Recap: Someone asked, “How far back in time can a cold case be sent in? How many years back can a case be re-opened?”

I answered that there is no statute of limitations on murder. If a murder hasn’t been solved, the case is still open even if no one has looked at it for years or decades. Then I asked others to weigh in.

From Det. Wendell Stradford: Yes that is correct, there is no statute of limitation on murder. And if a “very old” case has a chance to be brought to a meaningful conclusion, even if no one is ever arrested, we would give it a go. The bottom line is the family of the victim gets answers.

From retired Deputy Inspector Vito Spano: There is never a time limit. The key element is solvability. If there is new evidence, information or technology that may lead to solving a case, then the case will be assigned to a detective. Can it be developed? That is the main criteria for opening up a cold case.

Homicide evidence is placed in what are called DNA or blood barrells, and stored at the Property Clerk Warehouse. The warehouses look like that final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when they are putting away the Ark of the Covenant, amongst endless stacks of wooden crates. Here, there are fifty foot tall towers of cardboard DOA barrels. Each barrel holds 20 to 25 envelopes of evidence. There are roughly five or six thousand barrels. At 25 envelops per barrel, that could represent up to 150,000 crimes.

Someone asked, “How far back in time can a cold case be sent in? How many years back can a case be re-opened?”

I’m going to ask the cold case guys to weigh in, but there is no statute of limitations on murder. If a murder hasn’t been solved, the case is still open even if no one has looked at it for years or decades. Practically speaking though, the Cold Case detectives concentrate on cases they think they can solve first, cases with evidence and/or witnesses, or people with direct information about the murder, and cases where the murderer is likely still alive.

So, most of their cases are fairly recent. They usually don’t have cases earlier than the 70’s, although there are always exceptions. The Cold Case detectives are currently looking at the 1930 Judge Crater case, technically a missing persons case which was closed in 1979. Even though most people believed Crater was killed, the police had no evidence, and as a missing persons case — not a homicide — it could be closed. New evidence has recently emerged however, although how reliable it is and if it leads to anything remains to be seen. But it would be fun if it did!

When they;re looking for a body they’ll bring a cadaver dog. In one cold case investigation a cadaver dog named Zeus found a body that was wrapped in plastic and buried under concrete four years earlier. To train a dog to find dead bodies they construct something called a scent tube. It’s made from PVC and sealed at both ends after inserting a piece of gauze that’s been doused with one of the following perfumes: Pseudo Corpse I or II (II is a corpse further along), Pseudo Drowned Victim, or Cadaverine. They get the stuff from the Sigma Chemical Company in St. Louis and it’s expensive. In comparison, 1.5 ounces of the famously expensive perfume, Joy, by Jean Patou, which requires the blossoms of 10,600 jasmine flowers and 336 May roses, retails for $100 . The same amount of Pseudo Corpse II would run you $276.75.

These are not great shots of Zeus, I know. I scanned them from newspapers. Zeus’s official rank was detective–that’s more prestigious than a patrol cop. Zeus did recovery work for the Oklahoma City bombing, and was accepted into the Oklahoma Pet Hall of Fame on January 20, 1996, for locating 24 victims. This is Zeus finding a body at Oklahoma City. “When Zeus was digging,” Police Officer Robert Schnelle, his handler, describes, “he was on a mission.”

There are half a dozen official cadaver dogs, although because of 9/11 more dogs than usual got some cadaver experience. They don’t like to use rescue dogs for cadaver work, though. Rescue dogs are used to finding people alive and finding only corpses screws them up. I remember reading about how rescue workers would hide in the rubble of the Trade Center so the defeated and depressed rescue dogs would have a live person to rescue occasionally.

Zeus worked the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, but he had already been retired for a year when it was attacked again in 2001. His legs were finished, he just didn’t have it in him anymore. Then, the following Fall, Zeus developed cancer. A tumor burst that Spring, and he bled internally. Schnelle was at work when it happened and while he got to Zeus in time to take him to the vet, Zeus didn’t make it. He would have turned 11.