Seven grisly murders across Courier Country dating as far back as 1866 remain unsolved, police have revealed.
Unresolved homicides or murders always remain open and become active again if any new evidence is made known to police.
The figures were released following a Freedom of Information request on unsolved murders in the former Tayside, Fife and Central divisions.
Only murders from 1960 onwards are held on the central database but Police Scotland gave details of two from before the First World War.
They were the murders of Janet Henderson at a farm in Forgandenny near Perth in 1866 see our special look at an archive report here and Jean Milne, whose body was found in a house in Broughty Ferry in 1912.
Wealthy and enigmatic, Miss Milne led a flamboyant lifestyle centred on her mansion, Elmgrove House, at the corner of Strathern and Grove Roads.
Her brutal murder she was struck on the head with a poker and attacked with a carving fork shocked the Broughty Ferry community.
Although robbery was initially suspected, many of the wealthy spinster’s valuables remained untouched.
There was no sign of forced entry, a teapot and a half-eaten pie sat on a table and a cigar stub was in the fireplace, indicating she may have received a visitor.
It seems Miss Milne led something of a double life. On one hand, she was a church-going spinster who was often heard singing hymns while playing her pipe organ. On the other hand, she regularly travelled widely to meet young men and often took them home.
She boasted to friends of “adventures” with men while on regular visits to London.
When a £100 reward was offered, the floodgates opened and dozens of “witnesses” came forward to assert that Miss Milne had been enjoying the attentions of at least one handsome stranger.
When police were called to arrest a man for failing to pay a restaurant bill in London, the finger of suspicion began to point to Charles Warner from Toronto.
The detectives, who believed he could have been a former lover of the spinster, were particularly suspicious because he had no collar or cuffs on his shirt perhaps a sign that they had been removed and destroyed because of blood-staining.
Mr Warner protested he had never been to Scotland in his life and that his avoidance of the restaurant bill in Tonbridge had been prompted merely by hungry desperation after he had miscalculated his budget on a tour of France, Holland and Belgium. He said he had been in Antwerp when the murder took place.
Mr Warner was released without charge and went on to serve in the Canadian Army during the First World War.
Police Scotland said four murders remain undetected in the legacy Tayside division, two in Forth Valley and one in Fife.