When Murders Go Unresolved, These Volunteers Come in to Help

 

Nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter have gone unsolved from 1965 to 2022.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

By Allan Stein | December 17, 2024 Updated:December 19, 2024     PRESCOTT, Ariz.—Before she began investigating old homicide cases, in times of trouble Theresa Higdon would bring to mind the phrase: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”   Now, when she’s looking at photos of a victim from an unsolved murder that happened years ago, she has another thought.   Higdon, 74, said there are moments when she tells herself, “But for the grace of God, I could have been there,” and saved the person’s life.   She said it’s only human to be angry with a suspected murderer and have deep sympathy for a victim. It’s easy to get emotionally involved in a case in a way that goes beyond death.   Above all, Higdon said, “You have a job to do”—and that is helping to find the victim’s killer.   Higdon is one of four volunteer cold case investigators with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Bureau in Prescott, Arizona.   A cold case is a crime that has yet to be solved and is no longer actively investigated by detectives.   Retired as a business analyst from a major insurance company, Higdon joined the volunteer cold case unit believing her professional expertise would be helpful.   She and her fellow cold case investigators receive no payment for their work.   “The only pay is a pat on the back, which beats a kick in the butt,” Higdon said jokingly, sitting at her workstation with two computer screens.   But it’s serious business to solve a murder case, she said.   Her shared office is a 6-by-20-foot space in the sheriff’s office building, with a row of tall filing cabinets and cardboard boxes containing evidence from unresolved cases.   Some of the crimes include murders from the 1950s or, more recently, high-profile fraud cases in which the victims lost millions of dollars to online schemes.

Cold case investigator Theresa Higdon works at her computer in the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Bureau, in Yavapai County, Ariz., on Dec. 11, 2024. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Higdon works two days a week, giving her full attention to her murder cases from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.   She said she doesn’t worry about the age of a case because there is no statute of limitations on homicide in the United States.   “It has to do with evidence and witnesses and points to follow. The case could be 60 years old or six years old,” she said.   The Murder Accountability Project said the FBI estimated that 57.8 percent of homicides in 2023 “were either cleared through the arrest of offenders or through special circumstances such as the death of offenders during the process of arrest.”   A higher rate of clearance in 2023 coincided with a drop in the number of murders, which allowed over-burdened homicide units to make progress on the nation’s enormous backlog of unsolved murders, the project noted on its website.   The Murder Accountability Project found that nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter went unsolved from 1965 to 2022.   During this 57-year period, more than 1 million people were murdered nationwide. Of those, more than 673,000 (nearly 67 percent) were solved.   Texas had the highest number of homicides at more than 92,500 and it cleared more than 67,000 at a rate of nearly 73 percent. In Arizona, there were 17,671 homicides, and 63 percent of them were solved. Nearly 6,500 homicides remain unsolved.   A Fresh Perspective   Lt. Michael Dannison of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office CIB told The Epoch Times that volunteers bring their unique skills and a “new set of eyes” to each cold case.   Out of the approximately 300 police volunteers across the county, a small subset are the cold case volunteers. While some had careers in engineering, finance, or other fields, two had law enforcement experience.

Yavapai County Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Dannison points to a missing person poster, in Yavapai County, Ariz., on Dec. 11, 2024. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

“Not everybody can do it—or wants to do it because some of the stuff they see—they’re looking at old crime scene photos,” Dannison said. “They’re looking at autopsy photos. They’re looking at things that the everyday citizen should never have to see.   “So, it takes a special person to be able to want to do that and can do that.”   Dannison said that sometimes detectives get “stuck in their ways,” so it’s good when a layperson looks at the cases from a different perspective.   “Sometimes, it’s better to use somebody who doesn’t have that [law enforcement] background. They can come in and look at a file and see if anything was missed,” he said.   Volunteers have to pass a background check, be interested in solving crimes, and receive special training.   Dannison said that the group started in 2006 because the CIB, like many law enforcement agencies throughout the country, needed more detectives, money, or time to work on cold cases.   Out of more than 200 unsolved cases in Yavapai County, the volunteers were able to remove those that were not cold cases, mislabeled, or related to crimes in other counties.   Dannison said the volunteers have solved at least 30 cases in the past two decades and cut the backlog by about 85 cases.   “There’s no closure, and the detectives don’t have the time to dig into the cold cases themselves. They’ve got cold cases they’re doing daily,” Dannison told The Epoch Times.   “Some cases are so old, they’re not viable,” he said.   A challenging cold case concerned the 1960 discovery of a 5-year-old girl’s charred corpse in a shallow grave.   She was only known as “Little Miss Nobody” for many years until volunteers, using forensic genealogical DNA analysis and other tools, assisted in identifying her remains in 2022.

(Top) A police artist's sketch of Little Miss Nobody's estimated stature and clothing she wore at the time of her discovery. (Bottom Left) Sharon L. Gallegos, formerly known as Little Miss Nobody, is identified in 2022 via forensic genealogy, 61 years after the discovery of her body. (Bottom Right) Little Miss Nobody wore a pair of adult-sized rubber thong sandals that had been cut to fit her feet, at the time of her discovery. (Public Domain)

“There’s not a whole lot we can do with those cases. It is very frustrating,” Dannison said.

Cold Case Solved

He said detectives were able to close the 1987 murder case of Catherine Sposito with the help of cold case volunteers.

On Aug. 25, 2023, Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes announced at a press conference with “high confidence” that Brian Scott Bennett murdered Catherine Sposito.

The family of murder victim Catherine Sposito recently installed a memorial bench near the crime scene, in Heritage Park in Prescott, Ariz., on Dec. 11, 2024. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

At the time of Sposito’s death, Bennett, a sophomore at Prescott High School and a native of Kentucky, was only 16 years old.

New forensic evidence linked Bennett’s DNA to another female sexual assault victim near the exact location of Sposito’s murder three years later.

He eventually moved back to Calhoun County in Kentucky, and on June 27, 1994, he used a .22 caliber firearm to commit suicide.

Volunteers Essential

Ron Norfleet, another Yavapai County cold case volunteer, specializes in solving fraud cases.

With its approximately 400 members, the Cold Case Coalition is one of the oldest volunteer cold case groups in the country. It has a nationwide reach and an accredited DNA lab that provides access to investigative genealogy.

“Volunteer investigators play a critical role in helping with this country’s cold case crisis,” said volunteer CEO Karra Porter.

Solving Puzzles

Dannison said the Yavapai County cold case volunteers unit often use genealogy DNA services such as Ancestry.com to find missing persons and identify human remains where earlier investigations failed.

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