CRIMINAL COLD CASES-FUGITIVES FINALLY BROUGHT TO JUSTICE-23-ACROSS AMERICA

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COLD CASES:
ACROSS AMERICA
IN MANY CASES OF MURDER, THE KILLER IS UNKNOWN – AT LEAST INITIALLY – AND MUST BE PURSUED BY THE FORCE OF LAW UNTIL HE OR SHE IS FOUND. BUT IN AN UNUSUAL CASE THAT OCCURRED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, IT WAS THE VICTIM, AS WELL AS THE MURDERER, WHO WAS A MYSTERY.

One of the most challenging cases on the files of the Austin Police Department Cold Case Unit concerned a murder dating more than twenty years ago. On a Saturday night in August 1985, a witness named Dion Garcia saw a murder occur in the city. He heard shouts, and looked out of his window to see two men fighting each other in the front yard of the house next door. One of the men then rushed into the house to get a club, and when he came out, began to beat the other man until he fell over. After that, he pulled out a knife and stabbed him to death.

When the police were called, they could not identify the victim. They released a composite sketch of him, hoping that someone would recognize it and contact the authorities. They also found out that his first name was Jaime. But no one came forward, and the victim remained unknown for the next twenty years.

Then one day, Jose Flores-Salas, who had been detained in custody in Canada, confessed to the murder. In response, the Austin Police Department travelled to Canada to talk to him and found out more details of what had happened. They tracked down Jaime's family, who filled in the rest of the story.

The proximity of Texas to Mexico means that their police's crime cases will involve Hispanic people. There can be no doubt that some years ago these cases counted for less than those involving more affluent people, and this led to a marked number of cold cases in this ethnic group

It turned out that the parents had thought their son, Jaime Guajardo Hilario, had forgotten about them. As a youngster, he had dreamed of a better life, and had promised to keep in touch when he left home to seek fame and fortune in the big city. However, the family had never heard from him again. His brother-in-law said: 'Twenty years ago his dream was to have money and a good life. We thought he had success and forgot about us.' He went on, 'There was a time that I felt anger because he forgot about his mom. Now things are different. Jaime is no longer with us. He's waiting for us in another world.'

A confession after twenty years by Jose Flores-Salas meant Jaime's case could finally be marked 'Solved'

As a result of the police investigations into the case, twenty years after his death, the body of Jaime Guajardo Hilario was brought back to Saltillo to be buried next to his father in the graveyard. This was hardly a happy ending to the story, but as the Austin Police Department pointed out, it showed that the cold case unit would go to every length to solve the cases of every victim on their books, regardless of their race or nationality.

The composite sketch of Jaime Guajardo Hilario that was released at the time of his murder. It gave the police the victim's first name to go on, but not much else

Miami
Miami is well known as a city where drug dealing is a constant problem for law enforcement agencies. It is also well known that much of the drug running activity involves violent crime. The case of James Larkins was one such crime. But although police detectives knew that Larkins was a cocaine dealer, they could not find out any more about him: no one who knew anything about the case wanted to take their story to the police; for fear that their own illegal activities would be uncovered. Thus, the case mouldered on police shelves until, fifteen years later, the murder was solved.

It was March 1985 when James Larkins, a thirty-year-old cocaine dealer, was shot dead in his car. Police knew that he was part of an underworld of drugs and vice, but they were unable to penetrate the conspiracy of silence that surrounded the murder. It was only when two of Larkins' associates were picked up for unrelated crimes that the names of Larkins' killers came to light. The police promised that the courts would give the men lighter sentences if they revealed who had committed the murder, and in this way, obtained the information. It had taken fifteen years to find out who had murdered Larkins, but in the end, the killer became known. As police detective Gary Smith, supervisor of the Miami-Dade Cold Case Squad remarked, 'Over time, people's relationships with each other change. Friends are no longer friends. People divorce. They might find religion. So those people who didn't give information before might now be willing.'

Sometimes it is only the passage of time, and people's consequent changes in loyalties and interests, that warms up a cold case and makes it possible to solve a murder. Thus, detectives working in cold case squads often find it useful, when they reopen a case after a number of years, to go back and interview family, friends, and business associates once more, just in case things have changed and someone now wants to tell the truth about a person they might once, before, have protected.

Sacramento
In Sacramento, California, a new training programme for police officers has been set up, which specializes in cold case investigations. It has long been recognized that people often commit crimes when they are young that they later come to regret. A call of conscience and new, more sober moral values may encourage former criminals to come forward and tell the truth about the past. According to Sergeant Bill Tanton, a consultant for the California Cold Case Investigation Course, 'We find time has been an ally. Particularly in gang-related cases, a lot of these young kids have changed their minds and grown up and realized what they were involved in.'

Time has also helped in another way, with advances in DNA profiling, which has revolutionized the investigation of cold cases. Today, just by feeding information into a computer, it is sometimes possible to score a hit and identify a killer. A computerized national database named CODIS now stores DNA profiles taken from samples of known felons in the United States. According to Sharon Pagaling Hagan, whose full-time job consists in working on criminal investigation profiles for the state of California, 'DNA is so sophisticated now, just in the last few years we've been able to move from saying it's one in ten thousand people to saying, this is the only person on the face of the earth that will have this DNA profile. Obviously, it changes everything.'

Nevada
In September 1977, a six-year-old girl named Lisa Marie Bonham went missing while visiting relatives in Reno, Nevada. She was at an amusement park and left her brother to get a dollar from her parents to go on another ride. She was never seen again. Later, her clothes were found in Toiybe National Forest, Nevada.

At the time, it was not possible to make a DNA profile, because the technology needed to do so was not widely available. However, detectives kept her clothing, and many years later, the blood found on it was analysed and tested. A DNA profile was obtained, and was fed into the Crime Laboratory at the Washoe County Sheriff's office. A match was made to the DNA profile of a man named Stephen Robert Smith, a 57-year-old man who had been paroled since his release from prison in 1976. He had served a prison sentence for sexually molesting two young girls. He was arrested and charged with the murder. When the case was brought to trial, he was found guilty, and was sent back behind bars. Twenty-three years after the murder, the case was finally closed.

Richmond, Virginia
DNA profiling also helped to solve a baffling case of rape and homicide that occurred in Richmond, Virginia, in 1994. The victim had been found in her apartment, and samples of semen and blood had been taken from the body, but despite this, the police were unable to find a suspect for the murder. As a result, the case went cold, until in 1998, when a DNA profile was made from the samples, and routinely fed into the national CODIS database. To the surprise of the police department, the DNA profile matched that of a twenty-year-old prisoner, who was serving a sentence for another rape and murder. In this way, the case was reopened once more – this time, with a very clear indication as to who the killer was.

San Diego
DNA profiling is not the only method used by police criminal investigation teams in solving cold cases today. In modern times, the media also plays an increasingly important role in murder investigations. For example Sergeant Jorge Duran, Supervisor of the San Diego Cold Case Unit, has explained how he used the media to close an old unsolved case that had perplexed the police for many years. It concerned one Gilberto Araiza, who, along with an accomplice, fatally stabbed a city shuttle bus driver in 1983.

The accomplice later told police that Araiza was the perpetrator of the crime, whereupon Araiza went into hiding in Mexico. There he remained until the year 2000, when a Latin American television station ran a feature on him. The show was called Primer Impacto, and was similar in format to the well-known America's Most Wanted . It was not long before the station received a call concerning the item, and referred the caller to the San Diego Cold Case Unit. Araiza was found, arrested, and brought to trial for the murder. He was convicted, and today is serving a term of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Sergeant Duran explains that, in many instances, detectives working on cold cases such as these develop a strong desire to see justice done, out of a sense of obligation to the victims and their families, whom they often work very closely with and get to know very well. 'On some occasions, the investigator gets to know a lot about the victim by interviewing their friends and family,' Duran comments. 'And he gets a sense of wanting to bring this to a close because this person didn't deserve this.'