There are various types of law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts that provide reports filled with detailed statistics on their websites annually. These reports most commonly include the crime data for multiple types of crimes, including the number of murders in Massachusetts by year. Along with the several state and local law enforcement agencies that offer these reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation publishes an annual Uniform Crime Report, which shows similar information for most, if not every, state, county, and city in the United States. Another growing resource is Project: Cold case, which provides not only the statistics behind the number of unsolved homicides in every state, but also provides a database with nearly 25,000 unsolved murders that is available to the public at no charge. According to Project: Cold Case’s unsolved homicide statistics page, in the time between 1980 and 2019, out of the 9,686 murders that had been committed in Massachusetts, approximately 5,937 of them have been solved, leaving around 3,749 of those murders unsolved today.
Although there is no single database for cold cases in Massachusetts, various local and county law enforcement agencies house their own databases or websites full of their own lists of cold cases. Some of the types of cold cases which can be found within Project: Cold Case’s database, as well as within lists of cold cases on law enforcement websites, include unsolved murders in northern Massachusetts such as the 2003 murder of Robert Natiello Jr., the 2008 murder of Melanie Quadros, the 1984 murder of Nancy Merson, the 1986 murder of Claire Gravel, and the 2011 double murder of John and Geraldine Magee, among others. Other types of cold cases are the many unsolved central Massachusetts murders, which include the following: the 1982 murder of Brenda LaCombe, the 1993 murder of Holly Piirainen, the 2006 murder of Travis Monroe, the 1978 murder of Theresa Corley, and the 2001 murder of Karen Marchioni, among others.
In addition, unsolved murders in Boston, Massachusetts, are often included as well. Some examples are: the 2013 murder of Varelis Pereyra, the 1998 murder of Rita Hester, the 2007 murder of James Jacobs, and the 2012 murder of Stephen Hill, among many others. The many unsolved murders in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, include the 2007 murder of Jason Fernandes, the 2009 murder of Julienne Corrao, the 2013 murder of Carly Jones, and the 2017 murder of Xi Van Nguyen, among countless others.