History Main / ExtremelyColdCase

* The oldest entry in The Charlie Project missing person database is Dorothy Arnold, who disappeared in New York City in 1910.

* The {{Creator/PBS}} documentary series ''History Detectives'' investigated the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_Girl_Annihilator Austin Axe Murders]] of 1885-1886 using documentary evidence, psychological and geographical profiling. They concluded that the likely murderer was one Nathan Elgin who was shot by police while attacking another woman shortly after the last murder. At the time the murders took place, the idea of a SerialKiller simply did not exist, and the locals were convinced that it was the work of a gang or some kind of [[TheVirus moral degradation]] driving the town's men crazy.

* In ''The Wench Is Dead'', Colin Dexter's eighth Literature/InspectorMorse novel, Morse is laid up in hospital and passes the time by re-investigating a murder case from Oxford in 1859, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. (The murder case is fictional, but it was inspired by a real 1839 case.)

* The non-fiction book ''Cold Case Homicides: Practical Investigative Techniques'' (2006) argues that the coldest criminal case ever investigated is the death of Ötzi the Iceman ca. 3300 BCE. He was found 5,000 years later in 1991 and initially believed to have suffered an accidental death. Once dated better, he was speculated to be an accident still, or a ritual sacrifice (which would make his death not a crime under the law of the "jurisdiction" it was committed in), but further testing, using the same techniques employed in modern crime investigation, found unambiguous evidence that he had fought for his life against several people before being murdered. Now we know where he was before his murder, what he ate, how many people were involved in his killing, that they were all men from the area, and that he tried to save another wounded man by carrying him over his back before he met his fate.

* The dismembered, headless remains of a man were found in a cave in Lewiston, Idaho in 1979. He was speculated to be a hiker murdered a couple of decades before at most... until 2020, when he was identified through family DNA as Joseph Henry Loveless, a bootlegger who had disappeared after fleeing from jail '''in 1916''', where he was held for the murder of his wife. It is speculated that Loveless was found and lynched by his wife's relatives, as he was known to be dead and even had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenotaph cenotaph]] to his name. Nevertheless, his is still listed as an open case by the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

* ''Series/ColdCase'': A few episode cases go back to the 1930s or earlier. In these episodes the show's formula based on interview with living witnesses is largely replaced with the detectives interviewing with their descendants, reading diaries and letters, and listening to recordings. The investigation is almost always triggered by the recent death of a relative of the victim.

* ''Series/ColdCase'': A few episode cases go back to the 1930s or earlier. The detectives often complement their interrogations of living witnesses (who can be scarce) with interviews with their descendants, diaries, letters, and recordings. The investigation is almost always triggered by the recent death of a relative of the victim.

* The non-fiction book ''Cold Case Homicides: Practical Investigative Techniques'' (2006) argues that the coldest criminal case ever investigated is the death of Ötzi the Iceman ca. 3300 BCE. He was found 5,000 years later in 1991 and initially mistaken for an accidented mountaineer. Once dated better, he was speculated to be an accident still, or a ritual sacrifice (which would make his death not a crime under the law of the "jurisdiction" it was committed in), but further testing, using the same techniques employed in modern crime investigation, found unambiguous evidence that he had fought for his life against several people before being murdered. Now we know where he was before his murder, what he ate, how many people were involved in his killing, that they were all men from the area, and that he tried to save another wounded man by carrying him over his back before he met his fate.

* In ''Literature/TheDaughterOfTime'', Creator/JosephineTey's fourth novel featuring Inspector Alan Grant, he is laid up in hospital with a broken leg and passes the time re-investigating a murder from the 15th century. Famous because, rather than have him investigate a fictional case, Tey used the real incident of UsefulNotes/RichardIII and the Princes in the Tower. The investigation includes examining the primary historical sources on the case and realizing the political biases of either their writers, or the sources which these writers used.

* ''Series/ColdCase'': A few episode cases go back to the 1930s or earlier. The detectives often complement their interrogations of living witnesses (who can be scarce) with interviews with their descendants, diaries, letters and recordings. The investigation is almost always triggered by the recent death of a relative of the victim.
** In the series premiere, Lilly asks what the coldest case ever is and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness her old partner]] claims that it is Lucy the ''Australopithecus'', because someone bashed her head in with a rock. [[note]]The line may have been inspired by the documentary ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'', where Lucy is portrayed as being murdered by another ''Australopithecus'' with a rock, but the cause of her death is still unknown in reality.[[/note]]

** The deaths of 17 people found in a 13th century well in England. Identified through DNA as members of a single Jewish family, their deaths were also found to be not from natural causes.

** The boy in the cellar, a 15/16 year-old boy buried in a 17th century cellar in Maryland, determined to have been murdered.

* The death of the "[[DeathOfAChild Boy]] [[AChildShallLeadThem King]]" {{UsefulNotes/Tutankhamun}} has been debated ever since the discovery of his tomb in TheRoaringTwenties. An assassinaton by [[TheButlerDidIt his vizier]] was a favored theory for years, only to be [[DatedHistory replaced]] later by malaria, [[RoyalInbreeding inbreeding]], and an accident involving a war chariot.

* In 2007, the students at the police academy in Fürstenfeldbruck investigated the unsolved [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterkaifeck_murders Hinterkaifeck family murder]] of 1922 as if it was a new case. They agreed on a prime suspect, but did not make his identity public out of respect for his still living relatives.
* The disappearance of a 16-year-old servant girl named Emma Alice Smith in rural Sussex in 1926 was reinvestigated as a murder in 2009, after a short film was made about her. A dying man had allegedly confessed the murder to Emma Alice's sister in his deathbed in 1953, but she had herself died without reporting it and the man's name was unknown. After the investigation, however, the police accepted a different theory about her disappearance (that she had eloped with a married man to Ireland) and closed the case.
* The dismemembered, headless remains of a man were found in a cave of Lewiston, Idaho in 1979. He was speculated to be a hiker murdered a couple of decades before at most... until 2020, when he was identified through family DNA as Joseph Henry Loveless, a bootlegger who had disappeared after fleeing from jail '''in 1916''', where he was held for the murder of his wife. It is speculated that Loveless was found and lynched by his wife's relatives, as he was known to be dead and even had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenotaph cenotaph]] to his name. Nevertheless, his is still listed as an open case by the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

* The Non-fiction ''The Cases That Haunt Us'' (2000) by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker reexamines Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, and the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping through the lens of modern profiling among others.

'''Detective Vera:''' ...the suspects...

** Averted to some degree in "Best Friends", which involves a case from 1932. Despite the age of the case (the oldest case yet at the time, and third-oldest overall), the two critical witnesses are still alive to tell their stories (although some believe that the final scene in the episode implies that one of the witnesses dies the same day the case is closed).

* Atapuerca's "Skull 17" has been lauded as the oldest unambiguous instance of murder, some 430,000 years ago. The owner of the skull, a male ''Homo heidelbergensis'', was hit with a hard object, possibly a rock, in two different areas of the skull shortly before his death, thus excluding an accidental impact. A little more ambiguous is "Skull 5" from the same site and similar age, which received a single blow to the face and died months or years later from an infected tooth broken by that impact. Atapuerca itself has instances of cannibalism going back over 800,000 years, but it can't be excluded that these bodies were eaten after their natural death.

* The death of the "[[DeathOfAChild Boy]] [[AChildShallLeadThem King]]" {{UsefulNotes/Tutankhamun}} has been debated ever since the discovery of his tomb in TheRoaringTwenties. An assassinaton by [[TheButlerDidIt his vizier]] was a favored theory for years, only to be [[DatedHistory replaced]] later by malaria, [[RoyallyScrewedUp inbreeding]], and an accident involving a war chariot.

* In 2007, the students at the police academy in Fürstenfeldbruck investigated the unsolved Hinterkaifeck family murder of 1922 as if it was a new case. They agreed on a prime suspect, but did not make his identity public out of respect for his still living relatives.

* UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's death has been even been more intensely debated, not the least because his body has actually never been found.

* ''Series/ColdCase'': A few of the episodes go back to the 1930s or earlier. In these cases, the detectives often complement their interviews of living witnesses (who can be scarce) with interviews of their descendants, diaries, letters and recordings of them while they were still alive. The investigation is almost always triggered by the recent death of a relative of the victim.
** In the series premiere, Lilly asks what is the coldest case ever and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness her old partner]] claims that it is Lucy the ''Australopithecus'', because someone bashed her head in with a rock. [[note]]The line may have been inspired by the documentary ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'', where Lucy is portrayed as being murdered by another ''Australopithecus'' with a rock, but the cause of her death is still unknown in reality.[[/note]]
** In "Beautiful Little Fool", the team investigates their coldest case up to that point, the murder of a flapper in the aftermath of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The only living witness was a little girl at the time of the murder, and getting an interview with her (now an old, reclusive socialite in her family's mansion) is an additional challenge. Solving this crime has legal effects in the present day because the murder weapon is proven to have been stolen from the victim, and the police confiscates it from the murderer's grandson.
** In "Torn", Lilly and her team investigate their coldest case ever, the murder of a woman who was killed in 1919. They soon learn that she may have been murdered because of her activism for the women's vote. The only person from the original investigation still alive was a young child at the time.
** In the same episode, Lilly and Scotty revisit the storage for really old cases (before World War II). Lilly reads through some files from the 1910s and pokes fun at how lacklustre they are. One comments that "The suspect is a man with a mustache", and that is it. The implication is that they could take any of them right there and get closer to the truth.

* Atapuerca's "Skull 17" has been lauded as the oldest unambiguous instance of murder, about 430,000 years ago. The owner of the skull, a male ''Homo heidelbergensis'', was hit with a hard object, possibly a rock, in two different areas of the skull shortly before his death, thus excluding an accidental impact or fall. A little more ambiguous is "Skull 5" from the same site and similar age, which received a single blow to the face and died months or years later from an infected tooth broken by that impact. Atapuerca itself has instances of cannibalism going back over 800,000 years, but it can't be excluded that those bodies were eaten after their natural death.

* The death of the "[[DeathOfAChild Boy]] [[AChildShallLeadThem King]]" {{UsefulNotes/Tutankhamun}} has been debated ever since the discovery of his tomb in TheRoaringTwenties. An assassinaton by [[TheButlerDidIt his vizier]] was a favored theory for years, only to be [[DatedHistory replaced]] later by malaria, birth defects, and an accident involving a war chariot.

* The death of {{UsefulNotes/Tutankhamun}} has been debated ever since the discovery of his tomb in TheRoaringTwenties, with an assassinaton by [[TheButlerDidIt his vizier]] being a favored theory for years, only to be [[DatedHistory replaced]] later by an accidental death involving a war chariot.

* The death of [[UsefulNotes/AncientEgypt Tutankhamun]] has been debated extensively for years, with an assassinaton by [[TheButlerDidIt his vizier]] being a favored theory for years, only to be [[DatedHistory replaced]] later by an accidental death involving a war chariot.

* The {{PBS}} documentary series ''History Detectives'' investigated the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_Girl_Annihilator Austin Axe Murders]] of 1885-1886 using documentary evidence, psychological and geographical profiling. They concluded that the likely murderer was one Nathan Elgin who was shot by police while attacking another woman shortly after the last murder. At the time the murders took place, the idea of a SerialKiller simply did not exist, and the locals were convinced that it was the work of a gang or some kind of [[TheVirus moral degradation]] driving the town's men crazy.

** The death of UsefulNotes/ZacharyTaylor in 1850, confirmed to be from natural causes.

** The assassination of Giuliano de Medici during the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478. An encrypted letter deciphered only in 2004 revealed the identity of another plotter, the Duke of Urbino.

** In the same episode, Lilly and Scotty revisit the storage for really old cases (before World War II). Lilly reads through some files from the 1910s and pokes fun at how lacklustre they are. One comments that "The suspect is a man with a mustache", and that's it. The implication is that they could take any of them right there and get closer to the truth.

** In the series premiere, Lilly asks what's the coldest case ever and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness her old partner]] claims that it's Lucy the ''Australopithecus'', because someone bashed her head in with a rock. [[note]]The line may have been inspired by the documentary ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'', where Lucy is portrayed as being murdered by another ''Australopithecus'' with a rock, but the cause of her death is still unknown in reality.[[/note]]

* In ''Literature/TheDaughterOfTime'', Creator/JosephineTey's fourth novel featuring Inspector Alan Grant, he's laid up in hospital with a broken leg and passes the time re-investigating a murder from the 15th century. Famous because, rather than have him investigate a fictional case, Tey used the real incident of UsefulNotes/RichardIII and the Princes in the Tower.

* In ''A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs'', Creator/EllisPeters' fourth Literature/FelseInvestigates novel, George Felse goes on holiday and is invited to attend the opening of a historic tomb in the town where he's staying. It's discovered that the tomb's occupant was apparently buried alive, and figuring out the truth about her death becomes the B-plot to the more recent violent death that's the main mystery.
* In ''The Wench Is Dead'', Colin Dexter's eighth Literature/InspectorMorse novel, Morse is laid up in hospital and passes the time by re-investigating a murder case from Oxford in 1859, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. (The murder case is fictional, but inspired by a real 1839 case.)