I came across an organization that provides support to families of homicide victims in Cincinnati, OH, called Who Killed Our Kids. The website is extremely well designed with current, useful information, a forum for family and friends, and more.

From their website:

“Homicides have doubled in the last 5 years. There have been a total of 417 homicides since 2000:

40 in 2000, 63 in 2001, 66 in 2002, 75 in 2003, 66 in 2004, 79 in 2005 and now 28 in 2006.

The unsolved homicide rate has nearly quadrupled since 2000. There are 168 unsolved homicides since 2000: 10 in 2000, 21 in 2001, 29 in 2002, and 27 in 2003 and 26 in 2004, 37 in 2005 and 18 in 2006.”

Murder was worse! (If I did my math correctly.)

One hundred years ago, in 1906, 255 people were murdered in New York City. The population of New York was 3,437,202 in 1900, and it was 8,085,742 as of 2003. At the 1906 murder rate, 600 people would be murdered this year. Murder has gone up so far this year, but the total last year was 540 — even with the current increase it should still come out under 600.

Interesting, no? In the good old days, we were not so good. 1913 was particularly bad. 326 people were murdered that year. What was going on in New York that year??

Based on what I was able to find out about clearance rates for the time period, I estimate that 84 of the murders in 1906 and 136 of the murders from 1913 were never solved.

(The picture is Orchard Street in 1906.)

This is a crime scene photo from either the suicide or murder of mob hitman, Abe Reles, taken in front of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island in 1941.

I found the case files for Abe Reles in a warehouse in Brooklyn maintained by the Central Records Division. I’ve posted this before, but normally case records for unsolved homicides are supposed to stay in the precinct where the homicides occurred. Anything older than the 1980’s is often missing, however. They were lost in a move, the people at the precinct usually explain, or destroyed in a flooded basement. But 187 boxes of homicide records both solved and unsolved, and spanning the years 1921 to 1973, sit largely forgotten in an aisle at the very back of the Central Records warehouse. Some boxes have a few cases, some have thirty or more. They may be falling apart from age, but there are probably 4,000 to 7,000 case files there.

I thought of writing about Reles, but for various reasons decided not to. It’s a gruesome and interesting story though. He killed people by jamming an ice pick through their ear into their brain. He was eventually caught and was going to be convicted most likely, but instead he became a government witness. Hence the quotes around the word suicide.

LAPD blog. It can get a little PR-y, but it’s also informative and I like when they talk back about articles about the LAPD.

NYPD Rant. Just what it says, a bunch of guys ranting. But if you want to know what goes on inside these guy’s heads, this is the place. I’ve also gotten some pretty interesting information here.

The Policeman’s Blog. Inside the head of a policeman in the UK!

Cold Case website of the San Jose Police Department.

Cold Case website of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. [The link I had is no longer working.]

Cold Case website of the Home Office Police (UK). [The link I had is no longer working.]

Cold Case website of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Cold Case website of the Kentucky State Police.