Denver’s cold-case team has arrested 75 suspected rapists and killers since 2004, a number of cracked cases that rivals the totals achieved by some whole nations.
“It doesn’t get any better than Denver anywhere on the planet,” said Bob Green, former head of Great Britain’s national police and science unit within the Ministry of Interior. “They’ve been incredibly successful.”
In assembly-line fashion, Denver authorities have identified, arrested and convicted suspects who had long evaded detection in some heinous cases. Among them: serial rapist Byron Gay, convicted two weeks ago for kidnapping and raping three women in the 1990s.
The success of Denver’s cold-case project can be traced to actions taken many years ago by a few pioneers prompted by the families of victims of unsolved crimes: Denver police Division Chief Dave Fisher, District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and laboratory director Greg LaBerge.
The way prosecutors, laboratory scientists and police work closely together in Denver is now being copied by agencies across the U.S., said Chuck Heurich, program manager for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences.
“We’re on the cutting edge. We are the most aggressive unit in the United States,” said Morrissey, who as a deputy district attorney in 1988 filed the first Denver case using DNA evidence in a rape case.
Change in policing
LaBerge predicted the cold-case project — along with related initiatives including using DNA to take prolific burglars off the streets — will affect Denver’s quality of life for decades to come.
“You’re seeing a change in policing. We’re building an investigative factory,” LaBerge said.
Denver has generated a steady stream of arrests and convictions in cases dating back 30 years:
• Roderick Elias, 53, of Topeka, Kan., was arrested in March for allegedly fatally stabbing 22-year-old waitress Kristen Kay Swanson in 1980.
• Willie Trimble, 48, was linked by DNA to sexual assaults in 1997, when he allegedly raped a woman in an alley, and in 2007, when he dragged Judith Pyle into an alley, raped her and left her to die. He was recently convicted for attempted kidnapping of the first woman and raping the second and is serving a life sentence.
• Jody Ray Smith, 38, was arrested in May for allegedly raping one female newspaper carrier and the attempted rape of another female carrier on Sept. 23, 1993.
Project’s beginnings
Fisher said the project began after he attended a meeting in 2003 of Families of Victims of Homicide and Missing Persons, where several families confronted him about unsolved cases and the perception that nothing was being done.
That same Saturday night he called Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman and together they discussed the outline of what would soon become the cold-case project, an ambitious hunt for evidence in 600 unsolved murder cases and 4,000 rape cases dating back to 1970.
LaBerge, who has a degree in molecular biology, was the first civilian laboratory director for the Denver Police Department. He applied for several U.S. Justice Department grants beginning in 2003 that won the city millions of dollars for the cold-case project.
In 2004, police stacked thousands of files on tables in an auditorium at police headquarters, said Sgt. Anthony Parisi, who heads the cold-case unit. As many as 100 police officers and scientists spent six months scouring the files looking for solvable cases, LaBerge said. They cross-checked evidence storage boxes to confirm murder weapons or clothing stained with semen or blood hadn’t been tossed, Parisi said.
Morrissey helped establish a protocol for detectives and crime-scene analysts to follow in cold cases. His prosecutors brainstorm cases with police immediately after a DNA match is made and before the investigation begins.
Numbers “remarkable”
Since then, Denver police have thoroughly reviewed 304 murder cases, performing laboratory tests in 202 of them. In 14 of the cases, the tests identified a suspect, and of those, nine people have been arrested for murder. The department has had even more success pursuing rape and molestation cases.
Of the 186 sex-crimes cases investigated since 2004, detectives have made arrests in 66 rape and molestation cases and are still working 36 more cases.
The cold-case unit has also “exceptionally cleared” 91 rape and murder cases dating back to 1970. These are cases in which detectives identified the killer or rapist but the suspect is dead or victims decline to testify.
By comparison, when Great Britain did a similar nationwide project in 2002 involving late-1980s and early-1990s sexual-assault cases from 43 law enforcement agencies, they got DNA hits on about 50 rapes.
“Their figures are remarkable,” Green said, referring to Denver.
Since 2004, when Fisher assigned one detective to cold cases, the unit has grown to nine full-time officers.
“They are tenacious,” Fisher said.
Cold-case detectives have traveled across the country and as far away as Mexico City, often interviewing suspects or witnesses in prisons.
Fisher pioneered the use of a full-time victim-assistance specialist when detectives first meet rape victims or families of murder victims from decades-old cases. These first contacts can be very emotional.
“As soon as we knock on the door we’re going to bring them back to five minutes after it happened,” said Scott Snow, Denver’s victim-assistance director.
How that first meeting is handled can make all the difference in whether the victim will ultimately be willing to testify against the suspect, Lt. Matt Murray said.
But Fisher said he didn’t create the victim-assistance position as an investigative ploy. The specialist tries to meet the needs, including providing counseling, to victims who have been suffering silently for decades, he said.
In its early years, DNA was processed in cramp quarters, including a closet; the department is now on the verge of building a voter-approved $39 million crime laboratory.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
