Unsolved Murders That Have Stumped Law Enforcement for Decades

JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was just 6 years old when she was found dead in her family’s home in Boulder, Colo. in December 1996. The child beauty queen suffered a blow to the head and had been strangled.

Though police looked at many suspects, including John Mark Karr, a 41-year-old elementary school teacher who falsely confessed to murdering JonBenét, her killing remains unsolved.

JonBenét was buried at Saint James Episcopal Cemetery in Marietta, Ga. Her mother Patsy Ramsey was interred next to her after she died of ovarian cancer in 2006.

Amy Ayers, 13, was one of four girls brutally killed in an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! eatery on Dec. 6, 1991 in what has been become known as the Yogurt Shop Murders. 

The bodies of Ayers and her friends, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas (pictured above), and sisters Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, 15 and 17, were discovered inside the shop after a fire was extinguished.

(Jennifer Harbison pictured above) All four girls were shot in the head, and were found undressed. They were bound and gagged with their own clothes. Three of the bodies were stacked on top of one another.

(Sarah Harbison pictured above) The girls had last been seen alive at 10 p.m. and had planned to have a sleepover the night they were killed.

Jin Feng Chen, 39, his wife Hai Yan Li, 38, and their sons Anthony, 10, and Eddy, 7, were found stabbed and bludgeoned with something similar to a hammer in their upstate New York home on Oct. 8, 2014. Authorities believed the family was targeted, but have not been able to publicly identify a motive or suspect in the case.

Sarah DeLeon, 19, was last seen alive leaving her boyfriend’s Kansas house at about 1 a.m. on Dec. 29, 1989. A train crew member discovered her body along railroad tracks running near Interstate 435.

The college student had been stabbed multiple times and suffered a head injury, but there were no signs of a struggle or sexual assault.

In 2016, police arrested 48-year-old Carolyn Heckert in DeLeon’s murder. She pleaded not guilty and the charges were dropped six months later when a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to tie her to the crime.

DeLeon’s loved ones still have hope her killer will be caught, with her brother telling reporters the latest development was “just a roadblock.”

Barbara Grimes, 15, and her 12-year-old sister Patricia went to the movies to see their favorite star Elvis Presley's latest film, Love Me Tender, at a theater in Brighton, Chicago, on Dec. 28, 1956. Though it was their eleventh time seeing it, the girls stayed for a second viewing of the film and were expected home about 11:45 p.m. But they never made it back to their family. 

The Grimes sisters' bodies were found nearly a month after they had last been seen alive at the Brighton Theater. 

Attorney David Bradshaw speaks with journalists about the arrest of a suspect in the murder of the Grimes sisters in Chicago, Ill., in 1957. That suspect later recanted and no one has ever been charged in the murders of Barbara and Patricia Grimes. 

On the morning of June 13, 1977, 10-year-old Denise Milner (pictured above), 8-year-old Lori Farmer and 9-year-old Michele Guse, were found raped, bludgeoned and strangled on a Girl Scout trip to Camp Scott in Oklahoma.

(Lori Farmer pictured above) Though a local jail escapee with a history of violence was arrested for the murders, he was later acquitted when he stood trial.

(Michele Guse pictured above) Officials in January said surviving evidence from the crime scene is undergoing DNA testing that they hope will reveal more about the killer.

Known posthumously as the "Black Dahlia," actress Elizabeth Short was just 22 years old when she was found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 1947.

Short's murder captured the attention of the entire nation, as graphic details of the case, including that her body had been mutilated and severed at the waist, were reported in newspapers of the period. 

This threatening letter was addressed to the Los Angeles Herald-Express and claims to have been written by Short's killer. Some experts believe the letters were the work of journalists trying to keep the story alive. Though an extensive investigation produced more than 150 suspects in Short's killing, no one was ever arrested.