About Cold Cases
Why do murders go unsolved? There are approximately 16,000 murders annually in the United States, with an average closure rate of 63% nationally. That means that every day in this country, 16 murders occur that will never be solved. Murders go unsolved for many reasons – lack of or uncooperative witnesses, lack of physical evidence behind, etc. No detective wants to leave a case unsolved, but despite their best efforts, some cases will just not close.
What does it mean when a case is closed? The law enforcement partners of the Violent Crimes Case Review Project (VCCRP) at the California State University, Fresno, follow the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) standards when it reports that a homicide case is "closed". It can get a bit confusing, but just because a case is marked "closed" does not mean that the investigation is finished.
According to the UCR, homicides can be closed one of two ways – by arrest, or by "exceptional" or "administrative" closure. Arrest means that a suspect was placed under arrest and charged by the police with the murder. Among the reasons that an "exceptional" or "administrative" closure may occur are that the individual suspected of the murder:
- Dies,
- Is incarcerated for a long period of time for another crime,
- Is found to have acted in self defense.
An additional category includes cases where an arrest has been made, but for some reason the charges against the defendant were dismissed without the defendant going to trial. While still considered "closed" by UCR standards, the charge can be re-brought if additional evidence is uncovered.
When does a case become a "cold case"? Typically, all cases are worked by the original case detective for a period of up to three (3) years. At that time, if all reasonable leads have been exhausted, the case is transferred to a Major Case or Cold Case Unit. This is not a hard and fast rule. If the original detective or their replacement has active leads, they may choose to keep the case until those leads are exhausted before allowing the case to be transferred.
How does the VCCRP interact with Major Case / Cold Case Units? Major Case / Cold Case Units are typically comprised of law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and forensic scientists. VCCRP personnel are specially trained forensic science and forensic behavioral science faculty and their graduate and undergraduate students. Students assist by helping to determine whether a case is open or closed, noting the status of all suspects, summarizing the case, preparing cases for entry into investigative databases, and assisting in the prioritization of cases with high solvability factors. One of their primary functions is to identify cases that may benefit from advances in forensic technology – specifically DNA testing.
What happens when a case is reviewed? The first thing the review team does is to determine the status of the case (open or closed). If the case is closed, VCCRP staff determine whether or not the case went to trial, the outcome of the trial, and the status of the suspect.
The case information is summarized and placed in a format to be entered into two separate databases. One is an internal case management database. The other is the National FBI Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) database. The ViCAP database collects detailed behavioral information about the crime and allows for complex link analysis and searches. The most important thing that ViCAP does is to allow analysts to link incoming clues to the cases.
Finally, the VCCRP team identifies cases that might benefit from advances in forensic technology, or have unresolved investigative leads. Those cases are passed along for additional review, and re-assignment where appropriate. In cases with forensic potential only, additional laboratory work may be requested and the case put on hold pending the outcome of those analyses.