367 articles
Diane Zamora
Diane Michelle Zamora, a former US Naval Academy midshipman, was convicted of capital murder in 1998 for helping kill 16-year-old Adrianne Jones in Mansfield, Texas, in 1995.
Disappearance of Charlene Downes
Charlene Downes, 14, vanished in Blackpool on 1 November 2003 and is presumed murdered. Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi were tried; the 2007 jury hung, the 2008 retrial collapsed, and a 2009 IPCC report found the surveillance evidence flawed. Unsolved, £100,000 reward.
Disappearance of Heather Elvis
Disappearance of Heather Elvis: 20-year-old Myrtle Beach hostess last heard from December 18, 2013 at Peachtree Boat Landing; Sidney and Tammy Moorer convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy; she has never been found.
Disappearance of Johnny Gosch
Johnny Gosch, also known as John David Gosch, was a 12-year-old Des Moines Register paperboy who vanished in West Des Moines, Iowa, on September 5, 1982; the case remains unsolved.
Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
Disappearance of Natalee Holloway: American 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, missing since May 30, 2005, in Aruba; prime suspect Joran van der Sloot confessed in 2023 via US extortion plea; body never found, Aruba case open.
Donald Neilson
Donald Neilson (1936-2011), the Black Panther, English armed robber who murdered three sub-postmasters in 1974, kidnapped and killed heiress Lesley Whittle in 1975, and died in prison.
Drew Peterson
Drew Peterson, former Bolingbrook, Illinois police sergeant, convicted in 2012 of the first-degree murder of third wife Kathleen Savio, sentenced to 38 years; case known for Drew's Law hearsay statute; fourth wife Stacy Peterson missing since 2007.
Drive-by shooting
Drive-by shooting: firing a gun from a motor vehicle at people or property outside it, associated with US gang violence; less lethal than other shootings (41% lower fatality in LA data), criminalized federally since 1994.
Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance
Unsolved 2011 Nantes case: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, 50, suspected of shooting his wife Agnès and four children plus two labradors and burying them under the family terrace; he disappeared at Roquebrune-sur-Argens on 15 April 2011 and remains France's most famous fugitive.
Earll family murders
The Earll family murders were the 1902 killings of six family members on a farm in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. Farmhand Albert Edwin Batson was convicted and hanged in 1903.
École Polytechnique massacre
Antifeminist mass shooting at Montreal's École Polytechnique on 6 December 1989, in which Marc Lépine, 25, with a .223 Sturm-Ruger rifle, killed 14 women before killing himself; it drove Canadian gun control and December 6 national remembrance.
Elizabeth Haysom
Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom, Canadian University of Virginia student, pleaded guilty in 1987 as accessory before the fact in her parents' 1985 Bedford County murders; sentenced to 90 years, paroled and deported to Canada in 2019.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart, American abduction survivor and child-safety activist, kidnapped June 5, 2002 from Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, held nine months, rescued March 12, 2003; founded the Elizabeth Smart Foundation in 2011.
Enforced disappearance
Enforced disappearance, also known as involuntary disappearance, occurs when state agents deprive someone of liberty and then deny it or conceal their fate, leaving them outside the law's protection.
Eric Smith (murderer)
Eric M. Smith is the American who murdered 4-year-old Derrick Robie in Savona, New York, in 1993 at age 13, was tried as an adult, received nine years to life, and was paroled in February 2022 after 28 years. Not the Crips member Eric Smith of EDNY.
Erika and Benjamin Sifrit
Erika and Benjamin Sifrit were a married couple from Pennsylvania convicted of the 2002 murders of two Virginia tourists. They were sentenced to prison terms of 35 years and life plus 20 years.
Extrajudicial killing
Extrajudicial killing, also called summary or arbitrary execution, is deliberate killing by state agents or allied non-state actors outside judicial process, prohibited under ICCPR Article 6 and monitored by a UN Special Rapporteur.
Familicide
Familicide, or family annihilation, is the killing of multiple family members, typically an intimate partner and one or more children, by a perpetrator who is overwhelmingly male and dies by suicide in about half of cases; roughly 23 US incidents occur yearly.
Farmville murders
The Farmville murders were the September 2009 bludgeoning deaths of four people, including Longwood professor Debra Kelley, at 505 First Avenue in Farmville, Virginia; horrorcore rapper Richard "Syko Sam" McCroskey pleaded guilty in 2010 and received life sentences.
Filicide
Filicide is the killing of a child by a parent, sometimes extended to killings by stepparents and parent equivalents; distinct terms cover neonaticide and infanticide.
Franklin Delano Floyd
Franklin Delano Floyd, also known as Clarence Hughes and Brandon C. Williams, is an American death-row inmate convicted of murdering Cheryl Commesso; he kidnapped his stepdaughter Suzanne Sevakis as a child, married her, and killed 6-year-old Michael Hughes in 1994.
Fratricide
Fratricide (Latin fratricida, killer of a brother) is the killing of one's brother or sister, also called siblicide or sororicide; it spans myth (Cain and Abel), Ottoman dynastic law, and modern forensic criminology.
Fritzl case
Fritzl case: Amstetten, Austria, 2008 discovery that Josef Fritzl held daughter Elisabeth captive 24 years in a windowless cellar, fathering seven children; 2009 life sentence.
Gary Plauché
Gary Plauché, Baton Rouge father who in 1984 shot and killed Jeffrey Doucet, his son Jody's kidnapper and abuser, on live TV; he pleaded no contest to manslaughter and got a suspended sentence.
Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping case
The Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping case, also known as the Ranga-Singh case, was a 1978 murder in New Delhi where two siblings were abducted. (22 words)
Grant Amato
Grant Amato, American former nurse convicted in 2019 of murdering his parents and brother in Chuluota, Florida after spending about $200,000 on a Bulgarian cam model; sentenced to life without parole, appeal affirmed 2021.
Grievous bodily harm
Grievous bodily harm (GBH) is really serious injury under sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 in England and Wales, with maximum penalties of life and five years respectively.
Hart family murders
Hart family murders: 2018 murder-suicide in which Jennifer and Sarah Hart drove their SUV off a California cliff with six adopted children, after years of abuse reports across three states.
Hawley Harvey Crippen
Hawley Harvey Crippen (1862-1910), American-born London practitioner convicted of murdering his wife Cora (Belle Elmore) at Hilldrop Crescent; first criminal caught by wireless telegraphy; 2011 DNA study disputes the identification of the remains.
Hello Kitty murder case
The Hello Kitty murder case, also called the Hello Kitty藏屍案, was the 1999 Hong Kong torture killing of hostess Fan Man-yee, whose skull was found sewn inside a Hello Kitty doll; three men received life sentences for manslaughter.