Serial Killers Still at Large: 9 Unsolved Cases in 2026

Yes, there are serial killers active in the United States right now. Nobody can name most of them yet. Researchers count a serial killer as "active" in a year if he or she killed someone that year, and many are only identified years later. Some never are.

The best count comes from the Radford/FGCU Serial Killer Database. Its 2023 report found an average of 53 active serial killers a year in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019, using the FBI's two-victim definition. With a three-victim cutoff, the number drops to 31. The peak was the 1980s, at 173 a year. Those figures only include killers who were later identified. The authors say the real number "is unknown but is certainly higher."

You will also see the line "the FBI estimates 25 to 50 active serial killers" on a lot of websites. We looked for the FBI document behind it and could not find one. No report, no named official, no date. We left it out.

A few other numbers help. In 2024, former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi said the FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative links about 850 murders to the trucking community, with a pool of 450 suspects. And in 2024, police cleared 61.4 percent of murders nationwide, according to FBI data reported by the Center for American Progress. About 4 in 10 were not cleared.

We updated this page in September 2026. The biggest change since the last version: the Long Island case is closed.

Caught: the Long Island Serial Killer

For years this list opened with the Long Island Serial Killer. That case now has an ending. On April 8, 2026, Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty to murdering seven women: Melissa Barthelemy, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Sandra Costilla. He also admitted in court to killing an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, though he was never charged in her death. On June 17, 2026, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

"He thought that by killing them he could silence them forever and get away with murder," Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said the day of the plea.

Not every set of remains found near Gilgo Beach is solved. One victim, known only as Asian Doe, still has no name. At a DNA collection event in Chinatown in August 2026, Tierney asked the public for help. "Let's give this victim their name back," he said.

Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez are the names most people know, and our stories on Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez cover how each was caught and convicted. The nine cases below never got that ending.

9 serial killer cases still unsolved in 2026

Five of the nine are in the United States. The map shows where those killings happened. It does not show where anyone is now.

1. The I-70 Killer (Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, 1992)

Over 29 days in the spring of 1992, a gunman walked into small stores near Interstate 70 and shot the people working inside. It started on April 8 in Indianapolis, where Robin Fuldauer, 26, was found dead at a Payless ShoeSource. On April 11, two women were found dead at a bridal shop in Wichita, Kansas. Then came a ceramics shop in Terre Haute, Indiana, on April 27, a boot store in St. Charles, Missouri, on May 3, and a gift shop in Raytown, Missouri, on May 7.

The six victims were Robin Fuldauer, Patricia Magers, Patricia Smith, Michael McCown, Nancy Kitzmiller, and Sarah Blessing. Police linked the shootings through ballistics tests. Detective Tim Relph described the gun as "a historic remake of an old German Navy pistol" with a long barrel and a wooden forearm.

A task force reopened the case in 2021 and released an updated sketch showing how the man might look today "if he's still alive." Investigators have been testing evidence for touch DNA since February 2022. As of May 2026, it was unclear whether any of that testing produced a match. He has never been identified.

2. The West Mesa murders (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

In February 2009, human remains turned up on Albuquerque's West Mesa. Police went on to recover the remains of 11 women and an unborn child from the same stretch of land. Fifteen years later, the Albuquerque Police Department said it had taken in more than 1,400 tips and run seven land searches. A reward of up to $100,000 is still offered. "We have put a tremendous amount of effort into solving this case over the last 15 years and we will not stop," Police Chief Harold Medina said in 2024.

Investigators have pointed to two major suspects, and neither has been charged in the case. Lorenzo Montoya was shot dead in 2006. A former police chief later called him "probably our best suspect." Joseph Blea is serving 90 years for rapes he was convicted of in 2015. He has been named a person of interest in the West Mesa deaths, but he has not been charged in the case and has never admitted to them.

3. The Jeff Davis 8 (Jennings, Louisiana)

Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were found in and around Jennings, a small town in Jefferson Davis Parish. A federal task force of 14 agencies took on the case, and it drew national attention through a 2019 Showtime documentary series.

Twenty years on, local station KPEL put it plainly in June 2025: "Not a single person has been convicted." Much of the reporting has focused on local law enforcement. The 2025 KPEL report describes allegations that deputies abused some of the women. Those are allegations, not court findings. Some relatives also doubt that one person is to blame. "I think it's more than one," Brittany Jones, the niece of victim Whitnei Dubois, told Fox News in 2019.

4. The Chicago strangulations (2001 to 2018)

The Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit that runs FBI homicide data through an algorithm to spot clusters of similar unsolved killings, flagged 51 strangulation deaths of women in Chicago between 2001 and 2018. One detail from the group's founder, Thomas Hargrove, is hard to forget: a line of body recovery sites on the Near South Side "forms an almost perfect north-south line" along the Green Line elevated train.

In February 2020, Chicago police charged Arthur Hilliard in the 2017 killing of Diamond Turner, 21. It was the first arrest among the 51 deaths. In December 2025, a jury found him guilty of her murder. Police have not said the deaths are the work of one killer, and most of them have no public arrest.

5. The Zodiac Killer (Northern California, 1968 to 1969)

The Zodiac Killer is believed to have stabbed or shot at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969. Every few years someone claims to have solved it. In October 2021, after a private group said it had named him, the FBI answered with one line: "The case remains open." We found no later statement from the FBI or San Francisco police that changes that.

For more American cases by state, see our Colorado cases, the 4 worst serial killers from Kentucky, and our list of famous Michigan serial killers and unsolved murders. North of the border, start with the 7 most famous Canadian serial killers.

6. Pedro Lopez, the "Monster of the Andes" (whereabouts unknown)

Pedro Lopez is different from the rest of this list because he was caught once. In Ecuador he pleaded guilty to the murders of 57 girls. He was released on August 31, 1994, and deported to Colombia. Authorities there tried to convict him of a decades-old murder, but he was declared insane and, in 1995, placed in a psychiatric facility. In February 1998 he was declared sane and let go on $50 bail.

In 2002, Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with a new murder. The warrant was deactivated in 2005. He was last seen in public in 1999, renewing his citizenship card in Bogota. Nobody knows whether he is alive.

7. Brazil's Rainbow Maniac (Carapicuiba, 2007 to 2008)

In 2007 and 2008, 13 men were killed at Paturis Park in Carapicuiba, near Sao Paulo. The killer targeted gay men, and The Guardian reported that victims were found with a .38 bullet in the back of the head. "He doesn't like homosexuals, he hates them," police chief Paulo Fernando Fortunato told the paper in December 2008.

That same month, police detained a retired police officer. He was released 30 days later when his temporary detention ran out. We could not find any conviction for the park killings.

8. Japan's vending machine poisoner (1985)

On April 30, 1985, someone in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, drank a bottle of Oronamin C, a vitamin drink, that someone had left on top of a vending machine. It was laced with paraquat, a weed killer. In all, at least 12 people died of paraquat poisoning in the case. At the time, the drink's maker was running a promotion that gave lucky buyers a free bottle, according to NextShark. Police ran out of leads, with no witness statements or DNA to work from, and no one was ever charged.

9. Russia's Danilovsky Maniac (Cherepovets, 2004 to 2007)

In Cherepovets, a city in Russia's Vologda region, one unknown killer is linked to seven murders of girls and women between 2004 and 2007. Investigators checked about 14,000 residents. Local reporting credits him with as many as 14 killings, though only seven are formally tied to him. In March 2024, senior investigator Artyom Kolobov said the case file runs to more than 120 volumes. Cherinfo reported that "the investigation into this case continues." A reward of one million rubles still stands.

For a case from South Korea, read our story on the Hwaseong serial murders.

How DNA is reopening old cases

DNA testing is how several of these cases moved. In the Long Island case, a judge ruled in September 2025 that DNA pulled from rootless hairs was admissible, saying the method "is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community." Prosecutors also tied Heuermann to Valerie Mack's death through "mitochondrial DNA analysis of a female hair found on Mack's body." In Chicago, DNA evidence led to Arthur Hilliard's arrest in 2020, more than two years after Diamond Turner's body was found.

The I-70 task force has been testing for touch DNA, the trace left on things a person handled, since 2022. That is the same kind of work that could one day put a name on the West Mesa or Jeff Davis 8 cases. So far it has not.

Serial killer theories that don't hold up

Some famous "active serial killer" stories fall apart when you check them.

The Smiley Face Killers. Two retired detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, argued that young men found drowned in several states were murdered, and pointed to smiley face graffiti near some of the sites. Supporters point to details like the lack of deterioration of his corpse when Todd Geib's body was found 22 days after he went missing. The FBI looked at the theory in 2008 and said it had "not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths." A 2010 review of 40 cases by the Center for Homicide Research found "no substantive evidence" that any of the drownings were serial killings.

The Austin "Rainey Street Ripper." Rumors blamed a killer for drownings in Austin's Lady Bird Lake. In 2025, Texas State University researchers working with Austin police reviewed 189 drowning cases from 2004 to 2025. They found "neither direct evidence nor indirect warning signs of a serial murderer."

The Ibadan forest. In March 2014, police in Ibadan, Nigeria, found what Al Jazeera described as "decomposed corpses, skeletons and skulls" in a building in the Soka area, along with malnourished survivors. One early report described ten live people chained inside. Nigeria's The Nation (thenationalonlineng.net) reported six arrests and ten survivors in hospital. Reports at the time described a kidnappers' den or a ritual site, not a lone serial killer. We found no report of how the case ended in court.

If you want to know what investigators look for in a real case, read Signs of a Serial Killer: 11 Common Serial Killer Traits.

Is there a live map of active serial killers?

No. Police cannot map killers they have not identified. The closest thing is the Murder Accountability Project's cluster tool, which uses FBI homicide data to flag counties and metro areas with unusual groups of similar unsolved murders. A flagged cluster is a reason to look closer, not proof of a serial killer. Chicago is the example: the algorithm flagged 51 deaths, and police have not treated them as one case.

More unsolved cases to read

For older cases that were never solved, start with The 29 Most Gruesome Unsolved Murders In History. If you want the names that were caught, our list of the most famous serial killers is the place to begin. You can also read our list of serial killer documentaries, 21 Disturbing Serial Killer Quotes, and The Real Life Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Ed Gein.

Serial Killer Shop also sells horror tees and true crime merch.

Sources

• Aamodt, Leary, and Girimurugan, Radford/FGCU Annual Report on Serial Killer Statistics, 2023.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators (FBI report abstract).
• FOX19, FBI focusing on specific pool of suspects as part of Highway Serial Killings Initiative, August 1, 2024.
• Center for American Progress, Nationwide 2024 crime data, August 5, 2025.
• PBS NewsHour, Rex Heuermann sentenced to life in prison, June 17, 2026.
• NBC News, Rex Heuermann admits killing 8 women, April 8, 2026.
• Patch, Search continues to identify Asian Doe, August 2026.
• ABC7 New York, Judge rules DNA evidence admissible, September 3, 2025.
• 6abc, Prosecutors announce new charge in Gilgo Beach case, December 17, 2024.
• Men's Journal via Yahoo, 34 years ago: the I-70 Killer claimed his sixth victim, May 7, 2026.
• KWCH, New sketch of the I-70 serial killer, October 19, 2021.
• First Alert 4, I-70 task force review, January 20, 2022.
• Albuquerque Police Department, APD honors West Mesa victims on 15th anniversary, February 2, 2024.
• A&E, Will the West Mesa serial killer ever be identified?, updated July 16, 2026.
• KPEL 96.5, The Jennings 8, June 23, 2025.
• Fox News, Jennings 8 documentary, June 15, 2019.
• Murder Accountability Project, Chicago police make first arrest among 51 female strangulations, February 1, 2020.
• A&E, How Chicago is trying to solve 51 strangulation homicides, updated July 16, 2026.
• ABC7 Chicago, Arthur Hilliard found guilty, December 6, 2025.
• NBC News, FBI rebuts claim Zodiac case is solved, October 7, 2021.
• Biography.com, Pedro Alonso Lopez, October 3, 2023.
• A&E, Pedro Alonso Lopez, updated July 16, 2026.
• All That's Interesting, Pedro Lopez, February 21, 2026.
• NBC News and AP, Brazilian ex-cop quizzed in deaths of 13 gays, December 11, 2008.
• A Capa, Suspeito de ser o maniaco do arco iris e solto, January 13, 2009.
• NextShark via Yahoo, The forgotten case of Japan's vending machine murders, July 4, 2023.
• Lenta.ru, The Danilovsky Maniac, April 17, 2021.
• Cherinfo, Cherepovets investigator on the Danilovsky case, March 26, 2024.
• Al Jazeera, Nigeria police open probe into torture house, March 24, 2014.
• Fox News, FBI: no evidence to support Smiley Face serial murder theory, May 1, 2008.
• Center for Homicide Research, Drowning the Smiley Face Murder Theory, 2010.
• KUT, 200 have drowned in Lady Bird Lake. A serial killer isn't to blame, September 4, 2025.
• Murder Accountability Project, Who we are.