The most notorious unsolved crime in every state

On June 6, 1984, 12-year-old Greenville native Sherry Lynn Marler went into town with her stepfather to run errands. While he went to the bank to sign some papers, he gave her a dollar to buy a soda from a vending machine and told her to meet him back at his truck in 15 minutes. She hasn't been seen since.

"That's when our nightmare started 30 and a half years ago," Marler's mother, Betty Stringfellow, told the Montgomery Advertiser in 2015.

Marler's disappearance was featured on the TV show "Unsolved Mysteries."

Eight people, including a man, his pregnant wife, their two children, and teenage deckhands, were shot to death aboard a fishing boat called the Investor on September 6, 1982, People Magazine reported. The killer is then believed to have returned to the scene the next afternoon to set the boat on fire.

It was the biggest mass murder in Alaskan history and rocked the small fishing town of Craig, where it took place.

The case was featured on People Magazine Investigates on Investigation Discovery, and is the subject of the true crime book "What Happened in Craig: Alaska's Worst Unsolved Mass Murder."

On March 12, 1978, Chad Burgett returned home to Phoenix after a weekend away with his mother to find his sister, Pauline Robbin, murdered with multiple stab wounds.

Police think that whoever killed the 16-year-old knew her. They have DNA evidence but no source for it yet, according to Fox 10 Phoenix.

Six-year-old Morgan Nick was last seen on June 9, 1995 at a ballpark in Alma, Arkansas, according to 5 News. An unidentified man in a red truck who was seen driving away around the same time Nick disappeared was deemed a suspect, but after countless leads, authorities are no closer to finding her.

Nick's family founded the Morgan Nick Foundation to provide immediate assistance to families of missing children. The Arkansas alert system is also named in honor of Nick.

Nancy Grace featured the cold case in 2010, and the family received a new home on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in 2012.

The "Zodiac Killer" has been connected to five murders and two attempted murders between the 1960s and the 1970s, but has claimed responsibility for at least 37, sending coded messages to newspapers describing killing people.

The "Zodiac Killer" has been the subject of several movies, including "Zodiac" and "Dirty Harry," which was inspired by the still-open case.

JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her family's home on December 26, 1996. There were cords around her right wrist and neck and she was wearing her favorite pageant nightgown, according to Vanity Fair. Her parents also discovered a ransom note asking for $118,000, according to CNN.

Her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were suspects in the case, but DNA evidence processed from JonBenét's underwear in 2003 indicated the involvement of two unrelated people. A man named John Mark Karr confessed to the murder in 2006, but it was ruled to be false since he couldn't provide any additional details and his DNA didn't match what was discovered at the scene. The case remains active.

Mary Badaracco disappeared on August 19, 1984. Her car was left parked in the driveway with the driver's side smashed in, and her wedding ring and car keys were left on the kitchen counter, according to the Hartford Courant.

Her husband Dominic told authorities that they had been planning to divorce and that Mary took off with $100,000 in exchange for their home.

But no evidence of the money has ever been found, and Dominic didn't report her missing. A tip in 1985 alleged that Mary's death was a hit by Hell's Angels, but the case is still cold.

Prichard was pursuing a master's degree in botany at the University of Maryland, and visited Blackbird State Forest many times for her research, according to Delaware Online. But on September 19, 1986, her detailed notes stopped around 10 a.m. She was found the next day partially clothed and dead from a shot to the back.

While the forest is popular with hunters, her death was ruled a homicide. A squirrel hunter was taken into custody and questioned, but DNA evidence exonerated him in 1987.

A new cold case unit at the New Castle County Police Department began reexamining the case in 2015, but there are no new developments.

Robert and Helen Sims and their daughter Joy were found bound, gagged, stabbed, and shot in their Tallahassee home on October 22, 1966, WCTV reports. More than 50 years later, police still don't know who did it.

The murders have been the subject of a documentary called "641 Muriel Court" and various podcasts.

After a day at work in 2012, 18-year-old Vanessa "Honey" Malone told her mother, Flora, that she was going out, NBC News reports. Not long after, Flora heard shots from a neighboring apartment complex and called to see if Vanessa was OK. She didn't pick up the phone.

Two friends of Vanessa's who were renting the apartment where she was killed said they were victims of an armed robbery, and tied up and locked in the bathroom during the attack.

Her family maintains a Facebook group to solicit tips from the public, and the cold case was featured on Dateline NBC. An arrest was made in April, but more people were likely involved.

"We do believe that multiple people are responsible for this crime, and the investigation is ongoing," DeKalb County Police Sgt. L. Shuler said following the arrest, according to People magazine. "We hope more arrests will follow."

Lisa Au was 19 years old and working as a hairdresser in 1982. On January 21, she left her boyfriend's sister's house after having dinner. Hours later, her car was found parked along the highway in Kailua, and her decomposing body was found 10 days later.

Witnesses say they saw a car flashing blue lights behind hers in what may have been someone impersonating a police officer, prompting the Honolulu Police Department to ban supplemental blue lights.

There wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone with the murder, the Honolulu Prosecutor's Office told KHON2.

In an area on the border between Idaho and Washington known as the Lewiston-Clarkson metropolitan area, a series of murders and disappearances between 1979 and 1982 remain unsolved. Of the five missing people, only the bodies of Kristina Nelson, Jacqueline "Brandy" Miller, and Kirstin David were found. Steven Pearsall and Christina White remain missing.

The cases were featured on the Investigation Discovery docuseries "Cold Valley" and the true crime podcast "The Trail Went Cold."

Jaclyn Dowaliby was taken from her bedroom as she slept in 1988 when someone broke through the Midlothian, Illinois, home's basement window, ABC7 reports. Her body was found a week later in Blue Island with a rope from the family's garage tied around her neck.

Her parents were brought to trial, but they were acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

Her case was turned into a made-for-TV movie called "Gone In The Night" (pictured).

Three men were found dead inside 1318 North LaSalle Street on December 1, 1971, and the killer remains unknown.

"There were just too many suspects. I think that was the problem," Indianapolis Police Department Captain Robert Snow told Fox59. "They just couldn't narrow it down."

Various authors have claimed to have solved the case with books such as "Slaughter on North LaSalle" by Robert L. Snow and "The LaSalle Street Murders" by Carol Sissom, but the Indianapolis Police Department still considers it an open case.

Steven Fisher, 20, and his girlfriend Melisa Gregory, 17, were bludgeoned to death on a ranch northwest of Newton, Iowa, in 1983.

More than 30 years later, Fisher's estranged wife was charged with first-degree murder. She was found not guilty in 2015.

The case was featured on "Cold Justice."

Four days after Kelly Lynn Albright disappeared from her family's home, she was found dead in a field. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 18 times.

A family friend named Glenn Davis was a suspect in the murder, but the evidence against him was circumstantial. After being convicted of aggravated incest and aggravated indecent liberties with a child in an unrelated case in 1995, he died in prison before authorities could question him again about Albright.

The case inspired a mystery novel called "Facing September" by Sara Jenlink.

On October 27, 1961, 19-year-old Betty Gail Brown was found in her car in front of Transylvania College's Old Morrison building, strangled to death with her own bra.

A man confessed to the crime in 1965, saying he had been drunk, but the jury didn't buy it and the trial ended in a hung jury.

According to the Lexington Herald Leader, her mysterious killer became "a mythological figure in Lexington, a kind of all-purpose boogeyman." The Herald Leader also called her murder "Lexington's most notorious cold case."

The cold case is the subject of the book "Who Killed Betty Gail Brown" by Robert G. Lawson.

Eight women from the Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana were found dead in swamps and canals between 2005 and 2009 around Jennings, Louisiana.

Deputies reportedly lost evidence during the investigation, and a detective bought a truck from an acquaintance of one of the victims and was seen in it the day she disappeared. These circumstances and the overall lack of progress in cracking the case led some to suspect that the police were involved in the deaths or in covering them up, the New York Times reports.

A five-part Showtime documentary "Murder in the Bayou" profiled the cases and featured footage of one of the victims, Necole Jean Guillory, telling investigators about rampant misconduct and trafficking inside the jail.

Maine's oldest unsolved murder case is that of 13-year-old Mary Catherine Olenchuk. Witnesses say that they saw her standing next to a maroon car driven by a man in his 30s on August 9, 1970. She was found dead on August 22 in a barn in Kennebunk with a rope around her neck.

Carolyn Wasilewski, 14, was the oldest of seven children. Her bloodied remains were discovered in a Baltimore rail yard in 1954, with the name "Paul" written on her thigh in lipstick, according to the Baltimore Sun. The case also inspired the movie "Cry-Baby" starring Johnny Depp.

Lizzie Borden allegedly took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks, when she saw what she had done she allegedly gave her father 41. That might not be how the original rhyme goes, but it is more accurate since Lizzie was acquitted of her parents' murder in 1893.

On August 4, 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and his second wife, Abby, were bludgeoned to death with an ax, New England Today reports. Police could find no evidence of who committed the crime, but arrested their daughter Lizzy and charged her with murder.

Because the evidence against her was purely circumstantial, she was acquitted after the jury deliberated for less than an hour. But the townsfolk of Fall River never stopped believing that she was guilty and ostracized her for the rest of her life.

The Lizzie Borden House where her parents were found murdered is now a popular tourist attraction and was featured on an episode of "Supernatural."

Also known as "The Babysitter Killer" whose identity is still unknown, the killer is believed to have abducted, in some cases sexually assaulted, and killed four children between 1976 and 1977. The killer would then clean the kids' clothes and arrange their bodies in a sort of display on the streets of Metro Detroit for investigators to find.

The unsolved case is the subject of the book "The Kill Jar" by J. Reuben Appelman and the Hulu docuseries "Children of the Snow."

Mary Schlais was found dead in Spring Brook Township in 1974, stabbed 15 times. A witness saw a man in a compact car throw her body in a ditch along the side of the road and helped police draw up a sketch.

Police suspect that her death may have been the work of Randall Woodfield, a former Green Bay Packer who became known as the "I-5 Killer." Linked to 44 murders, Woodfield only ever confessed to one, and is currently serving a 90-year prison sentence.

The case is still cold.

Flynt Lee disappeared in Simpson County in August 2009. His body was found floating in the Strong River, and his truck was found riddled with bullet holes, set on fire, and pushed down a ravine. Investigators believe he was killed and then thrown off a bridge based on a trail of blood.

Three people were arrested, but insufficient evidence led to their release. The Simpson County Sheriff's Department considers it a cold case.

On February 28, 1983, a female body with the head missing was found in an abandoned building in St. Louis. Police originally thought it was the body of a sex worker, but soon discovered that the victim was much younger than they expected —between 8 and 11 years old.

At the time, it was the only decapitation in the US that involved a person that young, according to the FBI.

The victim and the killer still remain unidentified. She is simply known as "Little Jane Doe" in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's database.

On December 7, 1924, barber Nels Anderson and his wife, Annie, were bludgeoned to death with an ax they kept in their shop for chopping wood, leaving behind four children. There were no signs of a struggle, and the couple still had money in their pockets. Their murder remains unsolved.

Chadron State math professor Steven Haataja was found tied to a tree and burned in 2006. Haataja had attempted suicide before, leading some to believe that he took his own life. There was also no evidence of anyone else at the crime scene.

Dawes County Attorney Vance Haug said his death is an "unresolved death case."

A 2013 book and a 2014 documentary, both called "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere" explore the case.

Rapper Tupac Shakur was killed on September 7, 1996, at 25 years old. He was shot while stopped at a red light in Las Vegas.

Gang rivalries were suspected as a motive, but his death has spawned a host of conspiracy theories, including some that believe he's still alive.

A&E aired a six-hour miniseries called "Who Killed Tupac?"

Between 1978 and 1987, the Connecticut River Killer is said to have fatally stabbed seven women in New Hampshire. His eighth victim survived.

In 1988, Jane Boroski, who was seven months pregnant, was approached in a convenience store parking lot by a man who proceeded to stab her 27 times. She managed to drive to a friend's house, and both she and her baby survived the attack. After that, the killings stopped.

Boroski provided the police with a description and partial license plate of the man, but he was never identified. The Connecticut River Killer was profiled on "Unsolved Mysteries" and "THS Investigates."

Kim Raffo, Molly Dilts, Barbara Breidor, and Tracy Roberts were found dead behind the Golden Key Motel in Atlantic City in 2006. They had all been strangled or asphyxiated, and were positioned face-down, barefoot, with their heads facing east. The crime scene was never found.

The unsolved mystery was featured on A&E's "The Killing Season."

When a woman walking her dog found a human bone in 2009, she had no idea she had come across one of the biggest crime scenes in US history. She had found a 100-acre patch of desert in Albuquerque's Southwest Mesa that contained the remains of 11 women.

The 11 women buried there had all had connections to drugs and prostitution, and it took police a year to identify all of the remains. They came up with a small pool of suspects, but no one was ever charged.

When the owner of the legendary 2nd Ave Deli on the Lower East Side was killed in 1996, it shocked New York.

Abe Lebewohl was known as the mayor of Second Ave, feeding homeless people and high society members alike at his restaurant. He had been on his way to the bank when he was shot and robbed of $10,000. The gun was recovered in Central Park three days later, and police released a sketch of the suspect, but the case is still unsolved more than 20 years later.

Evelyn Williams, 72, an active member of the community in the small town of Pinehurst, North Carolina. When she was found with her throat slashed in a utility room outside her garage in 1989, the killer left no clues and detectives were baffled.

With only her pocketbook missing, they ruled out robbery as a motive.

"It wasn't a random act," former deputy Jerry Lynn Cooper told the News and Observer. "You don't have such a violent death over just, 'Give me your pocketbook, lady.'"

The News and Observer calls it Moore County's "coldest case."

Police believe to know the name of the serial killer who buried six bodies in a crawlspace underneath a house in Niagara, North Dakota — Eugene Butler, who was committed to an insane asylum in 1906. But after 100 years, the identities of the victims remain unknown. The bodies had only been found after Butler's death.

Inforum calls it "one of the state's biggest murder mysteries."

From 1935 to 1938, the "Cleveland Torso Murderer" beheaded and frequently dismembered their victims — seven men and five women in total. Some of the victims couldn't even be identified due to their incomplete remains.

The murders have been the subject of public fascination as well as both nonfiction and fiction books.

When nude corpses of young women began turning up in creeks and streambeds in the Lawton area, police knew they had a serial killer on their hands.

The women had all been involved with sex work, and cocaine residue was found in each of their systems, suggesting that the killer targeted women from the underground drug trade along Cache Road in Lawton.

In 1977, 19-year-old Terri Jentz and her college roommate Shayna Weiss spent the night at Cline Falls State Park while on a cross-country bike trip. They woke up to a truck driving over their tent. A man then got out of the truck and started attacking them with an ax.

Jentz was left with broken bones, and Weiss was left blind. Jentz returned to Cline Falls 15 years later to investigate the crime herself, but the attacker was never found. She wrote a book about her experience called "Strange Piece of Paradise."

On February 26, 1957, the body of a small boy was found beaten and disposed of in a box on Susquehanna Road in Philadelphia. Police estimated that the boy was between 4 and 6 years old. Sixty years later, his identity and that of his killer hasn't been discovered.

6ABC News in Philadelphia calls it "one of the highest-profile unsolved-mysteries in Philadelphia history." A historic marker was mounted for "The Boy in the Box" in Philadelphia in 2017.

The case was featured on "America's Most Wanted."

24-year-old Joanne Lee Reynolds was found stabbed to death in her apartment on February 16, 1980. There were no signs of forced entry, leading police to believe she knew her attacker.

More than 30 years later, police are reopening the investigation.

The North Kingstown Police Department created a Facebook page in 2012 in an attempt to gather more information about the cold case.

Jessica Gutierrez, 4, was kidnapped from her bed on June 6, 1986, in the Red Bank area of Lexington County, South Carolina. The next morning, as her mother frantically searched their home, Jessica's sister Becky said that "the man with the magic hat and the beard took her last night."

After 30 years, there still isn't enough evidence to file charges or get a conviction.

LaDonna Mathis, 30, and her two sons, aged 4 and 2, were shot dead on September 8, 1981, in Mount Vernon in Davidson County, South Dakota. The father, John Mathis, was shot in the arm, but survived. He said a masked man had carried out the attack, but investigators considered him the prime suspect. He was acquitted a year later when a jury found him not guilty.

Then-Attorney General Mark Meierhenry said the trial was the "most-covered, watched and listened-to case in the recent history of the state."

In the 1970s, '80s, and even into the '90s, bodies of redheaded women were found in Memphis, Jellico, Ashland City, and Greenville, Tennessee, as well as Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. All of the bodies were found along major highways, suggesting that they were hitchhiking or working in prostitution, according to the Gasden Times. They were dubbed "The Redhead Murders."

Local authorities from all five states enlisted the help of the FBI to track down the serial killer, but they have continued to elude arrest.

The exact number of victims is unknown, but it could be as many as 11 women.

Cheryl Henry, 22, and Andy Atkinson, 21, drove into a secluded patch of woods in Houston dubbed a "lovers' lane" on August 22, 1990. They never came back out.

Atkinson was found tied to a tree with his throat slashed. Henry was found naked, buried under a stack of boards. She'd been sexually assaulted and her throat had also been cut.

Police are using new DNA technology to try to confirm a potential suspect, but no one has been charged or convicted.

The murders remain "one of Houston's most infamous unsolved slayings," according to KHOU11.

On February 9, 2006, 29-year-old Sonia Mejia, who was six months pregnant, was sexually assaulted and strangled to death in Taylorsville, Utah. On February 9, 2008, 57-year-old Damiana Castillo was found strangled in West Valley City.

The fact that the murders occurred in a similar manner two years apart indicated to detectives that they were dealing with a serial killer, and the same DNA was found at both crime scenes. However, the "February 9 Killer" has yet to be identified and apprehended.

Between 1920 and 1950, as many as 10 people mysteriously disappeared in a patch of woods surrounding Glastenbury Mountain in southwestern Vermont. Some have also reported UFO activity and Bigfoot sightings in the area.

Author Joseph Citro coined the term "Bennington Triangle" in 1992.

From 1986 to 1989, a series of murders along Virginia's historic Colonial Parkway claimed the lives of eight people in their teens and twenties. The FBI got involved, even asking Russia to view satellite footage of the area, but no one was ever arrested.

In 1985, two couples disappeared in the wooded areas of Pierce and Lewis counties. Steven Harkins and his girlfriend, Ruth Cooper, were found dead. Then Mike Riemer disappeared, while his girlfriend, Diana Robertson, was found dead. In both cases, the women had tube socks tied around their necks.

In 2011, Mike Riemer was also confirmed dead when part of his skull was found near Mineral.

The "Tube Sock Killings" were featured on "Unsolved Mysteries."

A fire broke out in the Sodder home on Christmas Eve in 1945. Four of their nine children escaped. But when the blaze was finally put out, firefighters found no trace of their other five children.

Fire Chief F.J. Morris concluded that the fire had been hot enough to cremate the bodies, and death certificates were issued. But witnesses said they saw the children after the fire, and 20 years later, the mother, Jennie, received a photo in the mail labeled Louis Sodder — their son who was 9 at the time of the fire.

Did they die in the fire? Are the Sodder children still out there somewhere? No one knows for sure.

Between 1968 and 1982, seven women affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison were killed by strangling and stabbing.

All of the victims had long hair and lived in Madison, suggesting that the murders were the work of a serial killer or killers. But others on the police force didn't think all of the cases were connected.

The murders became known as the "Capital City Killings." The perpetrator or perpetrators were never found.

A man identified only as "Gabby" left an old trunk in his friend Newell Sessions' shed in Thermopolis in 1986. When Sessions decided to open it years later, he found human bones.

The remains dated back to the early 1900s and the trunk's lock dated back to the 1930s, ruling out Gabby as a suspect. When DNA testing technology became available, the bones were identified as Joseph Mulvaney.

Mulvaney's daughter said that her father was shot and killed by his brother, but the Hot Springs County Sheriff's Office never confirmed this. The story behind "Gabby's Bones" remains a mystery.

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