Free Republic

German police will undertake a new search in Portugal this week as part of ongoing investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The search will reportedly take place in Praia da Luz, the town in the Algarve where she went missing nearly two decades ago. Madeleine was three years old when she vanished from a holiday apartment complex on 3 May 2007. Her disappearance sparked a Europe-wide police investigation, and has become one of the highest-profile unsolved missing person cases in the world. The Metropolitan Police said it was not involved in the new search, but was aware of the...

33 years ago today, Edward Travens, 15, was murdered while trying to rent a video with his older brother in LA as the race riots were breaking out. A Black male yelled, "where you from?" and shot Travens five times as he exited the vehicle. UNSOLVED https://x.com/NatCon2022/status/1928071818897694832

On October 12, 1973, Douglas Brick walked out of his dorm at the U and vanished... his disappearance remained a mystery known only by an ever-shrinking circle of people who knew Brick as a brother, a friend, or a roommate...In 2022, University Police hired a crime data analyst, Nikol Mitchell, who, in her work with Utah's Statewide Information and Analysis Center (SIAC) discovered that the U had a cold case that had been lost for at least 20 years.Major Heather Sturzenegger was the investigations lieutenant at the time...Then, the first glimmer came. They discovered that Brick's sister had called university...

Early one morning in September 2024, two teams of F.B.I. agents descended simultaneously on a pair of homes in Orange County, New York. The agents arrived to serve arrest warrants on Mout’z Soudani, 76, a local real estate investor, and Stewart Rosenwasser, 72, a prominent former judge and recently retired county prosecutor. The two were accused in a conspiracy case. Mr. Soudani surrendered. Mr. Rosenwasser did not. Instead, he barricaded himself inside his home in Campbell Hall, N.Y., a suburb 65 miles north of Manhattan, exchanging gunfire with F.B.I. agents, according to local news reports, which cited an unnamed source...

Nearly half a century after a young California woman was strangled, officials say a thumbprint on a carton of cigarettes has led to an arrest. Willie Eugene Sims was arrested in Jefferson, Ohio, in connection with the death of Jeanette Ralston, according to a Friday statement from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Sims, 69, has been charged with murder and was arraigned on Friday in Ashtabula County Court before being sent to California. (snip) A thumbprint found on Ralston’s cigarette carton in her car was found to match Sims’s last fall after law enforcement had asked to run...

Larry Eugene Parks, 30, was found dead along Interstate 5 in Oregon in 1980. He remained a John Doe until he was identified using forensic genealogy last month.Notorious California serial killer Randy Kraft has been identified as the suspect in the murder of a man almost 45 years ago, police said Friday. Larry Eugene Parks, 30, was found dead along Interstate 5 on the morning of July 18, 1980, in Oregon, according to the Oregon State Police. An investigation into his death was opened, but Parks remained a John Doe until just last month, after an investigator from the sheriff’s...

The San Jose Police Department has identified a suspect in a nearly 30-year-old murder case. Investigators announced on Monday that DNA testing led them to identify Victor Lamont Ferguson as the primary suspect in the 1997 murder of Karen Gevorkov, who ws 28 years old at the time. "While justice may be delayed, the victim is never forgotten," Chief of Police Paul Joseph said in a press statement. "This breakthrough, made possible through advances in DNA technology, underscores our unwavering commitment to seeking the truth, no matter how many years pass. Though the suspect is no longer here to face...

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office announced on Tuesday that they have identified the remains found in 1995 as those of a missing teen from New York. On March 22, 1995, partial remains were found in a riverbed off Highway 129 east of Rogge Lane. All investigators could determine from DNA testing was that the remains were from an unknown female. Her identity was a mystery for decades before her case was re-examined in 2019 when her remains were sent for more forensic testing, including carbon dating. The testing determined that she was likely born in the 1960s, with her...

Law enforcement and divers are gearing up for a deliberate mission to bring a vehicle believed to be connected to a 1958 cold case up to the surface of the Columbia. Divers clearing debris to remove suspected Martin family car from Columbia River | 7:45 KOIN 6 | 540K subscribers | 20,256 views | March 7, 2025

A suspect was arrested in his nursing home last week for the unsolved murder of a 16-year-old student nearly half a century ago.Nearly five decades after her partially clothed body was discovered on the second floor of her Honolulu high school, modern DNA testing has led to an arrest that could solve the cold case murder of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara. Momohara, discovered with an orange cloth wound tightly around her neck, was found on the second floor of the English building at McKinley High School in Honolulu on March 21, 1977. She was a sophomore at the school at the...

In the mid-1980s, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng raped, tortured and murdered at least 11—possibly 25 or more—men, women and children at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, Calif. Now, thanks to genetic genealogy, investigators have identified one of the bodies found in June 1985 at a crime scene linked to the Wilseyville Serial Killings. Identifinders International, working with Intermountain Forensics and the Calaveras Cold Case Task Force, used IGG to identify the body as Reginald “Reggie” Frisby. Frisby, who was born in 1956 in the state of New York, had never been reported missing and was previously not considered or...

A man who was shot dead last month as authorities attempted to serve him an indictment on federal gun charges has been identified as the killer of an 18-year-old Ohio woman in a case that had gone unsolved for 43 years, police announced Monday. Mansfield Police Chief Jason Bammann said the cold case of Debra Lee Miller, a local waitress beaten to death with an oven grate in her apartment on April 29, 1981, was reopened in 2021 to account for advances in DNA technology and forensic investigative techniques. “They examined the case as if it had happened yesterday, through...

It was the middle of Jenna Gerwatowski’s workday at the local flower shop in Newberry, Michigan, when she got a call from an unknown number. The now 23-year-old doesn’t usually answer unknown calls, but says she decided to pick this one up in May 2022. To her surprise, it was a detective from the Michigan state police. “He was like, ‘Have you heard of the Baby Garnet case?’” Jenna told CNN. Jenna had heard of it. In 1997, a deceased infant was found in a campground pit toilet at the Garnet Lake Campground – right where Jenna grew up. …The...

A man who passed a lie detector test and was released from custody after the brutal slaying of a 17-year-old girl in California has been identified as her killer, 45 years later. In February 1979, an unidentified man called the the sheriff’s office in Riverside County to report a body dumped in a snowpack off Highway 243, near Banning. Deputies described the caller as “argumentative” and said the caller could not identify if the victim was male or female. Authorities later found the body south of Poppet Flats Road and identified the victim as Esther Gonzalez. On Feb. 7, the...

Fuller and his group’s version of ‘I Fought The Law’ is a classic rock’n’roll record, but always risks being upstaged by the macabre circumstances of his death.No matter how memorable was Bobby Fuller’s signature hit – and his version of “I Fought The Law” is inarguably a classic rock’n’roll record of any era – it always risks being upstaged by the macabre and never-explained circumstances of his death. Born on October 22, 1942 in Baytown, Texas, Fuller became a noted performer in the El Paso, Texas area to which he and his family relocated. His first appeared on disc...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO/Gray News) – Authorities in Colorado have identified recently sold remains that were found stored in a freezer nearly 10 months ago. The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said the grim discovery was made shortly after a home in Grand Junction had been sold in January. According to deputies, the remains of a human head and set of hands were found by someone who arrived to claim the freezer, which was being offered for free by the new owner of the recently sold property. Investigators have confirmed the remains belong to Amanda Leariel Overstreet, a girl who had...

More than 37 years after a man was killed in San Jose, the man suspected in his death has been arrested following a cold case investigation. According to authorities, 55-year-old Joseph Anthony Abeyta of San Jose has been charged with murder in connection with the 1987 death of Jesus Ibarra. "There is no statute of limitations on finding, arresting, and prosecuting people who hurt and kill the people of our community. Violent criminals should look over their shoulders because we're coming," District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. Prosecutors said on the night of April 22, 1987, Ibarra was...

The remains of a man found in the Snake River near the Grande Ronde River 25 miles south of Lewiston back in 1982 have been identified. The Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office responded to the scene in June of 1982. The Nez Perce County Coroner estimated that the man was between 18 and 22 years old, stood 5’11” tall, and weighed between 145 and 160 pounds. The man was never identified and was referred to as 'Snake River John Doe'. By 2008 the case was entered into the National Missing & Unidentified Persons System. A sketch was conducted of the...

On January 9, 1980, 25-year-old Susan Leigh Wolfe enrolled at the University of Texas Austin School of Nursing. On the same day, at about 10 p.m., she was kidnapped about one block from her home while walking to a friend’s house after having her house sprayed for bugs. A witness to the kidnapping watched as a car stopped and the driver exited grabbing Susan in a ''bear hug,'' placed a coat over her head, and forced her into the car. The witness also said that the passenger door opened, but he did not see what the passenger did during the...

Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni announced Tuesday the arrest of a man in connection with the murder of a Pruendale restaurant owner and his mother-in-law in 1991. Ira Ulyesses Bastian, 85, currently a Fresno resident, is charged with the murder of George Smith, 67, and his 79-year-old mother-in-law, Eva Thompson. George Smith owned Smith’s Restaurant, located on El Camino Real at the time. Bastian was a former employee at Smith's, said Pacioni. On Nov. 11, 1991, Anna Smith returned home from running errands and found her husband and mother had been "brutally stabbed to death." Her mother, who...