For unsolved crimes, the police can keep a case open as long as they like.

ECONOMIST: Freedom of information

The money could be better spent investigating unsolved crimes, backers of the measure say.

BBC: California to vote on abolishing death penalty

The Unresolved Homicide Database now contains details of 93 unsolved crimes dating back as far as 1942.

BBC: Malcolm Webster

Investigators announced Saturday that they were looking into whether Garrido may have been behind other unsolved crimes.

CNN: Kidnap victim's daughters' lives seemed normal, friend says

The case remained one of the city's great unsolved crimes, until in 1993, police found four men who admitted that a man named Kenneth Hansen had confessed to the murders.

CNN: Solving the cold case: Time, DNA and ingenuity can help

Who ordered the murder remains one of Haiti's great unsolved crimes, and the mystery became the basis of the 2003 documentary, The Agronomist, by the Oscar-winning US film director Jonathan Demme.

BBC: Haiti crowds defy ban to 'protect' ex-President Aristide

The judiciary, in particular, became a tool of the government, used for political purposes even as the crime rates spiraled, homicide rates reached unprecedented levels and most crimes went unsolved.

CNN: Chavez empowered the poor, divided a nation

In April, Fitzgerald indicted 14 reputed mobsters for crimes including 18 previously unsolved murders dating back to 1970 in one of Chicago's biggest ever mob busts.

NPR: Fitzgerald Leads Way on Plame Case

In fact, the vast majority of killings and other crimes in Cambodia, political and otherwise, go unsolved - even when photographs of public lynchings are regularly published in newspapers.

CNN: Seeking Justice

Experts say that all too often when crimes are committed against people of colour the cases remain unsolved.

BBC: Magazine