Cold Cases of the 1940s
9 documented cases in which the crime or disappearance took place between 1940 and 1949. 6 are recorded as unsolved.
- Unsolved 6 (67%)
- Partly resolved 1 (11%)
- Solved or convicted 1 (11%)
- Closed without conviction 1 (11%)
By type
All 9 cases
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.
Somerton Man
An unidentified man was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia with a scrap of paper reading 'Tamám Shud' (meaning 'ended' in Persian) hidden in his pocket.
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.
Paula Jean Welden
Bennington College sophomore Paula Welden went for a hike on the Long Trail near Bennington, Vermont and was never seen again. Her disappearance was the most prominent in a series called the 'Bennington Triangle' disappearances…
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.
Sodder Children
Five of the ten Sodder children disappeared during a Christmas Eve house fire in Fayetteville, West Virginia. No remains were found in the ashes.
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.