On the evening of August 17th, 1992, eleven-year-old Holly Staker was babysitting for Dawn Engelbrecht’s two young children at an apartment in Waukegan, a city north of Chicago in Lake County, Illinois. Engelbrecht had left the children in Holly’s care while she ran an errand. When Engelbrecht returned, she found the back door kicked in … More Holly Staker
Bob Mellors (born 1950), a pioneering British gay rights activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in London in 1970, was a key figure in the early radical phase of the LGBTQ+ movement in the United Kingdom. Alongside figures like Aubrey Walter, he helped launch the GLF, inspired by the Stonewall Riots, promoting … More Bob Mellors
On May 26th, 1993, seventeen-year-old Jayne (sometimes spelled Jane) Furlong vanished from the bustling Karangahape Road (commonly known as K’ Road) in Auckland, New Zealand, a central city strip notorious in the early 1990s for street-based sex work. Her disappearance sparked immediate concern, but it would take nearly nineteen years for her fate to be … More Jayne Furlong
David Vernon Cox, born on November 27th, 1966, in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in Needham and graduated from Needham High School. From a young age, he aspired to serve in the United States Marine Corps. After enlisting straight out of high school in 1985, David dedicated himself to the Marines, eventually achieving the rank of … More David Cox
In the mid-1980s, Italy’s music scene still echoed with the voices of its earlier pop and variety stars from the 1960s and 1970s. One such figure was Graziella Franchini, better known by her stage name Lolita. Born on January 5th, 1950, in Castagnaro (in the province of Verona, northern Italy), she rose to modest fame … More Graziella “Lolita” Franchini
In the fall of 1983, twenty-three-year-old Andrea Scherpf and twenty-seven-year-old Bernd Göricke, a young engaged couple from West Germany, were fulfilling a dream adventure: hitchhiking across western Canada. The pair was exploring the vast landscapes of British Columbia as part of a broader North American trip. They were described as adventurous, friendly, and typical of … More Andrea Scherpf and Bernd Göricke
The Brabant Killings, also known as the Bende van Nijvel (Gang of Nijvel) or the Tueurs du Brabant (Brabant Killers), represent one of Belgium’s most infamous and enduring unsolved crime sprees. Between 1982 and 1985, a small group of assailants—widely believed to consist of three core members—carried out a series of violent armed robberies and … More The Brabant Killings
The unsolved murders of Janet C. Scott and Ruth Potdevin in May 1985 remain one of the more chilling and mysterious cases from New York City’s mid-1980s crime landscape. Occurring just days apart in hotels on West 54th Street in Manhattan, the brutal killings—both involving severe head wounds from a sharp, heavy weapon—prompted police to … More Janet C. Scott and Ruth Potdevin
The murder of Nathan Blenner remains one of the more tragic and controversial cases in New York City’s criminal justice history from the 1980s. On October 20th, 1985, twenty-year-old Nathan Blenner, a resident of South Ozone Park in Queens, New York, was abducted in front of his home in a daylight carjacking-style attack. His body … More Nathan Blenner
Lenny Breau was one of the most innovative and underappreciated guitarists in jazz history. Born Leonard Harold Breau on August 5th, 1941, in Auburn, Maine, he grew up in a musical family and began performing as a child. By his teens, he had become a prodigy, blending jazz, country, flamenco, classical, and folk influences into … More Lenny Breau
Crime Immemorial 