Cold Case
Thomas A. DiBiase · 2023
A no-body case can often take many years to solve. It is important to stay close to the family because they hear things about the case. One of the ways to stay close to the family is to use victim advocates. The victim advocates became invaluable members of the prosecution team and often relieved the prosecutor from having to spend too much time hand-holding a victim when they needed to be focused on resolving the case. Using social media in cold cases, however, can often involve an investigator looking at websites that focus on so-called citizen detectives solving cases such as Reddit and Websleuths. Using these sites can be a double-edged sword. Reading pages of incoming and outgoing calls, looking at call time lengths and frequency of calls can be a challenge to organize. This is where interns, retired detectives, citizens groups, or college students studying criminology can all help.