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Famous Cold Cases
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10 Famous Cold Cases

By Gary C. King
Edited by Kevin P. Allen

True crime mysteries have always grabbed readers' attention, and the more sensational they are, the more attention they tend to receive. Take murder for example. According to authors James M. Adcock and Sarah L. Stein, both with The Center for the Resolution of Unresolved Crimes, there are approximately 185,000 homicides since 1980 that remain unsolved — and obviously many more if you investigate pre-1980, but only a fraction of those cases are well known to the public.

What is a cold case? According R. Paul Frasier, district attorney in Coos County, Ore., a cold case isn't determined by a precise length of time from when the crime in question was committed, but rather after investigators have exhausted all of their leads and progress is at a standstill. Frasier says that a case can go cold in as little as a month or as long as a year or more. Here are 10 famous cases that have been cold for a very long time, most of which appear to have little chance of ever being solved.

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