Cold Cases in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
ColdCaseIndex documents 8 cases in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dated 1949 to 2005. 5 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Dorothy Forstein (1949) and the most recent is Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone Jr. (2005).
- Unsolved 5 (62%)
- Solved or convicted 3 (38%)
By type
All 8 cases
Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone Jr.
Danielle Imbo, 34, and Richard Petrone Jr., 35, a dating couple, vanished after leaving a bar on South Street in Philadelphia on the night of February 19, 2005. Neither they nor Petrone's pickup truck have ever been found.
Judy Smith
Judy Smith, a 50-year-old nurse from Newton, Massachusetts, vanished from a Philadelphia hotel in April 1997. Five months later her stabbed remains were found more than 600 miles away in the North Carolina mountains, and how she…
Gary Heidnik Victims
Gary Heidnik abducted six women between November 1986 and March 1987 and held them captive in the basement of his North Philadelphia home, where Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley died.
The Frankford Slasher
The 'Frankford Slasher' is the name given to an unidentified serial killer who stabbed to death at least eight or nine women in and around the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia between 1985 and 1990.
Philip Testa
Philip "Chicken Man" Testa, 56, reputed head of the Philadelphia crime family, was fatally injured on March 15, 1981 when a nail-packed bomb exploded on the porch of his South Philadelphia home.
Holly Maddux
Helen "Holly" Maddux, 30, was last seen in Philadelphia on September 9, 1977; her body was found in March 1979 in a trunk in the apartment of her former partner, Ira Einhorn.
Joseph Augustus Zarelli
A young boy's battered, naked body was found in a cardboard box in Fox Chase, Philadelphia. Known for decades as 'America's Unknown Child,' he was finally identified in 2022 as Joseph Augustus Zarelli through DNA genealogy.
Dorothy Forstein
Dorothy Forstein, the wife of Philadelphia magistrate Jules Forstein, disappeared from her home on the night of October 18, 1949. Her young daughter said she saw a man in a brown cap carry her unconscious mother out of the house.