Cold Cases in Texas
ColdCaseIndex documents 40 cases in Texas, dated 1884 to 2024. 14 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is The Servant Girl Annihilator (Austin Axe Murders) (1884) and the most recent is Audrii Cunningham (2024).
- Unsolved 14 (35%)
- Partly resolved 5 (12%)
- Solved or convicted 16 (40%)
- Closed without conviction 5 (12%)
Homicide clearance in Texas, 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 Texas cases
Audrii Cunningham
Eleven-year-old Audrii Cunningham of Livingston, Texas, disappeared on February 15, 2024, after failing to board her school bus. Her body was recovered from the Trinity River five days later.
Caleb Harris
Caleb Harris, a 21-year-old Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi student, vanished from his apartment complex on Ennis Joslin Road in the early morning hours of March 4, 2024, leaving behind his truck, wallet, and keys.
Lina Sardar Khil
Lina Sardar Khil, 3, disappeared on December 20, 2021, from the playground of the Villas Del Cabo apartment complex in San Antonio, Texas, where her family, who had come from Afghanistan, was living.
Patrick Warren Sr.
Patrick Warren Sr., 52, was shot and killed by Killeen, Texas police officer Reynaldo Contreras on January 10, 2021, after his family called for help during a mental health crisis.
Vanessa Guillen
Army specialist Vanessa Guillen was bludgeoned to death by fellow soldier Aaron Robinson at Fort Hood. The case exposed systemic failures in military sexual harassment reporting.
Elizabeth Barraza
Elizabeth Barraza, 29, was shot in the driveway of her Tomball-area home at about 6:52 a.m. on January 25, 2019, while setting up for a garage sale; she died the next day.
Maleah Davis
Four-year-old Maleah Davis was reported missing in Houston on May 4, 2019, by her mother's former fiance, Derion Vence, who said she was taken by men who attacked him on a roadside.
Botham Jean
Botham Jean, 26, was shot in his own Dallas apartment on September 6, 2018, by off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, who said she entered his apartment by mistake.
Sherin Mathews
Three-year-old Sherin Mathews, adopted from India in 2016, was reported missing from her Richardson, Texas, home on October 7, 2017; her body was found in a nearby culvert two weeks later.
Terri 'Missy' Bevers
Fitness instructor Missy Bevers was found dead in a church where she was preparing for an early morning boot camp class. Surveillance footage showed a suspect in SWAT-style tactical gear walking through the church before the…
Sandra Bland
Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her Waller County, Texas, jail cell on July 13, 2015, three days after her arrest during a traffic stop. Her death was ruled a suicide by hanging, a finding her family has disputed.
Brandon Lawson
Brandon Lawson, 26, vanished in the early hours of August 9, 2013, after running out of gas on U.S. Highway 277 a few miles south of Bronte, Texas, north of San Angelo, and placing a frantic, confused 911 call.
Lori Erica Ruff
A Texas woman known as Lori Erica Ruff died by suicide on Christmas Eve, leaving behind evidence she had been living under a stolen identity for decades.
Amina and Sarah Said
Sisters Amina Said, 18, and Sarah Said, 17, were found shot to death in a taxi outside a hotel in Irving, Texas, on January 1, 2008.
Dana Lynn Dodd (Lavender Doe)
On October 29, 2006, the burning body of an unidentified young woman was found on an oil lease near Kilgore, Texas; she became known as Lavender Doe after the sweater she wore.
Jennifer Servo
Television reporter Jennifer Servo, 22, was found dead in her Abilene, Texas, apartment on September 18, 2002, two days after she was killed.
Rachel Louise Cooke
Rachel Louise Cooke, 19, left her parents' home near Georgetown, Texas, for a run at about 9:30 a.m. on January 10, 2002, while on winter break from college in San Diego, and never returned.
Sara Ann Lewis Trusty
Sara Trusty, 23, was last seen riding her bicycle near Algoa Baptist Church in Algoa, Galveston County, Texas, on July 12, 2002. About two weeks later, fishermen found her body on the Texas City Dike.
Yates Children
Five children of the Yates family, aged six months to seven years, were drowned by their mother, Andrea Yates, at their home in the Clear Lake area of Houston on June 20, 2001.
Mary Lou Morris
Mary Lou Henderson Morris, 48, was found dead in her burned car near her Baytown, Texas, home on October 12, 2000. Days later, an unrelated Houston-area woman, Mary McGinnis Morris, 39, was found shot in her car.
James Byrd Jr.
James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old Black man, was chained by the ankles to a pickup truck and dragged about three miles to his death near Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998.
Amber Hagerman
Nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted while riding her bicycle in the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store in Arlington, Texas. A witness saw a man pull her into a black pickup truck.
Damon and Devon Routier
Brothers Devon Routier, 6, and Damon Routier, 5, were fatally stabbed in their home in Rowlett, Texas, on June 6, 1996. Their mother, Darlie Routier, who said an intruder attacked them, was convicted of capital murder in Damon's…
Austin Yogurt Shop Victims
Four girls aged 13 to 17 were shot and an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop was set on fire in Austin, Texas, on December 6, 1991. Two men convicted in 2001 and 2002 had their convictions overturned and charges dismissed in 2009.
Charles Albright Victims
Charles Albright was convicted in December 1991 of murdering Shirley Williams, one of three women found shot in Dallas between December 1990 and March 1991 with their eyes removed.
Robert Ben Rhoades Victims
Long-haul trucker Robert Ben Rhoades is serving life sentences for three murders. He pleaded guilty in Illinois in 1992 to killing 14-year-old Regina Walters of Pasadena, Texas, and in Texas in 2012 to the capital murders of…
Debra Jan Masters Baker
Debra Masters Baker, 34, was beaten to death in her bed by an intruder at her Austin, Texas, home in January 1988. The case went unsolved for more than two decades until a DNA match linked it to the 1986 killing of Christine…
Angela Samota
Angela Samota, a 20-year-old Southern Methodist University student, was raped and stabbed to death in her Dallas home in the early hours of October 13, 1984.
Dean and Tina Clouse
The remains of Harold Dean Clouse Jr. and his wife, Tina Linn Clouse, were found in woods in the Houston area on January 12, 1981, and were not identified until 2021 through genetic genealogy.
Betty Gore
Betty Gore, 30, was killed with an axe at her home in Wylie, Texas, on June 13, 1980, sustaining 41 blows. Her friend Candy Montgomery was charged with murder and testified that she acted in self-defense after Gore confronted her.
Sherri Ann Jarvis (Walker County Jane Doe)
On November 1, 1980, the body of a teenage girl who had been raped and strangled was found beside Interstate 45 north of Huntsville, Texas.
Debra Jackson ("Orange Socks")
A young woman's body was found in a culvert off Interstate 35 near Georgetown, Texas, on Halloween 1979, wearing nothing but a pair of orange socks.
Carla Walker
Carla Walker, 17, was abducted at gunpoint from a Fort Worth bowling-alley parking lot in February 1974 and found murdered three days later.
Fort Worth Missing Trio
Mary Rachel Trlica, 17, Lisa Renee Wilson, 14, and Julie Ann Moseley, 9, disappeared on December 23, 1974, after going Christmas shopping at Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas.
Texas Killing Fields Victims
Since the early 1970s the bodies of more than 30 women and girls have been found along the Interstate 45 corridor between Houston and Galveston, including four found in a field off Calder Road in League City known as the Killing…
Dean Corll Victims
Dean Corll, with accomplices David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, tortured and murdered at least 28 young men and boys in Houston. Corll was shot and killed by Henley in 1973, who then led police to multiple burial sites.
John F. Kennedy Assassination
President John F. Kennedy, 46, was shot dead in his motorcade in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged but was killed by Jack Ruby two days later and never tried.
Henry Lee Lucas Victims
Henry Lee Lucas confessed to hundreds of murders but most were unverifiable. He was confirmed in several cases including the murder of his mother and with accomplice Ottis Toole.
Texarkana Moonlight Murders
Five people were killed and three wounded in four nighttime attacks in and around Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas border, between February 22 and May 3, 1946. The attacker, called the Phantom Killer, was never identified.
The Servant Girl Annihilator (Austin Axe Murders)
The 'Servant Girl Annihilator' was an unidentified serial killer who terrorized Austin, Texas, in 1884 and 1885, murdering eight people, most of them young Black servant women, in a series of nighttime axe and knife attacks.