Sherlock Holmes never had to worry about podcasts, Reddit threads, or cold-case documentaries.
All he needed was a foggy street, a baffled inspector, and a case file full of contradictions.
Yet some real-life, old-timey murders came loaded with twists that would have made even Holmes
sit up, adjust his deerstalker, and say, “Now this is interesting.”
From prophetic dreams and disappearing killers to cases that inspired classic literature, these
historical murder mysteries aren’t just gruesome footnotes. They’re intricate puzzles packed
with misdirection, missing evidence, and human drama. Below are ten old-timey murders whose
bizarre details and unexpected turns feel like they were outlined by Arthur Conan Doyle himself.
Why Old-Timey Murders Still Feel Like Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part of the charm (and chill) of historical true crime is how modern these old cases can feel.
You see familiar themes: underfunded police departments, bungled investigations, trial-by-newspaper,
and the public’s obsession with beautiful victims or respectable suspects. What you don’t
see are modern forensic tools no DNA, no CCTV, no phone records. Detectives had to rely largely
on witness statements, physical clues, and their own ability to reason.
That combination limited technology plus messy human motives leaves plenty of room for
twists. A dream changes the direction of a case. A landlord turns out to be a killer. A
seemingly meek daughter is accused of butchering her parents. And, decades or even centuries
later, historians, writers, and amateur sleuths are still combing through the evidence like
Holmes with a magnifying glass.
10 Old-Timey Murders With Twists Worthy of Sherlock Holmes
1. The Dream That Solved a Murder: The Red Barn Case
In 1827 in rural Suffolk, England, a young woman named Maria Marten planned to elope with her
lover, William Corder. The rendezvous point: a local landmark called the Red Barn. She left
home for the secret meeting and simply vanished. Corder wrote letters claiming the couple had
successfully eloped, but months went by with no sign of Maria. Her family was worried; the
village was buzzing. Still, there was no body, no crime scene, and no obvious way forward.
Then came the twist: Maria’s stepmother had a series of vivid dreams in which Maria lay buried
in the Red Barn. This wasn’t exactly standard police procedure, but desperation makes people
remarkably open-minded. Maria’s father finally went to the barn with his mole-catching spade
and dug where his wife’s dream had indicated. He uncovered Maria’s remains.
Corder was tracked down in London living under an assumed name, brought back for trial, and
confronted with circumstantial evidence tying him to the murder. The prosecution even offered
multiple theories in separate counts about how he might have killed Maria a kind of
“choose-your-own-murder” indictment. He was convicted and hanged before a massive crowd, and
parts of his story were literally turned into souvenirs. If Holmes had written this one up,
he’d probably file it under, “Never underestimate a stepmother with a bad feeling and good
instincts.”
2. The Beautiful Cigar Girl Who Became a Detective Story
In 1841, Mary Cecilia Rogers better known to New Yorkers as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl”
disappeared from the tobacco shop where she worked. A few days later, her body was found in
the Hudson River near Hoboken. She was young, well-known, and strikingly attractive, which
meant her death instantly became headline material in the city’s highly competitive and
sensationalist press.
Theories piled up quickly. Some believed she’d fallen victim to gang violence in one of the
city’s rough riverside areas. Others suspected a botched abortion after evidence turned up in
a nearby tavern suggesting a secret medical procedure gone wrong. Her fiancé later died by
suicide near the site where her body had been found, leaving a cryptic note that only deepened
the mystery rather than solving it.
The real Sherlockian twist came when the case inspired Edgar Allan Poe. Fascinated by the
investigation, Poe fictionalized the crime as The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, moving it
to Paris and using his gentleman-detective C. Auguste Dupin to “solve” it with armchair logic.
In other words, one unsolved real-life case turned into one of the earliest modern detective
stories and Sherlock Holmes’s literary ancestor. The murder itself remains technically
unsolved, but its impact on crime fiction is anything but mysterious.
3. A Roadside Inn of No Return: The Bloody Benders
On the Kansas prairie in the early 1870s, the Bender family ran a small inn and store along a
busy trail used by westward travelers. On the surface, it was an ordinary frontier stop: a hot
meal, a bed for the night, maybe a chat with the family’s charismatic daughter, Kate. Behind
that ordinary façade, however, was something closer to horror fiction.
Travelers began disappearing along that stretch of road. The turning point came when Dr.
William York, searching for his missing brother, traced him to the Benders’ property and
then York himself vanished. Suspicion finally focused on the family, but by the time neighbors
organized a search party, the Benders had fled.
In true Holmesian fashion, the scene they left behind read like a ghastly puzzle. The cabin’s
floor was stained beneath a dining chair that had been strategically positioned over a trapdoor.
In the garden, searchers found multiple shallow graves containing bodies of murdered travelers.
The working theory: victims were seated with their backs to a curtain, struck from behind, and
robbed before being buried on the property.
Authorities chased leads and false sightings for years, but the Benders themselves were never
conclusively identified or captured. It’s the ultimate old-timey “the killers got away” twist:
a family of serial murderers who simply stepped off the page and vanished into folklore.
4. A Manor House, a Tenant, and a Very Bad Alibi: The Stanfield Hall Murders
If you enjoy classic British country-house mysteries, Stanfield Hall checks every box. The
estate in Norfolk belonged to the Jermy family, whose patriarch, Isaac Jermy, held the
respectable title of Recorder of Norwich. In 1848, the Jermys had a problem tenant: James
Bloomfield Rush, a farmer drowning in debt who had mortgaged and remortgaged his property to
the point of disaster.
Rather than accept financial ruin, Rush seems to have decided on a spectacularly evil solution.
One November night, a disguised gunman approached Stanfield Hall. Isaac Jermy was shot at the
front door; his son was killed inside. Jermy’s daughter-in-law and a servant were wounded but
survived, and crucially, they got a good enough look at the attacker to later identify Rush
despite his costume and fake whiskers.
Rush left behind forged documents and handwritten notes suggesting that distant relatives were
the real culprits trying to seize the estate, a twist that would’ve impressed any Victorian
melodramatist. He also tried to secure an alibi from his governess-mistress, Emily Sandford,
but she refused to support his story in court.
Rush represented himself at trial, cross-examining witnesses in a performance that mixed bravado
with desperation. It didn’t work. The evidence from his financial motives to his botched
disguise convinced the jury, and he was hanged at Norwich Castle. Souvenir-makers turned his
crimes into ballads, pottery, and wax figures, transforming one man’s murder plot into a national
obsession.
5. Murder on Holy Ground: The Reed Family at Mission San Miguel
California’s Mission San Miguel Arcángel is today a picturesque stop on the state’s historic
mission trail, but in 1848 it was the site of a brutal mass killing that shocked the region.
William Reed and his family were living at the mission buildings, which had been converted into
private residences and commercial spaces after secularization.
One night, a group of men descended on the mission. Their goal appears to have been robbery
there were rumors of money or gold kept on the property but what happened was far worse than
a simple theft. Reed, members of his family, and their household staff were killed. Contemporary
accounts suggested that at least ten or eleven people died in a single night.
Here’s where the Sherlock-style chase comes in: a posse pursued the suspected killers across
the countryside. Some died while trying to escape; others were captured and executed by firing
squad. Even so, not every detail is clear. The exact motive, the full number of attackers, and
how much loot if any was actually taken remain murky.
Today, visitors touring the mission often hear both the historical account and the ghost stories
that grew up around it. It’s an old-timey murder where the “solution” involved frontier justice
rather than a neatly reasoned courtroom reveal.
6. Lizzie Borden and the Axe: An Acquittal That Solved Nothing
“Lizzie Borden took an axe…” The schoolyard rhyme is catchy, but the actual case is far more
complicated and much more like a detective novel where the final chapter went missing. In
August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found killed in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home.
The nature of the attack led investigators to suspect a sharp-bladed weapon, and suspicion soon
focused on Andrew’s adult daughter, Lizzie.
The evidence was largely circumstantial. There were questions about Lizzie’s movements, a dress
she destroyed after the murders, and her reported strained relationship with her stepmother. The
family’s Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan, became a key witness, describing who was in the house and
what she heard during the critical hours. Her testimony and later speculation about whether she
told the whole truth has fueled theories ever since.
At trial, Lizzie had a powerful legal defense team and the benefit of reasonable doubt. The
prosecution couldn’t firmly connect her to a murder weapon or establish a clear motive that
satisfied the jury. After just over an hour of deliberation, she was acquitted. Officially, the
case ended there. Unofficially, the town never stopped whispering.
Modern writers have proposed a who’s-who of alternate suspects: Bridget, Lizzie’s sister Emma, a
mysterious intruder, even distant relatives. Yet no one else was ever charged. The Borden case
remains a perfect example of a story where the main suspect walks free, the public picks a villain,
and the truth is never definitively revealed.
7. Eight Victims and a House Full of Clues: The Villisca Axe Murders
On the night of June 9, 1912, the Moore family of Villisca, Iowa, hosted two young neighbor girls
for a church event and a sleepover. By morning, all eight people in the house were dead. The local
minister who came to check on the family reportedly walked into a silent house with covered mirrors
and drawn curtains an eerie detail that has haunted the story ever since.
Investigators found odd clues that seemed tailor-made for an armchair detective: a lamp with its
chimney removed and wick turned low, suggesting the killer moved through the house by faint light;
a piece of clothing draped over the lamp, perhaps to dim it further; and a strange fragment of a
keychain that belonged to no one in the household. Two spent cigarettes in the attic hinted that
the killer might have hidden there, waiting for the family to go to sleep.
Several suspects emerged, including a traveling preacher and a man with a history of similar crimes.
One suspect was tried twice; the first trial ended in a hung jury, the second in an acquittal. After
that, the case stalled. No one was ever convicted.
Today, the Villisca house is preserved as a sort of historical time capsule and, depending on whom
you ask, a haunted attraction. The unsolved murders continue to fascinate visitors who arrive ready
to play detective for a night, only to leave with more questions than answers.
8. Three Siblings and a Botched Investigation: The Gatton Tragedy
On Boxing Day 1898, Michael Murphy and his sisters Norah and Ellen were returning home to their
family’s farm near Gatton, Queensland, Australia, after a dance that had been canceled. They never
arrived. The next day, their bodies were found on a remote stretch of road.
The crime scene, by all accounts, was bewildering. The siblings had been attacked with extreme
violence, the horse still harnessed nearby, and the layout of the bodies suggested some kind of
staging or ritual or at least an attempt to confuse investigators. If ever there was a moment to
cordon off the area and carefully record every detail, this was it.
That’s not what happened. Local authorities arrived, stayed briefly, then left to send telegrams
without taking notes or securing the scene. Curious onlookers wandered freely, disturbing footprints
and potential evidence. The investigation floundered almost immediately, and each lost clue made the
case harder to crack.
Over a century later, the Gatton murders are still unsolved and still provoke heated debate among
historians and true crime fans. Was it a random attack by strangers? A targeted crime by someone who
knew the family? The real twist is how much the outcome hinged on those first few, mishandled hours.
9. The Black Dahlia: Hollywood’s Most Infamous Cold Case
In January 1947, a woman out for a walk in Los Angeles spotted what she initially thought was a
discarded mannequin in a vacant lot. It was the body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, a would-be
actress who had drifted through Southern California in search of work and stability. The media soon
dubbed her “The Black Dahlia,” a nickname she’d picked up in life for her dark clothing and striking
looks.
The crime scene was carefully staged, with Short’s body arranged in a way that suggested both control
and a desire to shock. The brutality of the killing, the absence of clear motive, and Short’s
connections however faint to the Hollywood scene made the case irresistible to reporters. The
LAPD was flooded with false confessions and crank letters, while actual leads became buried in the
chaos.
For decades, writers and investigators have proposed suspects: a doctor with a suspicious past, a
bellhop, a relative, and more. Recent books have even attempted to link the case to other unsolved
murders and to identify a single, overlooked suspect based on new archival research. Officially,
though, the case remains open and unsolved.
If Holmes were on this one, he’d likely complain that the real villain wasn’t just the killer but also
the media circus that made careful detective work nearly impossible.
10. Bodies in the Fridge: The Icebox Murders of Houston
Fast-forward to 1965 Houston still “old-timey” by modern standards, but close enough that the
surviving paperwork looks eerily familiar. Concerned relatives asked police to perform a welfare
check on elderly couple Fred and Edwina Rogers, who hadn’t been seen for days. Officers forced their
way into the home and noticed food left out, as if dinner had been interrupted.
One officer opened the refrigerator and at first assumed he was looking at cuts of butchered meat.
Then he saw two human heads in the vegetable compartment. The couple’s remains had been carefully
dismembered and stored, and yet the house showed surprisingly little blood. It looked as if someone
with at least basic anatomical knowledge had taken time to clean the scene.
The prime and only serious suspect was the couple’s son, Charles, a reclusive seismologist who
reportedly communicated with his parents by notes slipped under his bedroom door. A trail of blood
led toward his room, but Charles himself had vanished. A warrant was issued, but he was never found
and was eventually declared legally dead in absentia.
Over the years, the case spawned conspiracy theories, including claims linking Charles to the Kennedy
assassination. More recent research has painted a different picture: a highly intelligent but isolated
man possibly driven by years of family conflict, with investigators tracing his car and potential
movements into Mexico and Central America. Officially, the Icebox Murders remain unsolved a mid-20th
century case with all the ingredients of a Victorian shocker.
What These Sherlock-Worthy Murders Teach Us
Look across these ten cases and you start to see patterns. Many involve:
- Flawed investigations from trampled crime scenes to misplaced priorities.
- Powerful narratives beautiful victims, monstrous families, respectable suspects.
- Mystifying evidence prophetic dreams, staged bodies, forged documents, vanishing killers.
- Enduring ambiguity official verdicts that don’t quite end the story.
That’s exactly why these old-timey murders still fascinate us. They resist easy answers and challenge
our faith that with enough data, every mystery can be solved. Holmes would remind us that “when you
have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The problem
with real history is that so much of the evidence is missing, contaminated, or filtered through bias
that the “improbable” and the “unknowable” often blur together.
Still, these cases offer something valuable: a reminder that justice depends not only on clever
reasoning, but also on thorough investigation, honest reporting, and a willingness to question our
favorite stories. And in that sense, revisiting these long-ago murders isn’t just morbid curiosity
it’s a lesson in how easily the truth can slip through our fingers.
Experiences and Reflections on Old-Timey Murder Mysteries
Spend enough time with cases like these, and you notice how they change the way you move through the
world. Not in a paranoid, “everyone is a suspect” way (hopefully), but in a more observant,
detail-focused way that Sherlock Holmes would approve of.
Imagine standing at a historic site like Mission San Miguel or outside a preserved house in a quiet
Midwestern town. In daylight, it’s just another stop on a road trip a church, a farmhouse, a row of
restored Victorian buildings. But once you know the story, the setting feels different. A doorframe
becomes the place someone last walked through alive. A field or courtyard becomes a crime scene.
You notice how close the neighbors are, which paths lead to the road, how someone might have slipped
in or out unseen.
A similar shift happens when you read old newspaper archives or trial transcripts. At first, the
language feels stiff and formal, even a bit theatrical. Then you realize you’re watching people try to
process something they barely understand with the tools they have: a handful of physical clues, lots
of gossip, and a justice system still figuring itself out. Detectives argue over footprints; lawyers
spar about character and morality; reporters shape public opinion with every headline.
There’s also a personal responsibility angle here. True crime, especially historical true crime, can
easily become entertainment a spooky story for a rainy evening. But behind every clever twist or
unsolved puzzle is a victim whose life was abruptly cut short, and families who had to live with not
knowing what really happened. Keeping that in mind doesn’t make the stories less fascinating; it just
keeps the curiosity grounded in empathy rather than spectacle.
One helpful approach is to think like a careful historian instead of a casual thrill-seeker. Ask:
- Who is telling this version of the story, and what might they be leaving out?
- Which details are documented, and which are rumors that hardened into “fact” over time?
- What social anxieties about gender, class, race, or morality might be shaping how people talk about the case?
When you apply that lens, these old murders become less about “whodunnit” and more about “what does
this say about the world these people lived in?” The Red Barn case isn’t just about a man killing his
lover; it’s about how communities handled scandal, unmarried pregnancy, and trust in dreams and
superstition. The Black Dahlia isn’t just a Hollywood horror story; it’s also a window into mid-century
media, sexism, and the way a young woman’s life can be rewritten to fit a sensational narrative.
The best “Sherlock Holmes” experience, then, isn’t pretending you can finally solve what generations
of investigators couldn’t. It’s learning to look more closely, question more deeply, and recognize how
fragile the truth can be once it passes through courts, headlines, and folklore. If there’s a modern
twist to these old-timey murders, it’s this: we don’t just inherit the mysteries we inherit the
responsibility to tell them carefully.