Selection bias is a cheap canned answer, but it doesn't make any sense here. Sensational unsolved crimes make the news. The public hearing about crimes isn't conditional on those crimes being solves. Arguably some of the most enduringly notorious crimes are the ones that go unsolved.

The Zodiac Killer; never been caught. "D.B. Cooper", never caught. The presumed murder of Jimmy Hoffa, unsolved.

I happen to know somebody who was involved in the investigation of highly professional heist. The bank wanted to keep it quiet, and I can't find much other than this one article about the incident. I was gonna call it movie-worthy, but it's not, because there were no salacious details, no close calls, just in&out and no funny business.

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19980804&slug...

The best crimes do not look like crimes. The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'. Such cases fade fast.

> The best crimes do not look like crimes.

Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes.

> The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'.

They do, in all the cases I listed they've asked the public for help for years. Certainly they don't do that for crimes they don't know occurred, but there is no shortage of known crimes that are very publicly unsolved.

For that matter, there are also a whole lot of missing person bulletins soliciting information from the public. Many of them might be murder victims, but it isn't known whether they are really alive or dead, let alone murdered. The public is nonetheless asked for information.

> Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes.

That's certainly the nice way to put it -

"If you're murdered in America, there's a 1 in 3 chance that the police won't identify your killer. To use the FBI's terminology, the national "clearance rate" for homicide today is 64.1 percent. Fifty years ago, it was more than 90 percent." ... "Criminologists estimate that at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved since the 1960s"

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-...

Yes, police are pretty good at solving "the spouse did it" crimes, the most obvious sort. When the victims were chosen randomly, the clearance rate becomes abysmal. They're also bad at solving crimes when the victims come from the marginalized fringes of society. Jack the Ripper is a famous unsolved case of a serial killer who targeted prostitutes more than a century ago. Modern examples include the Long Island killer, the Eastbound Strangler, and plenty more.

When the existence of such a serial killer is recognized, it tends to make the news at least regionally. Sometimes they become internationally famous for many years. But to my point, the public hearing about it is not contingent on the culprit being caught. If anything, the ones who are caught fast and easy tend to make the least amount of news. You can 'juice' unsolved crimes for stories a century after the fact, but stories that follow the "husband did it and we caught him" format tend to disappear from the news after the culprit has been sentenced.

Except for when the husband didn't do it after being convicted, where it turns out the wife was having an affair with a golf pro, and someone comes in and kills them both. I bet that one would even lend itself into making a great movie.

What, would you have an entire movie with the husband sitting in prison slowly whittling away the time with a rock hammer? Never would get funded.

Cast Harrison Ford as the wrongfully accused husband. Have him escape after his bus to the prison crashes, then have Tommy Lee Jones as a US Marshal chase Ford down while Ford is trying to prove his innocence.

Might just make for a blockbuster movie.

Still shocking to me that nobody looks at the life insurance broker who knows that the spouse would be vulnerable to a sure conviction if the other spouse was found dead within the next few months after opening the policy

What is the broker’s motive?

for the lulz?

fbi says there are over 2,000 serial killers free in the US

we dont know nearly enough of them to know motivations or even assume thats a prerequisite

A random person doing it for the lulz is already likely to get away with it, at least for a while. No need to do that much prep.

Clearance rate for rape: 34.5% (65.5% unsolved)

Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

The Dutch police has a cold case team, yes. For cold cases ( there is even a word for it ) which have not seen progress or public attention for year, some even decades.

I think most police forces have one. A decade might mean there's new tech that can move the case forward or the criminal got caught for something else and it's just a matter of connecting the cases.

Huh? Big unsolved crimes receive unending fame.

This is not always the case... the DoJ reminds me of a sales organization. Crimes are sales leads. Publicized leads are usually very close to being closed(solved).

That doesn't always work though - the crime may be something the public is aware of, and then the pressure to "close" the lead is even greater. There are numerous "big" crimes that the public has no awareness of though.

This is somewhat pessimistic..

If the case is high profile enough, they will _always_ find someone to find guilty.

The Zodiac Killer and D. B. Cooper are notable exceptions. And there are probably a bunch more.

It seems statistically unavoidable that there are always going to be some big cases that go unsolved. It'll probably become less and less common - especially since it seems inevitable that nearly all DNA will eventually be traceable via genetic genealogy databases - but some crimes just won't result in any DNA or other significant evidence being left.

The trick is to make sure no one even knows the crime was committed.

Or to make the crime legal by paying politicians

D.B. Cooper

If Harvey got $3 million in cash and gotten away, or just not gotten caught. We would have heard about it.

Unsolved Mysteries type shows and news stories would be all over that sort of thing.

His name is John Birges Sr., not Harvey.

He was such a criminal mastermind he managed to frame the casino for its own bombing.

and on FBI wanted lists too.