Cases from the 1960s

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• Credit: Stine family scrapbook, via zodiackiller.com·Editorial use·SourceUNSOLVEDListen

  San Francisco Bay Area, California (multiple crime scenes including Benicia, Vallejo, Napa County, and San Francisco) · 1960s

  Zodiac Killer case

  An unidentified serial killer known as "Zodiac" killed at least five people and wounded two others in Northern California between December 1968 and October 1969, taunting police and press with letters and ciphers. The case remains unsolved despite thousands of proposed suspects and decades of investigation.

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• Credit: Via Wikipedia·Editorial use·SourceCOLDListen

  Riverside City College, Riverside, California · 1966

  Death of Cheri Jo Bates

  Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old Riverside City College student, was stabbed and slashed to death on campus grounds on October 30, 1966, after her car was deliberately disabled. The case remains officially unsolved, though it has drawn attention due to a contested theory linking it to the later Zodiac Killer murders.

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• Credit: alexander williams·CC BY-SA 4.0·SourceSOLVEDListen

  Braybrook Street, Shepherd's Bush, London · 1966

  Shepherd's Bush murders

  On 12 August 1966, three London police officers were shot dead in Braybrook Street, Shepherd's Bush, after stopping a car to question its occupants. Harry Roberts, John Duddy and John Witney were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

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• Credit: Unknown author·Public domain·SourceUNSOLVEDListen

  Cameron Highlands, Malaysia · 1967

  Disappearance of Jim Thompson

  American businessman Jim Thompson, credited with revitalizing the Thai silk industry, vanished while walking alone in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands on March 26, 1967, and was never found despite a massive search.

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  Jericho, New York, United States · 1969

  Murder of Reyna Marroquín

  Reyna Marroquín, a pregnant Salvadoran immigrant, was murdered in early 1969; her mummified remains were not discovered until 1999 inside a barrel in a Long Island home once owned by businessman Howard B. Elkins, who died by suicide days after being questioned by police.

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  Railway underpass near Horbury Lagoon, Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England · 1965

  Killing of Elsie Frost

  Elsie Frost, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, was fatally stabbed in a railway underpass near Wakefield in 1965; despite a massive manhunt no one was ever convicted, and a 2019 inquest posthumously named Peter Pickering as her killer.

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  Rooks Farm (later Stocking Farm), Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire, England · 1969

  Murder of Muriel McKay

  Muriel McKay, an Australian-born woman, was kidnapped from her London home in December 1969 in a mistaken-identity plot that had targeted the wife of media proprietor Rupert Murdoch; brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein were convicted of her murder, kidnapping and blackmail in 1970, though her body has never been recovered.

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  Off Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, California · 1969

  Killing of Reet Jurvetson

  Reet Silvia Jurvetson, a 19-year-old Estonian-Canadian woman, was stabbed to death in November 1969 and left in a ravine off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. She remained unidentified for 46 years — known only as "Sherry Doe" and later "Jane Doe 59" — until a DNA match confirmed her identity in 2016. The case remains unsolved; the Los Angeles Police Department's most likely suspect is an unidentified man she had traveled from Canada to meet.

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  Independence, Missouri, USA (case origin); killing of Francisco Paredes Ordoñez occurred in Mexico City, Mexico · 1962

  Sharon Kinne

  Sharon Kinne was convicted in Mexico in 1965 for killing Francisco Paredes Ordoñez and was long suspected in two 1960 Missouri deaths — her husband James Kinne and Patricia Jones — of which she was acquitted (Jones) and convicted then retried without final resolution (James Kinne) before fleeing to Mexico. She escaped a Mexican prison in 1969 and lived undetected in Canada under an alias until her 2022 death, confirmed by fingerprint match in 2025.

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• Credit: National Archives of Australia·Public domain·SourceSOLVEDListen

  Cheviot Beach, Portsea, Victoria, Australia · 1967

  Disappearance of Harold Holt

  Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt vanished while swimming in rough seas off Cheviot Beach, Victoria, on 17 December 1967; despite a massive search, his body was never found, and a 2005 coronial inquest concluded he drowned.

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