A cold case can sit unanswered for years without being forgotten. The papers remain, samples are stored, and people return to questions that an earlier investigation could not settle. Sometimes a different test makes an old sample useful. Sometimes the harder task is admitting that the first explanation was wrong.
These five murder investigations took years to reach a conviction or guilty plea. They are a selection, not a ranking. Each involved real people whose lives matter beyond the question of how the crime was solved.
The dates need care. Identifying a suspect, making an arrest and obtaining a conviction are separate events. A useful lead is the beginning of an explanation, not the end of the work needed to support it.
1. Carla Walker: preserved evidence, 47 years later
Carla Walker was 17 when she was abducted from a bowling-alley car park in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 1974. A renewed investigation began decades later. Glen McCurley was arrested in 2020 and pleaded guilty during his trial in August 2021, receiving a life sentence. The Tarrant County district attorney’s account records that he died in prison in 2023.
The appeal judgment explains the evidence. A DNA profile from Walker’s preserved clothing produced no match in the national database. Further genetic work gave investigators a lead. DNA from discarded material, followed by a sample McCurley supplied, matched the clothing profile. His conviction was upheld in 2022.
The distinction matters: the lead told investigators where to look. The later comparisons tested whether that direction was right.
2. April Tinsley: a 30-year investigation
Eight-year-old April Tinsley was abducted in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in April 1988. The FBI’s account from 2009 describes an investigation still seeking answers more than twenty years later. It is a reminder to check a source’s date: that page describes the case before the eventual breakthrough.
In 2018, investigators used genetic genealogy to narrow their search. They then recovered additional DNA from John D. Miller’s discarded material and compared it with the evidence. Miller confessed, pleaded guilty that December and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. WBOI’s reporting from the sentencing hearing documents the outcome and the prosecutor’s account of the investigation.
What changed was the way investigators could use evidence already in their possession. Its earlier failure to produce a name had not made it worthless.
3. Sherri Rasmussen: evidence that challenged the first theory
Sherri Rasmussen was killed in her Van Nuys home in February 1986. Investigators initially approached the crime as an interrupted burglary. Years later, DNA testing of a preserved swab from a bite injury revealed a profile from another woman, but a database search found no match.
Investigators collected a discarded drink cup and straw in 2009. Testing linked Stephanie Lazarus to the DNA on the swab, and police arrested her in June. The California appellate decision explains the comparisons and affirmed the conviction in 2015. A jury found her guilty in 2012, according to the LAPD’s verdict announcement. The investigation had spanned more than two decades.
The important evidence was DNA recovered from the injury, not a visual comparison of bite shapes. The case also shows why an explanation must remain open to challenge when the evidence points elsewhere.
4. Lynette White: finding the killer and correcting an injustice
Lynette White was killed in Cardiff in 1988. Police initially prosecuted innocent people, whose convictions were subsequently overturned. A fresh forensic investigation eventually identified Jeffrey Gafoor: his DNA matched blood recovered at the crime scene. Fifteen years after the killing, he admitted the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The government’s Mouncher Investigation Report documents both the wrongful prosecution and the later identification.
South Wales Police acknowledges the miscarriage of justice and its apology to the original defendants.
This is more than a story about improved testing. Reopening the investigation meant correcting an account that had already harmed innocent people. A conviction can look like an answer while the underlying account is still wrong.
5. The Golden State Killer investigation: connecting crimes across decades
The Golden State Killer case concerns a series of crimes across California, rather than one murder with a single starting date. The FBI’s historical case account places the last known crime in the series in 1986. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was arrested in April 2018, more than three decades later. The FBI timeline records the use of investigative genetic genealogy to narrow the suspect pool and identify him.
Arrest was not the final court outcome. DeAngelo pleaded guilty in June 2020 to thirteen murders and thirteen kidnapping counts. That August, he received multiple life sentences without parole, as recorded by the Orange County district attorney.
Putting those dates beside each other shows how much a short phrase such as “case solved” can leave out.
What changes when an old case is reopened?
The common thread here is a willingness to ask another question of the evidence. Keeping a sample made later testing possible. A new method supplied a lead that still needed checking. A fresh investigation challenged a familiar explanation.
These are observations about the cases above, not a promise that every cold case has an answer waiting in a laboratory. They are also a reason to read carefully: what does a source establish, when was it written, and what remains outside it?
Try the reading on a fictional case
Murder Desk’s cases are fictional; they do not recreate the crimes in this article. If you enjoy comparing documents and testing an explanation, our guide to reading a case file gives you a place to start.
You can investigate alone or plan an evening with friends. For a short first file, read about Closing Time, the free training case.