On the websites of various law enforcement and investigation agencies, including local, state, and even federal, you may easily access historical and current statistical information and crime rates on the number of murders in Nevada by year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, creates and publishes an annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which provides data on the types of crimes that occur in many cities and counties in each state around the country, as well as their respective crime rates. Furthermore, Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit organization, has compiled and made publicly available an ever-growing database of almost 25,000 unsolved murders in the United States.
In addition to their rapidly growing unsolved homicide database, Project: Cold Case has also built a comprehensive webpage dedicated to sharing the number of unsolved murders as well as the homicide clearance rates for each state from 1980 to 2019 with the help of the Murder Accountability Project. According to Project: Cold Case statistics, there were about 7,203 unsolved homicides in Nevada between 1980 and 2019. Over the years, about 4,852 of those murders have been investigated and solved, leaving approximately 2,351 unsolved murders in Nevada as of the website’s most recent update.
Unfortunately, there is no centralized database or comprehensive record of Nevada’s various unsolved murders, and many local law enforcement agencies are in the same position. As a result, locating Nevada cold cases for Citizen Detectives to analyze may seem to be a very difficult endeavor, especially when looking for information on unsolved crimes in specific parts of the state. A few of the unsolved murders in northern Nevada which can be found with a bit of research into various websites and news articles, as well as within Project: Cold Case’s database, include the 2014 murder of Richard Lawson, Jr., the 1988 murder of Barbara Louise Nichols, the 2001 murder of Norma Jean Parker, and the 1996 murder of Gail Anne Thompson, among several others in the northern section of Nevada.
Other cases that may be referenced on similar lists include the numerous unsolved central Nevada murders. Some examples include the following: the 1980 murder of Karin Santos-Coy, the 2012 murder of Ryan Connelly, the 1991 murder of Vincent Trapp, and the 2000 murder of Roger Kelly, among several others. In addition to those already mentioned, a few of the unsolved murders in Carson City, Nevada, can also be found in the limited lists or within databases, including the 1997 murder of Natasha Jennings and the 1988 murder of Gene Mortarotti. Ormsby County, Nevada, was absorbed by and consolidated with Carson City, Nevada, in 1969. Research into murders in Ormsby County, Nevada, will only show information regarding murders in Washoe County, Nevada, and Carson City, Nevada.