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Surveillance footage has become a crucial element of modern criminal investigations, and cases often hinge on video evidence. But several high-profile murder cases remain unsolved despite investigators finding and publicly sharing video of a prime suspect.
Case in point: It seemed like a slam-dunk for investigators when they linked not only DNA of a Maryland woman’s alleged killer to a suspect in a Los Angeles home invasion — they also had doorbell video of the suspect leaving the crime scene.
Despite that video, alongside widely shared flyers about the crimes, six months have passed without a witness to identify the man suspected of killing Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five whose body was found on a hiking trail last summer.
Six months after Morin’s killing, authorities last week released additional sketches of the suspect, hoping it will finally lead to a break in the case. But as it stands, Morin’s killing joins a number of baffling murder cases that remain unsolved despite video evidence of a suspect near a crime scene — or even of the killing itself.
On April 18, 2016, Terri “Missy” Bevers, a 45-year-old married mother of three daughters, was killed inside the North Texas church where she was scheduled to lead a 5 a.m. fitness class. Surveillance footage captured her driving into the church parking lot at 4:16 and entering the Midlothian Creekside Church at 4:20 a.m., according to a police timeline. One of her bootcamp students found her body just before 5. The person suspected of killing her, investigators said, was first captured on video at 3:50 a.m., so they had been there at least half an hour before Bevers arrived.
Midlothian Police publicly released a chilling two-plus-minute video combining snippets of motion-activated security footage from inside the church that morning. In the nearly soundless footage, a person dressed in what appears to be riot gear, including a helmet, is seen wandering the halls of the church. “Police” can be seen in white block letters on the front and back of their tactical vest. Their movements are unhurried, almost casual, as they open various doors, peek inside, and continue on. Some rooms are locked, and a few times they try to break in, using a large hammer that they casually swing at their side while roaming the halls.
Police have estimated the person in the video to be about 5 feet, 8 inches tall. They emphasized their “unique walk or gait,” noting that their feet point outward (“more predominantly” on the right), possibly due to an injury. Investigators couldn’t determine the person’s gender, though one search warrant described the suspect as having a “feminine sway.”
It’s unclear whether the hammer was used in the attack, because police haven’t shared many details about Bevers’ death. They revealed only that Bevers had suffered “multiple puncture wounds” on her head and chest, which they said were “consistent with tools the suspect was carrying throughout the building.”
Bevers, who worked for the fitness company Camp Gladiator, posted a message on Facebook to her class the night before her killing. The class, which would normally take place in the parking lot, would be held inside because of rainy weather, she said, writing, “NO EXCUSES… You are Gladiators!” If her killing was targeted, it pointed her killer to exactly where should be — and when — that morning.
Investigators also released video surveillance footage of a sedan, possibly a Nissan Altima, slowly circling the parking lot of a nearby business in the “early morning hours” before Bevers’ killing. The suspect flips the car’s lights off and on “multiple times,” briefly parks, and then leaves.
Nothing from the church was stolen, and investigators found Bevers’ purse, iPad and gun inside her pickup truck.
In one search warrant, investigators claimed to have found evidence that Bevers and her husband, Brandon, were having problems with their marriage and finances, but they confirmed that Brandon was in Mississippi for an annual fishing trip at the time of her death. In a recent interview, he said that he believed his wife’s killing was “untargeted,” which contradicts investigators’ theory.
Nearly eight years since Bevers’ killing, investigators have yet to identify a person of interest or make an arrest.
Elizabeth “Liz” Barraza was gunned down in her driveway just before sunrise on Jan. 19, 2019. The 29-year-old Houston woman was setting up for a garage sale outside her home when a person walked up and shot her four times with a revolver. Despite video of the shooting from a neighbor’s home security camera, the killer has not been identified. Like the Bevers case, it is unclear whether Barraza’s killer was a man or woman; it was still dark and the cameras were not close enough to capture more than a shadowy figure. Also, authorities have said the killer might have been wearing a disguise: a wig, a long jacket and tall boots.
The suspected shooter was driving a dark-colored four-door Nissan Frontier pickup truck, which security cameras, including the Barrazas’ own doorbell camera, captured driving around the neighborhood before and after the shooting. Investigators believe the driver was waiting for Sergio Barraza to leave for work. After he left, the driver parked on the street near the Barrazas’ home, leaving their headlights on. After firing the last shot, the shooter ran back to the truck and drove away, but authorities said the truck returned, likely to confirm that Barraza was dead. (She died the next day at the hospital.)
According to investigators, Barraza said “good morning” to her killer before they shot her three times point-blank. She can be heard in the video footage screaming as she falls to the ground. The shooter fired a fourth round while Barraza was on her back.
No motive has been identified for the killing. Sergio Barraza, who met his second wife, Amber, about a year and half after Liz’s death, told KHOU-11 last year that he knows he’s “the prime suspect in people’s eyes,” but investigators have never named him as a person of interest. He told the news station that both he and Amber had passed lie detector tests.
Barraza’s husband said the couple planned to use the proceeds from the garage sale for an upcoming trip to Florida to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. The two were both Harry Potter and Star Wars fans, and Barraza often wore a Stormtrooper costume when she volunteered at local hospitals — including the one where she died the day after the shooting.
Security cameras captured Kris Jake-Moon, a 31-year-old Native American mother of two, leaving the Oasis Casino in Mesquite, Arizona, on Feb. 13, 1998. Hours later, authorities said, she was beaten to death. In the video, she is seen leaving with several people, including a man in a cowboy hat. He remains a person of interest in her killing but has never been located. A co-worker told investigators that he knew the man only by his first name, and that he never returned to work or collected his paycheck after Jake-Moon’s disappearance, ABC15 reported.
Jake-Moon’s body was found Feb. 16, covered by a blue blanket in a brushy desert area near the Arizona-Nevada border. Mojave County Sheriff’s officials said she had been struck multiple times in her head, and an autopsy concluded she had died from blunt force trauma. Investigators found no evidence to indicate she had been sexually assaulted.
Relatives of Jake-Moon told USA Todaythat they believe that one reason Jake-Moon’s case remains unsolved is because of a shoddy investigation, emblematic of the uninvestigated and underreported widespread violence against Indigenous people, which the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement is seeking to combat.
The bodies of Canadian billionaire philanthropists Barry and Honey Sherman were found in their Toronto mansion on Dec. 15, 2017. They had been dead for about 36 hours. Despite their wealth and prominence, the case remains unsolved and shrouded in mystery. Investigators are hopeful, however, that surveillance videoof an unknown person walking on a sidewalk in their neighborhood on Dec. 13 might someday lead to a break in the case.
The Toronto Police Service shared the video with the public in December of 2021, saying that the walker’s “purpose in the neighborhood is unexplained” and that the timing lines up with when investigators believe the Shermans were killed.
Interestingly, authorities asked people to pay attention to the suspect’s distinctive gait — one of the things that stood out in the videos of the suspect in Missy Bevers’ killing. Authorities determined the person to be between about 5 feet, 6 inches, and 5 feet, 9 inches tall.
Barry Sherman, 75, and his wife, 70, had been married for more than 40 years and had four children, who each stood to inherit one-quarter of the couple’s estate. Barry Sherman, who founded a pharmaceutical company that sold generic drugs, was worth at least $3 billion when he died, according to Forbes.
The initial investigation got off to a rocky start. According to CTV News Toronto, authorities said they found no signs of a break-in and that investigators were not looking for any “outstanding suspects” — suggesting either a murder-suicide or that the couple had both killed themselves.
But according to crime scene and autopsy photos and notes obtained by the Toronto Star, the couple had been killed and their bodies were staged. They were found in a semi-seated position on the deck of their indoor pool, their necks tied to a low railing with men’s leather belts. They were fully clothed, including their shoes, and Barry was wearing his glasses.
The Shermans’ relatives hired a private investigator and paid a more experienced pathologist to conduct second autopsies. That pathologist determined that the couple had been bound at the wrists and strangled with ligatures significantly thinner than the leather belts. No bindings or ligatures matching his findings were found at the scene.
On Jan. 26, 2018, authorities announced at a news conference that the Shermans’ deaths were a “targeted” double homicide.
The family has originally offered a reward of $10 million (Canadian dollars) for information that could help solve the crime. In December 2022, the couple’s son announced that the family had added another $25 million, bringing the total reward to $35 million. No one has publicly come forward to identify the man walking in the surveillance video.
More than five years after the bodies of 14-year-old Libby German and 13-year-old Abby Williams were found near a hiking trail in Delphi, Indiana, on Feb. 14, 2017, authorities announced they had arrested and charged a local man, Richard Allen, with their killings. Grainy video of a man walking on a bridge — filmed by one of the alleged killer’s victims — gained nationwide attention after it was circulated by police.
But there was a problem: Nobody in Delphi recognized Allen, despite video and audio evidence recovered from German’s cellphone, in which the suspect said, “Guys, down the hill.” Investigators had apparently unearthed a 2017 interview Allen gave with a police officer in which he placed himself at the scene when the girls disappeared.
