Columbus Police using new tools, techniques for solving old murder cases

Under most circumstances, a homicide involving a victim and a prime suspect who are both dead is essentially moot. The proverbial “cold case” doesn’t get much colder than that.

So goes one scenario — an actual case, as it happens — described by the Ledger-Enquirer’s Tim Chitwood in a recent in-depth report on a new Columbus Police Department focus on solving long-unresolved murders. The high-profile gang assassination at Peachtree Mall apparently involved one killing in retaliation for another, in which case the suspect in the first killing, because he was the victim in the second, is beyond the reach of human justice.

Yet technically, that first killing is still listed as an unsolved murder. It is, as Chitwood reported, one of 84 on a CPD list going back more than 40 years.

Most if not all of the others, needless to say, should be and are higher-priority cases. There’s no statute of limitations on murder; surviving loved ones of victims still deserve justice, as do perpetrators who have thus far eluded it.

The technology of criminal justice continues to evolve, often well beyond what was available at the time crimes were committed. This was graphically demonstrated in the seemingly endless case of convicted “Stocking Strangler” Carlton Gary, whose grisly crimes in the late 1970s preceded the advent of DNA evidence, but whose DNA has, since his conviction, placed him at the scene of one of the murders. (That it was one of the murders in which he was suspected, but not tried, was recently deemed insufficient cause for overturning his conviction.)

As noted in Chitwood’s story, eight CPD homicide investigators are receiving updated training and traveling around the country to follow up with witnesses and review evidence. Some physical evidence formerly thought unrevealing is being retested.

One especially interesting technique described by Maj. Gil Slouchick is something called DNA phenotyping — using DNA evidence such as blood to create a genetic heredity profile. The results might sound like something from an Ancestry.com commercial, except the subjects of these profiles aren’t the ones asking for them.

This cold case project is just getting started; thus far, old-fashioned police legwork has paid off more immediate dividends than the chemistry, although DNA phenotyping probably has produced a more accurate description of at least one suspect still at large. But a 2004 cold-case killing has been cleared this year thanks to re-examination of old evidence, resulting in a voluntary manslaughter plea; and the state Supreme Court in September upheld a conviction in a previously cold-case 1999 murder thanks to the work of Sgt. Randy Long in finding witnesses against the killer. As important as physical evidence such as fingerprints and DNA can be in nailing down the details of a crime, the traditional tool of witness testimony is still invaluable.

But when those key witnesses are hard or impossible to find — and sometimes even when they’re not — state-of-the-art criminology tech might make all the difference.

This story was originally published October 3, 2017 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Columbus Police using new tools, techniques for solving old murder cases."