Pick a Day

Music History Events: Unsolved

April 17, 2006 A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called "Love Is The Truth" hits YouTube, then quickly goes away.More

March 9, 1997 Beloved New York rapper Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) is gunned down in Los Angeles streets just six months after his rival Tupac Shakur met the same fate.More

September 13, 1996 Tupac Shakur, age 25, dies six days after being shot while riding in a car driven by his label boss, Suge Knight. No arrests are made in the case.

September 7, 1996 Rap star Tupac Shakur is shot five times in a drive-by following a boxing match in Las Vegas. He dies six days later at age 25.More

May 17, 1987 Tom Petty's home in Encino, California, burns to the ground. Petty and his family escape unharmed, but are traumatized by the blaze, which is determined to be arson. The perpetrator is never caught.More

July 8, 1947 New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region." In the coming decades, extraterrestrials and flying saucers invade several songs, including David Bowie's "Starman," Megadeth's "Hangar 18," and Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien."More

May 1, 2006 Rapper Big Hawk (of Screwed Up Click) dies at age 36 when he's shot by an unidentified assailant outside of a friend's house in Houston, Texas.

May 11, 2004 John Whitehead (of the R&B duo McFadden & Whitehead), age 55, is murdered outside of his Philadelphia home when he's shot while fixing his car. The crime, thought to be a tragic case of mistaken identity, remains unsolved.

September 25, 2003 Indie rocker Matthew Jay dies at age 24 from an unexplained fall from a London apartment building.

September 20, 2003 Fire destroys a lodge on Chuck Berry's Wentzville, Missouri, estate (arson is the cause, but no one is ever arrested for the crime).

October 30, 2002 Jason Mizell aka Jam Master Jay (of Run-DMC), age 37, is shot and killed at a recording studio in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York. Although authorities suspect convicted drug dealer Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, a friend of Murder Inc. founders Irv and Chris Gotti, of the crime along with accomplice Randy "Stretch" Walker, they are not convicted and the murder remains unsolved.

February 26, 1990 Cornell Gunter, former lead tenor for The Coasters, is murdered in Las Vegas, Nevada, at age 53. Gunter, who was in the midst of making a comeback, was shot in his car by an unknown assassin.

July 18, 1966 Bobby Fuller (of The Bobby Fuller Four) is found dead, soaked in gasoline, in his automobile outside of his apartment in Hollywood, California. The details of the 23-year-old singer's death are murky - it's unclear whether it was a murder, suicide, or accident - but the official cause of death is reported as asphyxia due to inhalation of gasoline.

December 15, 1944 Glenn Miller, a world-famous bandleader who joined the Army in 1942 and has been entertaining troops with his Army Air Force Band, vanishes when the plane taking him from England to Paris disappears over the English Channel. The plane is never found; Miller, age 40, is presumed dead.