I was going to pull out a few good parts, but this article really does need to be read in its entirety.

The problems they highlight are important. What are the chances you'll get a DNA match to an innocent person? It's not what you think. From the article: "In every cold hit case, the panels [a National Research Council panel and an FBI panel] advised, police and prosecutors should multiply the Random Match Probability (1 in 1.1 million in Puckett's case) [Puckett was the defendant in the case discussed in the article] by the number of profiles in the database (338,000). That's the same as dividing 1.1 million by 338,000.

"For Puckett, the result was dramatic: a 1-in-3 chance that the search would link an innocent person to the crime."

Fortunately, the problems are getting attention. Again, from the article, " ... the California Supreme Court is weighing the statistical and other concerns raised by cold hit cases -- the highest court yet to consider them. People vs. Nelson, which involves the 1976 murder of a college student in Sacramento, is scheduled for oral arguments Thursday.

"It could influence how such cases are tried across the country and undermine some convictions in California."

The picture is of Diana Sylvester, a 22 year old San Francisco nurse who was raped and murdered in 1972. Puckett was being tried for her murder based on a partial match of his DNA to semen that was found in Sylvester's mouth.

(That reminds me, I meant to post something about the lack of statistics for fingerprint matches. I have to check to see if I got to that yet.)

Anyway, good job Jason Felch and Maura Dolan.

"The state police publicized a description of what the dead man might have looked like. Dozens answered, hoping and not hoping that their father, husband, brother, son had been found. But nothing panned out. So Dr. Craig applied clay to skull to create a facial reconstruction for the public’s consideration; again, nothing. She and the other investigators moved on to other cases just as sad.

They did not know that 1,250 miles away, in the South Texas town of Freer, a distraught mother had reported her 34-year-old son missing.

The bones were placed in a small plastic tub labeled 'Henry Co. Doe' and tucked into an evidence room used to store books, Christmas decorations and the bones of Kentucky’s unidentified dead going back 30 years. Here was a tub labeled 'River Legs'; there, a bag labeled 'Shelby County Babies.'"

The photograph, by Angel Franco, is from the Times article. It's a picture of Dr. Emily Craig, the forensic anthropologist who together with The Doe Network, was able to figure out the identify of the 1998 murder victim.

"Gertrude Jones disappeared March 10, 1964 after a fight with her husband, longshoreman Bruce B. Jones, said Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes.

Her headless and handless remains were discovered in February by workers expanding the nearby Fernwood Cemetery, which backs up to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area on Tennessee Valley Road.

A spine protruding from her tattered wool sweater led to the macabre find. She was buried less than 10 inches below the surface a few streets away from her home, Holmes said."

The husband is suspect of course, but he died in 1987.

Full piece here.

You can view the YouTube video here.

From George Pelecanos, writer and producer for The Wire: Cop in the Hood is a thoughtful, highly entertaining record of a police officer's year spent patrolling one of the country's toughest urban districts, delivered by Moskos, who wore the uniform. For those who are interested in crime and how things work, and for readers seeking a reasoned look at the war on drugs and its implications, this is the handbook.

I went down to Baltimore to interview the Chief of Police while I was doing research for my book, and I have to say, in many ways it looked like being a cop in Baltimore was a tougher job than being a cop in New York. (I'm sorry if this contributes to Baltimore's bad image, something Moskos addresses on his blog.)

For more about this book and Moskos, click here for his blog. There's a chapter from his book, and some very interesting daily commentary about current events relating to crime.

The article quotes a former federal prosecutor who says old DNA is "a defense lawyer's playground," and it's going to be a difficult case to win. I don't really get that. I imagine the biggest point the defense attorney will make is that the evidence was improperly handled and contaminated with other people's DNA. But even if there is other DNA present, say, the DNA of the people who work at the evidence storage facility, the defense attorney still has to explain how his client's DNA got into the victim's underwear.

The accused killer, Philip Thompson, is in jail already on a burglary charge. From the article: "Thompson was convicted of an assault about the same time as the killing. He was found not guilty of rape the year before."

Betty Marie Cloer had a five year old son, so he'd be 41 now.

(The DNA image is from www.breitbart.com.)

Another article followed on February 4th. The comments section of both articles are worth reading.

(The picture is of Cpl. Duwana Pelton from the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Orlando and appears in the first article.)

I thought I had looked into devices like this and found a brief mention in my cold case book: "a handheld device now exists that can analyze DNA on the spot at crime scenes. However, 'There are problems with its integration and reliability with respect to meeting government standards for public forensic DNA laboratories,' Dr. Robert Shaler points out." Dr. Shaler was the head of the Forensic Biology Office and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner when my book came out.

So, I gather they're still working on it. The picture is of an early prototype of a handheld DNA analyzer developed by the Lawrence Livermore lab, that I got from a 2002 issue of Mechanical Engineering. There's no doubt that this would be a valuable device.

Who Determines the Cause and Manner of Death?

It's different from state to state, but basically, the medical examiner determines the cause and manner of death. Cause is a medical distinction, ie, blunt force trauma or strangulation. Manner is a legal one, like homicide or suicide or accidental, and this is what people typically dispute.

Step 1

If you are a family member, you are entitled to all the autopsy records from the medical examiner. The first step would be to get the records and discuss the decision with the medical examiner (or coroner) who made it.

Step 2

If you are not happy after your discussion with the medical examiner, your next best option is to hire an independent pathologist. I've never hired a pathologist myself, so I don't know how much they cost.

This organization should be able to direct you to pathologists in your area: The American Academy of Forensic Science.

The patholgist will look over the autopsy report and make his or her own determination. It's like going to another doctor for a second opinion. Presumably the pathologist will also know the ins and outs of the politics and procedures in your city/state and can advise you on how to proceed from there.

The Vidocq Society

If money is an issue, there's The Vidocq Society, a voluntary organization that looks into unsolved murders. But I don't know how helpful they will be for cases that have not yet been classified as homicides, and there's also the issue of workload. Unfortunately there are untold thousands of unsolved homicides in this country.

But you can go to this page for their guidelines.

The picture is from this Boston Globe article about the drop in crime in Boston and the fact that they're starting a cold case unit. I thought they already had one! And one of the oldest in the country (but not the oldest, which is in Miami). I also read an article about a new cold case unit in Detroit and I thought they already had one there too.

Are we still under 500 murders for the year so far? Yay us for not killing each other so much this year! But for those who have lost people this year, I'm sorry they won't be with you this holiday. Here is a bit from a poem called The Song of Shadows by Walter de la Mare:

Ghosts linger in the darkening air,
Hearken at the open door;
Music hath called them, dreaming,
Home once more.

But there is so much there, old and new, the the place is worth many visits. I've always been drawn to anything about Hart Island, the location of New York's Potter's Field, and the amount of material about Hart Island on their website it staggering. An index of it is here.

I spent a summer calling police departments all over the country and asking over and over, "Do you have a cold case squad?" What I heard more than anything else was, "No," or, "We did, but then we didn't have the money to continue it." I put together a list of the relatively small number of departments that said, "yes," and to the best of my abilities keep this list up-to-date to this day.

Things have changed since that summer. Every day there are articles in newspapers all over the country about cold case work being conducted all the time. Even better, are developements like the ones outlined in this article by A. J. Flick today in the Tucson Citizen.

Input from survivors aim of cold-case forum

The victims' subcommittee of the Arizona Legislature's Cold Case Task Force will hold a public hearing from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Monday at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, 101 N. Stone Ave.

The task force was created to review law-enforcement procedures for investigating and preserving evidence in cold-case homicides. The committee is particularly interested in hearing how cold-case homicides have affected victims' survivors, how and whether law-enforcement agencies have helped victims' survivors and recommendations.

Subcommittee members include Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall; subcommittee chairwoman Beckie Miller, chapter leader of Parents of Murdered Children for Maricopa County; Gila County Attorney Daisy Flores; task force chairman Rick Romley, former Maricopa County attorney; Tony Vidale of the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission and Victim Services Program manager; and victims representative Mike Durham.

For more information, call Homicide Survivors at 740-5729, Miller at 602-254-8818 or Romley at 602-542-7744.

* * * * *

The downward spiral of cold case investigation seems to be turning around, and the number of squads appear to be increasing. The picture above is of Wendy Lou Stark who was murdered in Kensington, MD on April 9, 1982. It came from the website Montgomery County Police Cold Case Squad. Thank you Montgomery County Police Cold Case Squad, and everyone else who works to help the families of murder victims. As can be seen from the above list of committee members in Tuscon, a wide array of professionals contribute to a homicide investigation, so thank you all and I'm glad to see your numbers increasing (I'm sad for the need, of course).

At the same time I was studying unsolved murder in New York overall and looking at the past 100 years, although focusing on 1985 forward because that's what the NYPD had so far input into their database. I was constantly looking for patterns. At the time, the software was severely limited, this was 2001 - 2003. Only the most basic searches were allowed, and everytime I asked, "Can you pull out ..." the answer was no. I'm sure part of that was that they just didn't want to provide certain information to me, but I was willing to accept that the programmers had not made the more sophisticated searches available to them. I tried to explain what good programmers could do for them, but that meant $$$. I ended up doing everything manually which took months and months and months. And of course the whole time I kept thinking how a few good programmers could make the detectives lives a lot easier.

I bring this up because Eric Ingersoll from Ingersoll Consulting emailed me about their Cold Case Toolkit product. I know I'm stating the obvious, but it's very VERY hard to pull out patterns and connections manually. They could be right there in front of you and you can miss them. You forget stuff. It's so easy to see how things fall through the cracks, because it's simply not humanly possible to keep track of so much data in your head, and then perform the necessary operations on that data in order to make all the connections you need to make.

I haven't actually seen their product in action, but it's worth looking at. Developing these things from scratch is do-able of course, but more expensive.

Things about the Cold Case Analytical Toolkit that stood out for me:

"Data Sharing, Timeline, Attach Pictures, Mug Shots, Documents, Search Multitudes of Documents and Information Repositories, Restrict or Grant Access to Case File Information ... a pretty wide and powerful array of search options."

And, because you can't find patterns if you don't have access to all the available data, I liked this one:

"CCAT may be used for regional data sharing allowing one more agencies to access information. Information security restrices access to select areas where individuals or groups are granted permission."

"CCAT may be used for special Task Forces where temporary data sharing is needed."

"CCAT has the ability to search not only documents but also databases. For example if your agency has a records management system, CCAT can search selected areas of the database that may apply to your investigation. Multiple databases may be selected and searched simultaneously as well in a data sharing scenario. "

Again, I haven't seen the product, but I'd say it's worth checking out. Especially if your department doesn't have the budget to develop something like this itself. (That's an old NYPD crime scene photo, undated.)

As if murder, death of any sort really, isn't bad enough—these gray-area cases, like missing persons cases, and homicide vs suicide disputes, they're just so unendingly awful. I did a piece for NPR a year or two ago about a family in West Virginia who lost five children in a fire and who, to this day, believe that their children did not die in the fire, but were kidnapped. (Not a comment on the Dyer family, by the way.) It's worse than a cold case, come to think of it.

My condolences to the Dyer family. I hope you get the investigation and answers you seek.