Cold Cases in Michigan
ColdCaseIndex documents 10 cases in Michigan, dated 1974 to 2024. 5 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Coral Eugene Watts Victims (1974) and the most recent is Ruby Garcia (2024).
- Unsolved 5 (50%)
- Charges or trial pending 1 (10%)
- Solved or convicted 4 (40%)
Homicide clearance in Michigan, 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 Michigan cases
Ruby Garcia
Ruby Garcia, 25, was shot and left beside southbound US-131 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 22, 2024. Her boyfriend, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to second-degree murder and other charges.
Skelton Brothers
Andrew (9), Alexander (7) and Tanner (5) Skelton were last seen on Thanksgiving 2010 at their father's home in Morenci, Michigan, and have never been found. John Skelton served a prison term for unlawful imprisonment.
Tamara Greene
Tamara Greene, 27, a mother of three who danced under the name "Strawberry," was shot in her car in a drive-by shooting at Roselawn Street and West Outer Drive in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
Paige Marie Renkoski
Paige Renkoski, a 30-year-old substitute teacher from Okemos, Michigan, vanished on May 24, 1990. The car she was driving was found still running on the shoulder of westbound I-96 near Fowlerville, with her purse and shoes inside.
Aundria Bowman
Aundria Bowman, 14, disappeared in 1989 from her adoptive family's home near Hamilton, Michigan, after alleging her adoptive father molested her, and was long treated as a runaway.
Deanie Peters
Deanie Peters, 14, disappeared from a wrestling meet at Forest Hills Central Middle School near Grand Rapids, Michigan in February 1981 after telling her mother she was going to the restroom.
Janet Chandler
Janet Chandler, a 22-year-old Hope College student working a motel night shift, was abducted, gang-raped, and strangled in Holland, Michigan, in 1979.
Oakland County Child Killer Victims
A serial killer known as the 'Babysitter' abducted and murdered four children in Oakland County, Michigan. The victims ranged in age from 10 to 12 years old.
Jimmy Hoffa
Former Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in a restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, on July 30, 1975.
Coral Eugene Watts Victims
Carl Eugene "Coral" Watts admitted killing about a dozen women in Texas and Michigan under a 1982 Texas plea deal that gave him immunity for those murders and a 60-year sentence for burglary with intent to murder.