True Crime: Untold Cases

John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and injured 3 others in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area during a three-week period in October 2002. This episode details the chronology of shootings, the investigation process, the modified Chevrolet Caprice used as a mobile sniper's nest, the tarot card message ("Dear Policeman, I am God"), and other communications with police.

Heather Elvis, a 20-year-old woman from Myrtle Beach, vanished in 2013. Her disappearance led to a media frenzy and widespread speculation when evidence later suggested a tangled web of infidelity, possible organized crime involvement, and questionable law enforcement leads.

A controversial theory posits that a serial killer—or possibly a network of killers—was responsible for the mysterious drowning deaths of several college-aged men in the Midwest. Proponents point to unusual similarities in the circumstances of these deaths and the appearance of smiley face graffiti near some crime scenes.

Dozens of bodies—primarily of young women—have been discovered along the Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. 

Twelve-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted at knifepoint from her Petaluma, California, bedroom during a sleepover on October 1, 1993. Richard Allen Davis took Polly into the night, sparking a massive manhunt. Her remains were found two months later, and Davis was eventually convicted. The case received intense national media coverage.

Susan Powell disappeared from her West Valley City home on December 6, 2009. Her husband, Josh Powell, claimed he took their young sons on a midnight camping trip in freezing weather—an alibi that raised suspicion. When Josh later lost custody of the children, he killed himself and both boys in a murder-suicide house explosion. Susan’s body has never been found.

On May 28, 1980, Dorothy Jane Scott vanished from a hospital parking lot in Anaheim, California, after accompanying a coworker to the emergency room. Dorothy had been receiving bizarre, threatening phone calls from an unknown male stalker for months. Her remains were discovered four years later; the killer was never identified.

On January 15, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short, later nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” was found in a vacant Los Angeles lot. She had been brutally mutilated and bisected at the waist. Despite widespread media coverage and a flood of tips, her killer was never definitively identified. Various suspects have been proposed over the decades, including medical professionals and people in Short’s social circle.

Between 1972 and 1973, at least seven young women (most of them teenagers) were abducted and murdered while hitchhiking in or around Santa Rosa, California. The victims’ bodies were found in rural, wooded areas of Sonoma County. The killings drew comparisons to other West Coast serial offenders, but no single suspect was definitively identified or charged.

 On Easter Sunday (March 30, 1975), James Urban Ruppert fatally shot 11 members of his own family (his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and eight nieces and nephews) in their Hamilton, Ohio home. Ruppert had a history of financial and emotional instability. In one of the deadliest shootings within a private residence in U.S. history, he methodically moved through the house, targeting his relatives during a holiday gathering.

Between 1992 and 1994, Henry Louis Wallace murdered at least 10 young women in Charlotte, many of whom worked at fast-food restaurants, including Taco Bell. Wallace used his familiarity with the victims—often friends or coworkers—to gain access to them. Despite multiple murders happening in close proximity, law enforcement did not initially connect the cases. He was eventually arrested in 1994 and confessed to the killings.

Two women—both named Mary Morris—were killed in Houston, Texas, just days apart in October 2000. Mary Lou Morris was found burned in her car on October 12; Mary McGinnis Morris was found shot in her car on October 16. Despite similar names and circumstances, law enforcement never confirmed a definitive link. Some theorize the second murder might have been a botched hit meant for the first victim (or vice versa).

In the spring of 1992, six store clerks—often alone in small specialty shops—were shot to death in broad daylight along the Interstate 70 corridor in Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. The unknown killer used a .22-caliber firearm, targeting women (and one man mistaken for a woman due to long hair) in shops close to the highway. Despite composite sketches and ballistic evidence, no suspect has ever been charged.

Though based in Anchorage, Alaska, Israel Keyes traveled extensively throughout the continental United States between 2001 and 2012. Keyes is notorious for having “kill kits” buried in various states, which he would dig up to commit murders, then rebury. He confessed to multiple murders—including the 2012 abduction and killing of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig in Anchorage—before taking his own life in prison.

Between the early 1970s and 1983, Robert Hansen abducted, assaulted, and murdered numerous women—often sex workers—in and around Anchorage, Alaska. He would sometimes fly them into the bush with his private plane, release them, and then hunt them. Hansen was an unassuming local baker and avid hunter, which aided in masking his crimes. He confessed to killing at least 17 women, though some speculate the number could be higher.