This list of unsolved murders includes notable cases where victims have been murdered under unknown circumstances. Cold cases included.

1980–1984

Jeannie Mills (39) was an early defector from the Peoples Temple along with her husband and teenage daughter, who were all murdered on 26 February 1980 in their Berkeley, California homes. The murder is still unsolved. Angelo Bruno (69), a Philadelphia mob boss, was killed by a shotgun blast to the back of his head as he sat in his car in front of his South Philadelphia house on 21 March 1980. Antonio Caponigro, one of Bruno's underlings, is believed to have ordered the killing over a drug dispute; since the murder had not been sanctioned by the Commission, Caponigro himself was reputedly killed on its orders within a month. However, no suspects have ever been identified as having actually shot Bruno. Óscar Romero, the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, was killed by a shot to the heart on 24 March 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital. It is believed but was never proven that the assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads. During the funeral a bomb exploded in Plaza Barrios fronting San Salvador Cathedral and shots were fired. Many people were killed during the subsequent mass panic. Romero was later canonised as a saint in 2018 by Pope Francis. Dorothy Jane Scott (32) disappeared on 28 May 1980 in Anaheim, California after heading to pick up a colleague who had been discharged from the hospital following treatment for a spider bite. Her car was found burnt out in an alleyway from the hospital the following morning, and her decomposed remains were discovered in August 1984. Her murderer and cause of death remain unknown, but police believe an unidentified male who stalked Scott with harassing phone calls prior to her disappearance and subsequent murder is the likely suspect. Charles Miller (41), the War saxophonist who co-wrote and sang their hit "Low Rider", was killed on 4 June 1980 during a robbery in Los Angeles, California. No suspects have ever been identified. The explosion that killed all 81 on board Itavia Flight 870 near the Italian island of Ustica on 27 June 1980 has been variously attributed to a bomb or a missile strike. Whatever the cause, the investigations have been criticized as ineffective, and no culprits identified. There has also been a series of suspicious deaths, murders or suicides among people involved in or investigating the case, further raising suspicion of a conspiracy. Troy Leon Gregg (32), the first condemned individual whose death sentence was upheld by the United States Supreme Court after the Furman v. Georgia ruling invalidated all previously enacted death penalty laws in the United States, escaped from Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia along with three other death row inmates and convicted murderers on 29 July 1980. Gregg's body was found in the Catawba River later that night; he had died as a result of suffocation. One theory suggests that Gregg was killed in a biker bar in North Carolina after attempting to assault a waitress. Another theory suggests that Gregg was murdered after getting into an argument with one of his fellow escapees, Timothy McCorquodale, and James Cecil Horne, a member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Horne was initially charged with Gregg's murder, with William Flamont being charged as an accessory to the crime. All charges against Horne and Flamont were later dropped due to lack of evidence. Tammy Terrell, a formerly unidentified seventeen-year-old, was discovered on 5 October 1980, in Henderson, Nevada. Authorities believe she may have been the victim of human trafficking. Giorgio Agatino Giamonna (25) and Antonio Galatola (15) were two young homosexual males discovered deceased in Giarre, Italy on 31 October 1980. Both had been shot in the head and were discovered holding hands. The perpetrator of the murders was never identified, but is believed to have been the 13-year-old nephew of one of the victims. The deaths of Giamonna and Galatola ultimately led to the widespread recognition of homophobia among the Italian public and the strengthening and recognition of Italian gay rights movements. The decomposing remains of Dean and Tina Clouse were found outside of Houston, Texas in January 1981, but were not identified until 2021. Their infant daughter, Holly Marie, was not found with their bodies, and was later located alive in Oklahoma in 2022. It was discovered that Holly Marie had been abandoned at a church in Arizona by members of an unknown Jesus freak cult, who are now considered the main suspects in the murders of Dean and Tina. Frank Sindone (52), another Philadelphia mobster believed to have been involved in the Angelo Bruno assassination, was found dead on 29 October 1980 with three gunshot wounds in the back of his head in a South Philadelphia alley. His death is believed to have been ordered by the Commission as punishment for the unsanctioned killing of Bruno, but no suspects have ever been identified.

Sherri Jarvis is a formerly unidentified 14-year-old girl whose body was found on 1 November 1980, in Huntsville, Texas, United States. A witness reported a possible runaway matching her description seen asking for directions to a prison unit (which she never arrived at). Jarvis was sexually assaulted before being beaten and killed by strangulation. Goh Beng Choo, an eight-year-old girl whose body was found in a village in Bukit Batok, Singapore on 19 November 1980. She had died of a ruptured liver resulting from blows to her abdomen, and had been sexually assaulted before her death. Carol Cole (17) was discovered stabbed to death in Bellevue, Louisiana in January 1981, after her 1980 disappearance. Her body was identified in February 2015. The man who found her, now in prison for killing his wife's close friend, is considered a person of interest. Sebastian Russo (56), a primary care physician from Baltimore, Maryland, was shot and killed in his office on the evening of 27 February 1981. The only clues indicated that a patient and possibly an accomplice targeted him for his supply of prescription drugs. No suspects have ever been identified. Philip Testa (56), known as "The Chicken Man", was killed when a nail bomb exploded under his porch as he stepped into his Philadelphia house on 15 March 1981, the second local mob boss to be assassinated within a year. At the time he and several associates were under federal indictment for their activities; Testa's killing sparked a four-year war for control that left 30 other mobsters dead. Two of Testa's underbosses have been described as responsible; however, no actual suspects have ever been named. The Shinjuku–Kabukicho Love Hotel murders are the murders of three young Japanese females that took place on three different occasions on 19 March 1981, on 25 April 1981, and on 14 June 1981, in Tokyo at nighttime at love hotels. The three murders are believed to have been committed by the same person who is believed to be a male, who has never been identified or captured. Thor Nis Christiansen (23) was a Danish-American serial killer from Solvang, California. He committed his first three murders in late 1976 and early 1977, killing young women of similar appearance from nearby Isla Vista. His crimes motivated large demonstrations opposed to violence against women, and in favor of better transportation for the young people residing in Isla Vista.Dalton, Keith, Santa Barbara News-Press, 25 January 1977, p. 1. On 30 March 1981, Christiansen died after being stabbed in the exercise yard at Folsom State Prison. His killer was not identified.Santa Barbara News-Press, 31 March 1981. The Keddie murders, in which four people were found dead in Keddie, California on 11 April (and possibly into 12 April) 1981. Brenda Gerow (21) was found murdered in early April 1981 in Tucson, Arizona. Her body remained unidentified until 2015 after a photograph of her was found in a convicted killer's possession and led police to believe she was the unidentified victim, based on a resemblance to a facial reconstruction. Gerow was subsequently identified to be the girl in the picture and later confirmed to be the victim through DNA tests. The man who possessed her photograph is considered a person of interest and her murder remains unsolved. Marcia King (21), who had been nicknamed "Buckskin Girl" prior to her identification in 2018, was found in Troy, Ohio on 23 April 1981. She had been beaten and strangled to death. Mostafa Chamran (48) was an Iranian physicist, politician, commander and guerrilla fighter who was killed on 21 June 1981 in Dehlavieh, during the Iran–Iraq War. The mystery behind his murder remains largely unsolved. Raymond Nels Nelson (59) was Administrative Assistant to Senator Claiborne Pell and former bureau chief of The Providence Journal, Rhode Island. He was found bludgeoned to death with a typewriter in his Washington, D.C. apartment on 1 June 1981.D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Unsolved Murder Handbill, Raymond Nels Nelson , 27 November 2014 The Wonderland murders are four unsolved murders that occurred in Los Angeles on 1 July 1981. It is assumed that six people were targeted to be killed in the known drug house of the Wonderland Gang, five were present, and four of those five died from extensive blunt-force trauma injuries: Billy DeVerell, Ron Launius, Joy Miller and Barbara Richardson. Launius' wife, Susan Launius, survived the attack. The attack was allegedly masterminded by organized crime figure and nightclub owner Eddie Nash. He, his henchman Gregory DeWitt Diles, and porn star John Holmes were at various times arrested, tried, and acquitted for their involvement in the murders. Ken McElroy (47), long considered the "town bully" of Skidmore, Missouri, was shot dead while in the cab of his pickup truck on 10 July 1981. None of the 46 potential witnesses to the crime have ever come forward to identify a suspect. Vishal Mehrotra (8) was abducted from Putney, South London on 29 July 1981. Vishal's partial remains were discovered 25 February 1982, on an isolated farm in Sussex. His murder remains unsolved. Kazumi Miura (28), a Japanese citizen, was shot in the head by a sniper on 18 November 1981 while visiting Los Angeles with her husband Kazuyoshi Miura. She died in 1982 after spending a year in a coma. The sniper was never identified, while Kazuyoshi was acquitted in Japan of orchestrating the crime and died by suicide before he could stand trial in the United States. The Setiabudi 13 case refers to an unidentified male who was murdered, mutilated, and discovered dead on the sidewalk of Jalan Jenderal Sudirman, Setiabudi, South Jakarta on 23 November 1981. The case has now gone cold and his killer is unknown. Zoya Fyodorova (73) was a Russian film star who had an affair with American Navy captain Jackson Tate in 1945 and bore a child, Victoria Fyodorova, in January 1946. Having rejected the advances of NKVD police head Lavrentiy Beria, the affair was exposed resulting, initially, in a death sentence later reprieved to work camp imprisonment in Siberia; she was released after eight years. She was murdered in her Moscow apartment on 11 December 1981. The murder remains unsolved. Dana Bradley (14) disappeared while hitchhiking in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador on 14 December 1981. Her body was found four days later in a wooded area south of St. John's. An intense and highly publicized investigation followed, and in 1986 a man confessed to her murder, but later recanted. , the case remains open and unsolved.