People often post about a friend or family member who was murdered and then ask for help. All my suggestions for how to proceed are over there on the left under the heading, Getting Help – Contacting a Cold Case Squad.

I suggest first reading the document titled Before You Contact a Cold Case Squad Read This. Then look up the number in the document Cold Case Squad and Other Organizations.

If you can’t find a number for your city or town, call your local police department and ask them if they have a cold case squad or a person in their homicide squad who specializes in cold cases. If they don’t then ask to speak to someone in their homicide squad. If you don’t get what you believe is a decent response, then go to the document on the left titled, Escalating Your Case.

If you have specific questions after reading through the instructions or after contacting your local police department or cold case squad post them here. But please come back to see my response to your question!

(Those are pictures of the barrels of evidence at the NYPD’s Property Clerk Division.)

By now everyone has read about serial killer Rodney Alcala, who is on Death Row in California for killing four women and a 12-year-old girl.

I first heard about him after following a link to his appearance on the Dating Game, one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a while.  It’s very interesting that the woman who chose him for a date refused to actually going the date with him.  She knew something was off about him.  She’s obviously very intuitive.

California law enforcement sent copies of photographs Alcala had been taking of young women over the years to the NYPD. They were hoping the NYPD will help locate more of Alcala’s victims. The NYPD hesitated about releasing them, but you can see them now.

You can read a recent story in the Daily News here, which includes the 215 photographs. The one above is the first one that comes up if you follow their link.

Another case I came across while researching my book involved five Newark boys who went missing in 1978.

In 2008, one of the murderers visited a brother of one of the victims. “He said he’d become a born-again Christian and so he had to tell the truth.” That stood out for me. Murderers often use the fact that they are born-again as a reason why they should be pardoned.

I always thought if they were truly born again and repentant they would say the exact opposite. They would say they were ready to pay for their sins.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone can pay for what they did, the truth of what happened is spectacularly horrible, and it’s just so wrong that one of the killers got to live out his life and die of natural causes, but the complete New York Times article I quoted from can be found here (the picture is from the Times article).

NamUs.gov is The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. I’m pleased at how quickly word has gotten around about this database. I’ve even seen it be used as a plot point in a tv show (I forget which!).

So to help spread the word I wanted to link to a recent AP story about NamUs.gov by Steve Karnowski. It was picked up a lot of places, here is one version at the Guardian.

The story, which is titled, Database Can Crack Missing Person Cases—if Used, begins:

A new online database promises to crack some of the nation’s 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren’t aware of it, and others aren’t convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.

The picture is from the story. “In a photo made March 17, 2007, Janice Smolinski poses in her Cheshire, Conn., home where a photo of her son, Billy, is visible in the foreground. Billy disappeared from his Waterbury, Conn. home in Aug. 2004 and Smolinski believes a Justice Department database program will someday help find her son who was 31 when he vanished. (AP Photo/Michelle McLoughlin, File)”