Cold Cases of the 1950s
12 documented cases in which the crime or disappearance took place between 1950 and 1959. 9 are recorded as unsolved.
- Unsolved 9 (75%)
- Solved or convicted 1 (8%)
- Closed without conviction 2 (17%)
By type
All 12 cases
Daniel Barter
Four-year-old Daniel "Danny" Barter vanished on June 18, 1959, from his family's campsite on Perdido Bay, Alabama. A search lasting more than a week, with hundreds of volunteers, divers and bloodhounds, found no trace of him.
George Reeves
George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on television, died of a gunshot wound to the head at his Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles on June 16, 1959, at age 45.
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.
Barbara & Patricia Grimes
Sisters Barbara, 15, and Patricia Grimes, 12, vanished on December 28, 1956, after going to see an Elvis Presley film at Chicago's Brighton Theater.
Emmett Till
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago, was abducted and brutally murdered near Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955, after allegedly whistling at a white woman. Roy Bryant and J.W.
Steven Damman
Two-year-old Steven Damman was taken from his stroller outside a Long Island bakery on Halloween 1955. His mother had left him briefly with his baby sister. Despite FBI involvement and national attention, Steven was never found.
Marilyn Sheppard
Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in her Bay Village, Ohio home. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was convicted of murder in 1954 but his conviction was overturned. Retried in 1966, he was acquitted.
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.
Evelyn Hartley
Fifteen-year-old babysitter Evelyn Hartley was abducted from a La Crosse, Wisconsin home while watching a professor's daughter. Blood, a shoe, and her broken glasses were found at the scene.
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.
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.
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.