Cold Cases in New York
ColdCaseIndex documents 51 cases in New York, dated 1891 to 2023. 22 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Carrie Brown (1891) and the most recent is Jordan Neely (2023).
- Unsolved 22 (43%)
- Charges or trial pending 1 (2%)
- Solved or convicted 22 (43%)
- Closed without conviction 6 (12%)
Homicide clearance in New York, 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 New York cases
Jordan Neely
Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man experiencing a mental health crisis on a New York City subway train, died after being placed in a chokehold by fellow passenger Daniel Penny on May 1, 2023.
Orsolya Gaal
Orsolya Gaal, 51, was stabbed more than 50 times in her Forest Hills, Queens home on April 16, 2022, and her body was left in a hockey duffel bag near Forest Park.
R. Kelly (sentencing)
R&B singer R. Kelly was convicted in New York in September 2021 of racketeering and Mann Act sex trafficking offences and sentenced on June 29, 2022 to 30 years in prison.
Bianca Devins
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Devins of Utica, New York, was killed on July 14, 2019 by Brandon Clark, 21, who had driven her home from a concert in New York City.
Eric Garner
Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo during an arrest in Staten Island. His final words 'I can't breathe' became a rallying cry. A Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.
Avonte Oquendo
Fourteen-year-old Avonte Oquendo, a nonverbal autistic student, walked out of his Long Island City, Queens, school on October 4, 2013. His remains were found along the East River in January 2014.
Garrett Phillips
Twelve-year-old Garrett Phillips was found strangled in his apartment in Potsdam, New York, on October 24, 2011. His mother's ex-boyfriend, Oral 'Nick' Hillary, was indicted twice (the first indictment was dismissed) and tried…
Leiby Kletzky
Eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky was on his first walk home alone in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn when he got lost. He asked Levi Aron for directions; Aron abducted and killed him.
Shannan Gilbert
Shannan Gilbert disappeared at Oak Beach, Long Island on May 1, 2010; the search for her led to the discovery of the Gilgo Beach victims. Her remains were found in December 2011 and her cause of death is officially undetermined.
Shele Covlin
Shele Danishefsky Covlin, a 47-year-old Wall Street money manager, was found dead in the bathtub of her Upper West Side apartment on New Year's Eve 2009.
Jaliek Rainwalker
Jaliek Rainwalker, a 12-year-old adopted boy, disappeared from Greenwich, New York, in November 2007 after spending the night alone with his adoptive father.
Long Island Serial Killer Victims
The remains of roughly ten people — mostly women who had worked as escorts — were found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York, in 2010 and 2011.
Peter & Joan Porco
Peter Porco, 52, was killed and his wife Joan was severely injured in an axe attack at their home in Delmar, New York, on November 15, 2004.
Sarah Fox
Sarah Fox, a 21-year-old drama student at the Juilliard School, disappeared on May 19, 2004, after leaving her Inwood apartment in upper Manhattan to go jogging.
Jam Master Jay
Jason Mizell, the Run-DMC DJ known as Jam Master Jay, was shot dead in his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, on October 30, 2002. A federal jury convicted Ronald Washington and Karl Jordan Jr.
Henryk Siwiak
Henryk Siwiak, a 46-year-old Polish immigrant, was shot at about 11:40 p.m. on September 11, 2001, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, after getting lost on the way to a new job.
Jill-Lyn Euto
Jill-Lyn Euto, 18, was stabbed to death in her sixth-floor apartment at 600 James Street in Syracuse, New York, on Super Bowl Sunday, January 28, 2001. Her mother found her the next day.
Michele Harris
Michele Anne Harris, a 35-year-old mother of four from Spencer, New York, vanished in September 2001, leaving behind her abandoned minivan and traces of blood in her home.
Sneha Anne Philip
Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, an internist, was last seen shopping at a store near the World Trade Center on September 10, 2001. She was never seen again. Whether she died in the 9/11 attacks or disappeared separately remains unknown.
Valerie Mack
Valerie Mack, 24, was last seen in 2000; partial remains were found that year in Manorville, Long Island, and more along Ocean Parkway in 2011. She was identified in May 2020.
Suzanne Lyall
Suzanne Lyall, a 19-year-old University at Albany computer science student, disappeared on the evening of March 2, 1998, after leaving her mall job and taking a bus back toward campus.
Tanya Jackson ("Peaches")
A dismembered torso found at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York on June 28, 1997 was identified in April 2025 as Army veteran Tanya Jackson, 26, long known as "Peaches." Andrew Dykes, the father of her daughter…
Heidi Allen
Eighteen-year-old Heidi Allen disappeared from the D&W Convenience Store in New Haven, New York, where she was working alone on Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994.
Waneta Hoyt Children
Five infants and toddlers born to Waneta and Tim Hoyt of Newark Valley, New York, died suddenly between 1965 and 1971, and their deaths were attributed to SIDS.
Sara Anne Wood
Twelve-year-old Sara Anne Wood was abducted while riding her bicycle home from church in Herkimer County, New York, in August 1993. Serial killer Lewis Lent Jr.
Anjelica Castillo ("Baby Hope")
The body of a malnourished young girl was found in a cooler beside the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan in July 1991, and detectives who nicknamed her "Baby Hope" could not identify her for 22 years.
Lisa Steinberg
Six-year-old Lisa Steinberg was fatally beaten on November 1, 1987, in the Greenwich Village apartment of Joel Steinberg, a lawyer who had raised her without ever legally adopting her.
Diane Elsroth
Diane Elsroth died after taking a cyanide-laced Tylenol capsule in Yonkers, New York—a copycat of the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders.
Jennifer Levin
Jennifer Levin, 18, was found strangled in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 26, 1986, hours after leaving an Upper East Side bar with Robert Chambers.
Jacqueline Martarella
Jacqueline "Jackie" Martarella, 19, disappeared on March 26, 1985, while walking from a friend's home in Oceanside, New York, to her job at a Burger King.
Wendy Jerome
Fourteen-year-old Wendy Jerome was raped and murdered on Thanksgiving night, November 22, 1984, after leaving her Rochester, New York home to deliver a birthday card to a friend; her body was found in an alcove at School No.
Kathleen McCormack Durst
Kathleen McCormack Durst, a 29-year-old medical student, disappeared on January 31, 1982 from South Salem, New York, and has never been found.
Tammy Mahoney
Tammy Mahoney, a 19-year-old SUNY Morrisville student, vanished on May 8, 1981 after hitchhiking near Route 46 in Oneida, New York.
Herman Tarnower
Dr. Herman Tarnower, 69, author of the Scarsdale Diet, was shot dead at his home in Purchase, New York, on March 10, 1980, by his longtime companion Jean Harris.
John Favara
John Favara, a neighbor of mob boss John Gotti, disappeared in 1980 months after he accidentally struck and killed Gotti's young son with his car, and is widely presumed to have been murdered.
Etan Patz
Six-year-old Etan Patz was one of the first missing children to appear on a milk carton when he disappeared walking to school in SoHo. The case transformed child safety in America.
Bonnie Garland
Bonnie Garland, a 20-year-old Yale student, was fatally beaten with a hammer as she slept in her parents' Scarsdale, New York, home on July 7, 1977.
Son of Sam Victims
David Berkowitz, known as 'Son of Sam,' murdered six people and wounded seven others in New York City over 13 months. He terrorized the city with taunting letters to police and media.
Cornelia Crilley
Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, was found strangled in her apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side in June 1971.
The Alphabet Murders (Double Initial Murders)
Three young girls whose first and last names shared the same initial were separately abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled near Rochester, New York, between 1971 and 1973.
Alice Crimmins
Eddie Crimmins Jr., 5, and his sister Alice Marie "Missy" Crimmins, 4, were reported missing from their Queens apartment on July 14, 1965, and were found dead five days apart.
Dorothy Kilgallen
Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, who was investigating the JFK assassination, was found dead in her New York townhouse. Her death was ruled an overdose but many believe she was murdered.
Kitty Genovese
Kitty Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death near her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, early on March 13, 1964. Winston Moseley confessed, was convicted of murder that June and died in prison in 2016.
Steven Damman
Two-year-old Steven Damman disappeared on October 31, 1955, after his mother left him and his baby sister in a stroller outside a store in East Meadow, Long Island. The stroller was found nearby with only his sister inside.
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.
Starr Faithfull
Starr Faithfull, 25, was found dead on the beach at Long Beach, New York, on June 8, 1931, three days after leaving her family's Manhattan apartment. An autopsy found she had drowned and had bruises and a sedative in her system.
Judge Joseph Force Crater
New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, 41, vanished on the evening of August 6, 1930, after dining with two companions at a restaurant on West 45th Street in Manhattan.
Dorothy Arnold
Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold, a young New York socialite, disappeared while walking in Manhattan in 1910, in one of the era's most famous unexplained vanishings.
Hazel Drew
Hazel Drew, a 20-year-old domestic servant from Troy, New York, was found dead in Teal's Pond near Sand Lake in July 1908 with her skull crushed by a blunt weapon.
Stanford White
Architect Stanford White, 52, was shot dead on June 25, 1906, at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden by Harry K. Thaw, husband of Evelyn Nesbit.
Carrie Brown
Carrie Brown, known on the Bowery as "Old Shakespeare," was found strangled and mutilated in Room 31 of the East River Hotel in Manhattan on April 24, 1891.