For True Crime Junkies, what's your favorite cold case?

Is the Idaho case officially cold yet?

The Black Dahlia, then Zodiac, then the Texarkana murders. The Idaho murders are quickly moving up the list.

The local ones that I'm most interested in are Nanette Krentel's murder in Lacombe, LA, Margaret Coons in Mandeville, LA, and Eugenie Boisfontaine in Baton Rouge.

There's a podcast called The Vanished Podcast that does a weekly story about a missing person. There have been some very interesting cases they've reviewed (Jerrod Green, Jake Latiolais, Sandra Eckert, and Jason Landry).

Asha Degree was a little girl who supposedly just walked away from her home in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm about 20 years ago, never to be seen again.

Killing of Judy Smith

Brief rundown:

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Dental records and the arthritic knee soon led the body to be identified as that of Judy Smith (born Judith Eldredge; December 15, 1946, in Hyannis, Massachusetts), a 50-year-old nurse from Newton, Massachusetts, who had last been positively seen alive by her husband Jeffrey at a hotel in Philadelphia almost five months earlier. When she had not shown up after a day purportedly spent sightseeing in the city, he had reported her missing. Until the bones were found, the search for her had been concentrated in the Philadelphia area, where several sightings had been reported, although some of them may have been of a homeless woman who strongly resembled Smith.[2]

The investigation into the killing has been complicated by the unresolved question of how Smith got to North Carolina from Philadelphia, 600 miles (970 km) away, in the first place.[1] She and her husband planned to stay in the Philadelphia area and visit friends after the conference he was attending ended; she had not expressed any desire to visit the Asheville area where her body was found. Yet when found she was wearing clothes more appropriate for hiking than those she had on when last seen in Philadelphia. It has been speculated that she might have been a victim of serial killer Gary Michael Hilton, who had left one of his victims in a similar condition near where Smith's body was discovered.

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Supposedly, she was involved with horses in her younger days. I believe horse racing/breeding is a high dollar industry. This is an angle I've never seen talked about publicly with this case but it's one that I think makes sense.

A case of cold Budweiser is pretty good to me..

Jodi Huisentruit, the news anchor who went missing one morning in 1995 before her morning anchor shift in Iowa.

Also if you've watched the new Unsolved Mysteries series on Netflix, the Rey Rivera case has had me intrigued. That one truly baffles me.

AJ Breaux

One that has always intrigued me, and has a Jackson MS connection is Annie Laurie Hearin.

Unsolved wiki

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Seventy-two-year-old Annie Laurie Hearin was the wife of wealthy businessman Robert Hearin Sr.; the two had been married for forty-eight years. She was abducted on the afternoon of July 26, 1988. Earlier that day, she had several friends over. Robert came home in the afternoon to find her not home. After calling several friends and family, he called the police to report her missing. Investigators discovered drops of blood on the carpet and blood smears on the front door of the residence. Neighbors also reported seeing a suspicious pickup truck and a white van with Florida plates driving by her home. Analysts determined that the blood matched Annie Laurie's type. Authorities believe that she may have been struck on the head by an intruder, as indicated by blood smears on the door. A ransom note was also found near the door, which was typewritten and contained numerous grammatical and spelling errors. The note stated, in part: Mr. Robert Herrin, Put these people back in the shape they was in before they got mixed up with School Pictures. Pay them whatever damages they want and tell them all this so then can no what you are doing but dont tell them why you are doing it. Do this before ten days pass. Don't call police.

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The ransom note referred to School Pictures, a company that handled photographs of school children for yearbooks, which had been taken over by Robert in the 1980s. In order to collect debts, between 1981 and 1983, School Pictures sued twelve franchise owners in eight states, including Florida. The letter listed these twelve franchises of the nationwide business, all of whom Robert was supposed to pay ransom for the return of his wife. The kidnapper claimed that Robert "owed" these businesses money because he allegedly "harmed" these companies through his business dealings and lawsuits. Since the lawsuits against these companies were in public records, authorities determined that the kidnapper could have been someone that did not belong to these franchises. Robert made a public appeal for his wife's return in September 1988 and received a letter eight days later that was determined to feature Annie Laurie's signature. Postmarked from Atlanta, Georgia, the note stated: Bob, If you don't do what these people want you to do, they are going to seal me up in the cellar of this house with only a few jugs of water. Please save me, Annie Laurie

Robert mailed nearly one million dollars in ransom money to the 12 franchisees listed in the first note. However, Annie Laurie was never released and the kidnapper never contacted him again.

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Although not ever technically solved, they probably got their man…

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Unresolved. In March 1989, sixty-five-year-old Newton Alfred Winn, a civil attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida, was arrested and charged with Annie's kidnapping. He was the owner of a Florida-based School Pictures franchise and was one of the twelve names listed on the ransom note and among the ones that sent their money back to Robert. About four years before Annie's abduction, he had been sued by the company for over $153,000. A month before the kidnapping, Winn had purchased a van that matched the description of the one Annie's neighbors saw around her house the day she was kidnapped. The descriptions of the van's driver also matched his appearance. Two witnesses had also identified Winn as a man they had seen in a van in front of the Hearin home in the weeks prior to the abduction. Authorities also learned that Winn had asked his paralegal to help him fabricate an alibi for the day of the kidnapping. A woman contacted the FBI and told them that Winn had promised her $500 to travel from Florida to Atlanta, Georgia, and mail a letter for him; this occurred sixteen days after the kidnapping. He handed her a manila envelope; inside was the second letter, wrapped in a gray linen napkin. Winn instructed her not to look at or touch the letter, but when she deposited the letter she had to ease the napkin off. That is when she observed the writing on the letter. Later, she identified the letter as the one that Robert had received from his wife. Though he maintained his innocence throughout, Winn was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, extortion, and perjury in 1990. He was sentenced to nineteen years and seven months and was released from prison in April 2006. He died in August 2012. No one has ever been formally charged with the actual kidnapping of Annie nor has she ever been found. In 1990, Robert died of a heart attack, and a year after, Annie was declared legally dead.

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