Cold Cases in Illinois
ColdCaseIndex documents 28 cases in Illinois, dated 1911 to 2025. 16 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Elsie Paroubek (1911) and the most recent is Chicago River North Mass Shooting Victims (2025).
- Unsolved 16 (57%)
- Partly resolved 1 (4%)
- Charges or trial pending 1 (4%)
- Solved or convicted 10 (36%)
Homicide clearance in Illinois, 1965 to 2024
A homicide is "cleared" when police make an arrest or close it by exceptional means, so an uncleared case is not always an unsolved one. Source: Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data, as published by Project: Cold Case. Illinois and New York report only partial clearance data, so their figures are estimates. These are statewide totals and are separate from the ColdCaseIndex entries listed below.
By type
All Illinois cases
Chicago River North Mass Shooting Victims
On the night of July 2, 2025, occupants of a dark-colored vehicle opened fire on a crowd leaving an album release party outside Artis Restaurant and Lounge in Chicago's River North neighborhood, killing four people and wounding…
Taylor Casey
Taylor Casey, a 41-year-old yoga practitioner and youth advocate from Chicago, vanished on June 19, 2024, while attending a month-long yoga teacher certification program at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on Paradise Island in…
Jelani Day
Jelani Day, a 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student, was last seen in Bloomington on August 24, 2021. His car was found abandoned near Peru, Illinois, and his body was recovered from the Illinois River days…
Kierra Coles
Kierra Coles, a 26-year-old U.S. Postal Service mail carrier who was about three months pregnant, vanished from Chicago's South Side in October 2018.
Yingying Zhang
Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old visiting scholar from China at the University of Illinois, was abducted from a bus stop in Urbana on June 9, 2017, and killed.
Laquan McDonald
Seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014. Dashboard camera footage was withheld for 13 months until a court ordered its release.
Timmothy Pitzen
Six-year-old Timmothy Pitzen vanished after his mother pulled him out of school in Aurora, Illinois, and took him on a multi-day trip before dying by suicide.
Darnell Donerson, Jason Hudson & Julian King
Actress Jennifer Hudson's mother Darnell Donerson and brother Jason Hudson were shot to death in their Chicago home on October 24, 2008; her seven-year-old nephew Julian King was found shot dead three days later in an abandoned…
Lisa Stebic
Lisa Stebic, a 37-year-old mother of two, was last seen at her home in Plainfield, Illinois, on the evening of April 30, 2007, while she and her husband were divorcing. Her phone and credit cards were never used again.
Stacy Peterson
Stacy Peterson, 23, disappeared from her home in Bolingbrook, Illinois, on October 28, 2007. Her husband Drew Peterson, a former police sergeant, has been publicly named a suspect by investigators but has never been charged in…
Brian Carrick
Brian Carrick, 17, vanished on December 20, 2002 after walking into Val's Foods, the Johnsburg, Illinois grocery store where he worked. His blood was found in and around a produce cooler, but his body has never been located.
Trudy Appleby
Eleven-year-old Trudy Appleby disappeared from Moline, Illinois on August 21, 1996, after being seen getting into an older gray vehicle with a man; her body has never been found.
Donnah Winger
Mark Winger murdered his wife Donnah and a shuttle driver he lured to their home, staging it to look like a break-in. He was a hero until a friend went to police years later.
Susan Lund ("Ina Jane Doe")
In 1993, the severed head of a woman was found in a state park near Ina, Illinois, and she remained unidentified for nearly 30 years as "Ina Jane Doe." In 2022 forensic genetic genealogy identified her as Susan Lund, a mother of…
Tammy Zywicki
College student Tammy Zywicki was last seen with her disabled car on Interstate 80 in LaSalle County, Illinois. Her body was found nine days later in Missouri.
Dardeen Family
Keith Dardeen, his pregnant wife Elaine, and their young son were murdered in and near their mobile home outside Ina, Illinois, in one of southern Illinois's most notorious unsolved crimes.
Jeanine Nicarico
Jeanine Nicarico, 10, was abducted from her Naperville, Illinois home and murdered in February 1983. Two men were wrongly convicted and sent to death row before being exonerated; serial killer Brian Dugan pleaded guilty in 2009.
Chicago Tylenol Murders Victims
Seven people in Chicago died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in 1982. The deaths prompted a nationwide recall and led to tamper-resistant packaging regulations. James W.
Karla Brown
Karla Brown, 22, was found dead in the basement of the Wood River, Illinois, house she had moved into the day before, on June 21, 1978.
Helen Brach
Candy heiress Helen Brach vanished after a visit to the Mayo Clinic. Her disappearance was linked to a horse-related fraud ring. She was declared legally dead in 1984.
John Wayne Gacy Victims
John Wayne Gacy tortured and murdered 33 young men and boys, burying 26 under his house. He was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994. After his execution, investigators used DNA to identify unknown victims.
Richard Speck Victims
Richard Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse and methodically murdered eight student nurses. Corazon Amurao survived by hiding under a bed and later identified Speck.
Valerie Percy
Valerie Percy, 21, daughter of U.S. Senate candidate Charles Percy, was beaten and stabbed in her bedroom at the family's lakefront home in Kenilworth, Illinois, early on September 18, 1966.
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.
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…
Mary Agnes Moroney
Two-year-old Mary Agnes Moroney was taken from her family's South Side Chicago apartment on May 15, 1930 by a woman using the name Julia Otis and was never returned.
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.
Elsie Paroubek
Elsie Paroubek, a Chicago girl of four or five, disappeared on April 8, 1911, while walking to her aunt's house. A month later her body was recovered from the drainage canal near Lockport, about 35 miles away.