Prosecutors in the JonBenet Ramsey case still hope they’ll crack the 6-year-old’s murder – but many familiar with homicide investigations say the slaying is doomed to remain unsolved.
TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh sees many “sad parallels” between the 1981 murder of his 6-year-old son, Adam, and the Ramsey case – including police bungling and their failure to make an arrest.
Ten days after Adam was snatched from a Sears store in Hollywood, Fla., the youngster’s severed head was found in a canal near Vero Beach.
“They made a lot of mistakes in Adam’s case. And huge mistakes were made in the Ramsey case,” said Walsh.
According to the FBI, 34 percent of all U.S. homicides are never solved – which is more than 6,000 a year based on the latest statistics.
And because they go unsolved, there is endless speculation about motives, circumstances and perpetrators.
*Although widely believed to be the killer of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, former football great O.J. Simpson is today a free man.
In June 1994, the two were found hacked to death outside her townhouse in Brentwood, Calif.
Although Simpson was charged with the murders, he was acquitted in October 1995.
But a civil jury held Simpson liable for their deaths in February 1997 and ordered the former football great to pay $33.5 million in damages.
*New York couple Michael Sullivan, 50, and Camden Sylvia, 37, disappeared without a trace in November 1997. They are presumed dead.
Suspicion has centered on Robert Rodriguez, the 57-year-old owner of the couple’s Pearl Street apartment. But he’s not been charged in the case.
The day the couple disappeared they told Rodriguez they would withhold their rent if he didn’t turn on their heat, witnesses told police.
Cops dug up Rodriguez’s back yard and searched his Orange County home, but failed to find any clues.
*Last year, after Upper East Side millionaire-socialite Irene Silverman, 82, disappeared, prosecutors began building a case against grifters Kenneth Kimes, 23, and his mother, Sante, 64.
The two are suspected in a string of arsons, murders and disappearances.
Silverman’s assets included a lavish East 65th Street townhouse worth $7 million. Prosecutors believe the Kimeses murdered her after attempting to con her out of her savings and the building.
Silverman’s body has yet to be found.
*The best known of all disappearances in recent decades has to be that of former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished in 1975 after leaving a restaurant in a Detroit suburb.
Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982 after the largest manhunt in history failed to turn up any trace of him.
On the day of his disappearance, Hoffa told his family he had a lunch appointment. Police believe it was with suspected crime boss Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone.
His body has never been found and no indictment has ever been issued.