John A. Dvorak, The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The clue lies in sweat absorbed by the underwear that a killer-rapist left at a crime scene 20 years ago.
Maybe, just maybe, Gary Howell and his experts at the Kansas City Police Crime Laboratory can use the clothing and new DNA testing techniques to solve a cold-but-not-forgotten murder case.
Such a case would be nearly as sensational as the one Los Angeles authorities broke earlier this year.
Thanks to a new fingerprint-matching system, they reached across the continent to find a man who fled four decades ago after killing two El Segundo police officers. The man pleaded guilty and went to prison.
Several years back, none of this would have been possible. Now, because of high-tech developments and a strong commitment by police to wrapping up bygone murders, cold cases are turning hot.
This fall, investigators in Johnson County brought charges in two cold cases, one a 1982 killing of a man, the other a 1974 killing of a child.
Now, murderers should never think they got away with it, no matter when their crimes occurred.
Once lab experts needed a blood sample the size of a dime to conduct a DNA test. Today they can get by with a sample the size of a pinhead.
All the methods have improved in forensic science, said Howell, who has seen his lab grow from four employees to 60 over the years. So what were doing is looking at a lot of old cases.
Law enforcement agencies are on the same path throughout the nation, sometimes with impressive results.
Consider the Harris County sheriffs office in Houston, which formed a cold-case squad in the late 1990s. Authorities say that in the last three years they have filed 16 murder cases and two capital murder cases, one of them dating to 1974.
The Kansas City Police Department assembled a similar squad a year ago and already has sent 13 cases to prosecutors.
State investigators in both Kansas and Missouri also pursue old crimes.
What we have in the last few years, said Steven Brandl, criminal justice professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a textbook on criminal investigation, is more emphasis on a formal unit, the cold-case squad, where their responsibility is to deal with cases that are so serious that you cant put them in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
While Brandl called the squads a potential step forward, he said he knew of no formal studies that evaluated their effectiveness.
Why the recent emphasis on the squads?
The FBI has brought together forensics and computers to provide, in effect, a data bank of DNA profiles and fingerprints, which allows investigators to match old evidence with the newly categorized list of potential suspects.
Obtaining and matching fingerprints is easier, meaning that items of evidence kept from old crimes might produce never-before-seen fingerprints.
Police can benefit from the Internet, not just to quickly find data but also to advertise cases and receive tips.
Some law officers who specialize in homicides have a little more time available because the number of murders has fallen.
Cold cases abound. The nation experienced 16,200 murders last year, according to the FBI. Through the years, 30 percent to 35 percent of murders go unsolved, the FBI says, meaning thousands of aging cases keep stacking up.
Tradition holds that a murder lacking significant leads or arrests within the first three days has little chance of being solved, according to a report prepared for the Bureau of Justice Assistance this year.
Old cases, the report said, can require large amounts of labor and time, and may demand innovative investigative techniques.
Although forensic analysis and investigative techniques have greatly improved over the years, the report said, the resolution of cold cases is primarily rooted in a squads ability to identify, locate, and secure the testimony and cooperation of witnesses and informants.
That is apparently what happened in the two Johnson County cases. Although investigators have not provided all the details, they do say that new technology did not bring about the arrests.
Indeed, nothing replaces the dedicated cop willing to plow through old files, look for something that might have been missed and search out people who knew about the crime to see whether they might provide new information.
Time actually can be an ally, said Sgt. John Jackson, who heads the Kansas City Police Departments cold-case squad.
Peoples relationships change, he said. People who were friends at the time of the offense are no longer friends, girlfriends are not girlfriends, wives are not wives.
Put simply, a former friend of a killer, unwilling to speak at the time of the crime, may provide critical testimony years later.
New technology is a big ally, too, he said.
For example, the Kansas City Police Departments Web site contains a cold-case squad tips information page, which allows anyone to send tips by e-mail.
On June 4, 1994, just two days after he got married, Jonathan Williams left home near 40th Street and the Paseo and was never seen again. His family feared foul play. The Police Department Web site continues to list him as a missing person.
The sheriff’s office in Houston uses the World Wide Web to describe a 12-year-old murder, to show photos of two possible suspects, and to request tips.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children assembled a corps of retired detectives around the nation, available to legal agencies that dust off old files and need assistance, perhaps in a location far from their headquarters.
In Kansas, authorities put on a telethon to solicit clues in the long-unsolved murder of a young Baxter Springs woman.
Occasionally, a cold case will be solved unexpectedly.
In 1998, a Virginia man who could not live with his conscience any longer returned to Johnson County and confessed to murdering a Shawnee woman nearly two decades earlier. He later received a long prison sentence.
Officers in the Olathe Police Department who still remember an unsolved 1997 slaying wish they could be so lucky.
Roger D. Kent, a man who police said engaged in risky behavior, was beaten to death in his home on South Troost Street in Olathe. Police investigated for a long time. They would start again if it might pay off.
“I think someday there will be a break,” Lt. Clark Morrow said. “I think someday the players involved in the case will speak out.”
Detective Bill Wall said the Kent file remained in his office file cabinet, within easy reach.
“Anytime you’re not successful,” he said, “you never forget it.”