On the websites of numerous law enforcement organizations, you may find historical and current reports and data on the number of murders in Montana by year. A Uniform Crime Report is also published every year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which lists the types of crimes, crime rates, and crime locations in most cities and counties in every state in the United States. This report is a great resource for anybody interested in crime statistics. Additionally, Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit organization, has compiled and published a public database of more than 25,000 unsolved murders across the United States. In addition to their database, Project: Cold Case has created a detailed webpage dedicated to the number of unsolved homicides and the homicide clearance rate for each state. In Montana, between 1980 and 2019, there were about 1,303 unsolved homicides, according to Project: Cold Case’s data. Approximately 881 of the homicides have been solved over the years, leaving approximately 422 unsolved murders in Montana as of the website’s most recent update.
Unfortunately, there is no single database or list of Montana’s many unsolved homicides, and many local law enforcement agencies fall into the same category. Due to this, finding Montana cold cases to research can quickly become a daunting task, especially when trying to find information on unsolved murders in specific areas of the state. A few of the unsolved murders in northern Montana which can be found within various websites and news articles include: the 2003 murder of Darlene Wilcock and the 1992 murder of the Sheridan County Jane Doe, along with other cold cases, such as the 2017 disappearance of Ashley Loring HeavyRunner.
Other types of cases included within these lists are the many unsolved central Montana murders, including the 1994 murder of Julianne Stallman, the 1985 murder of Randall Church, the 1996 murder of Cliff Nelson, the 2019 murder of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, and the 2018 murder of Harriet Wilson, among others. In addition to those already mentioned, a few of the unsolved murders in Helena, Montana, can also be found in the limited lists or within databases, including the 1974 murder of Israel Goss and the 1969 murder of Cleve Harrigfeld. Finally, a few unsolved murders in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, are also included within law enforcement lists or databases, including the 1968 murder of Pamela Ann Dorrington.