Explore notes from the casefile — unusual cases, historical crimes and the darker side of human behavior.
Leatherslade Farm became a key piece of evidence in the Great Train Robbery investigation when police found fingerprints and other traces left by the gang after their hideout cleanup failed.
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The 2003 Antwerp Diamond Heist involved thieves breaching the Antwerp Diamond Center’s vault and escaping with an estimated $100 million in diamonds, gold, and jewels.
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This list explains how forensic investigators can recover usable DNA from unexpected or degraded materials, showing that evidence can survive in unusual substrates and still help link people to crimes.
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Anna Sorokin, known as Anna Delvey, used forged financial documents and false claims of wealth to obtain credit, services, and access from Manhattan hotels, clubs, and institutions, leading to her 2019 conviction.
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Los Angeles prosecutors said a mortuary employee and alleged accomplices tried to obtain about $1.2 million in life-insurance payouts by using false death certificates and an empty-casket funeral for people who were not actually dead.
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Wolfgang Beltracchi’s forgery scheme succeeded not just because of painted fakes, but because fabricated provenance, labels, and documents made the works seem historically authentic.
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John Drewe helped pass forged paintings as authentic by planting false provenance records in trusted museum archives.
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An SD card found on an Anchorage street led police to a homicide investigation and the arrest of Brian Steven Smith, who was charged in the killing of Kathleen Henry and later also linked by investigators to the death of Veronica Abouchuk.
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Microdots were tiny photographic images used in espionage to hide pages of text or photos inside ordinary-looking mail.
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Narco-submarines are low-profile semi-submersible vessels used by trafficking groups to move large drug shipments while reducing the chance of detection at sea.
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The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston still displays empty frames where 13 artworks were stolen in its unsolved 1990 art heist.
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Operation Trojan Shield was an FBI-run encrypted messaging platform designed to lure criminals into using it so investigators could read their messages and gather evidence.
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Authorities found about 55 grams of cocaine hidden inside a Styrofoam box of frozen fish during a cargo inspection.
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The CIA’s Operation Midnight Climax used covert brothel safehouses to secretly dose unwitting men with LSD while observing them for MKUltra-related research.
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The Lockerbie bombing investigation used fragments of a jacket and a recalled clothing sale in Malta to help trace the bomb suitcase back toward Libya.
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The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, who kept it hidden for more than two years before it was recovered.
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In June 2009, four inmates escaped from St. Tammany Parish Jail after using hacksaw blades hidden inside a Bible to cut through their window bars.
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Christopher Tapp was convicted in the 1996 murder of Angie Dodge, later released in 2017, and officially exonerated in 2019 after DNA-based investigation pointed to another suspect.
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Aileen Wuornos’s Florida murder trial became a major legal and public case because she claimed self-defense while prosecutors used evidence of similar crimes to argue the killings were deliberate.
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California’s East Area Rapist case was tied together by DNA in 2001 and, in 2018, genetic genealogy led to the identification of Joseph DeAngelo.
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The article explains how false claims and rumors spread online after the Sandy Hook shooting and affected public understanding and trust.
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The article explains that the Boston Strangler case remains unresolved because Albert DeSalvo’s confession may not account for all of the murders attributed to the killer.
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The 1982 Chicago-area Tylenol cyanide murders killed seven people and led to major changes in tamper-evident packaging and anti-tampering regulation for over-the-counter medicines.
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Anthony Curcio carried out a planned robbery of a Brink’s armored truck using surveillance, disguise, and a Craigslist-based distraction before he was later caught and sentenced to prison.
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Ohio investigators reopened a decades-old murder case and identified a suspect using genetic genealogy and family-tree research.
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The article explains that cell-tower records used in Adnan Syed’s murder case were challenged because AT&T warned incoming-call location data was not reliable for determining a phone’s location.
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The 1950 Great Brink’s Robbery in Boston was a carefully planned theft of about $2.7 million that led to a major investigation and became one of the city’s most famous crimes.
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The Golden State Killer case was cracked in 2018 when investigators used genetic genealogy to narrow the suspect to Joseph James DeAngelo, raising major privacy concerns about genealogy databases.
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D.B. Cooper is the unidentified hijacker who in 1971 parachuted from a commercial plane after demanding ransom and has never been conclusively identified.
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The Unabomber investigation advanced when Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto was published and investigators recognized language patterns that helped narrow the suspect list.
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