The most infamous unsolved crime from every decade
You know the Zodiac. You’ve heard of D.B. Cooper. And everybody knows Jack the Ripper.
But what about the 1910s? The 1940s? The 2010s?
Here’s one unsolved case for every decade, from the 1880s to now. Some never had a suspect. Some have a prime suspect and no charge. One is mostly solved, and we say which.
We also dropped two. The Gilgo Beach killer pleaded guilty in April 2026, per BuzzFeed’s roundup. And the man accused of planting the January 6 pipe bombs was arrested in December 2025, CBS News reported.
1880s: Jack the Ripper
Still the standard for unsolved.
Whitechapel, London, 1888. At least five women were killed, and there’s been no confirmed name in over 130 years. Suspects keep coming. In 2002, novelist Patricia Cornwell named the painter Walter Sickert. It isn’t proof.
1890s: Lizzie Borden
She was acquitted. The case still isn’t solved.
August 4, 1892, Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew and Abby Borden were killed at home. Lizzie was tried and acquitted on June 20, 1893, after about 90 minutes. Nobody else was ever charged. It’s officially unsolved.
1900s: Elsie Sigel
A trunk, an apartment, a waiter who vanished.
Elsie Sigel, 19, a granddaughter of Civil War general Franz Sigel, was found dead in June 1909 in the apartment of Leon Ling. Ling disappeared and was never found. The case set off anti-Chinese hysteria. Nobody was charged.
1910s: Villisca
Eight people went to bed in Villisca, Iowa. None woke up.
June 9 to 10, 1912. Six of the eight were children. Reverend George Kelly was tried twice: first, a hung jury; then, an acquittal. No one was convicted. The house is a museum now.
1920s: William Desmond Taylor
Hollywood’s first big unsolved murder.
Mabel Normand left director William Desmond Taylor’s bungalow at 7:45 p.m. on February 1, 1922, carrying a book he’d lent her. She was the last known person to see him alive. His valet found him the next morning. Police never charged anyone, and no weapon was found, Postcard History notes.
1930s: Judge Crater
A judge walked out to dinner and into history.
Joseph Force Crater, a New York Supreme Court justice, was last seen on August 6, 1930. The Daily News said he “disappeared efficiently, completely, and forever,” as quoted in the New York Press. He was declared dead on June 6, 1939.
In 2005, police released a note from a woman who’d died that year. It claimed her husband and other men killed him and buried him under the Coney Island boardwalk.
1940s: The Black Dahlia
Every suspect. No arrest.
On January 15, 1947, a woman found Elizabeth Short, 22, in a vacant lot in Los Angeles’s Leimert Park. Police pursued more than 150 suspects. No one was ever charged, and the case remains open.
1950s: The Boy in the Box
For 65 years, nobody knew his name.
February 25, 1957. A four-year-old boy was found in a cardboard box in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase neighborhood. In December 2022, police identified him as Joseph Augustus Zarelli and called it an active homicide investigation.
Both of his parents have died. Who killed him is still unknown.
1960s: The Zodiac Killer
He wrote to the newspapers. He still wasn’t caught.
Northern California, 1968 and 1969. He claimed 37 victims. Five were confirmed, and San Francisco police still consider it unsolved.
1970s: D.B. Cooper
He took $200,000 and jumped.
November 24, 1971. A man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient flight out of Portland. In 1980, a child found $5,800 of the money along the Columbia River.
The FBI suspended the case in July 2016, after 45 years and more than 800 suspects. It’s still the only unsolved air hijacking in U.S. history.
1980s: The Tylenol murders
Seven people took a pill. They never came back.
Chicago, September 1982. The Tylenol was laced with potassium cyanide, and more than 31 million bottles were recalled. Whoever did it was never found.
1990s: The Gardner heist
Two men in police uniforms. Thirteen works. No arrests.
March 18, 1990. They talked their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and left with art worth more than $500 million. The museum’s reward is up to $10 million.
Thirty-six years later, CBS Boston reported that nothing has been recovered.
2000s: Madeleine McCann
A three-year-old, a holiday apartment, a prime suspect.
May 3, 2007, Praia da Luz, Portugal. German prosecutors call Christian Brueckner their prime suspect. He was released from prison in September 2025 after serving a sentence for an unrelated rape.
Prosecutors have never charged him in her case. Operation Grange is still active.
2010s: Kyron Horman
A science fair. Then nothing.
June 4, 2010. Seven-year-old Kyron Horman vanished from his school in Portland, Oregon. It became the largest criminal investigation in the state’s history. As of May 2026, police had digitized the files and were using AI to look for new leads.
In June, the district attorney said his office wouldn’t rest until it knew what happened.
2020s: The Louvre jewels
This one’s only partly unsolved.
October 19, 2025. Thieves in work clothes cut into the Louver’s Apollo Gallery and took eight pieces of jewelry in under eight minutes. Police arrested the four main suspects within 10 days, and they’re jailed awaiting trial.
The jewels, worth about $100 million, are still missing. Two suspects say a ringleader remains at large. Investigators doubt it.
The bottom line
Only the 1950s victim waited 65 years for his name. Two cases we nearly used, Gilgo Beach and the January 6 pipe bombs, were resolved in the past year.
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Related:
- Archaeological finds that they still can’t fully explain
- Historical “discoveries” that turned out to be elaborate hoaxes
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