Hello! Is that Detective Wendell Stradford in the back there? I wasn’t aware when I first wrote that NYPD detectives were investigating serial killer Rodney Alcala that I knew one of the investigators. The ABC news story about the case can be viewed here. Alcala will be extradited to New York to stand trial for […]

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It’s not often that I get to post about new discoveries that may help solve old crimes. From a BBC article yesterday, “Scientists have developed a technique to estimate the age of a suspect from blood left at a crime scene.” “The work by a team in the Netherlands has been published in the journal […]

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I recently gave advice to a family member about contacting a cold case unit, and I thought other people might benefit from this advice. I’m only copying in the section of my email that might be useful to others, and I’m removing any identifying details. “There are unfortunately so many unsolved murders, all of which […]

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Someone recently asked me how many detectives are in the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad. There are now only nine. There were twenty-seven when I wrote my book and I was told that there were around fifty when the unit started (although there are 40 in the early group shot below, minus the commanding officers). The […]

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