Crime Immemorial

Tracy Marie Neef was a bright, energetic seven-year-old first-grader born on January 6th, 1977. On the morning of Friday, March 16th, 1984, her mother, Susan Neef, dropped her off at Bertha Heid Elementary School in Thornton, Colorado (in Adams County). The drop-off occurred between eight sixteen and eight twenty a.m., about ten minutes late. Due … More Tracy Neef

In the early summer of 1982, a quiet suburban home at 173 Parsons Road in Longwood, Florida—a small city in Seminole County near Orlando—became the scene of a shocking triple homicide that claimed the lives of a former rock musician, his young son, and a houseguest. The victims were thirty-six-year-old Russell “Rusty” Day, his eleven-year-old … More Rusty Day, Russell Davidson Jr., and Garth McRae

On the evening of September 29th, 1983, fifty-eight-year-old George Murdoch, a well-liked taxi driver from Aberdeen, Scotland, was brutally murdered in a crime that became known across the UK as the “Cheese Wire Murder” due to the unusual weapon used in the attack. George Murdoch, often called “Dod” by friends and family, was born in … More George Murdoch

On the night of Thursday, April 7th, 1983, Edinburgh’s waterfront at Gypsy Brae (Granton)—a windswept promenade overlooking the Firth of Forth—became the scene of one of Scotland’s most haunting cold cases: the murder of Sheila Anderson, a twenty-seven-year-old mother of two who made her living as a sex worker. In the early hours leading up … More Sheila Anderson

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Lewiston-Clarkston Lewis–Clark Valley region, where northern Idaho meets southeastern Washington along the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, was shaken by a string of disappearances and killings that investigators have long suspected are connected. The cases remain unsolved, but over the decades police have periodically signaled they believe a … More The Lewis-Clark Valley Murders

On March 20th, 1982, eleven-year-old Nava Elimelech left her family’s home in Bat Yam, Israel to walk the 300-meter distance to a friend’s house; it was a familiar short trip that should have taken only minutes. She left a note for her parents reading, “To Mom and Dad and the whole family: I’m going to … More Nava Elimelech

In the early morning hours of July 1st, 1981, four people were bludgeoned to death inside a small rental townhouse at 8763 Wonderland Avenue, tucked into the quiet hills above Los Angeles, California. The crime scene was so savage that even veteran detectives were shaken. Blood coated the walls. Bodies were left where they fell. … More The Wonderland Murders

In the spring and early summer of 1981, a string of killings in and around Tokyo, Japan shook the nightlife corridors of Shinjuku, especially the neon tangle of Kabukichō. Three women were murdered inside love hotels, each case echoing the last: a couple checks in, the man slips out alone, and staff later discover a … More The Shinjuku–Kabukichō Love Hotel Murders

On a quiet residential street in Berkeley, California in late February 1980, a triple homicide reopened a wound that many people hoped had begun to close after the 1978 People’s Temple catastrophe in Guyana. The victims—Jeannie Mills, her husband Al, and their teenage daughter Daphene—had once been insiders in the Temple’s world, and later became … More The Mills Family