Cold Cases in Ohio
ColdCaseIndex documents 20 cases in Ohio, dated 1935 to 2023. 7 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Cleveland Torso Murders (1935) and the most recent is Doerman Children (2023).
- Unsolved 7 (35%)
- Partly resolved 3 (15%)
- Charges or trial pending 1 (5%)
- Solved or convicted 7 (35%)
- Closed without conviction 2 (10%)
Homicide clearance in Ohio, 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 Ohio cases
Doerman Children
Brothers Clayton, 7, Hunter, 4, and Chase Doerman, 3, were shot dead at their home in Monroe Township, Clermont County, Ohio, on June 15, 2023.
Dayton Shooting
Nine people were killed and 17 wounded by gunfire when Connor Betts, 24, opened fire in Dayton's Oregon District at about 1:05 a.m. on August 4, 2019.
Otto Warmbier
American student Otto Warmbier was detained in North Korea for 17 months and returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state. He died days later. North Korea claimed he contracted botulism.
Sierah Joughin
Twenty-year-old Sierah Joughin was abducted while bicycling in rural Ohio. James Worley, a convicted kidnapper, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death.
Tamir Rice
Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann within two seconds of arriving at a park where Tamir was playing with a toy gun. A grand jury declined to indict the officers.
Katelyn Markham
Katelyn Markham, 21, disappeared from her home in Fairfield, Ohio, in August 2011; her skeletal remains were found in April 2013 in Cedar Grove, Indiana, and her death was ruled a homicide.
Anthony Sowell Victims
Anthony Sowell was convicted of murdering 11 women in Cleveland whose bodies were found in and around his home in 2009. He preyed on vulnerable women in his neighborhood.
Jessie Davis
Jessie Davis, 26 and nearly nine months pregnant, was killed at her home in Lake Township, Stark County, Ohio, on June 14, 2007. Her body was found nine days later in a Summit County park.
Brian Shaffer
Brian Shaffer, a 27-year-old Ohio State medical student, vanished in the early hours of April 1, 2006, after being recorded on security cameras outside the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar in Columbus.
Ariel Castro Victims
Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus were individually abducted and held captive for about a decade in Ariel Castro's Cleveland home. Amanda Berry escaped in 2013 with her daughter born in captivity.
Patricia Adkins
Patricia "Patti" Adkins, 29, has not been seen since she finished a late shift at the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, on June 29, 2001.
Amy Mihaljevic
Ten-year-old Amy Mihaljevic was lured from a Bay Village, Ohio, shopping center on October 27, 1989, and abducted; her body was found in a rural field months later. The killer has never been identified.
Barbara Blatnik
Barbara Blatnik, 17, of Garfield Heights, Ohio, was found strangled beside O'Neil Road in Cuyahoga Falls on December 20, 1987. In May 2020, after DNA and genetic genealogy work funded by the Porchlight Project, police arrested…
Louise Virginia Peterson Flesher ("Belle in the Well")
A woman's body was found weighted down in a rural well in Lawrence County, Ohio, in April 1981, and for 38 years she was known only as "Belle in the Well." In 2019 the DNA Doe Project identified her as Louise Virginia Peterson…
Marcia King (Buckskin Girl)
Marcia King, 21, of Arkansas, was found strangled beside Greenlee Road near Troy, Ohio, on April 24, 1981. Unidentified for nearly 37 years, she was known as Buckskin Girl for her fringed jacket.
Circleville Letter Writer
From 1977 residents of Circleville, Ohio, received hundreds of anonymous threatening letters, many aimed at school bus driver Mary Gillispie. Her husband Ron died in an August 1977 crash that the coroner ruled an accident.
Mary Ellen Deener
Mary Ellen Deener, 14, was murdered in Mansfield, Ohio, on November 14, 1965, while walking to a laundromat. Lester Eubanks was convicted in May 1966 and sentenced to death, later commuted to life.
Marilyn Sheppard
Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in her Bay Village, Ohio home. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was convicted of murder in 1954 but his conviction was overturned. Retried in 1966, he was acquitted.
Beverly Potts
Ten-year-old Beverly Potts disappeared on the evening of August 24, 1951, after attending a Showagon performance at Halloran Park, a short walk from her home on Cleveland's west side.
Cleveland Torso Murders
At least 12 people were killed, decapitated and dismembered in and around Cleveland's Kingsbury Run between September 1935 and August 1938. Only two victims were positively identified and no one was ever convicted.