I looked at the unsolved murders between 1985 and 2003, and found that 54% of the cases that went cold happened in the street, on a subway, in a park, or in an abandoned building. Places where a witness, if there was one, most likely didn’t know or recognize the murderer or the victim, and evidence is harder to collect.

Later, at John Jay College I found a 1994 doctoral thesis about unsolved murder that said, “murder in residences not only accounted for the most frequent murder location but stood the greatest chance of being solved when compared to other locations.”

As a last resort, some families put up billboards asking for information and offering rewards. I’m collecting pictures of these kinds of billboards for a presentation. If you have pictures to share, thank you, and please email me.

Below is a more homemade version. Five children went missing from the West Virginia home of the Sodder family in 1945. I’m working on a story about this. The family kept the billboard up for 44 years, and only took it down when both parents were dead. People who grew up in the area still talk about what happened. The Sodder children are the West Virginia version of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy who went missing in New York in 1979. If you grew up seeing the signs asking for information, you never forgot it.

A police poster for Etan Patz (still missing, presumed dead).

You can register in advance for the “100 Years of Unsolved Murder” panel by calling: 212-817-8215. The program number is 6048.

Or, you can go here: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cepp/courses/history.html#11

Find the listing for “The Restless Sleep,” click on the name, and then chose one of several options offered there. The event is $15, $10 for students.

I’ve been hard at work preparing the following event. This is the one to go to — I got four incredible people to agree to participate.

Wednesday, November 16, 7:00PM
100 Years of Unsolved Murder in New York
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Public Programs, 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th and 35th). $15, $10 for students.

I’m the moderator, and the panelists are:

Vito Spano, former Cold Case Squad Commanding Officer, now a Chief Investigator for the Office of New York State Attorney General.

Dr. Robert C. Shaler, former head of Forensic Biology, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City, now the director of the Forensic Science Program at Pennsylvania State University, and author of Who They Were: Inside the World Trade Center DNA Story (Free Press).

W. Mark Dale, former Director of the New York State Police Laboratory System and the New York City Police Department Laboratory, now the Director of the Northeast Regional Forensic Institute at Albany.

David Feige, former Trial Chief of The Bronx Defenders, and now on the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College, David is currently at work on the forthcoming book, Indefensible (Little, Brown & Co., 2006).