Wrongful and Disputed Convictions
Cases in which a conviction was overturned or the convicted person was exonerated, and cases in which a conviction has been publicly disputed. Listing a case here does not mean the conviction was wrong: each entry states precisely what a court has and has not found. ColdCaseIndex lists 23 cases on this theme, of which 5 are recorded as unsolved.
- Unsolved 5 (22%)
- Partly resolved 3 (13%)
- Solved or convicted 11 (48%)
- Closed without conviction 4 (17%)
By type
By state or country
All 23 cases
Duran Bailey
Duran Bailey, a homeless man, was found beaten, stabbed and mutilated beside a Las Vegas bank building on July 8, 2001. Kirstin Blaise Lobato, then 18, was convicted twice, but a judge vacated her convictions and all charges…
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.
Hae Min Lee
High school student Hae Min Lee was strangled and her body found in Leakin Park, Baltimore, in 1999. Her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted of first-degree murder in 2000, and his case became the subject of the podcast Serial.
Michelle Moore-Bosko
Michelle Moore-Bosko, 18, was raped and killed in her Norfolk, Virginia, apartment in July 1997. Omar Ballard, the only person whose DNA matched the scene, pleaded guilty in 2000.
Angie Dodge
Angie Dodge, 18, was raped and killed in her Idaho Falls apartment on June 13, 1996. Christopher Tapp was convicted in 1998 on the basis of a confession he later said was coerced; he served about 20 years and was exonerated in…
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.
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…
Steve Branch, Michael Moore & Christopher Byers
Three eight-year-old boys were murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, in May 1993. Three teenagers — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr.
Dana Ireland
Dana Ireland, 23, was abducted, raped and fatally beaten on the Big Island of Hawaii on Christmas Eve 1991. Three men were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated; in 2024 DNA identified a new suspect who died before arrest.
Timothy Wiltsey
Five-year-old Timothy Wiltsey vanished from a carnival in Sayreville, New Jersey, in May 1991, and his skeletal remains were found nearly a year later.
Peggy Hettrick
Peggy Hettrick, 37, was found stabbed and mutilated in a field in Fort Collins, Colorado, on February 11, 1987. Tim Masters, 15 at the time, was convicted in 1999, but the conviction was vacated in January 2008 after DNA testing…
Jeanine Nicarico
Jeanine Nicarico, 10, was abducted from her Naperville, Illinois home and murdered in February 1983. Two men were wrongly convicted and sent to death row before being exonerated; serial killer Brian Dugan pleaded guilty in 2009.
The Rainbow Murders (Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero)
Two young women hitchhiking to a Rainbow Gathering were shot to death on Briery Knob in rural Pocahontas County, West Virginia. A local man, Jacob Beard, was convicted in 1993 but acquitted at a 2000 retrial after serial killer…
Susan Reinert
Teacher Susan Reinert of Ardmore was last seen on June 22, 1979; her body was found three days later in the trunk of her car at a hotel near Harrisburg. Her children, Karen, 11, and Michael, 10, were never found.
Karla Brown
Karla Brown, 22, was found dead in the basement of the Wood River, Illinois, house she had moved into the day before, on June 21, 1978.
Martha Moxley
Fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1975. Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was convicted in 2002, but his conviction was vacated in 2018 and prosecutors declined to…
Barbara Gibbons
Barbara Gibbons, 51, was killed in her home in the Falls Village section of Canaan, Connecticut, on September 28, 1973. Her son Peter Reilly, 18, was convicted of manslaughter in 1974 on the basis of a confession he recanted.
Mared Malarik & Karen Ferrell (WVU Coed Murders)
West Virginia University freshmen Mared Malarik, 19, and Karen Ferrell, 18, vanished on January 18, 1970, after leaving a movie in downtown Morgantown and accepting a ride toward their dormitory.
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.
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…
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.
Betty June Binnicker & Mary Emma Thames
Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8, were found killed in Alcolu, South Carolina, on March 23, 1944. George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old Black boy, was convicted in a one-day trial and executed on June 16, 1944.
Nell Cropsey
Nineteen-year-old Ella Maud 'Nell' Cropsey disappeared from her family's home beside the Pasquotank River in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901; her body was found in the river on December 27.