15 Cold Cases That Left Us All The Way Shook

Kenneth Perry was found guilty in the murder death of siblings John and Pamela Sumpter who were found dead in a DeKalb County apartment the night of July 15, 1990. Police claim John was killed that night. They said Pamela was sexually assaulted and stabbed but escaped Perry’s grasp in time to call police before she died weeks later. DeKalb County Police Department kept her rape kit. However, they never found whose DNA was on those samples, causing the case to go cold.

However, in 2024, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sent the DNA to be tested again with forensic genetic genealogy, finding a match to Perry who was subsequently arrested for the crime, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was found just a county over from where the tragedy occured. Perry was found guilty of their murders on March 11.

In June 2006, the body of a Black woman between the age of 20 and 30 years old was found in an abandoned house, per the Detroit Police Department. She was an estimated five feet in height. Authorities determined she died days prior to her body was found and her death was ruled a homicide, Othram Inc said in a statement.

Over the next few years, a forensic composite produced by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System displaying how the woman might have looked while alive was published, Othram stated. It wasn’t until 2022 that the DPD joined forces with Othram to attempt DNA testing combined with forensic genetic genealogy. Luckily, a DNA profile was developed and researchers used that to help police track down potential family members, the research company said. Investigators were then finally able to rename Jane Doe as Darylnn Washington, a woman born in June of 1959.

Throughout follow-up investigations, authorities said Washington’s family believed one of their relatives was killed by a serial killer but they could never locate her body. Othram stated Washington was most likely the victim of Detroit-based serial killer Shelly Brooks who is alleged to have confessed to her murder.

Harold and Thelma Swain were were fatally shot during Bible study at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in southeast Georgia back in 1985, according to authorities. The Brunswick Judicial Circuit said the two were killed after Harold got in an argument with the suspect inside the church’s vestibule.

The investigation into their murders went cold as the suspect was able to escape. However, in 1998, police reopened the case and identified Dennis Perry as the potential suspect, according to The Georgia Innocence Project. Perry was convicted for the murders in 2000 but was later exonerated after it was discovered he was tried based on circumstantial evidence. The case went cold once again.

Then, in 2024, following another tip, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced they arrested a new suspect, Erik Kristensen Sparre, according to WJXT. The investigation found Sparre, who is alleged to be a white suprema­cist, fab­ri­cat­ed his ali­bi the night of the incident and was alleged to have bragged that he had ​“killed two ni****rs,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The now 61-year-old Georgia suspect is facing charges of murder and aggravated assault.

Back in December of 2007, the partial remains of an unidentified woman’s body were discovered inside a burning bag left on the side of a road in Hogansville, Georgia. It wasn’t until 2023 when authorities were able to identify the victim as 24-year-old Nicole Alston of New York City through a DNA match, according to the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.

Alston’s family said the last time they heard from her was around Thanksgiving of that year after she’d moved to Atlanta with her friend, Angel Marie Thompson. Thompson wasn’t considered a suspect in Alston’s death. However, police accuse her of failing to report Alston missing after plotting to use her identity to gain access to her social security benefits, food stamp allotment and Section 8 Housing benefits. Police say by the time she hung up her scheme, she allotted nearly $200,000 in Alston’s benefits.

Authorities arrested Thompson and charged her with concealing Nicole Alston’s death. However, the investigation into her murder continues as police have still not been able to identify a suspect.

Hattie DeBardelaben was killed in police custody in 1945. Only recently did her grandchildren discover exactly what happened to her, according to AL.com.

In 2024, Hattie’s granddaughter, Mary DeBardelaben, was able to obtain documents from the National Archives and Records Administration related to the case. This was thanks to the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act, signed by President Trump in 2019, which allowed an independent review board to investigate and disclose information about cold cases from between 1940 and 1979.

According to the federal documents, four officers arrived at Hattie’s home in Autaugaville on March 23, 1945, claiming to be looking for illegal whiskey. Though Hattie told officers she didn’t have whiskey, they searched her home anyway. Then, during the search, one of the officers got violent with one of Hattie’s nephews.

When she asked them to stop, officers redirected their violence to her. CNN reports they hit her, knocking her into a pot of boiling water. They then detained her in the back of a patrol car but she died on her way to the jail. One officer testified to seeing her head “sag” as if her neck was broken. It wasn’t until 2024 that Hattie’s grandchildren discovered these grisly details.

Three people were lured to a house in Jonesboro, Ga., where they were forced to enter at gunpoint, tortured and killed, according to police. On Jan. 13, 2013, Union City police officers patrolling Interstate I-85 in Georgia discovered the dead bodies which were stashed inside an abandoned 2010 Dodge Charger sitting on an exit ramp.

Officials identified the victims as Quinones King and Rodney Cottrell, who were both found in the back seat of the vehicle, as well as Cheryl Colquitt-Thompson, whose body was stuffed in the trunk, according to USA TODAY. Records show Colquitt-Thompson was found strangled, and the two others died from asphyxiation.

The case went cold for 11 years until the Georgia’s Clayton County Sheriff’s Office made a breakthrough in 2024, identifying the four suspects, one being an assistant school principal. They were arrested by the elite fugitive unit who found tracked them down across three states. The men were charged with malice murder.

In 1976, the woman was found in a ditch alongside a rural road in Grundy County with her face covered by a sweater and trash bag with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. Officials believed at the time she may have been killed in another location before her remains were discarded. On Thanksgiving Day, after officials failed to identify her, she was buried in an unmarked grave while her family spent the holiday wondering where she was, per ABC 7 Chicago. The case went cold until 2017, when DNA testing had become far more advanced. Only then was her body exhumed for investigation.

Investigators were able to determine at least one side of her family moved to Cincinnati, the report says. The Grundy County Coroner’s Office then collaborated with the DNA Doe Project to essentially build a family tree back to the Jane Doe, a process that took years, per WLWT. In 2024, investigators announced the remains belonged to that of JoAnne Vickie Smith, a Black lady from Ohio between 15 and 27 years old.

However, it remains unclear who killed her.

Authorities said the 6-year-old boy was removed from school in Charlotte, NC in 1998 and relocated to Georgia with his mother, per 11Alive’s report. However, in February of the following year, police found his remains near a cemetery in DeKalb County. They estimated that he was there for about three to six months. The remains were hard to identify him at the time, but by 2019, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were able to make a rendering of the boy’s face. He was identified as William Dashawn Hamilton.

The report says Angeline Hartmann, the true crime writer and podcaster following the case, received a tip from a woman who recognized Hamilton’s face and claimed to be a neighbor. They recalled that his mother, Teresa Black, left North Carolina briefly but returned without him. Police said when they tracked her down in 2022, Black claimed she left her son with a woman at the Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children because she could no longer care for him. However, investigators said she became emotional and explained that the two of them laid down to sleep in the woody area next to the cemetery, but when she woke up, she realized he was dead and left him there.

Black was charged with murder, cruelty to children and concealing the death of another. However, she was acquitted of all charges except concealing the death of another.

Shakeira Yvonne Rucker, 37, was reported missing on Nov. 11. Winter Springs, Fla. police said she was last seen at a restaurant with Hill, 51, in the Polk County area. Family members said the mother of four told them she was headed home after picking up some food, according to WESH.

The FBI and several law enforcement agencies embarked on an 18-hour search to locate her, looking in nearby wooded areas, according to NBC.

As Rucker’s disappearance reached the six day mark, police received a tip Saturday evening that there was a rotting odor coming from a Self Storage unit located in Apopka, 20 miles from Rucker’s home in Winter Springs. Upon investigating the smell, police found Rucker’s remains and identified her husband, Cory Hill, as the owner of the storage unit.

Prosecutors claim Hill brutally murdered his wife after she confronted him about being in a relationship with another woman. They say he left Rucker’s remains in the storage unit then marched over to the other woman’s house and tried to kill her. Hill was slammed with a first-degree murder charge.

On March 5, 1984, Ramona Brown, 3, and her family woke up the night before Mardi Gras to flames devouring their home. The New Orleans Police Department said the night of the fire, Ramona’s parents, Johnnie Mae and Aubrey survived along with seven of her eight siblings. Unfortunately, 4-year-old Aubrey Jr. and 2-year-old Kevin were found dead among the rubble, the police said. However, firefighters said they don’t recall finding the remains of Ramona, assuming she also died in the flames.

However, NOPD Detective Lamar Lewis told the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children they didn’t even think she was at the house to begin with. Ramona’s other sister, Tiffany, told the NCMEC she remembered Simona trying to explain to her parents decades ago that a biracial couple stopped by in a gold-colored Cadillac with wings on the back and picked up their little sister. She recalled the white woman having long hair and the Black man having short hair, both of them appearing old and thin.

Now, the police and the NCMEC have embarked on a search to find if Ramona is still alive. Their latest development is releasing images of what she may look like now, forty years later.

Jenkins, 19, was found dead inside a freezer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois in 2017, per ABC 7 Chicago. Jenkins was attending a hotel party with friends when surveillance footage captured the teen wondering in the hallways by herself, seemingly intoxicated. Somehow, between walking out of the hallway and through the hallways, she ended up locked inside the hotel’s kitchen freezer.

Officials ruled her death an accident due to hypothermia and alcohol intoxication, ruling out foul play. However, social media conspiracies suggested the party goers she was with had a hand in her death. No one has been charged in the case.

In 1922, George Tompkins , 19, was found hanging from a tree in Indiana. Although concerning details such as Tompkins’ hands being bound behind his back were noted, his death was ruled a suicide. However, in 2022, the record was corrected by Marion County Deputy Chief Coroner Alfie McGinty, who displayed a new death certificate that ruled Tompkins’ death a homicide, per NBC News.

Volunteers with the Indiana Remembrance Coalition argued police failed to follow up with the case. That day, Tompkins reportedly left home around 7:30 a.m. and was found hanging by 2 p.m. The volunteers also claimed that within the four days between his lynching and burial, local news wiped the story of his death from the papers. No one has been arrested in connection to his murder.

Kendrick Johnson was found dead, rolled upside down in a wrestling mat at Lowndes County High School in 2013. The autopsy said he died of suffocation in some freak accident. However, Johnson’s family believed their son was killed after the family saw spotty surveillance footage and social media posts that suggested he was attacked by his two white classmates.

The classmates in question had family members part of the police force, leading the Johnsons to assume they covered up the alleged sinister act. Additionally, an independent autopsy found Johnson suffered blunt force trauma to the neck and that some of his organs were missing. However, a second investigation closed with no new findings and no charges were filed in the case.

Tamla Horsford was found dead in a friend’s backyard three years ago. She had been invited to a slumber party where she’d been drinking, per 11Alive News. Witnesses claimed Horsford went out on the balcony for a cigarette when she allegedly fell over the balcony to her death. However, the position of her body at the crime scene as well as an independent autopsy found Horsford sustained injuries before she fell.

Now, it’s unclear if she’d fallen at all. However, no one has been charged in connection to her death.

Teenage twins Dannette and Jeanette Millbrook have been missing since March 18, 1990. Their case was reopened in 2013 when a viral documentary on their disappearance aired, according to WJBF. The cops initially wrote them off as runaways. Their family said the twins’ last appearance was at a Pump-N-Shop store. A younger sister recalled walking with her mother to find them the night they vanished.

True crime sleuths assumed they were abducted by serial killer Joseph Patrick Washington, who lived in their neighborhood. Their father was also reported to be sexually abusive and some assumed he may have abducted them himself. The family put up two billboards, asking the public to help them find any information about their loved ones. A $50,000 reward has been offered for any information.