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Murder Sheet
The Future of Crime Solving: A Conversation with Former Naval Criminal Investigative Service Agent Joe Kennedy on Cold Cases, Deployments, and Working for NCIS
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I'm Anya and today we're going to be talking to a former NCIS agent about cold cases and E Sleuth Content.
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Warning this episode contains discussion of rape, murder and suicide.
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Joe Kennedy's investigated and solved crimes all around the world. He was a longtime agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or the ncis. NCIS is tasked with investigating criminal activities involving the United States Navy and the Marine Corps. During his time there, Joe worked in the following places Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Puerto Rico, Japan, Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain and then back to Washington, D.C. on two occasions he was the Resident Agent in charge in Fallujah, Iraq. He was instrumental in founding the NCIS Cold Case Homicide Unit and codified their protocols. Joe now runs the Carolina Cold Case Consortium, which is dedicated to helping law enforcement agencies solve cold cases. Solving cold cases is a big passion of his. As a result, he's also now teamed up with E. Sleuth.
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Our interview with Joe is part of our new occasional recurring segment, the Future of Crime Solving. It's a series where we would talk to different figures associated with E Sleuth AI. E Sleuth AI offers a suite of new tools crafted to help eliminate backlogs and get cases solved cold and otherwise. It employs artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, and its systems are Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information System compliant.
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Basically, what E Sleuth does is taking case files and then provide suggestions on steps investigators may have missed or further tasks to complete in order to get closer to a conclusion.
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To help convince law enforcement departments around the country. The E Sleuth is the future of crime solving. The company is working with an impressive array of former law enforcement officials and.
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They'Re willing to talk to us in these interviews. We'll get into their careers and we'll check in with how their efforts to implement this technology into real work cases is going. Just as a note, E Sleuth is not sponsoring us. We just thought they'd be great to talk to because they universally have extensive backgrounds in crime solving that they're now trying to implement in a new way. We're also interested in sort of following along live with a company that's seeking to introduce its technology to law enforcement agencies. It's an interesting opportunity to see their trajectory up close. This conversation with Joe was great. I learned so much about ncis, an agency that's big in popular culture. I loved hearing about his views on cold cases. He also gave some insights on how law enforcement can clear their cold case backlogs. Some cases he worked, like the murder of Jacqueline Laird in Virginia and Missy McLaughlin in Michigan. How cops are cops no matter what country you're in. And how eastleuth can help prevent cases growing cold in the first place. Anya My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
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And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
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And this is the Murder Sheet.
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We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet and this is.
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The future of crime solving. A conversation with former Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Joe Kennedy on cold cases, deployments and working for NCIS sa. Well, first of all, Joe, thank you so much for joining us on the Murder Sheet today. We really appreciate it.
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D
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
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A
Absolutely. I guess to start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and perhaps what got you started in a career in law enforcement?
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D
Yeah. So, Anya, I'm from the middle part of North Carolina, a little town called High Point. It's known for furniture manufacturing, or at least was. Most of that's went to China these days. But, you know, growing up as a kid, I played a lot of sports, really, you know, fell in love with baseball. Ended up playing a little baseball at a couple of small colleges in North Carolina. That was my dream, right? To go on and play baseball. But, you know, dreams don't always come true. And so, you know, I had majored in criminal justice. It just seemed like the next likely step. You know, I spent my first part of my career in law enforcement at a small police department, the Albemarle Police Department in Albemarle, North Carolina. And then, you know, I'd always been fascinated with travel because my family, you know, my. My dad worked in a furniture factory, my mom worked at a drugstore. So we, you know, we didn't have the means to travel a lot. You know, we, I think I went as a kid. I went to the beach one time, you know, and so I was always, you know, kind of fascinated with traveling. And so I learned about ncis, you know, and that mission. You know, basically, you know, over half of the Agent Corps is overseas or in a, you know, a foreign country. So that's what kind of when I turned that focus on that. I was pretty young when I got hired, but I was. I was excited because it was my chance to kind of maybe see the world, see other things. Right. In addition to doing law enforcement.
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A
And NCIS is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, right?
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D
Correct. Most folks know it from the TV shows. There's, you know, all kind of TV shows about NCIS Hawaii and, you know, NCIS Los Angeles and the regular ncis. But, yeah, it's, you know, a very small federal agency. You know, when I hired on, we only had about 800 agents. I think today they got about 1100. You know, we do all felony investigations for the Department of Navy and the Marine Corps. Really. There's three missions in ncis. Criminal investigations, white collar, crime or fraud, and then counterintelligence. So it's a unique mission. It's one that not a lot of people are even familiar with. All NCIS agents are civilians. You know, we're not in the military. We're not, you know, we're not doing a, you know, a term in the military, anything. So that's what makes it unique. Everybody's, you know, the equivalent of, like, an FBI agent or a DEA agent or an ATF agent. You know, NCIS is just our mission just takes us anywhere the Navy and the Marine Corps is in the world.
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A
What was the culture of NCIS back when you worked there? What was it like? I mean, within.
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D
So within, you know, what you have is. I used to refer to NCIS agents as tactical, you know, because a lot of times we are. You know, it's kind of like one riot, one Ranger. You know, something goes down, you really had to think on your feet. You really had to be willing to do things, because a lot of times you didn't have the manpower and the resources that other federal agencies had. Being an NCIS agent was really more like being a big city detective than it was a federal agent, because we would do any criminal violence, any felony violation, you know, that a military member may been the victim of a crime or the suspect of a crime, you know, whether it was sexual assault or robberies or murder or, you know, something, you know, in the counterintelligence arena. So we did a variety of different investigations, which is what I really liked about it initially. You know, we did a lot of undercover narcotics work. I hired on in the mid-80s. You know, I was young. That's one of the reasons that I think I was hired. And I immediately started doing a lot of undercover work, you know, hand to hand, you know, undercover. You know, narcotics buys from. From folks that were preying on military troops in and around military installations.
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A
Wow. What was that undercover work like? I mean, is like, how do you kind of get into the character of someone who's, I guess, buying drugs?
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D
Well, I think what you have to do is, you know, you have to be yourself because, you know, folks. Folks, you know, have a good intuition, and they. They can pick up real quick if. If, you know, you're trying to trick them or, you know. So I think for me, it was just. I was just myself growing up in. In the. The town that I did, you know, I conversed with all different kind of, you know, races and ethnicities. And so it was really easy for me, you know, to kind of, you know, carry on that Persona of, you know, someone that was a, you know, seeking drugs or was a drug dealer myself. So, you know, it was not really that hard because, you know, I had interacted with so many different cultures as.
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A
A kid for those cases. What. How would they be sort of adjudicated from there once you sort of have made a case or maybe have found probable cause for a crime? How does that work within NCIS and sort of these crimes in the Marines and the Navy?
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D
Yeah, so if. If the suspect was a military member, then a lot of times that would go through what we call a court martial proceeding or a military court martial. Start with a preliminary hearing, which, you know, was referred to as an Article 32. And then once you have problem calls, you know, it goes to a court martial. But a lot of cases that I work, quite frankly, you know, we're in the civilian communities of suspects that we're preying on, you know, Marines and sailors and, you know, trying to get them to buy drugs. So we would take those cases either through the appropriate state court or if the levels of drugs, you know, escalated up to where it met criteria for felony prosecution, then we would, you know, prosecute a lot of our cases through United States Attorney's offices. Wow.
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A
Okay. And I'm curious, for your tenure at ncis, were you predominantly overseas or in the country? Were you moving around a lot?
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D
Yeah. So, you know, if you think about it, over half of our agents are assigned in overseas locations. I spent the majority of my career overseas and deployed. You know, I spent time. I've got a lot of time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I was there as the resident agent in charge a couple of different times because folks would be surprised that, you know, while a war is going on, it seems like, okay, Wait a minute. That's folks that are supposed to be killing each other. Right. You also have murder and mayhem. That has nothing to do with that war environment. It would probably surprise a lot of your listeners of just how much ecstasy, methamphetamine, heroin was, you know, trafficked during the wartime in Iraq, you know, in the border, on the Syrian border. He ran the gamut in terms of the investigations that we do. And again, that, I take it back, that's what kind of drew me to NCIS was, you know, the variety of investigations we could do and then the travel. But, you know, I don't get ahead of you here. But, you know, when I started there, when I was picked to start our cold case squad, you know, in 1995, from there, I kind of, you know, my focus went to cold cases and. But a lot of my assignments were overseas, you know, and I spent quite a bit of time in Japan. A lot of deployments in different countries, lived in Puerto Rico. So, um, you know, I think I've been to every, you know, I think at last count, I had about 106 countries under my belt that, that I had traveled or worked, you know, in some capacity while with the federal government.
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A
Wow, that's, that's a lot. You know, I'm curious, and what you said about crimes occurring during a war is fascinating because you're right. That's not, I think, what people would imagine. You know, they think like, who would have time for ecstasy smuggling in the middle of all that?
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D
Yeah, and not only that, but violent crime. We would have, you know, murders, you know, quite frequently because, you know, tensions are high, a lot of anxiety. And, you know, when you have impulsive impulsivity and anxiety and you bring those two together young, a lot of young people, you know, tempers are, you know, on edge. And so people would, you know, just common disagreements would turn into a murder right in the middle of a war zone, you know, in downtown Fallujah, Iraq.
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A
That's wild. Were those typically service members killing each other or did it.
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D
Yeah, it would vary. It was service members killing each other. It was also, you know, servicemen. Servicemen killing local citizens, you know, that were not engaged in some type of war effort or vice versa. They were, you know, it was just, again, it's. The people would be really surprised. You have what we call law of armed conflict violations. So this is, you know, maybe service members shooting someone. They shoot a shot. You know, they're, they're, they're, they get over there. They get tired of dealing with the same People every day, tensions are high and then, you know, an altercation or a disagreement turns into a murder. But yeah, those are, those are the kind of cases we respond to.
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A
Would it get tense with, you know, sort of investigating some of these servicemen? Like as was NCIS kind of viewed as almost like, you know. Oh. Or like, almost like internal affairs might be viewed in a police station or. Or was it pretty smooth?
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D
Well, no, I mean, there was always angst when NCIS agents were away, were around. Right. That, you know, when you saw us, that, that was not a good sign. You know, something, you know, illegal had transpired or something nefarious was ongoing. I mean, that's the only time we show up, right, is when, when things are not going well.
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A
Most federal agents don't have to work investigating crimes in a literal war zone. How did that, a war raging sort of around you or war going on. How did that impact how you're sort of going about investigating things?
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D
Well, I'll give you an example. Like responding to crime scenes, we did what we refer to as combat crime scenes. So you have much less time to complete the crime scene than you would, you know, say, in a city. And because of the threat, and a lot of times that threat was a sniper, you know, that was trying to shoot anybody that was, you know, affiliated with the US Government. So you'd have to go in quickly, process a crime scene. And again, it was a five minute combat crime scene. So that's, that's taking as many pictures as you can, collecting as much evidence as you can, because if you lingered around, you were going to get injured or hurt or shot. And so that's one of the things your listeners might not, or they might be intrigued with is, you know, here it is, you're in a war zone. But yeah, you still got to go collect that piece of evidence. You got to try to find the murder weapon, you got to try to see if you can recover some DNA, those kind of things.
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D
Yeah, so I, you know, a lot of my initial cases were drug related, but then I also was very fortunate. You know, I was. My first duty station was in Quantico, Virginia, and I had a couple of murders really quick. You know, one of them, interestingly, we talk about cold cases, was the wife of a DEA agent. Her name was Jacqueline Laird. So Jacqueline was murdered November of what, 86. And I was immediately put on that task force that we ran that out of the FBI Academy. And I was simply put on that task force because there were so many, you know, Marines and military personnel in and around Spotsylvania, in Stafford, Virginia, rather. And she was killed at Stafford Realty Company there. And then her body was dumped up in Woodbridge on Railroad Avenue behind Marumpsco Plaza. But, you know, that was one of the first assignments I had as an NCIS agent. So it was kind of. And then I had another murder that happened, you know, in close proximity to the FBI Academy. So I immediately got intrigued with, you know, I love doing the narcotics work, but I was. It was always the dead bodies were kind of gnawing at me. And so from there, I went up to our Washington, D.C. office, did some undercover work. Then NCIS has one agent assigned to every aircraft carrier. So I spent a year on the USS John F. Kennedy. And that thing traveled, you know, all across the world doing a deployment. So again, when our. Our ships pull in, there's crime that happens or they become the victims of crime. And so we would investigate in concert with foreign governments. From there, I went down to South Carolina, where I worked on a homicide task force, a violent crime task force known as Weedon Seed, and had just a blast there. Learned so much from, you know, I was in a task force. It was only a couple of US Federal agents with mostly local detectives, you know, from the local police and sheriff's office. And then I went to Washington, you know, because of. By now, you know, I was just working mostly violent crime and murder at that time. And we had a similar case that had remained unsolved in the Virgin Islands of a naval officer who was killed there. And so it had been unsolved for about 18 months. Because I'd worked a similar case in Charleston. I was put in charge of that case, and then we solved it. We got on the ground in St. Thomas. Took us about 33 days to solve it, you know, which was really good. A lot of teamwork, a lot of hard work. I didn't do it myself. I had some teammates. And then we partnered with the Virgin Islands Police Department. From there, I came back to Washington, and our director, Roy Nedro at the time, you know, just. I was just blessed to be in the right place at the right time. And he said, hey, Joe, let's. Let's see if we can't solve some more cases. So at that point, we established the NCIS Cold Case Squad. I was directed to, you know, okay, you had some success on this first case. You know, how do you work a cold case? What's the methodology? What's the protocols? So I was immediately, you know, kind of given a long leash. So I just started traveling around the country. This is. This is March of 95, and I went to 15 different departments that had solved cold cases. Not just one or two, but a lot to say, okay, how do you do it? You know, what's the methodology? And what I quickly learned was there were guys who were doing it. You know, those guys were who I am today. You know, the old guy with the gray hair. And, you know, I found myself to David Rivers, Tim Murray, Steve Murphy up in Boston pd. You know, I could go on and on with guys who mentored me, but what I realized, nobody had really written down a protocol. And so I took what they were all doing and developed a methodology and a protocol. And so, you know, what we did at NCIS is we exported that all across the country and then to foreign law enforcement agencies. And so I, you know, places like, you know, I helped Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Brazil set up cold case squads and kind of got enamored with cold case. From there, I went down. I did a stint before that in Puerto Rico, or I say, after that, I went to Puerto Rico. Then I came back home to North Carolina. Camp Lejeune. Lots of crime there. Ended up in Okinawa, Japan, for about six years, doing what's a fabulous assignment all over Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, you name it. Mongolia, you know, Russia, all that. You know, that whole big swath over there which is about, what, I don't know, two thirds of the population of the world. And then I found myself in South Carolina at our Southeast field office as the assistant Special Agent in charge. And there We. We had responsibilities for Florida, Georgia, Central South, Latin America, went to Bahrain, some other deployments. I was on the piracy mission. You know, the pirates were capturing ships out of Somalia. So the Somali pirates went over and worked on that task force for a while, and then ended up in Bahrain and then eventually came back to North Carolina, where I retired as the. As the agent in charge in 2014.
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A
Wow.
- [25:33]
D
I know that was a lot of. I know that was long winded. I'm sorry.
- [25:36]
A
Don't apologize. That's amazing. I mean, that's just like. You're going all around the world. That's really cool. I want to ask you a bit more about cold cases and your work with the Carolina Cold Case Consortium and just what you learned with that. But I do want to ask you, you were overseas so much, how was it working with different countries? Did you experience friction when you're sort of coming in and sort of trying to work with local police, or did things tend to go pretty smoothly?
- [26:03]
D
You know, I have to say, I never had an occurrence in my entire career where the collaboration with a foreign law enforcement entity was. Was, you know, anything but smooth. You know, cops are cops. And what I learned very quickly is the techniques are very similar regardless of the country you're in. And so that was probably, you know, what I love the most about NCIS was, you know, here I am, you know, in Argentina or here I am in, say, Colombia or Brazil or Japan or Australia, and everybody does things the same way. You know, it's a. It's the culture of cops that was really, you know, what I like the most? The ability, the smooth transition. And then you learn so much, right? I learned so much from these folks and took away their tactics. Although it's similar, right. There's nuances that, you know, are unique to each culture. Like, you know, the Dutch, they're extremely patient interviews, you know, to where they interview people for days, weeks, not hours. Right. The Japanese, who were, you know, very precision oriented, and they would process a crime scene where we might, you know, process that crime scene in four or five hours. The Japanese would be there four or five days later, still processing that crime scene. So when you start seeing techniques in how, you know that maybe they're a little better than we are in some areas, or, you know, they do things a little differently. And I think that's what gave me my strengths as an investigator was the exposure to all these other agencies and people, you know, because that's, you know, people make the difference.
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A
Absolutely. Were there any cases that have Sort of stuck with you as particularly memorable or something that comes to mind when you're sort of looking back on your career with ncis?
- [27:51]
D
Well, I, you know, I think the one case that always, you know, comes to my mind, and it's not necessarily a cold case, we, we, we solve this case fairly quickly. But it was the murder of Missy McLaughlin. And Missy was just a young gal from Michigan. On the 30th of December, 1992, her and her boyfriend had went out to a local bar. And, you know, to make a long story real short, you know, folks, Google this case, they'll get the gist of it. But Missy's abducted by six guys and two women who had sat down earlier that night while playing dominoes and cards. And they just decided, you know what, we're going to go out and capture somebody tonight and we're going to rape them and we're going to kill them. And that's what they did. Missy. And they did some horrible stuff to her, you know, forcing her to wash and bleach. They, they, after they had all six of these suspects had, had raped her while the two women watched and tortured her in some unimaginable ways. They, she knew she was going to be killed because they told her they were going to bury her alive. And as she fought for her life, as they took her to Carr to go bury her alive, they shot her in the face five times and dumped her body. And the mastermind of that case was a kid named Joe Gardner. And, you know, thank God we, we executed him in the state of South Carolina in December 2008. And he's one of those guys that just needed to be executed and some of his other, you know, co conspirators received life in prison. But the reason I, that case jumps out at me is it was so heinous in nature because here's this gal that's just walking with her boyfriend and they'd been to a bar to enjoy, you know, an evening out, and then she has no idea this abduction is coming. And, and the torture and the, just the, how heinous that crime was, that's the one that probably gives me the most satisfaction. And, you know, we worked a task force with the North Charleston Police Department, the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office in this case. And, you know, we learned, I learned so much in that task force from a guy named Butch Henry, who became the sheriff of Berkeley county and was just, you know, probably one of the best detectives I'd ever worked with and he was just had so much precision to his cases and such a good interviewer and had such great people skills. And you know, that's what it comes down to is cases. And we talk about murder. There's only three ways to solve a murder. We have to have physical evidence, we have to have a witness, or we have to get them to confess. Your viewers might find it interesting that only 15% of murders are solved with physical evidence. That includes fingerprints and DNA. About 35% of cases are solved with witnesses, but the witnesses change testimony, they don't show up for trial or their credibility is impeached. So if you think about it, it comes down to about 50% of murders. You're going to have to get the suspect or the co conspirators to confess. And that's what we did in this case with Joe Gardner is just, you know, spent a lot of time with them, got him to confess to this heinous crime and luckily and thankfully rather got one of them to be, you know, received the death penalty so that, so that they couldn't harm other folks in society.
- [31:00]
A
Wow. Was NCIS brought into that because there was a possibility that it was a, you know, I guess. How did that sort of, how did you align with that case ultimately?
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D
Yeah, so several of the suspects were in the Navy and a couple of the suspects had been prior. Navy, yes, that's why we were involved in that.
- [31:17]
A
Okay, that makes sense. Wow, that's. What a horrible case. And it's interesting you mentioned the DEA's wife, the DEA agent's wife in Stafford. I understand that was solved relatively recently.
- [31:29]
D
Very recently, Just this past January, if I got this right in my head, and that's that I can tell you. Oh my goodness, that was probably 150, 160, you know, local, state, federal officers looking at that. We worked it out of the FBI academy, the task force for months and months. And then, you know, that case was solved with, with what's solving a lot of these old cold cases, you know, genetic genealogy, you know, building that, taking that low level DNA and following those surnames on the family trees and putting together, you know, that, that from that vantage point.
- [32:02]
A
Tell me about the Carolina Cold Case Consortium and how that came to be.
- [32:09]
D
Yes, so I retired in 14. You know, I lived here, I grew up here. When I came back, I was a special agent in charge. So, you know, through that assignment, you know, I'm now reconnecting with folks that were, you know, young like I was 30 years prior to. And now they were in positions of leadership or authority. And so, you know, it was just a kind of a smooth transition that when I retired, some of those folks said, hey, Joe, would you take some of that cold case expertise and would you apply it to some of our cases, you know, here in north and South Carolina? And so what started out as, you know, myself, you know, I quickly realized, hey, there's some other retired guys that I could lean on. And I did that. And, you know, we grew that to today. You know, at any given day we could have anywhere from you know, 30 to 60 folks helping on cases. And what it is, is it's all pro bono. So what we do is we don't help families. We only help law enforcement agencies. And we only help if we're asked. And so they'll call us. And that could be anything from, hey, will you come look at the case? Will you help us develop an interrogation strategy? Will you take over this case? Right. I mean, it runs the gamut, you know, and resources are stretched. You know, in today's era of dwindling budgets and law enforcement, the perception of law enforcement sometimes is not great. But so that's how we got that thing started. Day. It has grown so much. You know, we're helping on cases, just about 200 cases. I say it's north of 200 actually, but they're from all over the country. You know, once folks started learning, hey, you guys, all we got to do is get you here. And you know, we're not trying to stay, we're not trying to stay in a five star hotel. You know, all you got to do is put us up and get us some water and you know, maybe a breakfast and we'll sit here. And that's, that's what we do today is we, we try to help folks get their cases solved.
- [34:01]
A
Have you actually been asked to take over cases?
- [34:04]
D
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because, well, you know, you've got smaller departments that just don't have, you know, the bandwidth. And so. And when I say take them over, I don't want to give your listeners the. We don't, we don't assume the right. We don't want to work. We want to. Our whole goals that we're trying to mentor, right, and help these younger detectives of what's worked for us in the past to get their cases solved. But there are of some occasions where they've said, hey, well, you just kind of take the will, the total will. And so we do, obviously in collaboration with that department.
- [34:35]
A
I'm curious, you Know, have you been able to sort of crack any of these or.
- [34:41]
D
Yeah, yeah, we've, we've, we've helped on dozens of cases that have gotten solved. We've also provided resources to, for, you know, departments that, you know, maybe they don't have enough funding for some DNA. So we will go out and through our resources, you know, get some funding, you know, through private businesses, through, you know, GoFundMe pages. A lot of different ways to address that that we have done in the past.
- [35:05]
A
You know, you talked about all these learnings you had over the course of your career and over the course of your colleagues careers, about learning what works and what is like a good protocol or when it comes to solving a cold case, or at least getting it closer to a solve, what are some of the kind of key things that stand out for you when you think about how law enforcement should approach cold cases with an eye to solving them?
- [35:30]
D
Well, one of the toughest things is you have to learn the case. You know, if you're responding to a hot murder or a contemporaneous murder, you know, you remember being, you know, at the crime scene, you remember the smell of the decomposing body, you saw the blood dripping off of the stairs, whatever that might be. But in a cold case, right, you can't type, tap into those five senses of sight, smell, touch, right? So you have to. And that's the toughest thing for a lot of investigators is they just pick it up and start working it as opposed to learning. Okay, were the original investigators on the right track? Was their focus correct? Did they have the right suspects, you know, in their gun sites? Or were they totally, you know, going down the wrong trail? Like I'll give you an example. The first cold case we saw, the ncis, there were three groups of potential suspects. The original investigators were just on the wrong trail of the wrong group of suspects. So we just got refocused on the right trail or the right group of people who did it. But learning the case, understanding the case, you know, and it's far different today in working with cold case than it was 35 years ago in a lot of ways. But then in most ways it's exactly the same. Not much has changed except for, you know, what we're going to talk about later. I guess as we continue this conversation is AI and how that is a game changer now for cold cases, just like genetic genealogy has been. But you know, the main thing for folks doing cold cases is having process. This will sound like almost an oxymoron. Here, the investigators need to be patient but tenacious at the same time, because you're going to see that most cold cases, it's a game of chess and it's cat and mouse all the way. And I want your viewers to realize also that in about 95% of cold cases on a, the suspect's name is somewhere in the police file during the original investigation. So they were a neighbor, they were a family member, they were a witness. Maybe they've always been the prime suspect for, you know, 30 years. But their name is in the file. We gotta find that name and who did it. And then. The thing I will share that your listeners might be the most intrigued with is if you think about the percentage of murders that are planned, it's really small, okay? It's in the 3.47 range, even less than that. Whereas a break in a robbery, a sexual assault, the vast majority of those are planned. But what the killer does not calculate for is that the victim's going to respond in a certain way. In other words, they're going to fight back, they're going to try to get away. So those other crimes turn into the murder. And because it was never planned to be a murder, the suspects can't cope with that. And it happens instantaneously. So you'll see that their lives will deteriorate significantly. It starts almost like days or weeks after the murder. They'll start drinking, they'll turn to alcohol, they'll start using drugs. And then over the course of time, you'll see they can't keep a job, they can't stay in the same residence. And so when I go and help on cases today, you know, through this 35 years of doing it, I don't even look at investigative steps. I say, okay, give me your five suspects. Here they are. Whose life has deteriorated from the minute after that murder. Right? It starts quickly because that's the. You know, if you think about the stigma that society places on that, and if these folks have any type of, you know, seeking a higher being in their backgrounds or anything, any morality at all, man, there's nothing worse than killing someone. Now, do you have serial killers and folks that are just, you know, angry, like Joseph Gardner, want to go out and kill someone? Absolutely. But that's not the vast majority of our cold cases. So if I was, and I know I'm rambling on here with you again, but, you know, for me, hey, look, for the life that's deteriorated the most, but you got to learn the case, and were they. Were they going down the right trail. And if they weren't, what's the right trail? What's the right group of suspects or suspect?
- [39:37]
A
That makes sense. Yeah. And you're not rambling. Don't say that. You're doing a great job. I do, I do want to ask you, you know, this should be pretty self evident and I think most of our listeners will, you know, probably be like, why is she even asking this? But what's the. Why is it important in your mind to solve these cold cases, these unsolved violent crimes and homicides?
- [40:01]
D
Well, I mean, it comes down to one thing and that thing is life is precious. You know, and I'll tell your audiences, I've said it on other podcasts. 1990, 1991. Going into 1991, I lost five people in my family. You know, my dad died of a stroke, my mom died of breast cancer, my grandmother died the day after Christmas at an 8 year old nephew who was killed on a bicycle at Wrightsville beach. And my uncle hung himself, all in about 14 months. So I realized how precious life was. And so as I got involved in cold cases and started working with families, victims, families, it became even more apparent to me. You know, my family was supposed to die maybe not that quickly and under that small amount of time, but they're supposed, you know, we're all going to die, but no one should have the ability to take a life, particularly of a young person. Let's just take those yogurt shop murders that just broke yesterday. You know, and I was on the phone this morning, a couple of folks had called me. You know, think of the age of those victims. You know, all those kids were. Not one of them was 20 years old. And you had a 13 year old in there. So to me, it's the families. Because what you're going to find is the families. And this is a misnomer, is a lot of people think if we solve a case, the family gets closure. That's actually not accurate because that person's not coming back. You know, closure would be, hey, let's fix the wrong and bring it back and make a right. But what we do give them is resolution. And I will tell you that the cold case families, they are just starving for their loved one's case to get solved. They just want to know. A lot of them don't have vengeance. You know, they don't want to, you know, go and, you know, do something to the perpetrator. They just want to know because, you know, what happened to my victim and why, what happened to my loved one. And why did that occur that night? But for any cold case investigator, I will tell you that if you asked a hundred of us, you probably get the same response. It's all about the victims and their families.
- [41:59]
A
That makes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I thought it was really interesting that the yogurt shop victims, families, they were even saying things like, it's eased their suffering already just knowing what happened, even though it doesn't bring the girls back. But I wanted to ask you, in your time working on cold cases, are there any special memories for you about times you were able to get help, police get a solve, or, you know, or just anything working on a case that sort of stands out for you?
- [42:30]
D
I certainly don't want this to sound arrogant or, you know, that I'm trying to be braggadocious or anything like that, but it, you know, for me, I don't take a lot of satisfaction. It does not give me a lot of satisfaction to solve a case. I just go on to the next case. You know, I want to. I want to, you know, provide empathy. I want to provide, you know, help that family, you know, understand. Hey, I'm glad this happened. We love you. We love your family. We're so sorry you were a victim of this. But then we got another family waiting for us. So for me, I don't. You know, I've never been one to relish in victories, you know, because I'm a guy that, okay, you solve one cold case, big deal. You solved in big deal. Can you solve 100? Can you solve 300? Can you solve 500? Can you keep doing this? Right? And that, to me, is. Is what this is all about. And again, I don't want your audience to take this in the wrong manner. It's just who I am. You know, I've never been one to grandstand or say, hey, we did this. I want to go prove that we can do it again. Right. And again and again and again.
- [43:36]
A
Absolutely. And now I want to ask about sort of your work with East Sleuth and sort of, how did that come to be?
- [43:44]
D
Yeah, so East Luth, you know, I was contacted by Mike Clark and Scott Tomlinson, you know, and those guys are kind of part of the architecture there, and Bob Beatty, and they've put together what I think is a really cool system for solving crime. You know, Scott is a highly decorated ATF agent. I mean, he was an excellent operator. You know, from a practitioner standpoint. I mean, the guy, he did it. He's been there and done that. You know, he's done it all. And so, you know, you have someone that has. They're proven. They're a proven entity. And he had a great reputation. He has great experience. You know, he did a lot of the gun murders, I think, out in the Gary, Indiana, Midwest. He's got a lot of time in Colorado. So he knows, you know, he knows how to solve a case. And, you know, for me, they reached out to me and they said, hey, you're at the Carolina's cold case Coalition. Are y' all using something? Have you used AI? Have you thought about it? And, you know, I mean, we have in some. Some other features, you know, but we didn't have a system that I have seen like his. You know, we have folks trying to maybe solve a murder. But I think what Scott and his group are doing is trying to solve all the unsolved crimes, which we know that perpetrators, you know, they start out stealing stuff, then they start out doing burglaries. That transitions to sexual assault before they ultimately murder someone. So, you know, the concept that he tried to establish, or has established, rather, at East Lou, you know, that was. That was really, you know, resonated with me. Okay, wow. You want to. You're really. We're taking this back to, you know, the perpetrators, maybe first offense or even first thought of an offense, and then, you know, trying to take that through that person's lifespan to see, you know, just how many cases we can solve. I mean, the yogurt shop murders be a perfect example of this, you know, and I think there's still more folks to be uncovered there. And if you think about. If you could have applied artificial intelligence to that case many years ago, because that case is made on one of the cornerstones of Scott's old agency, atf, is the NIBIN system to where the detective down in Texas actually had the shell casing rerun through nibin. And I know Scott was intimately familiar and involved in nibin, as you know, and that's kind of the. I guess it would be the. You know, the gold standard at ATF is, is those guys in the creation of that system has solved, you know, thousands of cases. I mean, thousands and thousands of cases.
- [46:15]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, you know, one thing, I guess, as you've worked on cold cases across the country, do you think that there's adequate resources being dedicated to cold cases within police agencies?
- [46:31]
D
Just in general, you know, most police departments lack the resources and, you know, to actually, you know, have a permanent cold case squad? You'll see a lot of Folks try to do it part time, you know, or ad hoc and that's just not going to work. You know, that's not going to result in successfully solved cases. They'll work cases, but they won't solve cases. To solve cold cases, you need a dedicated 100% effort. Now here's where East Luth would come in, is that, you know, because of, if you take a 30 year old cold case, we don't have a lot of digital media from that era, right. So we don't have ring doorbell camera footage, we don't have surveillance home security systems, cell phones. Right. That data is easy for a detective to kind of process. But when you get into the age of body cam footage and all the surveillance cameras and phones, now somebody's got to sit and review all that data. And I think, you know, Scott came down, you know, and heard from some detectives here in North Carolina at the Versailles County Sheriff's Department where they had a school shooting, you know, and it had taken the detectives about, if I remember correctly, about 60 hours to, you know, manage all of that, you know, the ring doorbells and surveillance system cameras, all that to where they got to the right car that was involved. And then you bring on something like Eastloof that has an AI platform. You're talking about identifying that car in seconds as opposed to hours. Right. I mean think of the difference in. It takes apartments 60 man hours to get to the right car. And then if you could do it in seconds with Eastleuth, isn't that amazing?
- [48:08]
A
It's making things quicker. And, and my understanding is it's almost like making suggestions on what can be done. Like so if you're starting from a cold case, like from, from scratch and you're not familiar with it and you can kind of get caught up easier within east loose.
- [48:24]
D
It's called a virtual agent. And so you have a virtual agent that just might be focusing on, say, blood evidence. Another virtual agent's just focusing on, you know, shell casings. Another agent is, is focusing on the interview that was done with a particular person. And where I'm going with this is imagine all that expertise that's at the tip of a finger. In other words, you don't have to have an agent that knows everything about bloodstain pattern analysis or you don't have to have an agent that knows everything about the nibin. In other words, this system is set up e sluice is set up to where it thinks for the detectives. And it also makes those connections with cases that, you know, there's some connection, maybe the suspect's car was used in, you know, a break in. And then five years later, the suspects, you know, used a gun that was tied back to that particular car. So again, it's, it's really a unique thing. I've not seen anything else like it. I'm still intrigued by it. I'm still learning it myself, obviously, to kind of try to figure out, okay, how. Because I think it is really going to revolutionize law enforcement. And here's the difference is, you know, I think Scott partnered with, with Bob, and Bob is, is a guy's a proven entity in, in the, in the law enforcement world in terms of a vendor, right, because he had forensic logic and that company, you know, they were, they were. He had over a billion law enforcement records. So now you take a smart federal agent who knows what in the hell he's doing and you pair those two up. And so what has built the system is a practitioner that knows how to solve a case as opposed to, you know, someone that's just trying to, you know, sell law enforcement a product. And so I think that, to me, that was the, the uniqueness of it was you've got this guy who's, who's proven, you know, who's been in the law enforcement world in terms of providing support, you know, through companies and as a vendor. And he's partnered with this really good, you know, formal federal agent. And what they've done is they've designed the system that, you know, most other companies don't use that format. They just have developers or programmers or someone that has AI, you know, to develop this system or does it even work. And so that's, I think the uniqueness of eastleuth is, you know, and that's where it's going to hit to most of the departments is they're going to realize quickly, okay, this thing is built like a cop would have built it. Does that make sense?
- [50:53]
A
It does. And I'm just curious, you know, have you all had success with convincing law enforcement agencies of its efficacy here?
- [51:04]
D
Oh, I think so. Everybody, as soon as they see it, they're enamored with it. It's like, oh my goodness. Right? Like, wow. And so, you know, it's, so it's such, it's in the infant stages, right? It's. And that's what we have to keep in our, in our minds, Anya, is that as it develops, I think it's going to just become a powerful tool. I know Scott and Mike and a lot of it and the other Thing that Scott did was he built, you know, some real other, got some experts together. You've got the former Julia's, the former director of the Secret Service. He's gotten some really good folks that were at the executive ranks. Eric Harden, BJ. BJ's on all the Fox News channels. I mean, because as an expert, you know, he is, he's. He's gotten a team together that, you know, it's, it's kind of like I don't want to, you know, I don't want to sound, you know, corny here, but it's, it's like a superhero team that is, you know, now trying to solve these cases.
- [52:06]
A
Are you calling yourselves the Cold Case Avengers?
- [52:09]
D
Now, wait, now, wait a minute. I don't want to go there because I'm. This is Scott Nims. You know, baby, I'm just, you know, they, they graciously, you know, asked me to, to take a look at it and, you know, try to see, you know, what maybe solvability factors and stuff. I would, I would add to it, you know, and this is, you know, I'm not a, I'm still learning on this thing, but I don't want to, I don't want to get, I don't want to give off that. I don't want to seem pretentious here. I don't. But, but I know Scott's put together a really good team. And I'm not just saying that because we're on this. I mean, it's, you know, the difference is this is a cop designed it, and so it's going to solve cases where a lot of software, you know, is eyewash or window dressing. This is actually going to get down to the meat and solve cases.
- [52:51]
A
Absolutely. And then I'm curious, you know, are you. Is there anything that you're especially excited for that's coming up with East Luthor sort of next steps that you're sort of. I mean, it sort of sounds like you guys are in the stage of introducing it to different law enforcement players. And so I guess. What's next for East Loose?
- [53:10]
D
Well, I think what is next and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to speak for, for Scott and his group, but, you know, it. I think it's the rollout of it and what's. What I predict is going to happen is, is it's going to be like wildfire. You're going to, it's going to be hard to contain this because once it is applied, you know, in a, in a let's say a major metropolitan police department. You're going to just see a lot of cases get solved. And so, you know, that's going to be the turning point. And I think that's just around the corner. You know, that's not years away or months away or even weeks. That's, you know, to me, it's. It's days or weeks away to where you're going to see, wow, we used eastleuth. It solved this case. Okay. We used it over here again, it solved this case. And so I think that's the key is, you know, and I know it's hard to have that tactical patience when you, you know, you're. It's like being a runner and, you know, a sprinter. Okay. You're on the line and they're getting ready to fire the gun. And I think that Scott and him are just, just about to fire that gun. And I'm, I'm excited to see what they do with it.
- [54:12]
A
And then what's next for the Carolina Cold Case Consortium?
- [54:16]
D
Well, our coalition, you know, we're constantly, you know, helping across the country. You know, I was just in, I'll give you, kind of my last four or five weeks was, you know, I was in South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas. But, you know, what's on the horizon for us right now is we are helping on several departments in eastern North Carolina, and we are trying to roll out, you know, programs that will help departments, you know, get organized. And. And instead of us showing up and, you know, en masse, we're able to do a lot of this stuff virtually just like e sluth will be able to be done, you know, from a virtual environment. But our next steps is really, we're concentrating on eastern North Carolina because, you know, we've got a lot going on in western North Carolina and a ton of things in the middle of the state. And we've maybe neglected some of our eastern departments over the years. And so we're going to try to go back there. We're also helping, and I can't get into it, but we're helping on a serial case here in the state that I think is, you know, is going to be very interesting. A serial killer who's in custody, thank God, but then we're going to be able to link a lot of other cases to him. So that's what's on our plate to say between now and Christmas.
- [55:34]
A
Wow, that's incredible. Well, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. We really, really appreciate your insight and thank you for the work you've done on all these cold cases.
- [55:44]
D
Anya. Thank you. God bless you. Have a great day.
- [55:47]
A
You too. Thanks. Thanks so much to Joe for taking the time to talk to us. We'll be including more information about E. Sleuth and the Carolina Cold Case Consortium in our show notes.
- [55:56]
B
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [56:17]
A
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support.
- [56:40]
B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with.
- [56:52]
A
Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. Save over $200 when you book weekly stays with VRBO this winter if you need to work, why not work from a chalet? If you haven't seen your college besties since, well college you need a week to fully catch up in a snowy cabin. And if you have to stay in a remote place with your in laws, you should save over $200 a week. That's the least we can do, so you might as well start digging out the long johns because saving over $200 on a week long snowcation rental is in the cards book now@vrbo.com.