Cold Cases in Missouri
ColdCaseIndex documents 19 cases in Missouri, dated 1950 to 2015. 9 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Janett Christman (1950) and the most recent is Dee Dee Blanchard (2015).
- Unsolved 9 (47%)
- Partly resolved 1 (5%)
- Solved or convicted 7 (37%)
- Closed without conviction 2 (11%)
Homicide clearance in Missouri, 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 Missouri cases
Dee Dee Blanchard
Dee Dee Blanchard was murdered by her daughter Gypsy Rose's boyfriend after years of medical child abuse (Munchausen syndrome by proxy). Gypsy had been forced to feign illness and disability her entire life.
Michael Brown
Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. A St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson. The U.S.
Lisa Irwin
Ten-month-old Lisa Irwin disappeared from her crib in Kansas City, Missouri. Her parents reported her missing in the early morning hours.
Phoenix Coldon
Phoenix Coldon, a 23-year-old college student, was last seen on December 18, 2011, driving away from her family's home in Spanish Lake, Missouri. Her black 1998 Chevrolet Blazer was found abandoned in East St.
Kara Kopetsky
Kara Kopetsky, 17, disappeared after leaving Belton High School in Missouri on May 4, 2007. Her remains were found in woods in Cass County in April 2017, beside those of Jessica Runions, and were identified that August.
Lena Chapin
Lena Chapin, 20, was last seen on February 14, 2006, at her apartment outside Steelville, Missouri. Relatives say she had described witnessing the 1999 death of her stepfather, Gary McCullough, who is also missing.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett
Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old woman eight months pregnant, was strangled in Skidmore, Missouri in December 2004 and her unborn baby cut from her womb. Lisa Montgomery was convicted and executed in 2021; the baby survived.
Shawn Hornbeck
Eleven-year-old Shawn Hornbeck was abducted on October 6, 2002, while riding his bike near Richwoods, Missouri, and was found alive on January 12, 2007, in the St. Louis-area apartment of Michael Devlin.
Branson Perry
Branson Kayne Perry, 20, vanished from his family's home in Skidmore, Missouri, on the afternoon of April 11, 2001, after stepping outside to return jumper cables to a shed. He has never been found and no one has been charged.
Kent Heitholt
Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt, 48, was beaten and strangled in the newspaper's parking lot shortly after 2 a.m. on November 1, 2001.
Lamar Johnson (Exoneration)
Markus Boyd was shot dead by two masked men on his St. Louis porch on October 30, 1994. Lamar Johnson was convicted in 1995 and served about 28 years before Judge David Mason vacated the conviction on February 14, 2023, finding…
Angie Housman
Nine-year-old Angie Housman was abducted after leaving her school bus in St. Ann, Missouri, on November 18, 1993. A hunter found her body nine days later in the Busch Wildlife Area in St. Charles County.
Springfield Three
Sherrill Levitt, her daughter Suzanne Streeter, and Suzanne's friend Stacy McCall all vanished from the Levitt home overnight. Their cars were still in the driveway, their purses inside. The porch light's glass globe was broken.
Angela Hammond
Angela 'Angie' Hammond, a 20-year-old pregnant woman, was abducted from a pay phone in Clinton, Missouri in April 1991 while talking to her fiancé, who heard her scream.
St. Louis Jane Doe (Precious Hope)
On February 28, 1983, the decapitated body of an African-American girl, estimated to be 8 to 11 years old, was found in the basement of an abandoned apartment building at 5635 Clemens Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri.
Ken McElroy
Kenneth Rex McElroy, the notorious 'town bully' of Skidmore, Missouri, was shot dead in his pickup truck on the main street in front of dozens of witnesses in July 1981.
James Kinne
James Kinne, a 25-year-old electronics engineer, was fatally shot in the back of the head at his Independence, Missouri home on March 19, 1960; his death was initially ruled accidental after his wife Sharon said their toddler…
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.
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.