Explore every episode of the podcast UNSOLVED MURDERS

Two young brothers entered the Tower of London in 1483 and disappeared from the historical record. Their uncle inherited the crown, while rumors spread that the boys had been secretly murdered. Nearly two centuries later, workers discovered the remains of two children beneath a staircase. More than 500 years after the disappearance, historians continue to debate whether the princes were killed and who might have been responsible.

For decades, investigators leaned on a simple framework to read crime scenes — organized killers who plan and control, disorganized killers who act on impulse and leave chaos. This episode traces how that model shaped early FBI behavioral profiling and became baked into how the public understands unsolved cases. But later research found that real offenders rarely sort that cleanly, raising real questions about how much weight this framework should carry in actual investigations. We examine what that means for cold cases built on profiles that may be more oversimplified than the field once believed.

For more than six decades, he was known only as the "Boy in the Box," his battered body discovered outside Philadelphia in 1957 with no identity and no leads that held. This episode follows the case through 65 years of failed attempts, generations of detectives, and the eventual arrival of forensic genetic genealogy, which in 2022 finally gave the child a name: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. We look at what that breakthrough changed — and what it didn't. The identity has been found, but the person responsible for his death has never been identified, leaving this one of the longest-running unsolved murders in American history.

When Ricky McCormick’s body was discovered in Missouri in 1999, investigators eventually encountered an extraordinary mystery. Two handwritten notes found in his pockets contained lines of letters, numbers, parentheses and apparent coded messages. Years later, the FBI publicly appealed for help deciphering them. Investigators believed understanding the notes might reveal information relevant to McCormick’s death, but their meaning remains uncertain. This is the strange intersection of homicide investigation, cryptanalysis and one man’s private language.

A killer can wipe away fingerprints, destroy clothing, and clean a crime scene—but escaping nature is considerably harder. Tiny fragments of leaves, seeds, wood, and pollen can connect a suspect to a location long after other evidence has disappeared. This episode explores the fascinating science of forensic botany and how plants can become silent witnesses to murder.

Twenty-five-year-old Shanquella Robinson traveled to Mexico with a group of acquaintances and was dead the following day. An initial account involving alcohol poisoning collided with disturbing video showing Robinson being assaulted and sharply differing Mexican and American forensic findings. We examine the timeline, victimology, group behavior, forensic contradictions, and the evidentiary problem that has prevented a criminal conviction. Nearly four years later, Robinson’s family continues pursuing answers through civil litigation.

A man walked into a desert that promised no history and left one anyway. The knife was still in his neck when they found him. The hospital had sent him back into the dust four hours earlier. A year on, the playa is clean, the tents are gone, and the name on the blade has not arrived.

An 84-year-old woman is dropped at her Catalina Foothills door after a family dinner and vanishes before dawn: blood on the porch, a silenced pacemaker, and doorbell video of a masked, armed figure. Investigators call it a kidnapping, chase mixed DNA across multiple labs, and release ransom notes that later split between possible contact and proven fakes—while a million-dollar reward and national attention still produce no named suspect. Seven and a half months on, human remains found miles away are ruled out, a man is sentenced only for hoax messages, and Savannah Guthrie is left making quiet on-air mentions of a mother who has not come home. This episode sits with what the cameras recorded, what the labs still cannot separate, and why a house full of digital proof can refuse to give up a name.

On March 31, 1922, six members of the Gruber family and their new maid were brutally murdered with a mattock on their isolated Hinterkaifeck farmstead in Bavaria, Germany.
This episode reconstructs the chilling timeline, including evidence that the killer likely hid in the attic for days beforehand and remained on the property for several days afterward, feeding the animals and eating the family’s food.
Essential listening for true crime enthusiasts, historians, criminologists, and anyone fascinated by one of Germany’s most disturbing unsolved cases involving intrusion, deception, and rural isolation.

Was Gareth Williams a victim of his own private life, or a targeted hit by a foreign intelligence agency? This episode navigates the two warring theories that define this cold case. On one side, the official police conclusion of a "solitary accident" involving claustrophilia; on the other, the coroner's verdict of "unlawful killing" potentially linked to Williams's work on Russian money laundering. We re-examine the timeline of his final days, the £25,000 of unworn designer women's clothing in his closet, and the suspicious "redirection" of the investigation that some say points to an MI6 cover-up.

We often like to believe that "good" and "bad" people are fundamentally different, but psychology suggests the line between them is thinner than we think. This episode explores the specific environmental and internal triggers that can push a law-abiding citizen toward a sudden, life-altering breaking point. We examine why some individuals crumble under pressure while others emerge with their moral compass intact.