Unsolved Murders & Serial Cases.
Killings the record documented in full and the law never closed — the ciphers that named no one, the victims who went unidentified for decades, the suspects everyone "knows" but no one could convict. This collection gathers every AnomalyDesk murder file in one place. Some of these cases have now been cracked by DNA that didn't exist when they went cold; most have not. Each file does the same thing: lay out what the physical evidence supports, weigh the named suspects against it, and refuse to convict on the page where the courts couldn't.
Why these cases stay open — and why some are closing now
A cold case is not an unknowable one; it's usually a case where the evidence was collected before the tools to read it existed. That gap is now closing fast. Investigative genetic genealogy — uploading a crime-scene DNA profile to consumer ancestry databases and building the family tree back down — identified the Golden State Killer in 2018 and has cleared dozens of cases since. The Long Island / Gilgo Beach investigation produced an arrest in 2023. The Somerton Man was named in 2022; the Boy in the Box in 2022.
But the technique has limits, and AnomalyDesk keeps them visible: it needs recoverable DNA and a relative who tested. The Zodiac, Jack the Ripper, and the Black Dahlia predate any usable sample or have none preserved. For those, the file's job is to stop the confident naming that the evidence can't carry — not to add another suspect to the pile.
Featured files
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The Zodiac Killer (1968–1969+)
The Northern California killer who taunted police in cipher. The 340-character code cracked in 2020, the named suspects, and why identity is still officially unconfirmed.
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The Black Dahlia (1947)
The murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles — one of the most famous unsolved killings in American history, and the decades of suspect theories the evidence never confirmed.
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The Golden State Killer
The case that changed cold-case work forever — solved in 2018 when investigative genetic genealogy identified Joseph James DeAngelo after four decades.
The collection
Every published file, grouped by status. Each links to the full case.
Unidentified serial killers
- ✓ The Zodiac Killer (1968–1969+) — ciphers partly solved; identity unconfirmed.
- ✓ Jack the Ripper (1888) — the Whitechapel murders and the endless suspect industry.
- ✓ The Cleveland Torso Murderer (1935–1938) — the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
- ✓ The Servant Girl Annihilator (Austin, 1884–1885).
- ✓ The Doodler (San Francisco, 1974–1975) — suspect known, never charged.
- ✓ The Highway 20 Murders (Oregon) — one conviction; prime suspect died in 2016.
- ✓ The Atlas Vampire (Stockholm, 1932).
Single-victim and mass murders, unsolved
- ✓ The Black Dahlia (1947) — the murder of Elizabeth Short.
- ✓ The Lake Mead barrel victim (found 2022) — shot and sealed in a barrel decades ago; still unidentified.
- ✓ The Lizzie Borden Case (1892) — Andrew and Abby Borden killed at Fall River; the daughter tried and acquitted, no one else ever charged.
- ✓ The Villisca Axe Murders (1912) — eight killed in an Iowa farmhouse.
- ✓ The Hinterkaifeck Murders (1922, Bavaria) — six killed on an isolated farm.
- ✓ The Lake Bodom Murders (1960, Finland).
- ✓ The Boy in the Box (Philadelphia, 1957) — victim identified 2022 as Joseph Zarelli; murder unsolved.
Cracked by modern forensics
- ✓ The Golden State Killer — identified 2018 (Joseph James DeAngelo) via genetic genealogy.
- ✓ The Long Island Serial Killer / Gilgo Beach — Rex Heuermann arrested 2023.
Unidentified victims
- ✓ The Somerton Man / Tamam Shud (1948) — identified 2022 as Carl Webb; cause of death still unknown.
How we handle unsolved crimes
The strongest temptation in true crime is to solve the case in the writing — to pick the most compelling suspect and let the prose do what the courtroom couldn't. AnomalyDesk doesn't. A named suspect is presented with the actual weight of evidence against them, including the exculpatory parts, and an unconfirmed identification stays unconfirmed no matter how popular. When a case is genuinely closed — DeAngelo, Heuermann, the Zarelli identification — we say so clearly and explain what closed it. The distinction between "widely believed" and "established" is the whole point of the file.