https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/us/cold-case-murder-investigation-police.html

U.S.|Dashed Hopes and Big Breaks: What It's Like to Work on Cold
Cases
  
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/us/
cold-case-murder-investigation-police.html

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Thomas Elfmont, wearing his uniform and a cowboy hat, poses for a
portrait outside.
Thomas Elfmont, who came out of retirement to work on a cold case,
believes he got the man who killed a teenage girl in Montana in 1996.
Credit...Will Warasila for The New York Times
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Dashed Hopes and Big Breaks: What It's Like to Work on Cold Cases

This month, significant breakthroughs were announced in several
murder cases that had been dormant for decades. Investigators
explained what cracking these can look like.

Thomas Elfmont, who came out of retirement to work on a cold case,
believes he got the man who killed a teenage girl in Montana in 1996.
Credit...Will Warasila for The New York Times

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Isabelle Taft

By Isabelle Taft

  * Aug. 25, 2024

Thomas Elfmont, a retired Los Angeles police officer, was living in
Bozeman, Mont., when the local sheriff invited him to lunch. Over
Mexican food, the sheriff described the murder of a 15-year-old girl
that rocked a nearby small town almost 30 years ago and had never
been solved. The sheriff asked: Would Mr. Elfmont take it on?

Fascinated and believing he could make a difference, Mr. Elfmont
accepted.

"I was just determined, even with the roadblocks that I faced, that I
was going to get the guy that did this," Mr. Elfmont said.

In a span of eight days this month, law enforcement announced key
breakthroughs in at least four homicides after decades without
arrests. In California, the police charged a 75-year-old man in the
1973 murder of Nina Fischer. In Texas, the police named suspects in
two separate murders -- of Susan Leigh Wolfe and Terri McAdams -- from
the 1980s. And in Montana, Mr. Elfmont believes he found who killed
Danielle Houchins in 1996.

This series of discoveries may seem like an encouraging turn of
events in the world of cold cases. But in reality, even with advances
in forensic technology, such breakthroughs are rare. Many American
law enforcement agencies have no teams dedicated to such cases, and
there remain hundreds of thousands of unsolved homicides across the
country.

Among the ranks of America's cold-case investigators are retired
police officers working for free; on-duty detectives and members of
dedicated cold-case units; and sometimes even civilian consultants
who earn the trust of police forces to work a case.

The work, investigators who have experience with such cases say, is
not for everyone, involving a lot of hours and sleepless nights.
Investigators have to interview witnesses multiple times and work
with new technology to uncover leads in ways that were not possible
when the case first opened.

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