What it's like to work on cold cases | Hacker News Reader

What it's like to work on cold cases

nytimes.com

42 pointssamclemens62 comments

I have a lot of respect for good detectives. I really enjoyed "Homicide Hunter" - which is a retired detective's recollection of past murder cases. Who knows how much was myth vs fact, but I got the sense he kept good notes because he would speak to exacting detail about decades old cases.

One of my favorite episodes was his first homicide case. A gas station was robbed and the clerk was killed. No video, no prints, etc. However there was a necklace that was dropped. It had some kind of pattern, so he called every. single. jeweler in the area. He called a lot, and eventually got a hit and found his man.

It's this kind of diligence and dedication (plus technology) that can crack cases open, even cold ones. Like the article here, he found 4 untested hairs that cracked it open.

> I got the sense he kept good notes because he would speak to exacting detail about decades old cases.

Maybe good notes, but also maybe good staff writers.

> there was a necklace that was dropped.

How did he know that it was dropped by the killer and not some random customer?

>How did he know that it was dropped by the killer and not some random customer?

As any diligent investigator (not just of the criminal justice type) can tell you, he didn't, but it was something to dig deeper into and then hopefully find the next piece of information that it connects to. In this case that was just the identity of its buyer, but from there he could scrutinize that person to see if anything else about them lines up, or if they were just coincidentally there.

Usually, if you track someone down based on something very circumstantial, but they really were the guilty party, you'll eventually find other information to cement that connection.

It's not as if he would have found the owner of the necklace and arrested them right then.

https://archive.ph/pT0gz

This is why stats that purport a low clearance rate for murders in the US are misleading. Cases never expire until either someone is convicted or the perp can be presumed dead. The file is always open, someone is always investigating.

Just this morning, there was a story on CNN about a cold case hit and run from 1989 being solved because of DNA on a joint left in the stolen car.

It wasn't even solved because detectives were actively looking at it - they received an (incorrect) tip, and decided to just check out what else was in the case, and ended up sequencing some DNA left in the vehicle. I imagine there are hundreds of thousands of such cases out there like that.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/25/us/charlotte-nc-cold-case-sol...

If it takes over thirty years to clear a homicide case, that’s a failure by any reasonable standard.

...or a success for a serial killer.

i mention this becaues the golden state killer was a police officer _and_ serial killer, and took advantage of the delay to kill over a great span of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo

Almost all of these cases are being cleared because DNA got shoved into a large enough private database that practically everybody now coughs up a correlation.

This has very little to do with diligence and more with technology advancing.

And, while clearing murders is nice, wait until the equivalent RealPage gets hold of that database and starts discriminating based on your DNA.

It's only a failure if you imagine every murder can be solved.

Sometimes, there's just not enough available information to go on.

How would you solve the case if you knew there was a lady dead on the street, and then a few miles away there is an abandoned stolen car with a half smoked joint. No fingerprints.

Where do you go from there in 1989?

You’re not going to clear 100% of homicides but you should be clearing a reasonably high percentage of them within a reasonable span of time, and pointing out that sometimes you solve a 34 year old cold case is a red herring.

I doubt it would feel like a failure for the person caught and finally sentenced to years in prison after having their whole daily life upturned in a criminal trial. No matter how long they'd been free, they probably would have loved to continue enjoying their ordinary freedom, and suddenly losing it even decades after would probably have hurt much more than just a shrug of "Ah, well at least I only got caught now. cuff me gents".

What about all the other people he probably committed violence against in the decades that he was free? Would it feel like a failure to them?

Possibly it would, but criminal investigation is imperfect by default and can't just be compared to an ideal of justice done exactly right and swiftly. Instead it has to manage with the reality of its difficulty and a killer being imprisoned decades later, the families of his victims being able to confront him vs. never having known anything at all.

You can make whatever excuses you want about any individual case, but this discussion is about clearance rates, and it’s obviously preferable for a larger proportion of homicide cases to be cleared within a reasonable time span.

The moment you mandate fast clearance you get into a state where people game the system, which can have bad side effects in criminal justice. You would likely find that either the wrong person is charged more frequently or else cases are rubber stamped closed to keep number up.

Murder clearance rate in Czechia is between 93 and 100 per cent depending on the year, but it is likely easier to solve murders in a relatively small language community. Although we are part of the Schengen free movement area, which means that at least some murderers will try to escape.

Is the low clearance rate really misleading? Seem representative of reality.

Outlier amateur detective wins are commendable, but also emblematic of a problem.

Why aren't the real police revisiting these cases? Why are we arming them better and better against our own people instead of spending some money on actual cops to solve crimes?

Every time one of these is solved by amateurs, we should be asking why the system is failing.

Why are we arming them better and better against our own people instead of spending some money on actual cops to solve crimes?

The current party in power ran verbatim on a platform of "defund the police".

You say that as though this is a brand new problem and not something that's been an issue for many, many decades regardless of what party has majority control at the federal level.

That's hardly a supported policy you'd find in the Democratic party platform, or the position of the Biden administration. Don't confuse a few of the most left leaning members of the party with the whole. It's a big tent.

https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_fa5dd2d9-b...

Sigh...

Remove funding for the police to gather used and new military gear to use against the populace, while much more accurate - isn't as sticky...

Sticky thoughts win over accurate ones. Truth needs a proper wrapping now a-days to even get looked at.

How about this for a new phase:

"pay for: effective Detectives; not toys."

OR:

"detectives solves cases: military toys melt faces."

"Demilitarize the police" would certainly have been a better slogan than "defund the police".

It was more accurate. I've heard that around the same time defund was going around...

But humans don't select catch-phases and sound-bites by their truth value...

Sticky truths: that's what we need.

>> Remove funding for the police to gather used and new military gear to use against the populace

That's not what I remember. I remember calls in the most highly regarded news media to literally abolish the police.

Do you remember those?

I remember what the media was saying was different from what the leftists were saying. I remember the twisting of the most offensive viral take to garner views for the news outlets, sure...

Do you believe everything you see on TV?

That phrase was probably a bad choice of words; I believe the fuller intent was

"Let's fund initiatives which build our community, like teachers and school lunch so our kids aren't hungry. That's more important than funding police who come from outside our community and have a reputation for extortion and murder of our citizens instead of protecting us."

You may disagree with the read on the situation of the people involved, but I would be very surprised if you support the idea of you being taxed to support an armed force which was sent into your community and only ever acted in a hostile way towards you.

By the way, the DOJ seems also to feel that the Minneapolis Police was hostile to the citizens

Minneapolis Police Used Illegal, Abusive Practices for Years, DOJ Finds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36917349

Minneapolis Police Use Force Against Black People at 7 Times the Rate of Whites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23403891

At urging of Minneapolis police, EMS workers subdued dozens with ketamine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17328770

And the slogan comes as part of a larger discussion of what the role of police should be in society, see i.e.

Minneapolis City Council looking into disbanding police department https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23398910

> We can totally reimagine what public safety means, what skills we’re recruiting for, what tools we do and don’t need. We can invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution.

> We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon, or pulling out handcuffs.

> The whole world is watching, and we can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past, and create a compassionate, non-violent future. It will be hard. But so is managing a dysfunctional relationship with an unaccountable armed force in our city.

That phrase got so much traction precisely because it's a bad choice of words. It's easy to dismiss a movement if you latch onto the worst framing you can find, take it literally to the point of bad faith, and refuse to dig any deeper.

>We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon, or pulling out handcuffs.

In what world is trying to pay with a counterfeit bill "confusion over a grocery transaction?"

> a bad choice of words

I think you had ample chance to sell your ideas, and you lost:

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051617581/minneapolis-police...

It was probably a bad choice of words, but chosen for a reason. I'm guessing of course, but I think the people that picked those words knew what they were doing. They wanted to appeal to people who think the police do more harm than good.

This is the kind of cultural literacy that comes from getting your politics from morons on Twitter.

It’s not just the U.S..

Here in Germany, there are several multi million Euro fraud cases that have been going on for decades. They get picked up by the media every couple of years, with hidden camera footage and everything. But the authorities do nothing.

I suspect they are all overworked - police, judges, prosecutors. They are all in reactive mode, trying to reduce the pile of paper on their desk. And, presumably, plan their next holiday.

The days where a cop, judge or prosecutor identified as the function they render to society are over, I suspect. It’s work life balance all the way.

And they may have a point. The woman who solved the Golden State Killer case, didn’t she die quite young because of the stress? If you look into the abyss for too long, the abyss looks back into you.

To do good work means risking divorce, lowering your per hour wage, becoming a target for the bad guys, watching your lazier colleagues pass you by, and putting your health in jeopardy. This was seen as heroic in the 80s. Today it is seen as dumb, naïve and futile.

This is the exact same dilemma that you face in any other job. Working extremely hard and burning yourself out does nothing except cover up the problem that the function you are providing is under-resourced.

> The days where a cop, judge or prosecutor identified as the function they render to society are over, I suspect. It’s work life balance all the way.

This is terrifying and also true in many other industries, including software.

I'm really confused as to why it's bad we identify people by their preferences and the content of their character instead of by the role they play in our capitalist economy.

People not giving a shit about their jobs means their jobs don’t get done well - if at all.

We’re quite dependent on the fastidiousness and conscientiousness of our peers, at least if you want life to be pleasant. People don’t have the ability to contractually enforce and codify good work ethic (see: people just trying to define SLOs for machines).

Especially with “public servant” type jobs which the comment was referring to.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to go from "has a life outside their job" to "doesn't give a shit about their job".

I worked a decade in the public sector in Denmark and I think it’s sort of natural when MBAs enter and flood the work with pseudo work. A nurse went from maybe filling out paperwork a few hours a week to two full days a week. What was “fun” about that is that I worked on the data, and I may have been the only one to ever come hear 99% or it as it was only ever audited after someone did something bad. They didn’t even use the data for anything analytical because it tended to show just how bad their budget cuts were hurting the area and that the best way to improve quality was through more resources and less administration.

Add to this that most public servants make very little money and that nobody in the chain of command actually listens to the people on the floor… Well why would they care?

> The days where a cop, judge or prosecutor identified as the function they render to society are over, I suspect.

The are in fact people who take their jobs seriously today. Are there actual hard numbers on how the prevalence of this has changed over the long term?

> To do good work means risking divorce, lowering your per hour wage, becoming a target for the bad guys, watching your lazier colleagues pass you by, and putting your health in jeopardy.

It is in fact possible to do quality work without martyring yourself.

> This was seen as heroic in the 80s. Today it is seen as dumb, naïve and futile.

"Was seen"... by whom? Both now and then, you'll get different answers on whether it's a good thing depending on who you ask.

Yeah, I think the uncaring, untrying cop goes way back. I think it was some fatso that only eats donuts and drinks coffee. These critiques go way back. I think the force had a few of these guys in the break room; they'd laugh their ass off if you suggested it was a good idea to work hard.

Only difference is he would be smoking a cigarette. Or perhaps a cigar.

>The woman who solved the Golden State Killer case, didn’t she die quite young because of the stress?

She died of an accidental overdose exacerbated by an underlying and undiagnosed heart condition. She had some level of opioid addiction prior to her death.

This is such a sign of our times. It's pretty much just stupid to work hard.

The weird thing, to me, is that it should be much more fulfilling to do one thing well than to pretend to be doing ten things and doing them badly. The former is the attitude of the craftsman. The latter the attitude of a slave.

It is the truth. I've been thinking lately about how working in tech is literally almost the same conditions as slavery. Sure they let you have a car but that's just to drive in. Then you get a house over your head. Clothing. That's it.

A 401k is no solice for a life lived into chains. It wrenches my tears. Never. To. Be. Free... Never freedom.

There's not enough cops to handle crimes committed today, so why is it a question on why cold cases are just sitting there getting colder? How does the budget for that get approved when current cases aren't getting solved? It's really not a hard thing to understand when you compare it to software teams that get shuttered because managers are scared that it is not revenue positive.

Better armed police act as a deterrent though . I don't think these are mutually exclusive: police are better-armed, yet more funding for the FBI for investigating more complex crimes.

>>Better armed police act as a deterrent though

As a deterrent for what? US has some of the most well armed police forces in the world and that's not reflected in the crime rates at all(unless you believe that it's inverse corellation, then sure).

Detectives. You want more detectives. Cops do not solve crimes. They're the foot soldiers -- enforcers -- of domestic politics. Detectives have to get a college degree and actually know the law! At best, cops will cordon off a crime scene and protect it until detectives and CSI arrive.

Detectives are sworn law enforcement officers employed by a law enforcement agency such as a city police department, and in many places they are required to have prior experience as uniformed officers. They are cops.

This is purely by convention though. There really isn't anything that all that unique about being a street general police officer that would lend itself to being a detective. It's all survivorship bias because criminal detectives were all cops so of course they all say you have to be one first.

Reality is outside of criminal investigation you have plenty of professions and people who conduct the same thing. Everything from auditing, insurance fraud, to a financial analyst even actually does the same "thing" but just in different domains.

It's a great example with the problem with our system. Why do detectives need to be gun-toting paramilitary and uniformed employees backed by use of force? They don't. We could just as easily have unarmed, non uniformed detectives who solve cases and then issue arrest warrants for specialized uniformed police officers to conduct arrests.

Isn't the answer simple? Most cold cases have a very low probability of ever being solved. The rare exceptions make headlines, but I'd rather police dedicate finite resources to the hot cases with a better chance of getting solved. Those are also the ones where solving them actually helps protect public safety. Solving cold cases appeals to a more vague notion of justice, which is fine, but you're not likely to get robbed by the killer from a cold case in 1987.

There are real recent "Hot" cases that dont have resources to solve. No need to use resources on old ones that are more difficult.

The wins are Saliency Bias. You don't read about all the cases where the detective, either pro or amateur, spends days looking and comes up empty. The amateur doesn't have anyone breathing down their neck for results.

If you're the detective's boss, you have to tell them, at some point, "OK, let's spend our time where we can do some good." Because you have no assurance that the cold case is ever going to work out.

> there remain hundreds of thousands of unsolved homicides across the country

Wow.

If you want to be horrified, look up how many african american women go missing every year without a trace - it is truly insane.

https://naacp.org/resources/missing-african-american-women-a...

If you look at the stats for how disproportionately higher the murder rate is inside black communities in the U.S, this isn't as surprising.

Can you quote the statistics you are referencing and the implication you are making with them?

The source? Feel free to do a Google search for the FBI's Uniform crime statistics. They're very easy to find and very robustly segmented along demographic lines.

The implication? What implication should there be other than that homicide is much higher in these communities and that by extension it doesn't seem surprising that an abnormally large number of female residents of these communities might be victims of it too.

Oh, I’m very familiar with the statistics you’re referring to and how often they’re ripped without context and injected into arguments like these, often with a barely veiled racist tinge to it. I was just curious if you were brave enough to say what you’re actually trying to say - clearly no.

There’s no causal relationship between black on black homicides (especially in the fbi statistics you are allegedly referencing - those crimes would be solved and not related to missing persons) and missing black women and even taking your argument as generously as I possibly can, suggesting so is very victim blamey and a little gross. For your statement to be true you’d have to also allege that the same statistics you’re referencing (but won’t post) are actually incorrect and the violence rate is much higher within the black community than the “authoritative” source you won’t post, which kind of invalidates your entire point, if you even had a real one.

>often with a barely veiled racist tinge to it.

Please go ahead and explain what's racist about referring to very unambiguous homicide and violent crime numbers that show how high the level of black on black murder is in that community. We can debate its causes and underlying systemic issues broadly, but the actual murder rates are what they are compared to other demographics.

>There’s no causal relationship between black on black homicides (especially in the fbi statistics you are allegedly referencing - those crimes would be solved and not related to missing persons) and missing black women

I'd argue that there very much is. Generally, if a certain community has a high murder rate and the women of that community, who live within and also work within that community are disappearing at disproportionate rates, it's hard to reason for outside causes unless you have evidence pointing to them. Also, among solved disappearances caused by homicides or violence against black women, the perpetrators are also more often from within their own demographic. Are you really going to say that it's then insane to extrapolate similar tendencies for many of the still unsolved cases despite a majority of solved cases consistently showing the same demographic tendency for the perpetrators?

>suggesting so is very victim blamey and a little gross.

I'm not at all blaming victims and can't see how you'd come to that conclusion. Pointing out likelihoods for cause of disappearance isn't blaming the woman for having been the victim of that disappearance, and a reasoned argument shouldn't be subjected to schoolyard criticisms like "gross".

>For your statement to be true you’d have to also allege that the same statistics you’re referencing (but won’t post) are actually incorrect and the violence rate is much higher within the black community than the “authoritative” source you won’t post, which kind of invalidates your entire point, if you even had a real one.

This I literally just didn't understand. How would my statement being true invalidate the statistics i'm referring to, or my point? The FBI's stats about resolved cases can be true while at the same time, for the reasons I mentioned above, the unsolved cases can have a high likelihood towards a certain outcome.

Also, I didn't link the stats because it's not hard to find them, not for some obscure point of obfuscation. They're really easy to look up, right through 2 seconds of google and then directly to the FBI's own web pages.

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