10 Valentine’s Day Cold Cases That Were Finally Solved

Valentine’s Day is celebrated worldwide to show love and affection in many different ways. Young children may pass out Valentine’s Day cards to their friends at school or have a classroom party. Couples often choose to exchange gifts, flowers, and candy or go out for a special dinner. Family and friends may gather for a special meal, make holiday-themed treats together, and play games. However, no matter whether the day is celebrated with a grand romantic gesture or just a quiet moment together, the holiday serves as a reminder of the many ways we show just how much we love and appreciate the special people in our lives.

Unfortunately, for the families of those on this list, Valentine’s Day became a day that would forever be overshadowed by tragedy. Instead of spending the day surrounded by romance and celebration, their lives were not only tragically cut short, but for years, the truth behind their deaths, and in some cases, even their identities, remained a mystery.

However, despite the years, and in many of these cases, decades that passed, the victims’ families and authorities refused to give up and let these tragedies go unanswered. Thanks to the tireless efforts of law enforcement, advances in technology, and long-awaited confessions, these once-cold cases have now been solved, proving that justice can still prevail, even if it is decades later.

Related: Top 10 Worst Valentines Day Breakups

10 Angela Perkins

Angela Perkins, 23, was described as beautiful, very nice, and someone who had an infectious personality. Unfortunately, her life was tragically taken on Valentine’s Day in 1994 as the result of a failed carjacking.

Perkins worked as a waitress at Newby’s in Memphis, Tennessee. In the early morning of February 14, 1994, she left her job and gave a ride to a friend after work. However, as Perkins came to a stop sign after dropping her friend off, a single shot was fired at her car. The bullet shattered a window, nicking Perkins’s carotid artery and larynx. The car then coasted to a nearby parking lot, where Perkins attempted to call 911 from her cell phone. Unfortunately, despite making two calls for help, Perkins was unable to speak and eventually lost consciousness.

With no way to trace the cell phone call, officers were dispatched to search areas near a busy intersection and look for a woman in trouble, but they never found Perkins. However, two hours and 37 minutes after her 911 call, an employee at a local donut shop called the police and stated he discovered a woman’s body in the parking lot with a cell phone in her hand. Sadly, it was there that a Memphis police officer found Perkins face down on the pavement, dead outside her red car.

Perkins’s murder case remained unsolved for two decades. That is, until 2014, when a Texas prisoner told a police detective he could solve the mystery. Ngoc Baoco “Ice” Huynh, who was serving 40 years for an unrelated murder charge, told Memphis cold-case police detectives that Phanhsay “Kapoo” Phanivong and Sathit “Tee” Ep were responsible for Perkins’s death. Both men were 16 years old at the time.

According to Huynh, days after the shooting, Phanivong confessed to him, showing off a newspaper clipping and bragging that he had “made the news.” Apparently, Phanivong’s plan was to steal a car or a car radio to get money to buy his girlfriend a Valentine’s Day gift. Phanivong tried to hold up Perkins, but when she drove away in an attempt to escape, Phanivong shot her. Huynh claimed he kept quiet about the murder because he was afraid of Phanivong, his relatives, and the Local Killer Boys- one of the first known Asian gangs in Memphis.

Thirty-six-year-old Phanivong, who, over the years, had become a Murfreesboro, Tennessee, soccer dad, former state employee, and aspiring police officer in graduate school, was arrested on April 23, 2014, and charged with attempted aggravated robbery and first-degree murder. Ep was arrested on April 24, 2014, and charged with felony murder.

On September 11, 2018, Phanivong pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, because his sentence was based on laws in effect at the time of Perkins’s murder, Phanivong was eligible for parole after serving 30% of his sentence. By this time, Phanivong had been in jail for almost five years, so he was allowed to serve the remaining 10 years of his sentence under the supervision of the Community Corrections Program, which diverts felony offenders from the prison system while providing supervision to reduce future criminal behavior.^[1]

9 Terri McAdams

Terri McAdams’s fiancé was out of town on a business trip, so she decided to make him a heart-shaped Valentine’s Day cake before his return home on February 14, 1985. After the cake was finished, McAdams chatted on the phone with her sister, but just moments after hanging up the phone, someone entered the Arlington, Texas, apartment through a sliding glass door. Sadly, McAdams, 22, was beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed. Her $5,000 engagement ring was also stolen. A maintenance worker found McAdams’s body in the apartment on Valentine’s Day.

While McAdams’s fiancé was ruled out early on as a suspect, homicide detectives worked around the clock for months, and McAdams’s parents even offered a reward, pleading for help to apprehend their daughter’s killed. Unfortunately, years of investigating led to dead ends; no arrests were made, and the case went cold.

Then, in 2021, multiple pieces of physical evidence from the case were sent to a lab for DNA testing. From that testing, a DNA profile for an unknown male suspect was developed and entered into the CODIS database, but unfortunately, it never produced a match. In August 2023, Arlington police reached out to the FBI Dallas Field Office to see if McAdams’s case would be a good candidate for investigative genetic genealogy (IGG)—a process that combines unidentified crime scene DNA with meticulous genealogy research and the use of historical public records to identify new leads for law enforcement agencies. The FBI’s IGG team agreed to assist with the case. After several months of work, they developed a potential suspect- Bernard Sharp.

Sharp, a registered sex offender who lived nearby, was one of dozens who were initially questioned. However, on November 3, 1985, nearly nine months after McAdams’s murder, Sharp shot and killed his wife and her friend, critically wounded her cousin, and then turned the gun on himself. With Sharp deceased, there was no available DNA the IGG team could use for comparison. Investigators (Link 8) were, however, able to identify and locate a close genetic relative of Sharp, who lived out of state and was willing to provide a DNA sample. Lab results confirmed that Sharp was a genetic match to the suspect DNA sample recovered from the crime scene.

Although McAdams’s killer won’t spend any time behind bars, on August 14, 2024, the Arlington Police Department and the FBI made a formal announcement of the findings and that the nearly 40-year-old cold case had finally been solved.^[2]

8 Eric Darnell Noel

Around 1:13 a.m. on February 14, 2014, officers responded to a call in Port Arthur, Texas, for a “man down.” When Port Arthur Police arrived on the scene, they found a man, who was later identified as 29-year-old Eric Darnell Noel, lying in the street suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

Noel was still alive, and Detective E.S. Thomason attempted to ask Noel questions, but unfortunately, Noel’s responses weren’t much more than a whisper. Hoping to learn more about who the assailant was, Thomason rode with Noel in the back of the ambulance as he was transported to the hospital. Noel, however, was unable to communicate any further and succumbed to the injuries sustained in the shooting later in the hospital. While there was information that Noel had been involved in a disturbance at BJ’s Convenience Store before the shooting, for years, the case went unsolved.

However, on June 14, 2024, 47-year-old Damond Lewis, who had been listed as a “person of interest” by police in 2017, walked into the Port Arthur police station and confessed to shooting Noel. Lewis was arrested and is being held at the Jefferson County Jail on a single charge of murder.^[3]

7 Wanda Deann Kirkum

On Valentine’s Day in 1991, an unidentified female was beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death in the Florida Keys. Around 8:15 a.m. on February 15, 1991, a group of windsurfers discovered the body off a dirt road that leads to an area known by locals as the “Horseshoe” recreation area. The young woman was found face down and nude, except for her bikini top, which she was strangled with.

The case became known as the “Valentine Jane Doe Homicide.” It drew national media attention, particularly on true crime television shows like Unsolved Mysteries. The case was even investigated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Unfortunately, despite countless efforts to identify both the woman and her attacker, the female victim remained nameless for 29 years.

It wasn’t until June 15, 2020, that Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay announced that the case had finally been solved. Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit Detective Vince Weiner teamed up with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Using advanced DNA technology and genealogy, the young woman was finally identified as 18-year-old Wanda Deann Kirkum of Hornell, New York. Kirkum’s ashes, which had been stored in a Florida Social Sevices vault, were later returned to her closest living relative, first cousin Brenda Chartraw, so that she could have a final resting place.

According to Chartraw, Kirkum was physically and sexually abused by her father and mother and ran away from home at 18. Kirkum’s parents, who are both now deceased, apparently had no interest in finding her and never even filed a missing person’s report.

In addition to finally identifying Kirkum, investigators were also able to identify her killer- Robert Lynn Bradley—who died as the victim of a homicide in Tarrant County, Texas, in April 1992 at the age of 31. DNA from Bradley’s homicide scene, along with DNA from Kirkum’s 1991 murder, were compared at the FDLE crime lab and determined to be a match.^[4]

6 Terry Dolowy

Terry Dolowy, a River Forest, Illinois native, was a senior at the University of Wisonsin-La Crosse, where she was studying finance. Following her shift at Piggy’s Restuarant, Dolowy returned home to a trailer park in Barre Mills, Wisconsin, where she lived with her fiancé, Russel Lee, sometime between 12:30 and 1 a.m. on February 14, 1985. At that time, Lee was getting ready to head to his third-shift job at the Radisson Hotel, but given that he didn’t have his own vehicle, Lee took Dolowy’s car and left for work.

However, when Lee returned from work, he claimed that the front door was open and the lights were on, but Dolowy was gone. Lee reported Dolowy missing, as she and her white poodle, Suzie, had seemingly vanished without a trace. Given that Lee was the last person to see Dolowy alive, this, in addition to claims that Dolowy had confided in friends about her decision not to marry Lee due to his rumored gambling and drug issues, put him at the top of the suspect list.

Four days later, on February 18, 1985, the Vernon County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call about something burning in a culvert. Sadly, it was there that they found Dolowy’s burned body. The DNA recovered from Dolowy’s body cleared Lee as a suspect. However, despite over 500 people being interviewed and 20 different investigators working on the homicide case over more than two decades, unfortunately, no arrests were ever made, and the case appeared to go cold.

It wasn’t until June 1, 2022, that the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory developed an STR (short tandem repeat) profile from evidence taken from Dolowy’s body. The STR profile was then submitted for further analysis through Investigative Genealogy. On September 23, 2022, they got a match—Michael Raymond Popp. In January 2023, authorities obtained a search warrant and collected a DNA sample from Popp, which was later also found to be a match to the DNA samples taken during Dolowy’s autopsy on February 19, 1985.

Popp, originally interviewed by the La Crosse and Vernon County Sheriff’s Offices on March 11, 1985, told investigators that he and his then-girlfriend were acquaintances with Dolowy and Lee. Popp stated the couples participated in pool tournaments and that he had been to Dolowy’s trailer “10 to 15 times in the past.” However, when Popp was interviewed again in March 2023, he contradicted his previous statements, claiming Dolowy was only a casual acquaintance and that he didn’t know where she and Lee lived.

Popp also denied being involved with Dolowy several times during interviews, but when authorities presented him with the DNA evidence linking him to Dolowy, he changed his story once again, claiming he and Dolowy “maybe had a little affair” for six to eight months. Popp insisted, however, that he never hurt Dolowy.

On September 23, 2024, 60-year-old Popp was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder.^[5]

5 Adrienne McColl

Nineteen-year-old Adrienne McColl and Stéphane Parent, 12 years her senior, began dating in 2000 when they both worked at Studio 82, a southwest Calgary bar owned by McColl’s stepdad, John McGee. There were claims, however, that Parent had a history of attacking McColl, and according to one witness, he had thrown McColl across a desk and choked her during a shift at the bar. Despite what appeared to be a tumultuous relationship, McColl eventually became pregnant. Sadly, just two weeks before the due date in October 2001, the baby was stillborn, and McColl suffered another failed pregnancy in the next few months.

Unfortunately, by February 2002, the relationship had even more cracks, and the two were struggling financially. McColl got a new job at a downtown bistro and moved back in with her stepfather, while Parent had become homeless and was living in his car. Parent’s situation seemingly got even worse when his temporary home was towed on February 14, 2002. However, that same day, McColl didn’t show up for her shift at work and didn’t meet up with her friends that evening as planned.

Almost immediately after McColl went missing on Valentine’s Day 2002, Parent also vanished, as did a car belonging to McGee. At 10:06 a.m. on February 15, 2002, Parent bought a one-way ticket to Ottawa. McGee’s car was later found abandoned at Calgary International Airport. McColl’s shoes were in the trunk and two stalls down, Parent’s jeans were found with blood on the pant leg.

On February 17, 2002, McColl’s body was found in a rancher’s field 52 miles (85 km) outside Calgary. McColl had no shoes, coat, or pants and had been strangled and beaten to death.

Although Parent had been the only “person of interest” in McColl’s death, there wasn’t enough evidence to file charges. The case went cold for 16 years, but thanks to advances in DNA technology, detectives were able to revisit the investigation. On February 17, 2018—the 16th anniversary of the day McColl’s remains were discovered—49-year-old Parent was arrested in Gatineau, Quebec, and later charged with second-degree murder. In 2021, Parent was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 17 years.

Parent, however, maintained his innocence and went on to appeal his conviction, arguing that some of the evidence shouldn’t have gone to the jury, a defense expert witness was denigrated, the trial judge erred in her instruction to the jury, and that a juror who knew McColl’s stepfather should have been dismissed. The Alberta Court of Appeal rejected Parent’s arguments.^[6]

4 Jodine Serrin

Despite her cognitive challenges, 39-year-old Jodine Serrin was a highly functioning woman who was active in several social organizations for the mentally ill and lived on her own in a ground-level condo in Carlsbad, California. After being unable to reach Serrin by telephone, her parents, Arthur and Lois Serrin, went to her condo around 10 p.m. on February 14, 2007, to make sure she was alright. Serrin, however, didn’t answer the door.

Serrin’s parents were able to get in through the front door and went inside, but when Arthur walked into his daughter’s bedroom, he found a partially dressed man engaged in sexual activity with his daughter. Concerned that the stranger was taking advantage of Serrin, Arthur told him to get dressed and get out.

Serrin’s parents then waited in the living room to allow her a moment of privacy, expecting an embarrassed couple to eventually emerge from the bedroom. However, when that didn’t happen, Arthur went back into the bedroom only to discover Serrin had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled to death. The man who had been in Serrin’s bedroom was also gone. An autopsy later revealed that Serrin had died of blunt-force head injuries.

An investigation of the crime scene did not reveal an entry or exit point for the killer. No windows in the bedroom had been broken or forced open, and there was no sign of forced entry at the door, leading investigators to believe that Serrin’s killer may have been someone she knew or someone who knew she lived alone. According to investigators, the suspect may have escaped through an open front door that wasn’t visible from where Serrin’s parents were standing in the living room. Unknown male DNA was found at the crime scene, but unfortunately, when run through the state database, it didn’t turn up any matches. Sadly, the chilling case eventually went cold.

Then, in February of 2018, investigators with the Carlsbad Police Department and the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office sought the help of Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs. The company specializes in DNA “phenotyping”—the process of using unidentified DNA evidence left behind at a crime scene to predict someone’s physical appearance and ancestry. Based on genetic evidence found at the murder scene, the company produced a computer-generated mugshot and trait predictions for Serrin’s killer, which included the subject’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape.

From there, investigators ran DNA evidence found at the murder scene against a DNA database. Thanks to DNA from relatives in the system and the process of elimination, they were able to zero in on a suspect—David Mabrito. Unfortunately, Mabrito, who was 38 years old at the time and a transient, committed suicide in 2011. While Mabrito’s own DNA wasn’t in the system, the Oceanside Police Department just so happened to have an unprocessed sample of his DNA that was taken because Mabrito matched the description of a suspect in another case. Thankfully, it was never discarded.

When Mabrito’s DNA was then run against crime scene evidence from Serrin’s murder, it came back as a “1-in-64-quintillion match”, meaning there was virtually no possibility it could be anyone else’s DNA but Mabrito’s.^[7]

3 Heyzel Obando

At approximately 5:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day 2016, Earl “Tony” Joiner called 911 to report that he had discovered his girlfriend, 26-year-old Heyzel Obando, bleeding and unresponsive in their Fort Myers, Florida apartment. When officers arrived, they found Joiner in the master bedroom attempting chest compressions. Police officers, however, stated that his efforts were “futile because (Obando) was very obviously dead and had been for some time.” Obando had been shot in the head.

Joiner claimed that he had just returned from a trip with their daughters to see his family in Winter Haven, Florida, and discovered Obando’s body when he returned. Despite Joiner’s claim, authorities noticed several things that didn’t seem to add up and behaviors that weren’t consistent with someone who just discovered a deceased loved one, such as Joiner’s calm and emotionless demeanor and the fact that he didn’t ask any questions about how Obando died.

An officer at the scene also noticed that Joiner left him and Obando’s two daughters in a running car in the parking lot. Joiner claimed he did so because the youngest one was asleep, and he intended to get Obando to help carry them into the apartment. However, when the couple’s 3-year-old daughter later told police that “poppy shoted mommy” and “mommy blood,” leading them to believe Joiner killed Obando in front of one of their daughters.

Unfortunately, there was not enough evidence to make an arrest, and Joiner, a former University of Florida football player, walked free to take a job at a local auto dealership.

Investigators continued to work the case over the next three years, even as leads went cold. Then, in May 2019, Oxygen Network’s true crime TV series Cold Justice came to town and began investigating the case with local law enforcement. They spent nine days working on nothing but Obando’s case, interviewing 50 additional witnesses, re-analyzing evidence, paying for additional DNA testing, and uncovering allegations of domestic abuse and suspected affairs that ultimately linked Joiner to the murder.

An arrest warrant was issued, and on June 8, 2019, 33-year-old Joiner was arrested for second-degree murder at the auto dealership where he worked. Joiner pleaded no contest, and on June 5, 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Joiner was also ordered to have no contact with the children—now in the care of Obando’s mother, Isabel Martinez—or the Obando family ever again.^[8]

2 Christopher Scott Case

A man was walking his dog in a field near E. 8th Street and Weld County Road 43 in Greeley, Colorado, when he stumbled upon a dead body on February 14, 2000. Weld County deputies and investigators responded to the scene but found no evidence of foul play.

Shortly after the discovery, the man’s remains were sent to an anthropologist who determined they were that of a white male, 35-50 years old and 5’4″ (1.62 meters) tall. The man’s weight could not be determined, but it was believed he may have had a tattoo in the center of his back. However, due to the advanced state of decomposition and no indication of trauma, the cause or manner of death could not be determined. Investigators named the unidentified male John Doe 2000, and for 22 years, his remains were locked away.

Then, in 2022, the remains were taken out of storage and analyzed using forensic genealogy along with DNA from John Doe’s remains. This led investigators to relatives in Nevada who willingly submitted their DNA to help solve the case. Weld County cold case detective Byron Kastilahn “got the break he had been waiting for” in December 2023, when the genetic test results returned identifying John Doe 2000 as Christopher Scott Case. Further genetic testing also confirmed these findings.

Before his death, Case lived in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and was last seen by his half-brother in Nevada in 1998. Sadly, despite being missing for 24 years, Case never showed up on the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation missing persons list.^[9]

1 Te’ore Terry

After receiving calls about a shooting on Coliseum Drive, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, police officers found 35-year-old Te’ore Terry lying face down in a parking lot at 8:01 a.m. on February 14, 2021. Terry was suffering from a gunshot wound, and he had been robbed of his keys and jewelry. EMS pronounced Terry dead at the scene. Terry’s sister, Tori, believed her brother’s murder was part of a hate crime because he was “openly gay.”

The case became inactive in January 2023 due to lack of evidence, but in September 2023, the case was reassigned to Detective Boles. By gathering additional information through interviews and investigative leads, Boles was able to identify a suspect—28-year-old Jacquane Juarre Fair.

Fair was arrested on May 17, 2024, and charged with felony murder. While Terry’s mother said she was aware of a relationship between her son and Fair, officials stated that they could not share any more information on Terry’s case.^[10]