Between a Family’s Demand for Answers and an Agency’s Capacity to Provide Them
As a victim advocate, I often find myself standing between two very different realities.
On one side is a family that has lived for years—sometimes decades—with unanswered questions. They want someone to reopen the file, test the evidence, pursue the person named years ago, compare DNA, locate a witness, or simply explain what has been done.
On the other side is a law enforcement agency that may be struggling with limited personnel, inadequate funding, outdated technology, competing violent-crime priorities, evidence backlogs, insufficient training, and case-management systems that were never designed to preserve and search decades of investigative information.
Both realities can be true.
A family’s expectations may exceed what an agency can presently deliver. But an agency’s limitations do not make the family’s need for answers unreasonable.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Homicide Process Mapping: Best Practices for Increasing Homicide Clearances examined agencies with historically strong homicide-clearance records. Its central lesson was not that one new technology or investigative technique solves cases. Successful agencies built an organizational structure that supported investigators with adequate staffing, training, analysts, forensic resources, modern information systems, community relationships, outside partnerships, and committed management (Carter, 2013).
That lesson applies just as strongly to cold cases.
When Institutional Limitations Become an Institutional Narrative
Families usually see a single case: the murder of someone they loved.
Agencies see hundreds or thousands of cases, accumulated over decades, while responding to today’s shootings, robberies, missing persons, suspicious deaths, officer-involved incidents, and other urgent demands.
That difference in perspective can create conflict.
When an agency lacks the resources to conduct a meaningful review, the explanation given to a family may gradually become a substitute for the review itself:
There is nothing left to test. Everyone involved is deceased. The evidence has already been examined. There are no viable suspects. DNA would not help. The case has been reviewed before.
Sometimes those statements are accurate. Sometimes they are conclusions inherited from an old report, an outdated laboratory result, an incomplete evidence inventory, or an earlier investigator’s assumptions. Occasionally, they become a kind of institutional fiction—not necessarily a deliberate lie, but a narrative repeated so often that no one goes back to verify whether it remains true.
That is especially troubling today. The National Institute of Justice notes that advances in DNA technology have substantially improved the ability to analyze aged, degraded, limited, or otherwise compromised biological evidence (National Institute of Justice, n.d.). Evidence once considered unsuitable may now be capable of yielding a useful profile.
A valid cold-case review therefore cannot begin and end with what investigators believed was possible 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
Reopening a Case Requires Courage
There is another reason agencies may hesitate.
A genuine cold-case review can expose shortcomings in the original investigation or in later follow-up efforts. Evidence may not have been collected. Witnesses may not have been recontacted. Reports may be missing. Property records may be incomplete. A promising lead may have been prematurely discounted. A biological sample may have remained untested because the technology, funding, or investigative insight was not available at the time.
Acknowledging those deficiencies can be uncomfortable.
But identifying a past shortcoming is not the same as condemning the people who conducted the original investigation. Investigators work within the knowledge, policies, technologies, staffing, and legal standards available to them at the time. A decision that appears questionable today may have been understandable decades earlier.
The purpose of a cold-case review is not to put the original detectives on trial. It is to determine what can be done now.
That requires leadership.
I applaud the investigators, supervisors, managers, sheriffs, and police chiefs who are willing to examine unresolved cases honestly. They understand that professional integrity is not demonstrated by pretending an agency has always done everything perfectly. It is demonstrated by confronting the record, correcting what can be corrected, and applying today’s capabilities to yesterday’s evidence.
National best-practice guidance similarly emphasizes professionally managed cold-case programs, dedicated investigators, access to DNA databases and innovative forensic tools, systematic case inventories, continuing education, multidisciplinary teams, and victim-centered approaches (National Institute of Justice, 2019).
Advocates and Outside Experts Are Not the Opposition
As an advocate, I have developed a broad network of forensic specialists, retired investigators, researchers, analysts, nonprofit organizations, and funding resources. Some nongovernmental organizations may be able to fund advanced DNA testing, forensic genealogy, specialized laboratory work, or other services that a local agency cannot afford.
These resources are not intended to take control of an investigation.
They cannot replace lawful authority, evidence custody, laboratory validation, prosecutorial consultation, or the judgment of the assigned agency. They should never be used to pressure an agency into releasing protected information or pursuing an unsupported theory.
But they can expand capacity.
The BJA report found that successful homicide units did not operate as isolated groups. They used analysts, forensic laboratories, prosecutors, medical examiners, victim advocates, patrol officers, specialized units, federal partners, neighboring agencies, fusion centers, public-information personnel, and community resources. Its message is clear: complex homicide investigations succeed through coordinated expertise, not institutional isolation (Carter, 2013).
An advocate who brings a credible resource to the table should not automatically be treated as an adversary. The appropriate response is to evaluate the resource, establish boundaries, protect the evidence and investigation, and determine whether a professional partnership is possible.
Communication Is Part of the Investigation
Families do not expect every investigative detail. Most understand that certain information must be protected.
What they struggle to accept is silence.
Months or years without contact allow uncertainty to become distrust. A family may interpret the absence of communication as proof that nothing is being done. Investigators may interpret repeated calls from the family as interference or unreasonable pressure. Each side becomes more defensive, and a relationship that should be cooperative becomes adversarial.
The BJA study found that effective victim-witness advocacy was not separate from successful homicide work. In Richmond and Denver, advocates and investigators developed substantive relationships with victims’ families. That support increased information flow, reduced complaints, assisted witnesses, and strengthened investigations. The report described helping families and keeping them informed not only as useful, but as the right thing to do (Carter, 2013).
The Office for Victims of Crime has published guidance encouraging agencies to develop protocols for serving survivors during cold-case investigations (Office for Victims of Crime, 2011). The International Association of Chiefs of Police likewise recognizes that victim-centered, trauma-informed practices can support recovery, improve engagement with the justice system, enhance safety, and help law enforcement solve and prevent crime (International Association of Chiefs of Police, n.d.).
Communication does not require promising an arrest.
It can be as straightforward as: “We have completed an initial inventory. We are determining whether the evidence is suitable for additional testing. I do not have a new investigative result to report, but I will contact you again within 90 days.”
That message establishes responsibility, manages expectations, and tells the family that their loved one has not disappeared into a filing cabinet.
The Goal Should Be Partnership, Not Blame
Families deserve honesty. Agencies deserve a realistic understanding of their operational limitations. Investigators deserve access to the resources necessary to do the work properly.
And victims deserve more than a contest over who is at fault.
The most productive path is a partnership in which the agency retains control of the investigation and evidence; the family receives consistent, compassionate, and truthful communication; advocates help identify qualified expertise and legitimate funding; outside organizations respect investigative and legal boundaries; supervisors encourage objective review rather than institutional defensiveness; and everyone remains focused on evidence, not favored theories.
Not every cold case can be solved. Evidence may have been lost. Witnesses may have died. Memories may have faded. Some offenders may never be identified.
But every case can be treated with professionalism. Every family can be treated with dignity. Every credible opportunity can be evaluated. Every agency can be honest about what it has—and has not—been able to do.
The leaders who accept that challenge deserve recognition. They are not weakening their agencies by looking critically at the past. They are strengthening them.
Justice is not served by defending an old conclusion simply because it is old.
Justice is served by asking, with humility and determination: What can we do today that could not be done then?
The International Association of Technology Advocates is here to help both victim families and the law enforcement agencies serving them by providing access to expertise, technology, funding resources, and professional partnerships that can help move unresolved cases toward resolution. Contact us at www.justice-advocates.org.
References
Carter, D. L. (2013). Homicide process mapping: Best practices for increasing homicide clearances. Bureau of Justice Assistance. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bja/grants/243969.pdf
International Association of Chiefs of Police. (n.d.). Promising practices in law enforcement victim support. https://www.theiacp.org/projects/promising-practices-in-law-enforcement-victim-support
National Institute of Justice. (n.d.). Cold case investigations. U.S. Department of Justice. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/law-enforcement/investigations/cold-case-investigations
National Institute of Justice. (2019). National best practices for implementing and sustaining a cold case investigation unit. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/252016.pdf
Office for Victims of Crime. (2011). Serving survivors of homicide victims during cold case investigations: A guide for developing a law enforcement protocol. U.S. Department of Justice. https://ovc.ojp.gov/library/publications/serving-survivors-homicide-victims-during-cold-case-investigations-guide