On the afternoon of Friday, October 5th, in the small town of Rices Landing, Pennsylvania, eight-year-old Debbie Makel left Dry Tavern Elementary School and got on the bus headed toward her home a mile away. Debbie had two older brothers, aged ten and eleven, who would sometimes ride the bus with her, but on this … More Debbie Makel

Thirteen-year-old Carol Spinks set out on the evening of April 25th, 1971 to walk to a 7-Eleven store less than half a mile from her home; her older sister had given her five dollars to pick up a few things. On the way to the store, Carol was seen by her mother, who had been … More The Freeway Phantom

In September of 1973, a free-spirited young woman would meet a grisly end in a cemetery in small-town Derbyshire, England, and her murder would lead to what was initially considered to be one of the longest miscarriages of justice in Britain’s legal history, though complications have arisen in the case in the years since. Thirty-two-year-old … More Wendy Sewell

The year of 1979 would be less than a week old before an appalling quadruple child murder took place in a small home in Singapore. Tan Kuen Chai and Lee Mei Ying were a hard-working couple who lived in a one-room flat in the Geylang Bahru subzone of Kallang, Singapore. They ran a small business, … More The Tan Children, aka the Geylang Bahru Family Murders

In the late autumn of 1971, the presumed first victim of a child killer who seemingly had a peculiar method for choosing his targets would turn up in Rochester, New York. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16th. Ten-year-old Carmen Colón left the home on Brown Street she shared with her grandparents and began … More The Alphabet Murders, aka The Double Initial Killings

Just over a week into the new year of 1976, a series of murders of dark-haired young women would commence, most of them centered on the beach town of Pacifica, located about fifteen miles south of San Francisco. Because many of the known victims were found in the vicinity of Gypsy Hill Road, the murders … More The Gypsy Hill Killings, aka The San Mateo Slasher Case

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

Sixteen-year-old Jeanette DePalma, a student at Jonathan Dayton High School in Springfield Township, New Jersey, left her home on August 7th, 1972 after telling her mother that she was going to take a train to visit a friend. When Jeanette failed to return home by that evening, her worried mother reported her missing. Jeanette would … More Jeanette DePalma

It was a little past two p.m. on the afternoon of November 23rd, 1977, the day before Thanksgiving, and six-year-old Beth Lynn Barr was on her way home from school near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What she couldn’t have known was that earlier that morning, a man had tried to pick up a woman waiting for a … More Beth Lynn Barr