Extremely Cold Case

Victim's descendant: It's all gone now. The house, the money...
Nick Vera: ...the suspects...

— Cold Case, "Torn"

A detective applies their crime-solving skills to an old historical mystery. Either the mystery has remained unsolved in the interim, or the detective has found reason to suspect that the original solution was flawed.

Differs from a usual situation of Revisiting the Cold Case because everybody involved in the original incidents is (usually) dead. This means the detective has no opportunity to re-interview witnesses or suspects and is forced to rely on what physical and documentary evidence remains. It also affects the framing of a successful outcome, since it's too late to make things right for the original victims (though there may be a living relative whose situation will be affected).

Often appears as the premise of a Formula-Breaking Episode for an established detective series.

Examples:

Film

• Raise the Titanic!: The McGuffin is a load of Unobtanium ("Byzanium") aboard the RMS Titanic. Investigating its whereabouts almost 70 years later, the main character interviews a surviving crewman played by Alec Guinness, who claims that the passenger who loaded the cargo forced him to take him back to it at gunpoint. They raise the Titanic to get hold of the Byzanium, only to discover that it had been buried in England and never made it into the ship.
• Titanic (1997) begins with Brock Lovett trying to find the "Heart of the Ocean" diamond 84 years after it was lost in the sinking. As part of this quest, he interviews main character Rose Dewitt Bukater, the only remaining survivor of the 1912 scenes who is one month shy of 101 years old.

Literature

• The Non-fiction book The Cases That Haunt Us (2000) by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker reexamine the cases of Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, and the Lindbergh Baby through the lens of modern profiling among others.
• In The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey's fourth novel featuring Inspector Alan Grant, he is laid up in hospital with a broken leg and passes the time re-investigating a murder from the 15th century. Famous because, rather than have him investigate a fictional case, Tey used the real incident of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. The investigation includes examining the primary historical sources on the case and realizing the political biases of either their writers or the sources which these writers used.
• In "The Fall of the House of Voticky" by Karel Čapek, a historian turns to a police investigator to try making sense of a 15th century noble family drama. Here, the reason isn't that it was unsolved or solved incorrectly - the case was plain, but no one bothered to write the details down.
• In Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Flemish Panel (adapted to film as Uncovered), an art restorer finds the hidden message "Who killed the Knight?" in a 1471 painting, then decides to investigate the 500-year old murder with her friends.
• In "The Musgrave Ritual", a young Sherlock Holmes not only resolves the disappearance of a butler but also locates a historical artifact, the crown of King Charles I. The butler had also discovered this, and got as far as the chest containing the crown, but was left to die by his accomplice/ex-lover.
• In A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs, Ellis Peters' fourth Felse Investigates novel, George Felse goes on holiday and is invited to attend the opening of a historic tomb in the town where he is staying. It is discovered that the tomb's occupant was apparently Buried Alive, and figuring out the truth about her death becomes the B-plot to the more recent violent death that is the main mystery.
• In On the Street Where You Live, Emily Graham and to a lesser extent the local police start investigating the disappearance and likely murders of three young women, Madeline Shapley, Letitia Gregg and Ellen Swain, who all vanished in Spring Lake over a hundred years ago in the 1890s (Madeline in 1891, Letitia in 1893, Ellen in 1896). It's evident that these cold cases are somehow related to the much more recent disappearances^note the novel was published and set in 2001 of Martha Lawrence (in 1996) and Carla Harper (in 1998), especially with Martha's body being found alongside Madeline's. Emily believes Martha and Carla's killer found out who killed Madeline, Letitia and Ellen, and that solving the older crimes will help the solve the modern ones; it's also personal for her as Madeline was her great-great aunt. Emily relies on old town records, newspaper articles, letters and diaries from the 1890s and early 1900s, plus her grandmother's recollections of things her own grandmother (Madeline's younger sister) had told her, to piece together clues.
• A variation is the main plot of the Agatha Christie novel Postern of Fate (1973). Tommy and Tuppence attempt to investigate a poisoning death from the World War I era, decades following the death of most witnesses and suspects. But the killers in the case were the founders of a spy ring, and the detectives have current members of the spy ring trying to "silence" them.
• In The Wench Is Dead, Colin Dexter's eighth Inspector Morse novel, Morse is laid up in hospital and passes the time by re-investigating a murder case from Oxford in 1859, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. (The murder case is fictional, but it was inspired by a real 1839 case.)

Live-Action TV

• One episode of Bones had an anthropologist as the Victim of the Week, and he had recently discovered a collection of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthal bones, which are brought in as evidence. Brennan, assigned to modern murders but eager to participate on prestigious specimens, quickly notes that one of the injuries seems not to be accidental and petitions Cam to classify it as a murder so that she can make it her priority. Clark Edison, the anthropologist assigned to ancient remains, points out that the modern case is much more pressing, while his "murder" has only academic interest. They wind up solving it anyway.
  • Another episode has the team investigating a skeleton found in a slave ship wreck.
• Inspector Morse: In "The Wench Is Dead", Morse is laid up in hospital and passes the time by reinvestigating a murder case from Oxford in 1859, which he suspects resulted in three wrongful convictions. (The murder case is fictional, but inspired by a real 1839 case.)
• Monk:
  • One of the mysteries in "Mr. Monk Gets Married" centers on foul play between prospectors during The Wild West. Both this and the present-day case are reverse whodunits, but Monk figures out how both crimes went down.
  • Used as a quick gag in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring". Playing undercover as a security guard of a museum and pondering the clues of the murder of the week, Adrian randomly points out to Natalie that a Neanderthal skeleton that is on a nearby exhibit shows signs of having been murdered, rather than the natural causes the exhibit says were the cause of death (and that none of the anthropologists or analysts or other people who have seen it in the many years since being unburied noticed). Overall, it is just more evidence that Adrian Monk is a living lightning rod for murder mysteries.
• New Tricks: Although the entire purpose of the UCOS team is to investigate cold cases, they cover new ground in "A Death in the Family" when Stephen Fisher of MI5 asks them to investigate a murder that took place in 1851.
• Cold Case: A few episode cases go back to the 1930s or earlier. In these episodes the show's formula of interviews with living witnesses is largely replaced with the detectives interviewing with the witnesses' descendants, reading diaries and letters, and listening to recordings. The investigation is almost always triggered by the recent death of a relative of the victim.
  • In the series premiere, Lilly asks what the coldest case ever is and her old partner claims that it is Lucy the Australopithecus because someone bashed her head in with a rock. ^note The line may have been inspired by the documentary Walking with Cavemen, where Lucy is portrayed as being murdered by another Australopithecus with a rock, but the cause of her death is still unknown in reality.
  • In "Beautiful Little Fool", the team investigates their coldest case up to that point, the murder of a flapper in the aftermath of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The only living witness was a little girl at the time of the murder, and getting an interview with her (now an old, reclusive socialite in her family's mansion) is an additional challenge. Solving this crime has legal effects in the present day because the murder weapon is proven to have been stolen from the victim, and the police confiscates it from the murderer's grandchild.
  • In "Torn", the team investigates their coldest case ever, the murder of a woman who was killed in 1919. They soon learn that she may have been murdered because of her activism for the women's vote. The only person from the original investigation still alive was a young child at the time.
  • In the same episode, Lilly and Scotty revisit the storage for really old cases (before World War II). Lilly reads through some files from the 1910s and pokes fun at how lacklustre they are; one only says that the suspect is a mustached man. The implication is that they could take any of them right there and get closer to the truth.
  • Averted to some degree in "Best Friends", which involves a case from 1932. Despite the age of the case (the oldest case yet at the time, and third-oldest overall), the two critical witnesses are still alive to tell their stories (although some fans believe that the final scene in the episode implies that one of the witnesses dies the same day the case is closed).
  • Downplayed also in the oldest episode of the first season, "The Letter", but at play still. The case is from 1939, 65 years before the present section and 19 before the next oldest case in the season. The main characters only look into the case because Lilly wants to. However, three witnesses are still alive, and the detectives are surprised to find that one of the perps is as well (he confesses when they tell him they'll look for DNA in the body).
  • Bizarrely averted in "World's End", which deals with a murder committed during Orson Welles's broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938, yet it is treated like every other episode and everyone involved is alive. Critics point that the doer should be way over 100 in the present day, but this never comes up, and that either the script must have been rewritten from another set 20 years later or Writers Cannot Do Math.
• The PBS documentary series History Detectives investigated the Austin Axe Murders of 1885-1886 using documentary evidence, psychological and geographical profiling. They concluded that the likely murderer was one Nathan Elgin who was shot by police while attacking another woman shortly after the last murder. At the time the murders took place, the idea of a Serial Killer simply did not exist, and the locals were convinced that it was the work of a gang or some kind of moral degradation driving the town's men crazy.
• Hawaii Five-0: In "Ho'onani Makuakane"^note "Honor Your Father", the team investigates the murder of a prisoner at Honouliuli Internment Camp after the victim's son accuses a now wheelchair-ridden elderly guard of killing him and stealing his family's samurai sword. Every other person involved in the case at the time is dead.
• BBC daytime documentary series Murder, Mystery and My Family, where two present day lawyers are asked by the family of the person convicted of a murder (and in most cases executed) to reinvestigate the case, and to hopefully clear their ancestors name. Most the cases were from the first half of the 20th century - the most recent case they investigated was from 1962. However, some were from even earlier than that, with one case they investigated being from 1825, and another one from 1839.
• Invoked in the title of The History Channel documentary series Crime Scene: Antiquity. The segments revisit either bodies found at archaeological sites (like Ötzi the Iceman) or murders described in ancient chronicles.
• Also invoked in the Cold Case miniseries hosted by Florence Kasumba, which investigates the deaths of Ramses III, Vincent van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, the Pazzi Conspiracy, the Princes in the Tower, and post-World War II High-Class Call Girl Rosemarie Nitribitt.
• CSI: NY: In "Death House", an episode loosely inspired by H. H. Holmes's "murder hotel", the CSIs come to the titular Durable Death Trap-filled house after a person trapped inside calls 911. While trying to find the caller before he runs out of oxygen, they come across the body of a man killed in 1923, and investigate his murder as if it was a fresh one.

Tabletop Games

• The board game Mysterium is about a group of psychics performing a seance to solve the murder of a ghost, who was killed 50 years ago. One player plays as the ghost, and since they've been dead for so long, they can only communicate in mysterious visions. While all the suspects are dead, the psychics hope to put the ghost's spirit to rest.

Webcomics

• Schlock Mercenary: Bunni discovers that one of her patients, an immortal with brain damage, had his brain modified by his enemies in order to suppress his Proud Warrior Race nature that rendered him incapable of living peacefully under any circumstances. While bringing his memories (but not the violent programming) back, she notes that this is like resuscitating a murder victim, and wonders if the murderers should be prosecuted. Petey points out that it happened eleven million years ago. Yes, all the murderers are still alive, but the axe has been buried, the hole subducted, and half the continent became magma.
  Bunni: This immortality thing is going to get weird.

Web Original

• From Gizmodo: 9 Historical Murder Mysteries Solved More Than A Century Later:
  • The death of Antoine Mauroy, a Parisian madman who received several blood transfusions from animals in 1667. The physician who performed the transfusion was tried for murder and acquitted. The madman's wife was subsequently accused and convicted of poisoning him, but she was suspected of having help from the doctor's enemies.
  • The death of Cangrande della Scala, ruler of Verona who passed right after conquering Treviso in 1329. A 2015 autopsy revealed that he had been poisoned with foxglove.
  • The deaths of Francesco de Medici and his wife within a day of each other in 1587. A modern autopsy determined that Francesco had died of malaria.
  • The assassination of Giuliano de Medici during the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478. An encrypted letter deciphered only in 2004 revealed the identity of another plotter, Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino (1422-1482, reign 1474-1482).
  • The deaths of 17 people found in a 13th-century well in England. Identified through DNA as members of a single Jewish family, their deaths were also found to be not from natural causes.
  • The death of Zachary Taylor in 1850, confirmed to be from natural causes. Taylor's remains were exhumed and analyzed in 1991. The analysis concluded that Taylor had contracted "cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis", as Washington D.C. had open sewers, and his food or drink may have been contaminated.
  • The boy in the cellar, a 15/16-year-old boy buried in a 17th-century cellar in Maryland, determined to have been murdered.
  • The death of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1821, attributed to gastric cancer in a modern autopsy.
  • The death of Tycho Brahe in 1601. Suspected arsenic poisoning was ruled out by testing his beard in 2012.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The people of Chin Village hate the Avatar for Avatar Kyoshi (supposedly) killing their leader Chin 370 years ago, and imprison Aang as the new incarnation of the Avatar. Sokka and Katara seek to clear Aang's (or really Kyoshi's) name and visit a museum on Kyoshi island were they find relatively conclusive evidence Kyoshi has to be innocent (a temple in which Kyoshi supposedly was in was only built later, a footprint attributed to her is much to small, and on the very day she killed Chin she also "founded" an island). In Aangs trial, however, Kyoshi manifests and confesses that she indeed did kill Chin: he was an invading warlord, so to pretect her home country, she split it off of the mainland (thus founding Kyoshi island), and Chin, who was refusing to back down from the cliff, eventually fell down, leaving the footprint. Hearing the explanation, the case is solved after 370 years, and Chin Village grudgingly stops hating the Avatar but only after convicted him because of Kyoshi's 'confession'. His punishment ends up being the "community service" of saving them from a very timely Fire nation attack.

Real Life

• Speaking of Lucy, she was claimed to have died after falling from a tree in a 2016 paper, but other scientists disputed that conclusion.
• Atapuerca's "Skull 17" has been lauded as the oldest unambiguous instance of murder, some 430,000 years ago. The owner of the skull, a male Homo heidelbergensis, was hit with the same hard object, likely a rock, on two different areas of the skull shortly before his death, which excludes an accidental impact. A little more ambiguous is "Skull 5" from the same site and era, who received a single blow to the face and died months or years later from an infected broken tooth. Atapuerca itself has instances of cannibalism going back over 800,000 years ago, but it can't be excluded that those were eaten after their natural death.
• The non-fiction book Cold Case Homicides: Practical Investigative Techniques (2006) argues that the coldest criminal case ever investigated is the death of Ötzi the Iceman ca. 3300 BCE. He was found 5,000 years later in 1991 and initially believed to be a dead tourist. Once dated, he was speculated to have died in an accident or a ritual sacrifice (which would make his death not a crime under the law of the "jurisdiction" it was committed in), but further testing, using the same techniques employed in modern crime investigation, found unambiguous evidence that he had fought for his life against several people before being murdered. Now we know where he was before his murder, what he ate, how many people were involved in his killing, that they were all men from the area, and that he carried another wounded man over his back before he met his fate.
• The death of the "Boy King" Tutankhamun has been debated ever since the discovery of his tomb in The Roaring '20s. An assassination by his vizier was a favored theory for years, only to be replaced later by malaria, inbreeding, and an accident involving a war chariot.
• Alexander the Great's death has been even more intensely debated, not the least because his body has actually never been found.
• What happened to Edward V and his brother Richard after they were sent to the Tower of London in 1483, ostensibly for their protection, then never seen again after that summer? For over half a millennium, the leading theory was that the boys were killed by their uncle Richard III (their legal guardian at the time of their disappearance) so he could have the throne for himself. The remains of two children were found in the tower 1670s and buried as the princes. In 1933, the bones were removed and studied using more modern scientific techniques. However the study was sloppily done. It's unclear if the bones supposedly belonging to the boys were tested to see if they were male or female or even human as they were originally found with some chickens. One of the skulls was supposedly too large to have belonged to a child. Several of the bones had been destroyed by the original discoverers. Queen Elizabeth II never allowed for the bones to be DNA tested, even after interest in Edward and Richard's fate was renewed due to the discovery of their aforementioned uncles' remains in 2012. Although, her son Charles III reportedly is interested in having the bodies re-exhumed and tested.
• The 1809 death of Meriwether Lewis (of the 1804 Lewis & Clark Expedition) in the Tennessee countryside was considered a suicide by Thomas Jefferson, which tarnished his contemporary reputation and legacy. However his body was only examined by a doctor once, in 1848, and he claimed (without elaboration) that Lewis didn't kill himself but was murdered. From 1993 to 2010 about 200 members of Lewis's family petitioned the government for his body to be exhumed and subjected to forensic analysis, but this was ultimately rejected as this would destroy his grave, which is now a national monument.
• Spanish criminologist Francisco Pérez Abellán investigated three magnicides from the 19th and early 20th century in the 2010s:
  • He found that Juan Prim (Spanish PM shot in an ambush in 1870) was strangled in his bed while he was recovering from the shooting, concluding that he was victim of a more elaborate conspiracy than commonly believed.
    • However, a second autopsy by Madrid's Complutense University denied these conclusions and attributed the supposed ligature marks on Prim's neck to marks left by his burial clothes.
  • He ruled that Mateo Morral, the anarchist that tried to kill King Alfonso XIII during his wedding day in 1906, was murdered while in police custody and could not kill himself as historically recorded.
  • He confirmed that José Canalejas, Spanish PM murdered in 1912, was indeed murdered the way he is said to have been in History books, but also found that his killer, the anarchist Manuel Pardiñas, did not kill himself to evade arrest. Instead, he was beaten and then shot twice in the head by Canalejas' bodyguard.
• The Saskatoon Police Department accepts tips leading to the identity of an unidentified woman nicknamed "The Lady of the Well", even though her murder has been dated to the 1910s according to the items found with her. The body was found in 2006.
• The oldest entry in The Charley Project missing person database is Dorothy Arnold, who disappeared in New York City in 1910. She was 25 years old at the time of her disappearance, and would be 115 years old if she lived to the year 2000. She's been excluded as the identity of the Lady of the Well if you are wondering.
• The dismembered, headless remains of a man were found in a cave in Lewiston, Idaho in 1979. He was speculated to be a hiker murdered a couple of decades before at most... until 2020, when he was identified through family DNA as Joseph Henry Loveless, a bootlegger who had disappeared after fleeing from jail in 1916. In a real-life example of Meaningful Name, Loveless was jailed for the murder of his wife, and it is speculated that he was found and lynched by her relatives, as he was known to be dead and even had a cenotaph to his name. Nevertheless, his is still listed as an open case by the Clark County Sheriff's Office.
• In 2007, the students at the police academy in Fürstenfeldbruck investigated the unsolved Hinterkaifeck family murder of 1922 as if it was a new case. They agreed on a prime suspect but did not make his identity public out of respect for his still-living relatives.
• The disappearance of a 16-year-old servant girl named Emma Alice Smith in rural Sussex in 1926 was reinvestigated as a murder in 2009 after a short film was made about her. A dying man had allegedly confessed the murder to Emma Alice's sister on his deathbed in 1953, but she had herself died without reporting it and the man's name was unknown. After the investigation, however, the police accepted a different theory about her disappearance (that she had eloped with a married man to Ireland) and closed the case.
• A skeleton was found by hikers in October 2019, buried under some rocks in Mount Williamson, California. Family DNA identified him as Giichi Matsumura, a fugitive from a WW2 Japanese-American internment camp in Manzanar. As it turned out, Matsumura was known to have died in a snowstorm after escaping Manzanar, but his burial site had been lost.

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