COLD CASES SOLVED

n 1929, seven men were murdered in a Chicago garage, and suspicion fell on Al Capone’s organization. Forensic ballistics provided important investigative leads, but the perpetrators were never convicted. Explore what investigators established and why the historical case remains unresolved.

In 1969, a 16-year-old girl was murdered in California, leaving investigators with a mystery that would span more than half a century. Decades later, renewed investigative work helped identify Joanne Yvonne Burdick and brought attention to a suspect known as the Crew Cut Killer. This episode explores how old evidence, criminal profiling, and persistent detective work can revive a case long believe...

For more than six decades, he was known only as the “Boy in the Box,” one of America’s most haunting unidentified murder victims. His battered body was discovered outside Philadelphia in 1957, but despite thousands of leads, investigators could not determine who he was. Generations of detectives worked the case, while advances in DNA technology slowly created possibilities that investigators in th...

In October 1986, 23-year-old Teresa Ann Houck left the Baltimore club where she worked and was never seen alive again. Hours later, she was found shot to death in Druid Hill Park, leaving investigators with evidence but no identified killer. Nearly four decades later, a routine DNA database search produced the match prosecutors say finally gave the cold case a name.

For decades, investigators could possess a killer’s DNA yet have no suspect to compare it against. Investigative genetic genealogy changed that equation by allowing investigators to search for relatives rather than only exact database matches. The identification of the Golden State Killer demonstrated how a decades-old biological clue could suddenly become the beginning of an investigation rather...

For decades, investigators could possess a killer’s DNA yet have no suspect to compare it against. Investigative genetic genealogy changed that equation by allowing investigators to search for relatives rather than only exact database matches. The identification of the Golden State Killer demonstrated how a decades-old biological clue could suddenly become the beginning of an investigation rather...

Joshua Wayne Crawford was found murdered inside his Maryland apartment on the day he turned 21, leaving investigators with a violent crime scene but no arrest. For 23 years, detectives revisited leads, retested evidence, and waited for forensic technology to catch up with the evidence left behind. Then, in September 2026, investigators announced an arrest—and revealed an extraordinary detail: the...

On September 17, 2026, the GBI announced murder and related charges against Rashad Jackson in the 2020 death of Tyler Hall in Norcross, Georgia. Hall, 21, was found shot in his home in August 2020. The breakthrough came from advanced DNA and genealogy work by the GBI Cold Case Unit and Othram. Jackson is charged, not convicted, and the investigation remains active.

May 1973 two New Jersey sisters on a Florida Keys vacation were last seen hitchhiking on Stock Island; the next day their bodies were found in the woods off U.S. 1 in Key Largo. Fifty-three years later, forensic genetic genealogy named David Allen Snyder, a former Key West resident who died in Idaho in 2008. There will be no trial—only a name, a timeline, and the end of an unanswered question.

Two assaults, decades apart and a thousand miles from each other, sat in evidence rooms until the science caught up. In Lawrence, Kansas, a 2009 stranger rape on a darkened sidewalk finally produced a living defendant after a 1-in-848-trillion DNA match. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, a 1990 home-invasion rape at gunpoint was closed by genetic genealogy—only to find the Fort Bragg soldier alread...

In 1986, a masked intruder terrorized East Jefferson homes and vanished. Nearly four decades later, a Georgia inmate already serving life was linked by DNA and a palm print to six aggravated rape counts. A Jefferson Parish jury needed only 45 minutes to convict him — a cold-case win built on evidence someone chose to save.

Irasema Chavez was stabbed more than 100 times in her Arlington, Texas, apartment in January 2012. After CODIS produced no hit, FBI investigative genetic genealogy pointed to her friend Mayra Velasquez; police later matched crime-scene blood to DNA from a discarded fork. Velasquez was charged with capital murder, has pleaded not guilty in public, and the case now turns on what a single stain can—a...

In May 1991, 30-year-old mother Sherrie Bridgewater was raped and strangled in her Las Vegas apartment. Decades later, the same DNA profile tied her death to the 1975 slaying of Teree Becker in a Westminster, Colorado field. Investigators identified Thomas Martin Elliott only after genetic genealogy and the exhumation of a man who had already taken his own life.

After more than three decades, San Francisco prosecutors have charged Ricky Dawson in the 1992 rape and strangulation of Nancy Hernandez, a 45-year-old woman found dead in a Chinatown alley. Dawson, already serving life for a 1996 Denver murder and previously convicted in a Florida killing, has now been linked by DNA to at least four deaths spanning California, Colorado, Florida, and possibly Wash...

: In 1987, the murder of 82-year-old Opal Weil in her Pinellas County home left a community in fear and her family searching for answers amid a cluster of similar attacks on elderly residents. Despite the collection of critical forensic evidence at the time, including dozens of hair samples, the case languished as an unsolved cold case for more than three decades. Advances in DNA technology, combi...

October 1975, the partial remains of a 73-year-old Tucson man named William Reginald Sipfle were found in a landfill near Ryan Airfield, with no identification, no missing person report, and no answers for the family he left behind. Fifty-one years later, forensic genealogy and DNA technology cracked open the cold case and pointed investigators directly at Sipfle’s own stepdaughter, Carol Ann Beal...

On a quiet Friday morning in June 2008, an armed intruder entered the Sun Drop Bottling Company in Concord, North Carolina, and brutally murdered office manager Donna Barnhardt and job applicant Darrell Noles in a calculated robbery. For nearly eighteen years, the double homicide remained one of the city’s most haunting cold cases, devastating families and challenging investigators. In May 2026, p...

In a groundbreaking forensic breakthrough, advanced DNA technology has definitively linked notorious serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 murder of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime in Utah. This episode examines the decades-long investigation, the science behind the match, and how a complete Bundy DNA profile may now help resolve other suspected cases in the state. Join us for a detailed exploration of j...

Why do some serial offenders suddenly abandon one hunting ground and reappear hundreds of miles away years later? In this deep forensic investigation, we examine the phenomenon of “predatory drift” — the geographic and psychological migration patterns of violent offenders whose anchor points, routines, victimology, and operational zones evolve over decades. Drawing from behavioral profiling, geogr...

For nearly five decades, the brutal 1981 murder of 22-year-old Lois Marshall in Galveston, Texas, remained an icy cold case with no answers. In a stunning breakthrough, modern forensic technology and newly resubmitted fingerprint analysis finally unmasked a shadow suspect hiding in plain sight. Discover how meticulous detective work and cutting-edge DNA profiling broke a 45-year silence to deliver...

In February 2007, 25-year-old Carrie Hicks was found dead in a rural New Hampshire home with two gunshot wounds to the head, launching a nearly two-decade-long cold case investigation. New forensic analysis by the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit has now identified 51-year-old Wayne Ring as her killer, resolving the case as a murder followed by an attempted suicide. This episode examines the evidence,...


In August 1992, 85-year-old Alwin Schoefer was brutally beaten, stabbed, and shot inside his Weimar, California home, which was then deliberately set ablaze with the exterior doors padlocked from the outside in an apparent effort to conceal the crime. The investigation remained cold for nearly 34 years until advanced DNA testing in 2025 linked the evidence to Joseph Foster, a local man already se...

A 34-year-old cold case resurfaces with the arrest of a previously convicted sex offender—revealing critical failures in risk assessment, offender monitoring, and early forensic limitations. This episode applies forensic psychology, behavioral profiling, and modern DNA science to analyze how violent offenders persist, adapt, and evade detection for decades. A deep dive into sexual homicide typolog...

Tucson Police have arrested Rafael Alvarez in the long-unsolved 2008 cold case murder of 20-year-old James Noriega, who was shot five times while leaving a crowded Southside Halloween house party. For nearly two decades the victim’s family pleaded for answers as the case went cold, until this shocking breakthrough brought first-degree murder charges and a $1 million bond. This episode explores the...

A true crime and forensic psychology podcast exploring how decades-old evidence—gloves, clothing, and biological traces—helped solve a 1988 cold case through modern DNA analysis and investigative techniques. This episode examines the conviction of Aloysius Winthrop James, highlighting cold case forensics, DNA evidence, criminal profiling, and long-term investigative strategy. Ideal for listeners i...