Defrosting Cold Cases

The Observer reports that “The Ontario Provincial Police won’t be handing over its investigation of the Karen Caughlin murder to another police agency for external review. Commissioner Chris Lewis is confident OPP detectives have conducted a “thorough and professional” investigation and will not ask for an independent review of the cold case file, Insp. Dave [...]

The controversial chairman of the Texas Forensic Science  Commission will be out of the job next week. The state Senate Nominations Committee has ended its work  for this session without voting on Gov. Rick Perry’s appointment in 2009 of John  Bradley to chair the commission. Perry appointed Bradley to lead the commission days before it was to [...]

A very fast chat but it produced a plan and a strategy! The general plan is to examine some famous cold cases together in a themed chat. Then, we discuss the case together where each participant reports according to their area of expertise. And then we jointly blog about it! We practise with famous cold cases first for the [...]

A request from the Rotterdam Cold Case Squad in the Netherlands: If you have any information at all about the life of John Sweeney and in particular, his travels to and in the Netherlands, please contact the Rotterdam Police. “John Sweeney, 54, from Liverpool, was given a whole life tariff at the Old Bailey after [...]

The Caughlin family is calling for an independent external review of the 1974 murder of their little sister Karen Caughlin. “It’s been 37 years, and it’s time,” said Caughlin, who will hold a press conference in Sarnia next week to discuss and seek public support for the review. “This is not going to be solved under [...]

New details emerged and people have been ruled out by DNA in the case of the “Manchester Building Female Skeleton.” We now have a facial reconstruction of the victim. She was most likely European but could have come from the Middle East or Indian sub-continents. She also had a number of fillings in her teeth [...]

The UK Police is breaking the law by keeping DNA of the innocent in national database. The Chief who refuse to delete those profiles act unlawfully and violate privacy rights of those involved. “The ruling by the most senior judges in England and Wales says that the current police policy of indefinitely keeping DNA profiles [...]

We did some much needed organizing during this chat to be as effective as we can and to make the most of summer! I had sent out an email earlier to the core of the “chatters” about making cclivechat more effective. Do we need to change the time or day we have the chat? Do [...]

Kathleen Ryan is a retired 21-year veteran of the Suffolk County Police Department on Long Island, NY. She studied Memoir Writing with Frank McCourt, Creative Nonfiction with Matt Klam, and Screenwriting Adaptation with Stephen Molton. Kathleen tweets as @katcop13. She is an active participant in #cclivechat and never hesitates to brainstorm on a case. She also blogs on Women [...]

Captain Mike Parker, a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, was recently promoted to the rank of Captain by Sheriff Lee Baca and assigned to the Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau (SHB).  SHB leads the Media and Marketing efforts of the Department and coordinates the 24-hour dissemination of news and information to the general public, [...]