The Trail Went Cold

May 1, 2008. Lawrenceville, Georgia. Millionaire real estate developer Hal Wenal returns home to discover that his 60-year old wife, Eva Kay Wenal, has been murdered. The only lead is an eyewitness sighting of a suspicious man in the neighbourhood around the time of Kay’s death. A newspaper soon receives an angry anonymous letter from someone who confesses to killing Kay because she wouldn’t leave...

June 18, 1977. Tucson, Arizona. After disappearing from his family for eleven days, the body of escrow company owner Charles “Chuck” Morgan is found outside his vehicle in the desert. He has been shot in the back of the head and is carrying a two-dollar bill which appears to have a coded message written on it. Even though Chuck had allegedly survived a kidnapping ordeal three months earlier and th...

February 14, 2000. Shelby, North Carolina. The parents of nine-year old Asha Degree wake up to discover that she has vanished from her bedroom. After she is reported missing, witnesses come forward to report having seen Asha walk down the highway earlier that morning. This seems to indicate that she voluntarily left her home in the middle of the night for unknown reasons. Eighteen months later, As...

January 4, 1935. The nude body of a young man named Roland T. Owen is discovered inside Room 1046 of the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been tied up, beaten and stabbed and dies after being taken to the hospital. It turns out that “Roland T. Owen” is not the victim’s real name and after a mysterious anonymous benefactor sends money for his funeral, he is buried without anyone unc...

September 6, 1970. South Lake Tahoe, California. 25-year old nurse Donna Lass is nearing the end of her shift at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel-Casino when she vanishes without explanation. Her landlord and boss soon receive phone calls from an unidentified man, who claims that Donna will be absent for awhile because of a family emergency. However, this claim turns out to be false and Donna is never seen...

June 8, 1989. Richmond, British Columbia. Two weeks after she disappeared, the body of 44-year old Cindy James is found in the yard of an abandoned house. Her hands and feet have been tied behind her back and her cause of death is determined to be an overdose. Cindy’s death brings an end to six-and-a-half-years of terror, where she reported nearly one hundred incidents of being stalked, tormented...

May 5, 1968. After not hearing from him for three days, the fiancee of 62-year old character actor Albert Dekker (star of such films as “Dr. Cyclops”, “Kiss Me Deadly” and “The Wild Bunch”) enters his Hollywood apartment. She is horrified to discover him hanging dead inside the bathroom. The bizarre manner in which Dekker is found suggests that he was involved in some sort of sadomasochistic sexua...

July 26, 1974. The nude decomposed body of a young woman is discovered at the Race Point Dunes outside of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The woman has been murdered via blunt force trauma to the head, but carries no identification. In spite of an extensive investigation, police are unable to uncover the identity of the victim or her killer, so she simply becomes known as the “Lady of the Dunes”. Ove...

December 10, 1971. Middlebury, Vermont. 18-year old Middlebury College student Lynne Schulze is scheduled to take one of her final exams. While walking to the exam with her friends, Lynne remembers that she has forgotten her pen and returns to her dorm room to retrieve it. Lynne never shows up for the exam and vanishes without a trace. Four decades later, an unlikely connection is made between thi...

Christmas Eve 1975. Winter Garden, Florida. Police respond to call for help at the W.T. Zeigler Furniture Store and find one of the store’s owners, 30-year old Tommy Zeigler, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Inside, they discover that four people have been murdered: Tommy’s wife, Eunice Zeigler; her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards; and a customer named Charlie Mays. Tommy claims h...

June 28, 1991. An elderly couple named Gord and Jackie McAllister drive their motor home into an isolated rest stop near Blind River, Ontario, in order to spend the night. They are awakened by an armed man, who robs them before shooting Jackie to death and wounding Gord. When a motorist named Brian Major pulls into the rest stop, the suspect fatally shoots him as well before fleeing the scene. Yea...

Christmas Eve 1975. Winter Garden, Florida. Police respond to call for help at the W.T. Zeigler Furniture Store and find one of the store’s owners, 30-year old Tommy Zeigler, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Inside, they discover that four people have been murdered: Tommy’s wife, Eunice Zeigler; her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards; and a customer named Charlie Mays. Tommy claims h...

January 21, 1962. Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Authorities arrive at the burning home of Edward Maps to discover that his wife, Christine, has been bludgeoned to death and their four-month old daughter, Julie Louise, has died of smoke inhalation. Edward Maps himself has disappeared and a warrant is issued for his arrest. Maps is soon placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, but to this da...

August 7, 1982. Santa Fe, New Mexico. A Catholic priest named Father Reynaldo Rivera receives a phone call from a man asking him to administer last rites to a dying relative. After leaving to meet this man at a rest stop, Father Rivera disappears and is soon found murdered. Two years later, another Catholic priest named Father John Kerrigan disappears from the community of Ronan, Montana and thoug...

March 18, 1990. Augusta, Georgia. Fifteen-year old twin sisters, Jeannette and Dannette Millbrook, are heading back to their family’s apartment when they decide to stop off at a gas station to buy some food. After leaving the store, the twins never return home and vanish without a trace. Over the next two decades, the twins’ family would be trapped in a trapped in bureaucratic nightmare, as law en...

February 14, 1980. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While recovering from a bad drug hangover, 25-year old Michael Rosenblum drives off in his girlfriend’s car and vanishes without a trace. The vehicle is soon found abandoned by the Baldwin Borough Police Department, but even though Michael’s family reports him missing, the police inexplicably keep the car impounded for three months without informing any...

January 13, 1976. Beaumaris, Australia. The family of eight-year old Eloise Worledge wake up to discover she has mysteriously vanished from their suburban home and that an opening has been cut in the flyscreen window inside Eloise’s bedroom. Eyewitnesses report a lot of strange activity in the neighbourhood throughout the night, which seems to suggest that Eloise was abducted by an intruder. Howev...

November 16, 1982. An abandoned SUV is discovered in the middle of a desolate Wyoming prairie and numerous possessions are scattered all over the highway. The vehicle belongs to Don Kemp, a former New York City ad executive who has left his old life behind and vanished without a trace. In spite of an extensive search of the area, it is four years before Don’s skeletal remains are found on the prai...

July 10, 1991. El Dorado, Arkansas. A young blonde woman known to her friends as “Mercedes” is shot to death by her estranged ex-boyfriend at a seedy motel. It turns out Mercedes has been living under a stolen identity and no one in her life – not even the man who murdered her – knows who she really is. An extensive check into the woman’s background turns up many pieces of a puzzle which does not...

On April 9, 1997, Judy Smith, a 50-year old wife and mother from Newton, Massachusetts, decided to accompany her husband, Jeff, on a business trip to Philadelphia. The following day, Judy set out to do some sightseeing in the city while her husband attended a conference. When Jeff returned to their hotel that night, Judy was not there and she could not be found anywhere in the city. Five months la...

April 26, 1980. Manchester, New Hampshire. Judith Rahn goes out of town, leaving her 14-year old daughter, Laureen, alone at their apartment. When Judith returns home late that night, she discovers that one of Laureen’s friends is sleeping in her bed, but Laureen herself is missing without explanation. Over the next few years, there would be several strange leads to suggest that Laureen somehow wo...

October 1, 2003. Naples, Florida. A Mexican national named Felipe Santos gets into a minor traffic accident and mysteriously disappears after being taken into custody by the police. Three months later, another Naples man named Terrance Williams also vanishes without explanation after being pulled over for a routine traffic stop. What makes this story so unusual is that both men were last seen bein...

December 22, 1981. 19-year old Rhonda Hinson attends an office Christmas party in Hickory, North Carolina. Sometime after midnight, Rhonda is driving back home when she is struck by a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle, killing her instantly and causing her car to crash into the ditch. Incredibly, the bullet manages to travel through the vehicle’s trunk, back seat, and driver’s seat, striking...

January 5, 1994. A former Marine named David Cox vanishes from his home in Medfield, Massachusetts and is found shot to death three months later. In 1986, Cox had been involved in a controversial “Code Red” hazing incident while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, which would inspire the hit movie, “A Few Good Men”. When Cox saw the movie, he organized a lawsuit and became an outspoken critic of both the...

December 23, 1974. 17-year old Mary Rachel Trlica, 14-year old Lisa Renee Wilson and 9-year old Julie Ann Moseley, a.k.a. the “Fort Worth Three”, head on a shopping trip to a mall in Fort Worth, Texas. The three girls never return home and their abandoned car is found in the mall parking lot. The next morning, Rachel’s husband finds a strange mysterious letter in his mailbox which throws the whole...