The man ordered a coffee, pulled out a gun and disappeared into the night with 18-year-old Samantha Koenig. Weeks later, her family received a ransom demand. By then, Samantha was already dead.
She was working alone at a coffee stand in Anchorage, Alaska, on the night of February 1, 2012. A security camera captured the customer approaching her window. His name was Israel Keyes.
After ordering, he showed Samantha a gun. The footage shows her raising her hands before he climbs inside. He ties her hands, turns off the lights and leads her away.
Samantha’s family and friends searched for her, unaware that Keyes had killed her shortly after the abduction. He later used her phone to send messages and demand money from her family.
When money was deposited into the account connected to Samantha’s debit card, investigators began tracking withdrawals across several states. The trail led them to Keyes in Texas, where he was arrested in March.
During interviews with the FBI, Keyes admitted killing Samantha and a couple in Vermont. He also spoke about other victims across the country. Investigators were left trying to work out which of his claims they could verify.
Keyes killed himself in an Anchorage jail in December 2012, before he could stand trial. Samantha’s family never got to see him answer for her death in court.
How many families are still waiting for answers that disappeared with him?
1
671
For 23 years, the murder of a young nurse went unsolved. Then detectives found a DNA match. The woman they wanted to question was an LAPD detective, and she was already inside police headquarters.
On February 24, 1986, 29 year old Sherri Rasmussen was found dead in the Los Angeles home she shared with her husband, John Ruetten. She had been beaten and shot. A bite mark on her arm would become the most important piece of evidence in the case.
At first, police investigated the killing as a possible burglary. Sherri’s family had another name in mind: Stephanie Lazarus, an LAPD officer who had previously dated John.
The case went cold. Lazarus stayed with the department, became a detective and spent years working alongside other officers. Meanwhile, the swab taken from the bite mark remained in evidence.
In 2009, investigators took a fresh look. They secretly obtained a sample of Lazarus’s DNA and compared it with the DNA from Sherri’s arm. It matched.
Her colleagues brought her into an interview room under another pretext. As the conversation turned to Sherri, Lazarus insisted she barely remembered her. The interview was recorded; by the end of it, she was under arrest.
A jury convicted Lazarus of first-degree murder in 2012. She was sentenced to 27 years to life.
Sherri’s family had raised Lazarus’s name years earlier. What might have happened if detectives had looked more closely then?
2
452
For more than two months, Kala Brown was locked inside a metal container on a stranger’s property. When police finally opened it, she told them her boyfriend had been shot in front of her. Then she warned them there could be more bodies.
Kala and Charlie Carver disappeared in August 2016 after going to a property in South Carolina for a job. Its owner, real estate agent Todd Kohlhepp, had hired them to clear land.
According to Kala, Kohlhepp shot Charlie, then locked her inside a storage container with a chain around her neck. For weeks, her family had no idea where she was.
On November 3, investigators searching Kohlhepp’s property heard banging coming from the container. They forced it open and found Kala alive. The video shows her speaking to the officers as they work to free her.
She told them Kohlhepp had killed Charlie and spoken about other people buried on the property. Investigators found three bodies there, including Charlie’s.
Kohlhepp also confessed to a 2003 shooting at a motorcycle shop that had remained unsolved for nearly 13 years. Four people were killed there. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to seven murders and received seven consecutive life sentences.
Kala had survived long enough to tell police where to look.
How many answers might have stayed buried if investigators hadn’t found her that day?
1
486
Jassy Correia went out to celebrate her birthday and never made it home. Four days later, police stopped a man on a highway. When an officer asked if anyone else was in the car, he answered: “She’s in the trunk.”
In February 2019, Jassy was out with friends at a Boston nightclub. She became separated from them and tried to get a ride home. A stranger named Louis Coleman approached her outside and offered to take her to her friend’s apartment.
Jassy got into his car. Surveillance cameras later showed Coleman arriving at his apartment building in Rhode Island. He carried her inside and dragged her toward the elevator.
Over the next few days, Coleman bought cleaning supplies, protective equipment and a large suitcase. Investigators found that he had searched online for “can a person fit inside a suitcase.”
On February 28, police stopped Coleman’s car in Delaware. They found Jassy’s body inside a suitcase in the trunk.
Jassy was a young mother with a two-year-old daughter. She had gone out that night to celebrate with her friends.
In 2022, Coleman was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
How many people saw Jassy outside the club that night and had no idea what was about to happen?
332
A security camera caught the moment a man dragged 22 year old Carlesha Freeland Gaither off a Philadelphia street and forced her into his car. She fought so hard that she broke a window. For three days, her family had no idea where she was.
On the night of November 2 2014, Carlesha was walking home when a man parked his car, got out and approached her. A witness heard her screaming for help and called 911.
The footage shows her struggling as the man pulls her down the street. Her glasses and phone were left on the pavement. Inside the car, she managed to hit him with a hammer, but he threatened to kill her if she kept fighting.
The man was Delvin Barnes. He drove Carlesha to Maryland with her wrists bound and kept her in the trunk of his car. Investigators eventually tracked the vehicle using a GPS device that had been installed by the dealership.
Three days after the abduction, federal agents found Barnes in Jessup, Maryland. Carlesha was rescued alive.
Barnes pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
285
Kelsey Smith went to Target to buy a gift for her boyfriend. She was 18 and had graduated from high school just days earlier. A store camera filmed her shopping, then leaving. Another captured a man who left around the same time.
On June 2, 2007, Kelsey drove to the store in Overland Park, Kansas. After shopping, she walked back to her car and put her purchases inside. As she reached the driver’s door, a man forced her into the vehicle.
About two hours later, her car was found in a mall parking lot across the street. Her purse and purchases were still inside. Kelsey was gone.
Police reviewed footage from Target and released images of a man seen at the store. Tips helped investigators identify him as Edwin Hall.
Four days after Kelsey disappeared, investigators found her body in a wooded area in Missouri. Cell phone location data had helped narrow the search.
Hall later pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering Kelsey. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In the store footage, Kelsey is carrying the gift she never got to give.
1
205
Brittany Diggs was locked in the trunk of her own car while an armed man drove around Birmingham, trying to withdraw money with her bank card. She found the emergency release using the light from her insulin pump. What happened next was caught on a gas station camera.
It was March 14, 2017. Brittany, a 25 years old nursing student, was walking to her apartment when a stranger approached her with a gun and demanded money. He forced her into her car, made her drive and threatened to kill her. Eventually, he put her in the trunk.
Brittany remembered seeing a video on Facebook about how to escape from a trunk. She couldn’t see the latch in the dark, so she used the light from her insulin pump to find it.
The man stopped at a gas station and went inside to use the ATM. When he came back and started driving away, Brittany opened the trunk, fell onto the pavement and ran into the store.
You can see it happen in the surveillance footage. The car begins to move, the trunk opens and Brittany scrambles out. Inside the store, another camera captures her running in for help.
Police arrested Manuel Ali Towns about a week later. In 2018, he was convicted of kidnapping and other charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
4
609
In 1990, an eight-year-old girl was taken from her bedroom in Texas, attacked and left for dead in a field. She survived - but her attacker remained unidentified for 19 years. When police finally found him, they discovered he had once lived just a few blocks from her home.
Her name was Jennifer Schuett. On the morning of August 10, a man took her through her bedroom window in Dickinson. He drove her to a remote area, sexually assaulted her and cut her throat.
A group of children found Jennifer in a field approximately 14 hours later. She was alive, but her injuries had damaged her vocal cords. Unable to speak, she used handwritten notes to help investigators understand what had happened.
Police searched for the man, but the case went cold. Jennifer grew up without knowing who had attacked her. Years later, she was still helping investigators and hoping they would find him.
In 2009, new DNA testing produced a match. It led police to Dennis Earl Bradford, who was living in Arkansas. Records showed that around the time of the attack, he had lived less than a quarter of a mile from Jennifer’s home.
Bradford was arrested and charged with attempted capital murder. He died in jail in 2010 while awaiting trial, so Jennifer never got the chance to face him in court.
Jennifer later began sharing her story publicly and speaking to other survivors. The man who left her in that field did not silence her.
99
A man called 911 and said he had strangled his wife. He gave police the address, refused to give his name and said he was leaving the country. Then he disappeared.
On January 13, 2015, a dispatcher in Michigan received a call from a man who said a woman was dead inside a house near Fennville. He told her the body was on the living room floor and asked her to send the police.
When officers arrived, they found 48-year-old Sara Knight under a sheet. Her phone and information for contacting her family had been left nearby. Her husband, Harold “Butch” Knight, was gone. So was her car.
Investigators believe Knight made the call. He had already left the area by the time police reached the house. His son later identified the caller’s voice as his father’s.
Police traced Knight to Maine, where surveillance cameras captured him at a Walmart and he checked into a motel. His appearance had changed: his hair and mustache had been dyed dark. Sara’s car was later found abandoned in a parking lot.
Then Sara’s mother received a package mailed from Maine. It contained money for Sara’s cremation and a letter from Knight, in which he wrote about his grievances with her family.
Knight checked out of the motel in January 2015. More than a decade later, his whereabouts remain unknown. Investigators have considered whether he escaped, is living under another identity or died after disappearing. None of those possibilities has been confirmed.
The man who told police where to find Sara has never stood trial for her murder.
82
She escaped the man who kidnapped and raped her, then went to the police. He was arrested and released on bail. Before she could testify against him, she vanished. Her body was found in a shallow grave a year and a half later.
Her name was Debra Colliander. She was 25 and lived in Illinois. In June 1980, she was abducted from a shopping center and taken to a house in Aurora. The man who took her threatened and raped her, but Debra managed to escape and reach a neighbor’s home.
Police arrested Bruce Lindahl and charged him with kidnapping and sexual assault. Debra was expected to testify against him, but on October 7, 1980, she disappeared after leaving her job at Copley Hospital. The charges were eventually dismissed.
In April 1981, Lindahl was found dead beside 18-year-old Charles Huber. Police believe Lindahl had fatally stabbed Huber and accidentally cut an artery in his own leg during the attack. Both men died at the scene.
A year later, in April 1982, a farmer found Debra’s body. Her death was ruled a homicide, but the cause could not be determined. Investigators suspected Lindahl was involved he was never tried for her murder.
Decades later, DNA linked Lindahl to the killings of two other young women: Pamela Maurer in 1976 and Kathy Halle in 1979. Police also found photographs of women at his home and sought to identify them.
Debra escaped and told police what had happened. She never got the chance to testify.
2
99
Sixteen years after 8-year-old April Tinsley was murdered, someone began leaving threatening notes on little girls’ bicycles in Indiana. The writer claimed he was April’s killer and warned that he would kill again. He also left behind DNA. It would take police another 14 years to find him.
On April 1, 1988, April disappeared while walking in her Fort Wayne neighborhood. Her body was found three days later along a rural road about 20 miles away. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. Despite an extensive investigation, police could not identify her killer.
Two years later, a message appeared on a barn door near where her body had been found. The writer claimed responsibility for April’s murder and threatened to kill again. Police now had a chilling message, but still no name.
Then, in 2004, four handwritten notes appeared at homes around Fort Wayne. Three had been left on girls’ bicycles. Several mentioned April, and the writer threatened the children who found them. Biological evidence left with the notes matched DNA recovered in April’s case.
For years, the DNA did not lead investigators to a suspect. In 2018, detectives used genetic genealogy to narrow their search to a family, then collected discarded items from a man’s trash. His DNA matched the evidence.
His name was John D. Miller. When police came to his home and asked if he knew why they were there, he answered: “April Tinsley.”
Miller confessed, pleaded guilty to murder and child molesting, and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. He died in 2025, seven years into his sentence.
April’s family had waited 30 years to learn who killed her. She was eight years old.
76
In 1980, an armed stranger entered a Florida motel room full of teenagers and grabbed one of the girls. Her friend Carol Ann Barrett offered to go with him instead. She was found dead the next day. For nearly 44 years, her family didn’t know who had taken her. All that time, the man was already serving life in prison for other murders.
Carol was 18 when she traveled from Zanesville, Ohio, to Daytona Beach for spring break with her high school friends. They were staying at the Treasure Island Motel when the stranger entered their room around 2 a.m. He threatened the group with a gun, robbed them and seized one of Carol’s friends. When the girl panicked, Carol offered to take her place.
The following day, a passerby found Carol’s body in a ditch beside Interstate 95 near Jacksonville, more than 90 miles from the motel. She had been shot.
Her friends gave police a description of the man, and investigators produced a sketch. But no arrest followed, and the case went cold.
In 2017, Jacksonville detectives reopened the investigation. Three years later, they identified a person of interest: Billy Mansfield Jr., a convicted killer already serving a life sentence in California. He had also received four concurrent life sentences for murders in Florida.
Detectives interviewed Mansfield repeatedly over the next two years. In September 2022, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, he admitted that he was the man in the sketch. He confessed to abducting Carol from the motel and killing her.
Police announced the result in January 2024, nearly 44 years after Carol’s death. Prosecutors decided not to charge Mansfield in her case because he was already serving life sentences for the other murders.
The sketch had existed since 1980. The man in it had been behind bars for decades. Carol’s family finally had a name.
4
185
For nearly four years, two missing girls were held beneath a garage in a small Russian town.
A handwritten note helped bring them home.
In September 2000, 14-year-old Ekaterina Martynova and 17-year-old Elena Samokhina disappeared after accepting a ride in Skopin, Russia.
The man behind the wheel was Viktor Mokhov.
He and an accomplice abducted the girls. Mokhov kept them in a concealed underground bunker beneath his garage, where he repeatedly raped them.
Years passed.
Then Mokhov introduced Ekaterina to a young woman renting a room from him. He told her Ekaterina was his niece.
Ekaterina managed to pass the tenant a note. She explained that Mokhov was holding them captive and asked her to take it to the police.
The message reached the authorities.
On May 4, 2004, police freed Ekaterina and Elena. They had been missing for more than three and a half years.
Mokhov was convicted and sentenced to prison. He was released in 2021 after serving his term.
The man became known as the “Skopin Maniac.” The note that exposed him came from one of the girls he had kept hidden.
1
76







