Brian DePalma is making a movie about the Black Dahlia. It’s a horrifying case. If you’re not famliar with it, just google “black dahlia,” but it’s got to be among the most famous cold cases.

Brian DePalma, I don’t know. He made “Obsession,” a great movie which is a remake of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But there’s too often an unseemly side to his movies. Something which enjoys the violence just a little too much. I mean, on the one hand, it’s a tawdry story, so he’s perfect, but the story is always told the same way, the same tawdry way, to fit into the popular noir mold. I’d prefer a fresh look.

It’s like when I wrote my book, I had to fight that familiar cop book image everyone has of them, and of all murder investigations. It’s not like what we think. It’s hard to tell the truth (not that I have “the truth,” but you know what I mean).

Lt. Panzarella told me that he had to carry around a letter from Chief Anemone in his pocket, which gave him permission to ask for the files for old murder cases.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy

They told me pretty much the exact same thing, except they would also add imagination and I would have to agree.

The NYPD might want to recruit one or more detectives with a background in science for the Cold Case Squad, to overcome a general reluctance within the police department to embrace new scientific methods of police work. “Every single crime scene should be examined by a scientist,” Dr. Robert Shaler suggests. “ME’s are not forensic scientists. The medical-legal investigators who go out to crime scenes instead of ME’s are not forensic scientists. They are there to certify that it’s an ME case, that the death is a homicide. You need someone who understands all areas of forensic science.” Perhaps fewer cases would go cold in the first place. “The American Academy of Forensic Sciences has for the first time accredited crime scene analysis,” Shaler told me. “It’s a first step. That means, the people who go to crime scenes have to be accredited as investigators to do this kind of scientific work.”

The NYPD may not pay enough to attract scientists to police work, however. You never know. It’s interesting work. I wonder if they ever recruit at MIT? Their recruiting ads always target macho men. I’d love to see ads trying to entice brainy men and women (not that people can’t be both, of course, and not that they don’t already have lots of brainy people, etc., etc., etc.).

The Cold Case Squad could also use more detectives with expertise in information retrieval. The average detective is not completely apprised of all the databases currently available through other arms of law enforcement, government, on the internet, in libraries and privately. They had a couple of guys who were good at this but they retired.