An Erie Bureau of Police veteran of more than two decades, Det. Sgt. Craig Stoker has seen firsthand how scientific breakthroughs have changed crime-solving.
Stoker, who has been with the law enforcement agency since 1999, has been in the major crimes division since 2015 and was appointed cold case investigator in 2022. He helped to at last bring charges in the 34-year-old Helen Vogt homicide probe that year, where re-analysis of a bloody washcloth at a Pennsylvania State Police crime lab produced what authorities say is a match for Vogt's grandson, Jeremy Brock.
"That's one of the things that cold case detectives look for is possible evidence that can be tested that's never been tested prior," Stoker said.
Often, the problem for Stoker and colleagues across the commonwealth isn't a lack of evidence. The challenge in many instances rests with a lack of resources: manpower and money.
"It seems that funding's always been a huge problem with cold cases," Stoker said.
To conduct the testing and research critical to these investigations, creative crowdsourcing and additional police training is taking place in various parts of the state. These efforts may become increasingly necessary as the volume of unsolved crimes mount for already overextended departments, large and small.
'You get what you pay for'
Pennsylvania's worst year on record for homicides occurred just three years ago, according to the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project.
The commonwealth saw 1,050 murders in 2021. Statistics from the Murder Accountability Project — compiled using FBI data and sourced by volunteers researching individual police departments — suggest that the following year was the second-worst all-time with 896 killings.
To date, fewer than half those cases appear to have been solved.
This compounds an ever-growing list of unresolved acts of violence in the commonwealth. The Murder Accountability Project estimates the number of cold cases at nearly 10,000 in Pennsylvania alone since 1965.
Thomas Hargrave, founder and chair of the project, sees some of the hurdles as almost uniquely American.
In Denmark, a nation with a population of 5.9 million, comparable to the state of Maryland, there are around 50 homicides each year. Hargrave said Maryland has averaged more than 400 annually, meaning that the volume itself is challenging throughout most of America.
Communication and coordination is another problem, according to Hargrave.
State authorities in Denmark, for example, routinely follow up and assist local departments, resulting in a 98% case closure rate. Federal and state law enforcement only assist in the U.S. upon referral from the local jurisdictions.
"They don't have the resources to handle the crime," Hargrave said of many municipal police departments in the United States. "It comes down to, you get what you pay for. Fixing it? I don't know. (But) the data screams that they need more of everything."
Hargrave added that a lack of trust between law enforcement and minority communities, made worse by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer, can be another issue.
Despite technology that conceivably makes evidence-gathering much easier — pervasive surveillance cameras, breakthroughs in DNA testing and personal cellphones that double as human tracking collars — the homicide clearance rate in Pennsylvania has gotten worse. Philadelphia County is among the worst examples.
In 1965, Pennsylvania's most populous county saw 205 killings.
Of those 206 murders, the vast majority, 192, are solved. Every homicide from the following year, all 181, is closed.
By comparison, there were a combined 1,080 Philadelphia County homicides in 2021 and 2022, with approximately 700 of them still unsolved.
Brett Hambright, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, confirmed that his agency is limited by jurisdiction. He said the attorney general's team typically becomes involved in a case only when a county district attorney asks for help.
"We cannot just take over a case that we feel has 'taken too long;' it must come via referral, and we do get those on homicide cases," Hambright said in an email reply to the USA TODAY Network.
"However, there is not a Cold Case Unit in (our office) because we do not have a backlog of 'cold cases.' Rather, we work on the referrals we accept, as they come in, and there is no way of knowing what sort of cases those will be."
To find justice for victims, at least one Pennsylvania county began leaning on its civic-minded residents — an experiment that's already producing results.
'People want to get involved'
David Pedri, who spent the first seven years of his professional career as a prosecutor, understands the difficulties of bringing a case to court.
"There is technology out there now to solve a lot of them because of advances in DNA testing," he said. "However, it is extremely expensive for these sorts of tests to be completed."
A few years ago, Pedri became president and CEO of the Luzerne Foundation, a philanthropic organization that connects local donors to charitable causes they care about.
One such cause, spearheaded by Pedri and county District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce, is the foundation's Closing Cases Fund for homicides, missing persons and sexual assault investigations. Luzerne County residents who make tax-deductible donations to this fund finance the "case review, victimology, behavioral profiling, forensic testing, forensic consultation, interview techniques, and other investigative support measures" critical to finding answers.
"It's not as easy as it sounds to do a DNA test," Pedri said.
"The public looks at these things and says, 'Why not just get DNA? They do it on television all the time.'"
Most police forces don't have in-house lab specialists or certified forensic genetic genealogists, according to Pedri.
When a case has potential DNA, that evidence usually has to be re-analyzed and traced by third-party companies. This can cost police tens of thousands of dollars.
"It's a matter of funding to tie up some of these old cases, I believe," Pedri said. "It's just not an item that gets put in peoples' budgets for that. It takes hours of dedicated work by trained lab professionals to correctly identify these things."
This is what happened in 2022, when the Luzerne Foundation financed genetic genealogy testing of human remains discovered in 2012 in Newport Township.
Researchers at Othram Inc. were able to link DNA from the remains to relatives of Joan Marie Dymond, a Wilkes-Barre girl who disappeared in 1969 at age 14. State police are now investigating Dymond's case as a homicide.
"That family obviously knew that this young woman passed away, but they never had the closure," Pedri said.
Because he and his board believe in the mission of the Closing Cases Fund, he added, they've waived all fees that would typically be collected on it. He's been encouraged by the overwhelming volume of small donations that support this work.
"True crime is a big deal right now," Pedri said. "People are watching these shows, and every podcast is about true crime right now. People want to get involved with these things."
State police, meanwhile, are looking in-house for new solutions to old cases.
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Forensic genetic genealogy certification
Myles Snyder, communications director for the Pennsylvania State Police, said his agency divides the commonwealth's counties up into the jurisdiction of several troop divisions. Each state police troop has at least one person assigned to the criminal investigative assessment, or CIA, which handles cold homicide and missing person cases.
At headquarters in Harrisburg, according to Snyder, two investigators in the four-member CIA unit became certified in 2022 to conduct forensic genetic genealogy research.
He said Pennsylvania State Police are the first agency in the Northeast to have this capability. This allows them to save money that would otherwise be spent on the forensic genetic genealogy services provided by third parties, often at a major expense.
"You're kind of entering into an unknown contract because who knows how long it's going to take to do all the work," Snyder said.
The four-person CIA team at headquarters cleared five long-term unsolved homicides in 2022 alone. Those recently certified state police troopers also identified a former Delaware County Jane Doe in May 2023, a feat that Snyder said wouldn't have been possible without the in-house forensic genetic genealogy capabilities.
"We were extremely pleased that we could bring closure to the family and ensurance that missing loved ones are not forgotten," he said.
State police are experimenting with other tactics as well. The agency recently unveiled PSP Tips, a social media-based initiative sharing information about approximately 100 unsolved cases throughout the state.
Members of the public are additionally encouraged to provide leads with police anonymously and toll-free by calling 1-800-472-8477 or using a form found atwww.p3tips.com.
"We're hoping to see that grow," Snyder said of their social media following that's already surpassed 5,000. "That's where most people are. We're hitting the audience where people can share among friends."
Police are also finding success in using DNA previously thought to be too old and deprecated to be useful, Snyder added, a nod to the improving science of forensic investigation.
'Today it's different'
Even as the Vogt case proceeds to court, Stoker has plenty on his desk. He said he's looking at more than 40 unsolved homicide files, the oldest dating to 1980.
"(I'm) sorting through them, finding cases that are possibly solvable," he said.
Erie County, to Stoker's knowledge, doesn't have a foundation fund committed to unsolved homicides and missing persons. His position as cold case investigator was itself funded through $249,966 from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and he said they've applied for additional grants for lab testing services.
Through additional community crowdsourcing and an increased police commitment to forensic genetic genealogy certification, victims' loved ones in Erie and across the state have a better chance of finding answers, if not justice.
"Today it's different," Stoker said. "In the past you relied on a lot more interviews, fingerprints, door-to-door type of things. Now we do have access to cameras, cellphones ... the technology is a lot better."
"With more funding, some of these cases would be able to get solved in time."
Bruce Siwy is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania state capital bureau. He can be reached at bsiwy@gannett.com or on X at @BruceSiwy.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: New tech helps cops solve cold cases; funding, staff still issues
