352,390 US homicides have gone uncleared since 1965.
In 2024, police cleared 61% of reported homicides, up from a low of 51% in 2020. ColdCaseIndex documents 778 individual cases, 342 of them still unsolved, each with its status, a dated timeline and the sources behind it.
How Many US Homicides Go Unsolved
Figures for the United States as a whole, from FBI data analysed by the Murder Accountability Project. They describe all reported homicides, not only the cases documented on this site.
Show as table
| Year | Homicides | Cleared | Not cleared |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 16,135 | 61% | 6,280 |
| 2023 | 18,375 | 58% | 7,778 |
| 2022 | 20,419 | 54% | 9,458 |
| 2021 | 14,715 | 51% | 7,173 |
| 2020 | 20,221 | 51% | 9,847 |
| 2019 | 15,449 | 58% | 6,544 |
| 2018 | 15,877 | 59% | 6,537 |
| 2017 | 17,004 | 58% | 7,154 |
| 2016 | 16,891 | 56% | 7,509 |
| 2015 | 15,594 | 59% | 6,453 |
| 2014 | 13,923 | 61% | 5,413 |
| 2013 | 14,103 | 61% | 5,489 |
| 2012 | 14,822 | 56% | 6,456 |
| 2011 | 14,551 | 58% | 6,163 |
| 2010 | 14,577 | 58% | 6,158 |
| 2009 | 15,166 | 59% | 6,216 |
| 2008 | 16,272 | 64% | 5,858 |
| 2007 | 16,929 | 61% | 6,602 |
| 2006 | 17,030 | 61% | 6,642 |
| 2005 | 16,740 | 62% | 6,361 |
| 2004 | 16,148 | 63% | 5,975 |
| 2003 | 16,528 | 62% | 6,281 |
| 2002 | 16,229 | 64% | 5,842 |
| 2001 | 16,037 | 62% | 6,094 |
| 2000 | 15,586 | 63% | 5,767 |
| 1999 | 15,522 | 69% | 4,812 |
| 1998 | 16,974 | 69% | 5,262 |
| 1997 | 18,208 | 66% | 6,191 |
| 1996 | 19,645 | 67% | 6,483 |
| 1995 | 21,606 | 65% | 7,562 |
| 1994 | 23,326 | 64% | 8,397 |
| 1993 | 24,526 | 66% | 8,339 |
| 1992 | 23,760 | 65% | 8,316 |
| 1991 | 24,703 | 65% | 8,316 |
| 1990 | 23,438 | 67% | 7,735 |
| 1989 | 21,500 | 68% | 6,880 |
| 1988 | 20,675 | 70% | 6,203 |
| 1987 | 20,096 | 70% | 6,029 |
| 1986 | 20,613 | 70% | 5,313 |
| 1985 | 18,976 | 72% | 5,313 |
| 1984 | 18,692 | 74% | 4,860 |
| 1983 | 19,308 | 76% | 4,634 |
| 1982 | 21,010 | 74% | 5,463 |
| 1981 | 22,520 | 72% | 6,306 |
| 1980 | 23,040 | 72% | 6,451 |
A homicide is "cleared" when police make an arrest or close the case by exceptional means, such as the death of the offender. Source: Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data, as published by Project: Cold Case (retrieved September 29, 2026). Annual figures cover reporting agencies only.
Browse Cases
Filter the 778 documented cases by type, state or country, decade and status, or browse by state, type or decade.
Carrie Brown
Carrie Brown, known on the Bowery as "Old Shakespeare," was found strangled and mutilated in Room 31 of the East River Hotel in Manhattan on April 24, 1891.
Andrew & Abby Borden
Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. Their daughter Lizzie was acquitted of the murders.
Stanford White
Architect Stanford White, 52, was shot dead on June 25, 1906, at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden by Harry K. Thaw, husband of Evelyn Nesbit.
Virginia Christian Case
Ida Belote, 51, was killed in her Hampton, Virginia, home on March 18, 1912. Her 16-year-old laundress, Virginia Christian, was convicted of first-degree murder by an all-white, all-male jury in April 1912 and was electrocuted…
New Orleans Axeman Victims
An unidentified attacker known as the Axeman struck homes in and around New Orleans between May 1918 and October 1919, killing six people and injuring several others, many of them Italian grocers and their families.
Virginia Rappe
Actress Virginia Rappe died in San Francisco on September 9, 1921, of peritonitis from a ruptured bladder, four days after falling ill at a Labor Day party in Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's suite at the St. Francis Hotel.
William Desmond Taylor
Film director William Desmond Taylor, 49, was shot in the back at his bungalow in the Alvarado Court Apartments in Los Angeles on the evening of February 1, 1922; his body was found the next morning.
Bobby Franks
Fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was abducted and killed in Chicago on May 21, 1924, by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy students.
Judge Joseph Force Crater
New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, 41, vanished on the evening of August 6, 1930, after dining with two companions at a restaurant on West 45th Street in Manhattan.
Starr Faithfull
Starr Faithfull, 25, was found dead on the beach at Long Beach, New York, on June 8, 1931, three days after leaving her family's Manhattan apartment. An autopsy found she had drowned and had bruises and a sedative in her system.
Charles Lindbergh Jr.
The infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. A ransom was paid but the baby's body was found two months later.
Paul Bern
MGM producer Paul Bern, 42, was found dead of a gunshot wound at his Beverly Hills home on September 5, 1932, two months after marrying actress Jean Harlow. A note was found and a coroner's jury ruled the death a suicide.
Cleveland Torso Murders
At least 12 people were killed, decapitated and dismembered in and around Cleveland's Kingsbury Run between September 1935 and August 1938. Only two victims were positively identified and no one was ever convicted.
Thelma Todd
Film actress Thelma Todd, 29, was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in her car inside a Pacific Palisades garage on December 16, 1935.
Amelia Earhart
Pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. She was declared legally dead in 1939.
Betty June Binnicker & Mary Emma Thames
Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8, were found killed in Alcolu, South Carolina, on March 23, 1944. George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old Black boy, was convicted in a one-day trial and executed on June 16, 1944.
Recy Taylor
Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old Black sharecropper, was abducted and raped by six white men while walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama, on September 3, 1944. Two all-white grand juries declined to indict anyone.
Suzanne Degnan
Six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was abducted from her bedroom in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood on January 7, 1946, and killed. William Heirens, 17, pleaded guilty in September 1946 to her murder and two others and received three…
Texarkana Moonlight Murders
Five people were killed and three wounded in four nighttime attacks in and around Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas border, between February 22 and May 3, 1946. The attacker, called the Phantom Killer, was never identified.
Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia)
The mutilated body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Her body had been severed at the waist, drained of blood, and posed.
Beverly Potts
Ten-year-old Beverly Potts disappeared on the evening of August 24, 1951, after attending a Showagon performance at Halloran Park, a short walk from her home on Cleveland's west side.
Bobby Greenlease
Six-year-old Bobby Greenlease was taken from his Kansas City school on September 28, 1953, by Bonnie Heady and killed the same day by Carl Austin Hall. His family paid a $600,000 ransom before his body was found.
Frank Olson
Army biochemist Frank Olson, 43, died on November 28, 1953, after falling from a window of the Hotel Statler in New York, nine days after CIA colleagues gave him LSD without his knowledge. The death was treated as a suicide.
Janett Christman
Thirteen-year-old Janett Christman was sexually assaulted and strangled on the night of March 18, 1950, while babysitting at a home in Columbia, Missouri.
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Explore the Database
- Unsolved 342 (44%)
- Partly resolved 43 (6%)
- Charges or trial pending 20 (3%)
- Solved or convicted 323 (42%)
- Closed without conviction 50 (6%)
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Recently added
Tyre Nichols
Tyre Nichols, 29, died on January 10, 2023, three days after he was beaten by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop; the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. Former officers Desmond Mills Jr.
R. Kelly (sentencing)
R&B singer R. Kelly was convicted in New York in September 2021 of racketeering and Mann Act sex trafficking offences and sentenced on June 29, 2022 to 30 years in prison.
Halyna Hutchins (Rust trial)
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, was fatally shot on the set of the film Rust near Santa Fe on October 21, 2021, when a revolver held by actor Alec Baldwin fired a live round.
Natalia Grace Barnett
Michael and Kristine Barnett were charged in 2019 with neglecting their adopted daughter Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian-born girl with a rare form of dwarfism, after allegedly leaving her alone in a Lafayette, Indiana, apartment in…
Richard Glossip (case)
Motel owner Barry Van Treese was beaten to death at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City in January 1997 by Justin Sneed, who testified that Richard Glossip put him up to it. Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to death.
Pamela Smart (case)
Gregg Smart, 24, was shot dead in his Derry, New Hampshire, condominium on May 1, 1990. The gunman, 15-year-old William Flynn, was a student at the school where Smart's wife Pamela worked.
Homicide Clearance by State
Reported homicides, the share cleared and the number left uncleared in each state and the District of Columbia, 1965 to 2024. Select a column heading to sort.
- Under 60%
- 60 to 64%
- 65 to 69%
- 70 to 74%
- 75% and over
| California | 139,170 | 62% | 53,107 | 88 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York* | 81,154 | 65% | 28,249 | 51 |
| Texas | 96,067 | 72% | 26,570 | 40 |
| Illinois* | 54,880 | 54% | 25,328 | 28 |
| Michigan | 46,010 | 54% | 20,989 | 10 |
| Florida | 60,110 | 65% | 20,807 | 39 |
| Georgia | 36,791 | 64% | 13,171 | 20 |
| Ohio | 35,885 | 64% | 12,877 | 20 |
| Louisiana | 32,202 | 63% | 11,775 | 8 |
| Pennsylvania | 40,589 | 74% | 10,559 | 17 |
| Maryland | 27,090 | 66% | 9,235 | 9 |
| Alabama | 22,077 | 60% | 8,896 | 10 |
| Indiana | 19,779 | 57% | 8,470 | 10 |
| Tennessee | 25,461 | 67% | 8,277 | 17 |
| Missouri | 26,091 | 71% | 7,611 | 19 |
| New Jersey | 22,604 | 68% | 7,192 | 18 |
| North Carolina | 33,874 | 79% | 6,965 | 7 |
| Arizona | 18,490 | 64% | 6,695 | 13 |
| Virginia | 25,850 | 75% | 6,540 | 17 |
| District of Columbia | 14,087 | 61% | 5,507 | 6 |
| South Carolina | 20,328 | 77% | 4,639 | 15 |
| Massachusetts | 10,409 | 61% | 4,085 | 22 |
| Kentucky | 13,878 | 73% | 3,752 | 9 |
| Washington | 12,135 | 70% | 3,698 | 18 |
| Mississippi | 11,126 | 70% | 3,373 | 9 |
| Colorado | 10,911 | 69% | 3,335 | 12 |
| New Mexico | 7,627 | 60% | 3,063 | 6 |
| Oklahoma | 13,324 | 78% | 2,887 | 10 |
| Arkansas | 11,422 | 75% | 2,801 | 6 |
| Nevada | 8,267 | 69% | 2,572 | 8 |
| Wisconsin | 10,152 | 77% | 2,303 | 10 |
| Oregon | 6,567 | 66% | 2,240 | 3 |
| Kansas | 6,276 | 65% | 2,191 | 4 |
| Minnesota | 6,789 | 68% | 2,143 | 9 |
| Connecticut | 7,323 | 72% | 2,082 | 13 |
| West Virginia | 5,375 | 77% | 1,222 | 7 |
| Utah | 3,135 | 73% | 857 | 9 |
| Iowa | 3,274 | 74% | 850 | 8 |
| Hawaii | 2,206 | 67% | 734 | 5 |
| Rhode Island | 1,834 | 63% | 671 | 0 |
| Delaware | 2,309 | 71% | 668 | 1 |
| Alaska | 2,561 | 77% | 578 | 6 |
| Nebraska | 2,993 | 82% | 536 | 2 |
| Montana | 1,521 | 67% | 501 | 7 |
| Idaho | 1,967 | 80% | 394 | 8 |
| New Hampshire | 1,038 | 67% | 338 | 9 |
| Maine | 1,465 | 79% | 301 | 4 |
| South Dakota | 945 | 72% | 267 | 3 |
| Vermont | 611 | 63% | 225 | 4 |
| Wyoming | 1,047 | 84% | 165 | 3 |
| North Dakota | 631 | 83% | 106 | 4 |
About ColdCaseIndex
ColdCaseIndex is a structured index of cold cases and historically significant crimes. Most entries are unsolved. Others were solved, sometimes decades later, and are kept because the investigation, the forensic method or the outcome matters to understanding how cases are resolved.
Each entry is compiled from public sources: law enforcement releases, court records, NamUs, the Charley Project, the DNA Doe Project and established news reporting. Sources are listed on every case page. People who have not been convicted are presumed innocent and are described that way.
This is a research resource, not a tip line. If you have information about a case, contact the responsible police force or the FBI on 1-800-CALL-FBI. To report an error, email info@coldcaseindex.com. Read more about the index and its methodology.