instrument. Borden became the prime suspect, after providing police with contradictory accounts; a few days after the murders, she was even witnessed burning a dress in the kitchen stove. She was arrested and tried in a sensational, landmark trial, but acquitted due to circumstantial evidence. Others suspected of the murder include Borden’s sister Emma, and her maternal uncle John Morse, who’d slept in the house the night before.

#17: The Boy in the Box
In 1957, a boy was found naked lying face up inside a cardboard box in the woods near Philadelphia. He’d been wrapped in a blanket and his arms were folded across his stomach. Judging from the extensive scars on his body, investigators determined that he had been killed by blunt force trauma. However, they were unable to identify him and the boy remained a John Doe for several decades. With the advancement of DNA testing and the development of investigative genetic genealogy, the boy was finally identified in 2022 as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. While his identity has been resolved, the circumstances surrounding his death and how he came to be placed inside the box remain a mystery.

#16: The Cleveland Torso Murderer
Also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, this serial killer murdered at least 12 people in the Cleveland area in the 1930s. There were also other possible victims in the 1920s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. The killer usually targeted drifters and people who lived in the less privileged neighborhoods. Almost all of the victims were dismembered after their death. Some of them were never even identified because their heads were never found. Although the case was reviewed by Eliot Ness, the man who put Al Capone behind bars, no suspects were ever charged. Some theories have even claimed that there was no single butcher, but rather several different individual murderers.

#15: The Murder of Bob Crane
When “Hogan's Heroes” star Bob Crane was found dead in his Arizona home in 1978, suspicion immediately turned to his friend John Henry Carpenter, a video equipment salesman. Crane’s extensive home video collection showed that the two were rather close - filming their sexcapades with various women together. Carpenter had been with him the night before, and according to Crane’s son, the actor had planned to end their friendship. There were even stains on Carpenter’s car door that matched Crane’s blood type. However, insufficient evidence meant that Carpenter was let go. The case was reopened in 1990, and Carpenter went to trial four years later, but was acquitted.

#14: The West Mesa Murders
As a woman walked her dog in the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 2, 2009, she stumbled across this awful find: the remains of 11 women and a fetus, which had been buried in the bank of an arroyo. Many of these women were Hispanic, and most were caught up in drugs and sex work at the time of their disappearances four to eight years earlier. Police linked these murders with the area's yearly state fair, which drew sex workers to the area in large numbers, but the crimes remain unsolved. They’re suspected to have been the work of a serial killer, now referred to as the West Mesa Bone Collector.

#13: The Chicago Tylenol Murders
Chicago was gripped with fear in late 1982 when seven locals died after taking Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. A man named James William Lewis wrote to Johnson & Johnson, saying that he was behind them and would stop for $1 million dollars. But since he was in New York the whole time, he was only charged with extortion. Johnson & Johnson was applauded for its response, and tamper-proof seals became common practice when copycat crimes occurred afterwards. However, even with the support of the government and a huge corporation, the person who really masterminded the poisonings was never found.

#12: The Highway of Tears
The Highway of Tears is a 450-mile long stretch of road between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada. From 1969-2011, at least 18 women were murdered along this highway, although it’s estimated that the real number may be in the dozens. Many of them were in their teens, a disproportionate number were indigenous – a fact which has led some critics to accuse the investigating police of racism. Although a few victims have been linked to a convicted serial killer named Bobby Jack Fowler, there’s still no explanation for the other murders. Hitting a dead end, the case is seemingly a road to nowhere.

#11: The Alphabet Murders
Also known as the Double Initial Murders, the Alphabet Murders transpired in New York during the early 1970s. There were three victims: Carmen Colón, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza. Each girl was sexually assaulted before being strangled, and was found in or near a town starting with the same initials as their names: Colón in Churchville, Walkowicz in Webster, and Maenza in Macedon. Strangely, each girl came from similar backgrounds: They all had learning disabilities, were Roman Catholic, and came from single parent homes. This case was later connected to a series of similar murders in California, for which Joseph Naso was convicted and sentenced to death, but his DNA didn’t match the samples found on the victims.

#10: The Murder of Amber Hagerman
While the AMBER in Amber Alert does stand for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, it was actually named in reference to the case of Amber Hagerman. Hagerman was abducted while riding her bike in Arlington, Texas, on January 13, 1996. Just four days later, her body was discovered in a storm drainage ditch. To date, the individual responsible for her abduction and murder still hasn't been found. The outcry and response to this tragedy led to tougher laws for child abductors and sex offenders, with Bill Clinton signing the Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act into law - which created the national sex offender registry.

#9: The Axeman of New Orleans
Between 1918 and 1919, a serial killer, simply known as The Axeman, terrorized New Orleans. The Axeman is believed to have murdered six people, although it’s speculated there were several more victims. Almost all the confirmed victims were Italian-Americans who, like the name suggests, were killed with an axe. On March 13th, 1919, a person claiming to be the Axeman had a letter published in the newspaper, stating that they weren't human, but rather “a demon from the hottest hell”. He - or she - was apparently a jazz fan, and promised to spare anyone whose home had a jazz band in full swing. The murders stopped a few months later, but the Axeman’s identity was never discovered.

#8: The Hinterkaifeck Murders
This farmstead in Germany was home to one of the country’s strangest murder mysteries. On March 31, 1922, the family living at Hinterkaifeck were murdered, along with their maid. The crime scene suggested that four of the six had been led to the barn and killed one by one. The victims included Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia, their daughter Viktoria, and her two young children. Just days before the massacre, Andreas Gruber had noticed some strange occurrences, such as a strange newspaper and a series of footprints in the snow leading to the farm, but none leading back away. Although police questioned several suspects, nobody was ever convicted.

#7: The Murder of the Notorious B.I.G.
A fierce rivalry between East Coast and West Coast rappers led to two of their biggest stars being gunned down. On March 9th 1997, East Coast rapper the Notorious B.I.G. was fatally shot in Los Angeles, just six months after fellow rapper Tupac Shakur suffered a similar fate. It has been theorized that Suge Knight, then CEO of Death Row Records, which was Shakur’s label, had ordered Biggie’s death as an act of vengeance. However, with no conclusive evidence proving this, the murder remains officially unsolved. As for Shakur’s case, in 2023, a man named Duane "Keefe D" Davis was arrested and charged for his involvement in the murder. His trial is set for June 2024.

#6: The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
A union activist since his teens, Jimmy Hoffa became the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1958. His role with the Teamsters led him to organized crime, however, and he was even sentenced to prison for jury tampering and fraud. This connection may have led to his subsequent disappearance. Hoffa was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant on July 30, 1975. Hoffa had allegedly been there to meet with two members of the Mafia. He was officially declared dead in 1982, and his body has yet to be found, although there is no shortage of rumors as to the circumstances around his death.

#5: The Dyatlov Pass Incident
In 1959, nine experienced Russian hikers ventured into the northern Ural Mountains and never returned. Their tent was later found torn from the inside, suggesting a hasty escape into the freezing night. When their bodies were eventually discovered, they displayed mysterious injuries and appeared inadequately dressed for the extreme weather. Some of them had succumbed to hypothermia, while others bore signs of physical trauma. Despite decades of investigation, the circumstances surrounding their demise remain enigmatic, giving rise to various theories. Although the most popular of these suggests that they were killed by an avalanche, there is an abundance of evidence that seems to contradict this theory.

#4: The Killing of JonBenét Ramsey
In the late ‘90s, this murder gripped the nation and gave rise to numerous theories. Child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her Colorado home on the day after Christmas. Her skull was broken and she'd been strangled with a garrote. That morning, her mother Patsy had discovered a ransom note and contacted police. Due to unusual details in the note, Patsy and her husband John immediately came under suspicion. However, forensic cleared them of involvement. Criticism has since focused on shoddy police work at the scene. In 2006, someone did come forward claiming to have killed her, but the DNA found on Ramsey’s body wasn't a match.

#3: The Black Dahlia Murder
Perhaps the most striking detail about Elizabeth Short's 1947 murder is that her mouth was cut at both edges, giving the false impression of a wide smile. Short was an aspiring actress who relocated to California about four years before she was killed. On January 15th, her corpse was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. An autopsy would later show that she had died from blunt force trauma and severe hemorrhaging. Coverage of the case was sensational and Short became known in the media as the Black Dahlia. Her unsolved murder has sparked theories, books and films in the years since her death. Even with such publicity and hundreds of leads, the perpetrator has never been found.

#2: The Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac Killer began taunting authorities in the late 1960s, when a string of similarly murdered victims surfaced in Northern California. He sent letters and cryptic puzzles to police and the media, naming himself Zodiac and daring them to catch him. While he’s known to have killed at least five people, he claimed to be responsible for the murder of up to 37. His letters included four cryptograms; once solved, one of the puzzles stated that he was collecting slaves for the afterlife. Another was cracked in 2020, while the others remain unsolved. Although there were several suspects, and even a Hollywood movie about the case, the Zodiac Killer's identity still remains a mystery.

#1: Jack the Ripper
The murder of five women in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 has become one of the most infamous unsolved crime mysteries in history. The victims were found with their bodies mutilated; three of them even had internal organs removed. This led to the belief that the killer may have been well-educated, or even a surgeon. Several subsequent murders in Whitechapel were also blamed on the same perpetrator. At the time, the media and authorities received a barrage of letters that claimed to be from the killer. The nickname “Jack the Ripper” came from one; another came with half of a human kidney. The case received intense media scrutiny, but was never solved - and it continues to spawn new theories even today.

Which of these murder mysteries do you think will be solved in the near future? Share your predictions in the comments below.