Cold Cases in Kentucky
ColdCaseIndex documents 9 cases in Kentucky, dated 1968 to 2020. 4 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor ("Tent Girl") (1968) and the most recent is Breonna Taylor (2020).
- Unsolved 4 (44%)
- Partly resolved 1 (11%)
- Solved or convicted 3 (33%)
- Closed without conviction 1 (11%)
Homicide clearance in Kentucky, 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. These are statewide totals and are separate from the ColdCaseIndex entries listed below.
By type
All Kentucky cases
Breonna Taylor
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was shot and killed by Louisville police executing a search warrant at her apartment on March 13, 2020; no drugs were found, and her boyfriend fired one shot believing…
Savannah Spurlock
Savannah Spurlock, a Madison County, Kentucky, mother of four, disappeared after leaving a Lexington bar with three men on the night of January 4, 2019.
Crystal Rogers
Crystal Rogers, a 35-year-old mother of five, vanished from Bardstown, Kentucky, in July 2015; her abandoned car was found days later with a flat tire.
Officer Jason Ellis
Bardstown police officer Jason Ellis, 33, was ambushed and killed with a 12-gauge shotgun in the early morning of May 25, 2013, after stopping to clear tree branches that investigators believe were deliberately placed on the…
Paige Valisa Johnson
Paige Johnson, a 17-year-old mother, disappeared from Covington, Kentucky, on September 23, 2010, after last being seen with acquaintance Jacob Bumpass.
Jessica Dishon
Jessica Dishon, 17, vanished from her family's driveway in Bullitt County, Kentucky, on the morning of September 10, 1999, and was found beaten and strangled 17 days later.
Heather Danyelle Teague
Heather Danyelle Teague, 23, was abducted at gunpoint from Newburgh Beach on the Ohio River in Henderson County, Kentucky, on August 26, 1995, an act witnessed through a telescope from across the river.
Ann Gotlib
Ann Gotlib, a 12-year-old Soviet Jewish immigrant, disappeared on June 1, 1983, after riding her bicycle to the Bashford Manor Mall in Louisville, Kentucky.
Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor ("Tent Girl")
On May 17, 1968, a well digger found the decomposing body of a young woman wrapped in a green canvas tarp along U.S. Route 25 near Georgetown, Kentucky.