The Newport News Police Department launched a new team to work exclusively on cracking older homicides.
The “Cold Case Team” will include two full-time detectives and a retired police investigator who is being hired back part-time.
“The Cold Case Team will help bring back a voice to victims that, through time, has become a whisper,” said Aaron Thornton, a veteran homicide detective who is part of the initiative.
“We hope to help those families desperately looking for answers,” added Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew. “We have assembled a skilled and compassionate team dedicated to making this happen.”
The others on the team are veteran homicide detective Amber Rogers and retired investigator Misty Mercer. The three have 80 years of combined law enforcement experience, “with an emphasis on complex investigations,” the department said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many cold case killings the team will have on its plate. But the city’s unsolved homicides number into the hundreds.
In 2010, Newport News police began an initiative to farm out some of the older unsolved cases to robbery detectives. But in more recent years, the department’s homicide unit — at 10 detectives when fully staffed — has handled investigations of recent and cold case killings.
In practice, the unit focuses mostly on the more recent cases, looking at older cases in their spare time.
The existing homicide unit will maintain a manpower of 10 detectives, with the three Cold Case Team positions in addition to that, department spokeswoman Kelly King said.
While the part-time investigator position is new to the department’s ranks, the two other detective slots are being shifted from different investigatory areas. The change, King said, stemmed from regular staffing reviews designed to “optimize operations and respond to the evolving needs of our residents.”
The department said the new three-person team will use DNA analysis and other technological advances to investigate the older cases, and will work in partnership with local, state and federal law agencies.
They also are seeking tips from the community, with the department asking that anyone with information about an unsolved case share it with the new team.
In certain cases, experts say, the amount of time that’s elapsed since a killing can cause people to finally come forward after years of sitting on crucial information.
“Behind every unsolved homicide is a family looking for answers,” the department said in announcing the new team.
“As months and even years pass by, they live with uncertainty and unanswered questions about their loved ones. The Cold Case Team is dedicated to solving these cases and providing some sense of closure to these families.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
