Fifty-one-year-old Frank Morris owned a shoe repair and dry goods shop in the poverty-stricken town of Ferriday, Louisiana, and also lived in a small room in the back of the store. He was a well-liked and respected businessman in the area, catering to both black and white customers who appreciated his fine handiwork and his … More Frank Morris

Marianne Schmidt had moved with her family to Melbourne, Australia from her native Germany back in 1958. By 1965, she was fifteen years old, living in Sydney, and had become inseparable best friends with her fifteen-year-old neighbor Christine Sharrock, who lived next door with her grandparents. It was January, the height of the Australian summer. … More The Wanda Beach Murders and the Disappearance of the Beaumont Children

On Friday, November 7th, a young nun in Baltimore, Maryland would go out to run errands and never return home. Though her ultimate fate would not be revealed until early the following year, the mystery of her disappearance and death would resonate right up to the present day, when she was the subject of the … More Sister Cathy Cesnik: The Keepers Murder

Dr. Mary Stults Sherman was an exceedingly accomplished individual by any definition. Originally from Illinois, she had obtained her medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1941, and subsequently served as assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at the university-affiliated Billings Hospital. In 1952, she moved to New Orleans to take up a position as … More Three Possibly CIA-Related Murders

Elizabeth Figg, a twenty-one-year-old prostitute from Cheshire who also went by the name of Ann Phillips, was found dead on a towpath on the banks of the River Thames in London by patrol officers early on the morning of June 17th, 1959. Elizabeth had been strangled to death. Her clothes were torn open to reveal … More Jack the Stripper: The Hammersmith Nude Murders

In Columbus, Ohio, in 1966, an apparently random murder of a man associated with Ohio State University may have been connected with the victim’s prominence in the civil rights movement. Clergyman and theologian Robert Warren Spike had long been a fixture among activist communities fighting for racial equality. Having started his career in Greenwich Village, … More Robert Warren Spike

On Monday, April 12th, seventeen-year-old high school student Janice Snow got out of classes at around three-thirty in the afternoon, after which she and two friends—Sally South and Judy Young—proceeded to a nearby bowling alley that was a popular hangout spot for local teenagers. A little more than an hour later, Sally’s father picked up … More Janice Snow

Nineteen-year-old newlyweds Johnny and Joyce Swindle had just gotten married on January 18th, 1964 in their hometown of Jasper, Alabama, and had come to San Diego, California for their honeymoon. Johnny was on leave from the Navy, and he and his new wife had been spending a relaxing few days staying in a pleasant cottage … More Johnny and Joyce Swindle

The 1960s was obviously an extremely turbulent decade, and during the course of the struggle for civil rights in the United States in particular, violence was a fairly common occurrence. The death of Paul Guihard, however, is notable for being the only known case of a journalist murdered during the resistance to the civil rights … More Paul Guihard