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
It was around seven p.m. on the evening of November 30th, 1948. A couple strolling along Somerton beach near Adelaide, South Australia noticed a man in a suit sitting with his back propped against the seawall. As they watched, the man extended his arm and then dropped it limply. About a half-hour later, another couple … More The Somerton Man: Finally Identified?
On March 8th, 1921, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the body of a young boy, aged between five and seven years old, was fished out of a pond near the O’Laughlin Stone Company, by a worker named John Brlich. The child had been killed by a blow to the head with a blunt object, and seemed to … More Little Lord Fauntleroy
In early March of 1983, within the hip, underground music and film scenes of Los Angeles, California, a murder would take place that snatched from the world a man whose name is not all that well known today, even though at the time he stood at the nexus of everything that was experimental and up-and-coming … More Peter Ivers
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
On the day before Valentine’s Day of 1983, a body was found alongside a West Virginia highway, and although law enforcement weren’t aware of it yet, the dead woman may have been the first discovered victim of a possible serial killer who seemed to target red-haired females. An elderly couple was traveling along Route 250 … More The Redhead Murders
Eliška “Elsie” Paroubek was a pretty, slightly-built, five-year-old girl with long, curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and prominent dimples. She was the seventh child of Bohemian (now Czech) immigrants, František and Karolína Vojáčková, who had come to the United States in the waning years of the nineteenth century. Her family lived on Albany Avenue in … More Elsie Paroubek
Joseph B. Elwell was an exceedingly wealthy and well-connected man, best known as a champion bridge player who had penned several popular books on the game. He was something of a gambler, had made most of his money on the stock market, and owned several cars and a yacht, a mansion in Palm Beach, as … More Joseph B. Elwell: The Locked Room Murder
In the early years of the twentieth century, in the racially-charged atmosphere of Atlanta, Georgia, bodies began to stack up in the black community, and though law enforcement and the press were initially slow to embrace the idea that a single perpetrator might be responsible for the majority of the crimes, eventually so many unsolved … More America’s Forgotten Serial Killer: The Atlanta Ripper
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
