The Unsolved Files

In late September 1982, a series of medical emergencies across the Chicago area became one of the most consequential unsolved poisoning investigations in American history. Seven people, including 12-year-old Mary Kellerman and three members of the Janus family, died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules contaminated with potassium cyanide.

The deaths first appeared unrelated. They occurred in separate homes, suburbs, workpla...

On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Ann Short was found murdered in a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue in Los Angeles. She was twenty-two years old. Her body had been mutilated and placed there after death elsewhere, according to the absence of blood at the discovery site described by the FBI.

Within hours, investigators had achieved one remarkable breakthrough. Blurred fingerprints were transmitted from Los Angeles through a newspaper...

In the spring of 1992, six people were killed while working in small retail businesses across Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri. The cases began with Robin Fuldauer, a twenty-six-year-old Payless ShoeSource manager in Indianapolis. Three days later, Patricia Magers and Patricia Smith were killed inside a Wichita bridal shop. Michael “Mick” McCown was killed at a Terre Haute ceramics store, followed by Nancy Kitzmiller in St...

In February 1959, searchers found an empty tent on the eastern slope of Kholat Syakhl in the northern Ural Mountains. Nine hikers led by Igor Dyatlov had disappeared after establishing camp there. Their boots, clothing, and equipment remained behind, while tracks described by searcher Boris Slobtsov led downhill toward the forest.

The search uncovered bodies near a cedar tree, on the slope between the forest and tent, and later in ...

On December 26, 1996, John Ramsey and family friend Fleet White went downstairs to search the Ramsey home in Boulder, Colorado. For hours, the household had been treated as the scene of a kidnapping. Patsy Ramsey had found a three-page handwritten ransom note demanding $118,000 and called 911 at 5:52 that morning. Police arrived, friends entered the house, and an earlier basement search failed to locate six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey...

On December 5, 1945, five United States Navy TBM Avenger bombers left Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale for a routine navigation and practice-bombing exercise over the Bahamas. Fourteen men were aboard. The flight reached its target, completed its bombing run, and then became lost during the return portion of the mission.

Its leader, Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, reported that both compasses in his aircraft had failed. He beli...

Between December 1968 and October 1969, five people were killed and two survived a series of attacks across Northern California that authorities came to associate with an unidentified offender calling himself Zodiac. David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, and Paul Stine were killed. Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell survived and gave investigators rare firsthand accounts.

The case changed after the attack...

In 1888, a series of murders in London’s East End became one of history’s most famous unsolved cases. Five women—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—are traditionally grouped as the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. But that label was created after the killings began, and the name itself came from an anonymous letter whose author was never identified.

On February 2, 2009, Christine Ross and her dog, Ruca, found a human bone protruding from the ground on Albuquerque’s West Mesa. The discovery near 118th Street Southwest led investigators to an isolated burial area containing the remains of 11 women and the unborn child of Michelle Valdez.

The women had disappeared years earlier, many during the period from 2003 through 2005. Every victim was eventually identified, but no on...

On June 10, 1912, Mary Peckham noticed that the Moore home in Villisca, Iowa, had remained unusually quiet. When Ross Moore entered the residence, he found two young overnight guests dead in a downstairs room. A search of the rest of the house revealed the full scale of the crime: eight victims, including six children.

The Moore family had attended a Presbyterian church Children’s Day program the evening before. Sometime afte...

In August 1994, Oakville, Washington, residents reported translucent gelatinous blobs appearing during rainstorms. Officer David Lacey said the material struck and smeared across his patrol-car windshield. Samples were reportedly examined by hospital and state personnel, but the surviving accounts of those tests conflict.

This episode separates eyewitness testimony, later recollections, reported laboratory observations, and specula...

On Thanksgiving Eve in 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle aboard Northwest Orient Flight 305. Shortly after takeoff, he told a flight attendant that he had a bomb and demanded $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills, four parachutes, and a fuel truck waiting in Seattle.

After receiving the ransom and parachutes, he released all 36 passengers. Then he ordered the Boeing 727 back into the a...

In August nineteen thirty-eight, two dismembered bodies were found near Cleveland’s East Ninth Street lakefront dump, close to the center of city authority. By then, the Cleveland Torso Murderer had already left a trail of victims in and around Kingsbury Run, an industrial ravine shaped by railroads, poverty, shantytowns, and the pressures of the Great Depression. Eliot Ness, then Cleveland’s public safety director and ...

On October sixteenth, nineteen seventy-two, a Pan Alaska Airways Cessna 310 left Anchorage for Juneau carrying pilot Don Jonz, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, Alaska congressman Nick Begich, and Begich aide Russell Brown. The aircraft never arrived. The search became one of the most extensive missing-aircraft efforts in the United States at that time, drawing military, Coast Guard, Civil Air Patrol, government, and civilian resou...

In American parks and wilderness areas, some people disappear after only a brief separation from family, friends, or a marked trail. Missing 411 is the name given to a body of books, films, and investigations developed by author David Paulides, who argues that certain disappearances share repeated unusual features. This episode follows documented cases often discussed in that context, including Dennis Martin in Great Smoky Mountain...

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Unearth the enigmatic tale that has puzzled investigators for decades—the case of the Somerton Man. Found lifeless on Somerton Beach in 1948, this unidentified man left behind a slew of cryptic clues and little else. A scrap of paper bearing the words "Tamam Shud" and a book with an indecipherable code are just a few of the baffling pieces in this mysterious puzzle. Journey through the evidence, from a...

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Step into the haunting enigma at the heart of The Unsolved Files as we delve into the chilling tale of Elisa Lam's unsolved death at the infamous Cecil Hotel. Her disappearance triggered widespread intrigue, intensified by the eerie elevator footage that captured her last known moments. Despite exhaustive investigations and abundant evidence, questions persist: How did Elisa end up in the hotel's rooftop wat...