14 Unsolved Murders From 1940s America

Unsolved murders generate a morbid fascination — and the more gruesome they are, the more attention they get. Although crime was generally low in the 1940s, America still witnessed a handful of unsolved murders, particularly after World War II. Almost all the cases fell into one of two categories: post-war murders of mostly younger women — when crime spiked following the return of soldiers from World War II — or gangland hits involving organized crime.

To put the murder statistics in context, according to data from the American Historical Association, homicides dropped steadily from the 1930s, except for a 0.2% increase from 1940 to 1941. After 1941, many young men, who generally commit the most violent crime, were shipped off to fight in World War II. Like clockwork, crime ticked up again in 1946, when millions of deployed men returned to the U.S. Thus, many of the unsolved murders of the '40s hit the news because they were such anomalies, not just in their occurrence and seeming randomness, but in their brutality and the widespread fright they generated. Here are some of the better-known cases. 

Fashion designer Vera West, who worked on now-classic Universal productions such as "The Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Killers," was found dead in her pool by photographer Robert Landry in 1947. Police also found two notes addressed to one "Jack Chandler," reading, "This is the only way. I am tired of being blackmailed," and "The fortune teller told me there was only one way to duck the blackmail I've paid for 23 years — death," according to The Vintage Woman Magazine. A medical examiner determined that she had probably drowned, but the Los Angeles County coroner refused to sign the death report.

The "blackmail" was likely a reference to an unknown scandal that triggered West's move to California from New York in 1924. Suspicion fell upon her husband, Jack C. West, who gave differing accounts regarding his whereabouts on the night of her death. He also claimed there was no blackmail, but said her behaviour had been erratic. Vera's friends, however, suspected that her death was a murder dressed as a suicide.

The investigation was full of holes and unanswered questions. Police never established whether Jack Chandler and Jack West were the same person and never identified the blackmailer or the fortune teller. Suicide also did not explain how the hydrophobic Vera ended up in the pool — she was afraid of even being near it alone. And then the big question: Why did Jack West demolish their house and disappear without a trace? The case is widely considered "cold" due to these inconsistencies.

In 1940, farm worker John Verkuilen made a grisly discovery when he found the bodies of his boss William Van Camp and Van Camp's 77-year-old mother Annie dead in their farmhouse in Little Chute, Wisconsin, per the Appleton Post-Crescent. According to the report, it appeared the mother of seven and her youngest son, who ran the farm, were preparing for bed when William heard an intruder on their porch. He went to investigate and was shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun. The killer then made their way to Annie's room and shot her in the face too, so soon after killing William that it seems she did not even have a chance to react to her son's murder — assuming she was aware of it.

Authorities reported finding an empty leather sack on Annie's dresser, suggesting robbery was the killer's motive. Unfortunately, police investigations came up empty after interrogations of a handful of suspects failed to link anyone to the available evidence. Part of the reason may have been that Van Camp relatives disturbed the crime scene, according to a 2013 Post-Crescent interview with family members, leaving little intact evidence that the authorities could definitively link to the crime outside of the bodies and the purse. After 1945, the original case file was lost, making it difficult to reopen the investigation, barring someone coming forward with a confession. That is unlikely, since the murderer is probably dead.

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders were two double murders and one single murder that took place near Texarkana, Texas, between March and May of 1946. Teenagers Richard Griffin and Polly Anne Moore were removed from their car, shot in the head with a .32 revolver, and put back inside the vehicle. A second pair of teens were dragged out of their car and shot with the same caliber weapon the following month. A third murder hit the news in May, when Virgil Starks was shot dead in his home; his wife survived with two bullets to the face. In Starks' case, the killer used a .22 but left similar tire tracks at the scene.

Police concluded the crimes were related. A third couple, Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey, who survived a similar attack in February, reported an assailant wearing a burlap sack and armed with a gun, likely a pistol, which he used to whip Hollis. Like at least one of the murdered women, Larey had also been sexually assaulted — another detail the attacks had in common.

The killings caused panic in Texarkana. Gun sales skyrocketed, while women reportedly took their children to hotels whenever their husbands were out of town. Police never confirmed the killer's identity, but Texarkana native and author James Presley, nephew of the Bowie County sheriff who investigated the murders, told Texas Monthly that the killer was likely a man named Youell Swinney, who was incarcerated on car theft charges in 1947. The case, however, is officially cold.

Oil heiress Georgette Bauerdorf was found dead in her bathtub in 1944, wearing only her pajama top. The Tuscaloosa News reported the Los Angeles Police Department initially suspected an accident because her valuables were untouched, apart from a missing $100. However, they realized she had been murdered after finding a medical bandage stuffed down her throat. The Los Angeles Times reported on further examination that her body was bruised, her skull punched in, and her knuckle bones shattered — she had put up a fight.

Police searched Bauerdorf's personal life and diary for clues. The journal contained the names of different soldiers she had been involved with, so suspicion fell on them. Police suspected Cpl. Cosmo Volpe, who was witnessed aggressively pursuing Bauerdorf and getting in between her and other men on the dance floor at the club where she worked, but released him after his alibi — that he had returned to barracks before the murder occurred — checked out. Sgt. Gordon Aadland, the last person to see her alive after he hitchhiked a ride with her, was also exonerated after questioning, according to his own account in The Centralia Daily Chronicle.

The biggest clue to determining her killer may be the medical bandage found lodged in her throat, which, according to author Steve Hodel, citing contemporary newspaper reports, had not been available to anyone except for doctors since the 1920s. Hodel has suggested that the killer must have been a medical professional, similar to whoever had murdered and dismembered Elizabeth Short — perhaps his own father, George.

Margaret Treese was a war widow and divorcee who appeared to have moved to Iowa after divorcing her second husband in West Virginia. In 1947, two workers found her dead one morning in a Davenport, Iowa, park. According to the Estherville Daily News (via Iowa Cold Cases), she was found naked, badly disfigured, and covered with tattoos, leading her case to be dubbed "the Tattoo Murder Case." Her killers had shown no mercy, stabbing her at least 10 times and even running her over with a car.

Police quickly turned their attention to Treese's social circles, which included a handful of men with whom she appeared to have been romantically involved, per a Spokane Daily Chronicle report on the case from 1947 (via ICC). Treese was also known as a regular at the taverns on Davenport's skid row. 

Witnesses said she was last seen outside a bar on skid row getting into a car with three men. In 1956, however, the Cedar Rapids Gazette (via ICC) reported that an unidentified woman, who described herself as Treese's acquaintance, had seen her just a few hours before her death in a car with two men. According to the news report, both men were "known police figures." Police never ascertained a motive and no one was ever charged. The perpetrators are likely dead.

Twenty-one-year-old Texarkana native Virginia Carpenter was supposed to start school at the Texas State College for Women (pictured) in Denton. Instead, she disappeared after a taxi dropped her off in front of her dorm on the night of June 1, 1948.

After Carpenter vanished, police immediately went to the last person to see her: taxi driver Edgar Zachary. He told police Carpenter had met two men in a car at 9:30 p.m. in front of her dorm when he dropped her off. She reportedly knew them and said they were going to help her with her luggage, so he went home. Zachary's wife, however, testified years later that he had not come home until 2 or 3 a.m. If true, there is the question of why he lied. The driver passed all polygraphs, however, and was released without charges.

If Zachary was being truthful, then the men were probably the kidnappers. Their identities are unknown, since all suspects named over the years are dead. There is, however, one more chilling detail that might provide a clue. Carpenter knew three of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders victims, according to The Lineup – a statistically near-impossible coincidence considering Texarkana had a population of nearly 25,000 in 1950. One theory is that the Texarkana killer tracked her down and killed her too. But those crimes were never officially solved either, so it is impossible to know. Carpenter was presumed murdered and declared legally dead in 1955, though her body was never found.

Detectives Ferdinand Socha and Joseph Lynch were members of the New York City Police Department's bomb squad. They were called to disable a suitcase bomb at the 1939-1940 World's Fair, which blew up and killed them, according to a 1940 Time Magazine report on the incident.

New York City saw a spike in political violence in the 1930s, including bomb attacks, thanks to conflicts between local communists and the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi German American organization. Because the bomb had been found in the British Pavilion (a soon-to-be enemy of Germany), police immediately suspected the Bund, which had also been accused of trying to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. However, investigations came up empty, despite a $26,000 reward.

Without any clear connection to the Bund, the only suspects left were the British themselves. NYPD officer and historian Bernard Whalen told Atlas Obscura that Hitler was desperate to keep the United States out of Europe to avoid a larger war he could not win. Thus, it was not in the Bund's interest — if they represented the Nazi party's strategy — to carry out attacks against American targets. American public opinion was mostly either pro-German or anti-interventionist, and terrorism risked gutting that. The British, however, wanted American involvement in Europe as soon as possible. According to one theory, it was possible that British intelligence had false-flagged the U.S. with a terror attack on American soil that could be blamed on Hitler's supporters in America. But this remains mere conjecture.