Tear Jerker / Unsolved Mysteries

• The original run of the show ran from 1988 to 2002. By this point all of these cases are at least 20 years old, most of them 30 years older or more. As time goes on, witnesses and evidence will become even harder to come by and interest in solving them will fade as law enforcement agencies accept the likelihood that no new information will ever be found to help solve them. The loved ones of murdered and missing persons will die never knowing what happened to the one they lost, broken families will never be reunited, and criminals who committed heinous crimes have gotten away with them, and even if they were arrested and put in prison or executed on a separate charge, they will never face accountability for the crimes no one knows they did. Then one realizes that more unsolved mysteries are happening every day, and like these cases, decades from now some of them will still be unsolved.
• The Lost Loves section had some really big ones. A good example is a case where a former ill girl was searching for her hospital roommate to fulfill a promise they made: since the latter girl was rendered unable to have kids in adulthood, the former promised that when she herself had children, she would share them with her friend and name her first girl after her. Nikki Wade-Crowder gave birth to a daughter and was able to find Charita Harding-Buckner, who stood godmother to Charita Kennedy Crowder, aged three.
• A straight version would be the story of Dolores Ford and Irene Love, who grew up in the same 1950s neighborhood and were close like sisters, believing themselves to be cousins, until Dolores moved away with her family. Years later, 16-year-old Irene discovers that she's adopted, and Dolores was her sister. To the best of anyone's knowledge, Dolores died in 1991, before Irene could find her; and Irene died in 2012, having located other family members.
• The whole case regarding Darlie Routier. Granted, everyone has their own opinion on whether or not Darlie is guilty, or actually innocent of murdering her own children. There is evidence suggesting she is the murderer, but at the same time plenty of evidence showing she is innocent. She currently sits on death row. If she is in fact innocent, and wrongfully persecuted, it means an innocent mother will be getting a lethal injection, while the real killer is out there walking free.
• The woman who suffered a brain aneurysm and lost 16 years of her memories! After leaving the hospital, she thought it was still 1960, but really it was 1976, her children had grown up, her husband looked different, certain family members or friends had passed away, her house was different, and to top it all off, she was fearful of admitting to her family she had lost her memory, until four years later. The segment ends with the host saying that doctors do not believe she will ever recover, or gain her memories back.
• The Missing Person case that involved the New Kids on the Block turned out to be this. It featured a missing girl who was supposedly caught on tape in the video for My Favorite Girl, so the Knight brothers (Jonathan and Jordan) showed up on the show asking for info about her whereabouts. According to an update, however, the girl on tape was an Identical Stranger... and the actual one had been murdered the same day she disappeared. The only good thing is that the poor girl's killer was found and brought to justice.
• Any animal lover will cry at the story of Mabel Wood, who ran a kennel for abandoned/unwanted dogs in Missouri and lost all but one of them (59 total) in a deliberately set fire. Even worse was the fact that someone - perhaps the perpetrator - continued to harass Mabel afterwards. Mabel refused to give up and did rebuild her business, but has sadly since passed away, never having received justice for the loss of her dogs, or for the harassment directed at her.
• The case of Joseph Schambier searching for his long-lost daughter Alberta Elaine; she was taken from him as an infant and put up for adoption when Joseph had been thought to have been mistakenly killed in World War II. Schambier learned Alberta died at the age of 18 in 1957, murdered by Alberta's estranged husband.
• The entire Tsunami Spirits episode from the Netflix revival, particularly the man who talked about losing his entire family and how he found his daughters.
• A moment from the episode "Stolen Kids" of the Netflix revival, where the mother of Shane Walker, breaks down in front of the camera, blaming herself for his abduction, because he was snatched in front of her.
• The cases of Kristin Smart and April Gregory. Both women were college students who disappeared on the same day on opposite sides of the country in 1996. Seeing April's father talk about how he cries everyday over losing his baby girl and how he knew she was dead was heartbreaking, and years later her remains and her killer were found and sentenced to 25 years to life. Meanwhile, both investigators and Kristin's family know who likely killed her, but can't arrest him due to lack of evidence. Making it all the more painful is how both he and his family continue to antagonize and harass her family over their grief even decades after her disappearance.
  • Though a recent development elevates this to Bittersweet Ending— Kristin's killer and the family members who helped him cover up his despicable deed have finally been arrested as of May 2021, 25 years after she vanished, convicted as of October 2022, and sentenced to life in prison as of March 2023.
• While the Harper Ferry's steam trunk doe is considered one of the most frightening cases of the series, it's also this once you learn the details. As bad as it is to be gruesomely murdered and have your body hidden away without i.d, but to have a computer-rendered composite made just to figure out who you are since a visual i.d. can't be done is even worse. Moreso, one of the investigators surmised that the motive for the killing was that the man's only caretaker decided that they didn't want to help him anymore and felt that murdering him was the best option.
• The Blind River Killer case. In June 1991, an elderly couple, Gordon McAllister and his wife Jacqueline, were sleeping in their camper at a rest stop during a vacation trip across Canada. They got a knock on the door at 1 am from a man claiming to be a police officer, and when they opened the door he came in with a shotgun and a rifle, and told them he was going to rob them and then kill them. After they handed over their valuables, he shot Jacqueline and then shot at Gordon as he leapt out the door and rolled under the camper. Another man, Brian Major (who had a wife and son), happened to drive into the rest stop at the time, and was also shot and killed. Gordon survived, but the segment makes it clear he is long over the Despair Event Horizon: he's aware that the killer may come after him for identifying him and he doesn't care, because he doesn't know how to live without Jacqueline after more than thirty years of marriage, and if the killer comes for him then at least there is a chance they'll catch him. Gordon passed away 2012 with no one being charged for the pointless, cold-blooded murder of his wife.
• The Gordon "Gordie" Page, Jr., story. If there was ever a young man who deserved a happy ending because of all he'd endured in life up to that point, it was him; sadly, it was not to be. Always considered "slow" by his family, Gordie's high school years and early 20s were difficult, with him first losing his friends and then his job, then being misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, placed on medication that made the problem worse, and picked up by the police after fleeing the group home where he lived, wrecking a car, and barging into a nearby school. Finally, he was correctly diagnosed as autistic and accepted into another group home, which insisted his family have no contact with him for his first two weeks (to give him time to adjust). In May 1991, four days into his stay, Gordie apparently fled the group home and has not been seen since. Investigators believe he is dead, but his family still hold out hope that he somehow made it to safety and may still be alive under a different identity. As an additional sad footnote to the story, Gordie's father died in 2018, without knowing what happened to his oldest son.
• Sharon Stevens case finding her foster parents, Bill and Cynthia Zelinski. Sharon's mother died when she was an infant and had to live with her abusive father. The details of the abuse that she gives (including hitting her with a belt buckle that she had given him for christmas) and the actors in the re-enactment scenes makes it heartbreaking. The fact that social services took her away from the Zelinski's, the only loving family she knew because her dad re-married, after they already took her away from him and the abuse continued until he was finally arrested due to the school reporting a giant gash on her face. Made even worst that she had her young second child die to due another abusive relative. She at least got a happy ending in that she married a loving husband and was able to reunite with the Zelinski's.
• The story of a junior-high school student named Deloris and her music teacher, Madeline Strauss. Madeline helped bring the shy, awkward Deloris out of her shell and instilled in her a love of music. Sadly, Deloris' life took a turn for the worse after she graduated from junior high, and she ended up dropping out of school and becoming a ward of the court. Deloris and Madeline would meet a few more times, but Deloris had recently suffered from an ailment which had left her in a coma for a month and caused partial amnesia, and she didn't recognize or remember her former teacher. Deloris managed to get her life together and become a nurse, and her memories of Madeline returned after an unexpected reunion with a former classmate. However, her attempts to locate Madeline via the show were unsuccessful. (Deloris Brooks; Unsolved)
• The murder of Joe Cole. Aside from the horrifying circumstances of the case, his best friend Henry Rollins (who was with him the night they were held up and Joe was murdered) and father Dennis were interviewed. While Henry spoke about the lasting trauma of the event and the well-known "ripple effect" where the grief goes beyond just his parents but also all of his friends and others whose lives he touched, Dennis talked about his own pain of losing him and mentioned that he was a kid himself when he was born and that the two of them essentially grew up together. Sadly, Dennis would pass away himself from cancer in 2009, never learning who murdered his son and as of March 2023 remains unsolved.