So Many Questions
The biggest question that has been nagging at me lately is how hard to press law enforcement. A lot of what I deduce about how law enforcement operates is based on what I see on television. I have to say that upfront. On many a show, I’ve heard it said by law enforcement officers in some […]
On the Matter of Bringing a Civil Suit
I’m in a phase right now in which I’m feeling pretty hopeless about ever getting any movement on Patty Vance’s case. And by movement I mean someone getting charged with the crime of her murder. At some point I thought maybe a civil trial was the answer, but now I’m losing confidence in that idea. […]
The Dedicated Cold Case Unit
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any information on when the first cold case department was formed in the US. This model of a dedicated unit devoted to handling only cases that are anywhere from a year to many years old is relatively new. Criminologists estimate that at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved […]
The Squeaky Wheel
I thought I’d write about the role of persistence in dealing with law enforcement. I recently got ahold of the main detective working on Patty Vance’s case, Detective Daniel Cunningham. I’d reached out to him a month after we last spoke a little over a year ago now. I never got a response to my […]
The Circumstantial Case
“The evidence is too weak. Their whole thing is that they need something solid. There’s nothing solid, like a smoking gun that directly connects him to her at the time that she died. That’s the problem,” Detective Daniel Cunningham said during our conversation back in August about the progress of Patricia Vance’s case. What […]
THE PROBLEMS WITH SOLVING COLD CASES
The average homicide clearance rate — cases solved by police departments compared with the number of known homicides — which approached 90 percent in 1960 is now a third less, 61 percent. First and foremost, the reason why cold cases are so difficult to solve is that witnesses and suspects die or become incapacitated due […]
“I Am Victim”
On a recent Saturday night, perched over a glass of ale in a local brewery, I shared with a friend an idea I had for a true crime television show. “I’d pitch it to Investigation Discovery,” I said. We’d already established that we were both true crime television junkies, so I knew this would pique […]
STREET SAFE
I started volunteering at an organization called “Street Safe New Mexico” a couple weeks ago. I think that I needed to channel my energy into something. I think because I feel so helpless to do anything to help further the solving of Patty’s cold case, I picked volunteering as some sort of compensation. Wednesday night we […]
TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE NON-SENSICAL
When I went back over the transcript of my conversation with Detective Daniel Cunningham, the current detective on Patty Vance’s case, I felt as if I shared too much. “What’s your interest in this case?” he asked. What came out was a flood of reasons. “Honestly,” I began, a clear indicator that I am […]
DNA Samples in California Database Shrink after Prop 47
Only a very small percentage of criminal cases are solved utilizing DNA technology — cold cases often present a unique set of problems that make it exponentially more difficult. Still, even if there are only a few cases that get resolved using DNA, that seems justification enough for maintaining the largest possible pool of DNA […]