Cold Case Investigations

Most homicide investigators consider the first 72 hours the most crucial for developing the leads necessary to solve a case. An investigation that lacks viable leads, cooperative witnesses, or physical evidence may be stalled indefinitely. With passing time, these unsolved cases become “cold.” Departmental budget constraints, personnel changes, and the soaring homicide rate have all contributed to the growing number of unsolved cases. Specialized cold case squads have become a popular option for many police departments and prosecutors' offices overwhelmed by large numbers of unsolved cases. Reallocation of resources, focused on the review of these cold files, and advancements in computer technology and DNA analysis have made the resolution of some cold cases possible.

The homicide rate progressively increased in the United States every year from 1960 through the mid-1990s; the greatest escalation occurred between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Overburdened detectives, forced to handle multiple ongoing investigations while still responding to new crime scenes, could not conduct the necessary investigative follow-up. Budget restraints and the retirement and transfer of personnel also contributed to the increased caseload for detectives, as well as the reliance on less experienced officers to work new or ongoing cases. Crime labs and medical examiners' offices also felt the burden of this growing caseload, and a backlog of evidence analyses led to delayed reporting to the homicide investigators.

The cases most likely to become cold are gang-and drug-related deaths; deaths of immigrants, transients, and the homeless; and cases where the victim is unidentified. Traditionally, one of the most important investigative tactics is uncovering the relationship between killer and victim to establish a motive. However, many of these unsolved cases either involved minor arguments, often drug-or gang-related, that escalated to violence, or resulted from seemingly random attacks in which the killer had no known previous relationship with the victim. Traditional investigative approaches, focused on uncovering motive, proved ineffective in solving these seemingly motiveless homicides; it was increasingly difficult to establish the relationship between victim and perpetrator. Particularly in gang-and drug-related crimes, killers and witnesses themselves were killed or incarcerated for other crimes before they could be identified and interviewed. Other witnesses had questionable credibility or were unwilling to come forward with evidence. As a result, while the homicide rate increased, the homicide clearance rate across the nation dropped sharply.

Cold case squads were created specifically to alleviate the backlog of unsolved cases. Most were formed when the murder rate began to decline in the late 1990s, when departments could reallocate resources to begin investigating cold files. The staffing and setup of a cold case investigative unit varies based on municipality and departmental resources. A squad can be a single full-time investigator, or multiple investigators working either part-or full-time; some squads enlist retired homicide detectives on a volunteer basis. Squads can become established departments or act as ad hoc squads assigned to high-profile cases. The squads are often housed within a police agency, but can also be [Page 70]established in prosecutors' offices. Often, officers working cold cases are not assigned shift rotations and do not respond to fresh homicide crime scenes. In some cases, the absence of an established squad does not dissuade many tireless officers, motivated by particular cases that haunt them, from continuing to work on cold cases. Many squads use outside resources and expertise, including collaborating with the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI. In some jurisdictions, such as Washington, DC, FBI agents are actually assigned to the cold case squad. The U.S. attorney for Washington, DC, also assigns a full-time prosecutor who handles only the cases generated by the cold case squad.

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