If you’re interested in the detailed statistics surrounding the number of murders in Missouri by year, numerous law enforcement agencies’ websites give historical and current records and reports. Furthermore, the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles and publishes a Uniform Crime Report each year, which covers the many different types of crimes committed, crime statistics and rates, and the general locations where crimes are committed in most cities and counties in every state in the United States.
Aside from law enforcement, Project: Cold Case is a nonprofit organization that has created and published a public database of almost 25,000 unsolved killings across the United States, as well as a page dedicated to the number of unsolved homicides and the homicide clearance rate in each state. Between 1980 and 2019, there were approximately 23,023 homicides in Missouri alone, according to Project: Cold Case’s unsolved homicide statistics website. Around 16,639 of those homicides have been solved over the years, leaving approximately 6,384 unresolved murders in Missouri as of the website’s most recent update.
Few local and state law enforcement agency websites, along with Project: Cold Case, have published lists or databases containing the basic information regarding a few of the cold cases in Missouri. Due to the overall lack of a comprehensive database with Missouri’s cold cases, there are few cases mentioned in the group of databases/lists, including murders in northern Missouri, murders in Jefferson City, Missouri, and murders in Cole County, Missouri. A couple of categories, on the other hand, seemingly have an abundance of cold cases listed within multiple databases. The first of these categories includes the many central Missouri unsolved murders, which include the following: the 1972 murder of Arnold Hayes, the 1970 murder of Allen Thompson, the 1987 murder of Cinde Kemple-Buchner, the 1992 murder of Tammy Zywicki, and the 1997 murder of Gloria Jean Barnes, in addition to the 1985 unsolved disappearance of Jody Ledkins.