Warming up cold murder cases

Jen Lawson

Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.

A murder case is considered cold when investigators have chased down every lead and ended up with nothing.

This week, a forensic anthropologist with a newly formed nonprofit cold case investigation team was at an international conference for homicide detectives at the Las Vegas Hilton, offering to help them warm up cases that had gone cold.

Max Houck, a former FBI scientist who said he helped identify victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, wants to make a dent in the 200,000 unsolved homicides that have been piling up across the country since 1960.

Along with about two dozen other scientists from around the country, Houck recently formed the Institute for Cold Case Evaluation through the West Virginia University business incubator program, where he now teaches forensic science. The ICCE will will offer science-based assistance to short-staffed police departments faced with mounting cold case loads.

"The law enforcement agencies are overburdened," Houck said. "They don't have the resources, manpower or funds. We want to give them an edge, a little jump start and help them over that obstacle they may need to solve the case."

Metro Homicide Lt. Tom Monahan said unsolved homicides in his jurisdiction are "in the hundreds" and date to the 1940s, but Metro may not need the help of Houck's institute because of the resources the large department already has.

To help with the workload, Sheriff Bill Young in June added a fourth squad, consisting of a sergeant and six detectives, to the homicide unit to allow investigators more time to spend on cases.

The additional manpower will "prevent a case from going cold in the first place," Monahan said during an interview Thursday at the homicide investigators conference. "The troops are thrilled by it."

Monahan said "the luxury of additional time" has allowed detectives to make significant progress in cases from 1982 and 1996 that had grown cold. He wasn't certain if his department would take advantage of ICCE.

He made a distinction between cold cases and old cases. A case is considered cold when all investigative leads have been pursued and exhausted.

Old cases are ones that have simply become dormant because investigators have been assigned to newer cases that need immediate attention. Old cases outnumber cold cases at Metro, Monahan said.

Some police departments have detectives who work full-time on cold cases, Houck said.

Metro has Dave Hatch, who retired from Metro in 1997 after 27 years. A homicide detective for 18 years, he works three days a week reviewing Metro's cold homicide cases.

Hatch will "look at a case with a fresh set of eyes and see if there are any investigative steps that have been overlooked," Monahan said.

He might re-interview key witnesses or evaluate biological evidence that the original investigators might not have realized was significant.

The ICCE doesn't seek to re-do police work, he said. Members of his team "will go through and triage the case and see what experts we need, what items we think will be important, what suggestions we can make."

Asked how police have reacted to an offer of help from a nonpolice investigator, Houck said: "Every officer that I talked to said, 'You are the scientist and we are the investigators.' We leave the investigating to them and give them the forensic support."

Since the focus of the team is forensic evidence, a case with little such evidence, such as a drive-by shooting, probably would be beyond the team's reach.

On the ICCE team are pathologists, entomologists, forensic DNA analysts, trace evidence analysts, forensic anthropologists, chemists and biologists. Houck is a forensic anthropologist who specializes in analyzing hair and fiber evidence.

A forensic meteorologist will be able to determine what the weather was like on a certain day. If a suspect says he was mowing the lawn and the forensic meteorologist finds it was raining that day, it could be a help to the case.

Houck compared the ICCE to the Philadelphia-based Vidoq Society, an exclusive group of experts that meet monthly to tackle cases at no charge. The ICCE is setting its bar higher, hoping to handle at least 10 cases a month.

Police departments will be charged $350 to $1,500 per case that the ICCE reviews, Houck said. He is hoping to apply for grants and secure private donations through the website www.coldcases.org.

The site will have message boards where investigators can swap stories and suggestions. It will also let the public search through cases.

The conference, which ran all week at the Hilton, yielded a lot of interest from homicide investigators from different parts of the world, Houck said.

"I talked to some international folks who are interested in putting together cold case services themselves," he said. "We had a lot of people offering suggestions and their services. ... We are very pleased."