The full list of every unsolved murder in the West Midlands since the 1940s, when dozens of killers went free

They are the tragic victims of crime who have gone without justice for years and even decades. More than 100 men, women and children were murdered in the West Midlands – and yet their killers have never been found.

The full list of unsolved murders, stretching back to the 1940s, has now been detailed as part of an exclusive freedom of information request from West Midlands Police. The force has shared the names, dates and locations behind the tragedies which for years have left detectives baffled and unable to bring justice to the victims and their loved ones.

In the latest ‘unsolved murder’ in March last year, a loving and devoted father, described as ‘larger than life’ by his family, was fatally assaulted in a pub in West Bromwich. Detectives are still hunting a ‘brothel killer’ who stabbed a man to death following an alleged robbery in Digbeth.

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The gunman behind the tragic shooting of Kasim Mohammed also remains on the run after a separate incident in the same decade. A further 16 victims are still without justice from the 2010s, including a son found dead in a disused factory in a “construction” and a gruesome murder in which an industrial-sized firework was pushed through a man’s letterbox.

Police at the time were hoping to break the community’s silence and solve the case in cold blood, but have yet to find the thugs. In another tragedy a few years ago, a man was stabbed to death in his flat in Handsworth; the reason for his killing has since remained a mystery.

And since the 1990s, detectives have been unable to find the killer behind one of the city’s most notorious murders, the brutal triple murder of the Smith family in Northfield. The bodies of Harold and Mary Smith and their paralyzed son, Harold Junior, were found in their home in December 1992. They had been bound and stabbed repeatedly before being killed.

Sadly, they are just a few of those on a long list of unsolved murders in Birmingham, the Black Country and Coventry over the past nine decades. Responding to the updated list from the force, West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster has now urged anyone with information to contact police “immediately”, amid ongoing work to solve each tragedy.