Recent innovative technology has revolutionized the way law enforcement investigates cold cases, leading to outages on dozens of previously cold cases in 2022 alone.
While not all break-ins have resulted in arrests yet, police have been able to use modern DNA forensics technology and genetic genealogy to link evidence from crime scenes to a certain person or group.
With each advance, researchers have come one step closer to finding answers and, in turn, a resolution.
Here’s a look at some of the top cold cases resolved in 2022.
NEBRASKA MAN IDENTIFIED AS MINNESOTA COLD CASE MURDER VICTIM
MELISSA HIGHSMITH
The real Melissa Highsmith along with a colorized photographic illustration of what she was believed to look like from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
(NCMEC/Highsmith family Facebook page)
The search for Melissa Highsmith had a rare happy ending.
Highsmith was just 21 months old when she was kidnapped by a woman pretending to be a babysitter more than half a century ago. The woman took it from her home in Fort Worth, Texas, in August 1971.
According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Highsmith family had just moved to the Fort Worth area, and Melissa’s mother placed an ad in the local newspaper looking for a babysitter.
Melissa Highsmith’s family provided this photo of her as a baby. Highsmith disappeared from Fort Worth, Texas on August 23, 1971, when she was only 21 months old.
(Provided by the family to Fox News Digital)
“A woman responded to the ad and arranged to meet her at the restaurant where she worked, but she never showed up,” NCMEC said. “The nanny called the mother later and told her that she really wanted the job, that she had a nice big yard and that she also looked after other children.”
Highsmith’s mother gave him the job. On August 23, 1971, the woman picked up Melissa from her mother’s apartment, where a roommate had been babysitting the child while her mother was at work.
The family did not see Melissa for decades, until November.
Missing Melissa Highsmith’s mother poses next to a composite sketch of her daughter’s alleged kidnapper in a Fort Worth Star Telegram article.
(Jeff Highsmith)
Jeff Highsmith, Melissa’s younger brother, said his family had been tested through the genealogy service 23andMe and received the results on November 22 showing there was a match to Melissa’s children.
FOUND: MELISSA HIGHSMITH’S FAMILY ‘OVERJOY’ AFTER REUNITED WITH HER KIDNAPPED SISTER IN 1971
“One of our sisters called her daughter, the youngest, and her daughter took us to her mother,” Jeff Highsmith, who had never met his older sister, told Fox News Digital.
Missing Melissa Highsmith reunited with her family
(Highsmith Family Facebook Page)
The family met Melissa, now known as Melanie, in Texas on Thanksgiving night and learned that she had grown up just minutes from where they took her.
“When I looked at her, I knew. I knew,” Jeff Highsmith said.
‘KID IN THE BOX’
“Boy in the Box” identified as 4-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
(The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children)
More than 65 years after a young boy was found brutally beaten to death, wrapped in a blanket and abandoned in a wooded area of Philadelphia, the little boy, nicknamed the “Boy in the Box,” was identified earlier this month. .
The remains of four-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli were discovered inside a box and abandoned in the Fox Chase neighborhood of Philadelphia on February 25, 1957. In announcing his identity, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said that Joseph had “experienced horrors that no one, no one should ever be subjected to.”
PHILADELPHIA ‘BOY IN THE BOX’ IDENTIFIED 65 YEARS AFTER BODY FOUND BEATEN, WRAPPED IN BLANKET
While his identity was a big break in the case, police are still working to determine who killed Joseph and why.
Police said Joseph’s parents had since died, and no one claimed the boy or reported him missing at the time his remains were discovered.
‘TORSO KILLER’
Richard Cottingham and the victim Diane Cusick.
(Nassau County District Attorney’s Office)
Richard Cottingham, nicknamed the “Torso Killer” or the “Times Square Killer,” allegedly admitted in December to killing five women on Long Island, New York, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
NYC ‘TORSO KILLER’ PLEADS GUILTY TO THE 1968 MURDER OF LONG ISLAND WOMAN DIANE CUSICK, ADMITS TO KILLING 4 OTHERS
Cottingham, now 73, has said he has killed up to 100 people in New Jersey and New York and is already serving life in prison for the 1960 murders of several women.
Richard Cottingham makes a remote appearance in court in Mineola, New York on December 5, 2022. The serial killer known as the “Torso Killer” admitted to killing a 23-year-old woman outside a Long Island shopping mall. in 1968 and four other women decades ago.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Cottingham was known to approach his victims in shopping mall parking lots and accuse them of shoplifting while impersonating a security guard.
Most recently, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to another 25 years to life in prison for the rape and violent murder of Diane Cusick.
Cusick’s parents reported her missing after the 23-year-old never returned home from a trip to the Green Acres mall. The young mother’s own father and dance instructor discovered her remains, severely beaten, taped and sexually assaulted, in his vehicle parked outside the mall.
Brittany Drexel
Raymond Moody was sentenced to life in prison on October 19 for the 2009 rape and murder of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
(Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office/Associated Press)
The man behind the kidnapping, rape and death of upstate New York teenager Brittanee Drexel pleaded guilty in October to a case that went cold after the 17-year-old disappeared over spring break. of 2009.
Raymond Moody, now 62, pleaded guilty during a hearing on October 19, 2022 in Georgetown, South Carolina.
NEW YORK TEEN BRITTANEE DREXEL SENT CREEPY MESSAGES TO HER BOYFRIEND BEFORE DISAPPEARANCE AND DEATH: REPORT
Originally from Rochester, New York, Drexel was spending her spring break in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and was last seen walking from hotel to hotel.
Raymond Moody, 62, pleaded guilty on October 19, 2022 in Georgetown, South Carolina, to raping and killing 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in 2009.
(Jason Lee/The Sun News via AP)
Her body was located more than 13 years later, in May of this year, about 35 miles from where she disappeared, authorities said. Investigators determined that Drexel was strangled.
REMAINS OF NY TEEN BRITTANEE DREXEL FOUND 13 YEARS AFTER DISAPPEARING IN SOUTH CAROLINA, SUSPECT CHARGED
Her mother, Dawn, called the discovery of Brittanee’s remains “the start of a new chapter.”
“This is truly a mother’s worst nightmare,” she said. “I am mourning my beautiful daughter Brittanee as I have for the past 13 years.”
‘LITTLE MISS NOBODY’
An image of “Little Miss Nobody,” a girl discovered in a remote Arizona desert more than 60 years ago.
(Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office)
The body of a girl tragically known as “Little Miss Nobody” was identified in February after remaining a mystery for more than 60 years.
REMAINS OF ‘LITTLE MISS NOBODY’ IDENTIFIED AS 4-YEAR-OLD GIRL FROM NEW MEXICO, KIDNAPPED IN 1960 AND FOUND IN ARIZONA DESERT
The partially decomposed body of four-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos was found more than 500 miles from her New Mexico home on July 31, 1960. DNA technology was credited with solving the case.
Ten days before the discovery of her remains, little Sharon was kidnapped by two people who had allegedly been harassing her.
An undated image of Sharon Gallegos.
(Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office)
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children described how Sharon was playing with her cousins behind her grandmother’s house in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 21, 1960, when she was abducted.
The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said witnesses reported a man, woman and child approached Sharon in a dark green sedan. The woman allegedly offered her clothes and candy, but she refused, at which point she was forced into the vehicle.
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His death was later ruled a homicide, although the cause was not determined. Sharon’s parents died before they could learn the fate of her daughter.
Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin, Danielle Wallace, Pilar Arias and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
