Opinion : Cold Cases: How old and unsolved murders can still affect a community today

I had just begun working part-time in the news business, when in May of 1992, I learned some of the most important journalistic lessons from my participation in a story – one I did not write.

The uncle of my wife was killed, along with another bicyclist, when he was hit by a car on a county highway west of Cedar Rapids. The story was on TV all night, and we saw it over and over as the family gathered at the aunt’s house, dealing with the shocking, tragic loss.

For the most part, my wife’s family was OK with the media coverage, although with the looping all-night news, it got old seeing the footage of the ambulance on the roadway. There was one newspaper story that seemed to question whether the bicyclists wore helmets or carried ID (they did both), but for the most part, the newspapers handled the stories very well and accurately.

I remember that experience any time I deal with any kind of story dealing with pain, loss or death. I try to think about the people I am writing about, and how I would feel if I were in their situation.

Just a few days ago, while working on one of my cold case stories, I tried to contact a relative of one of the Benton County murder victims from the 1970s. I found her number via a series of Google searches.

But before I called her, I realized what she would be experiencing when she answered her phone. She would be getting a call from a total stranger, a newspaper guy from a publication she has never heard of, asking her to talk about the most painful experience of her life. She chose not to comment for my story; that of course, is her right (and what I thought she would do). She would also wonder how a total stranger got her cell phone number (Google is a marvelous investigative tool).

While most newspapers have a policy of contacting people who have lost a loved on in an accident or other tragic death, I virtually never do that.

Once, after a man whose son died suddenly of natural causes spoke to a TV station, I gave him a chance to share with the local paper his thoughts about his young son. I have covered funerals, and murder trials, mentioning the deceased in those cases. But even then I can’t help but use what some people call “kid gloves,” trying to be as gentle as possible while describing life’s most cruel moments. It offends me when someone representing journalism shoves a mike in the face of someone facing the tragic death of a loved one and asks, "How do you feel?"

Writing about an untimely death -- regardless of the person's age or how they died -- is never easy. And worrying if I did it right is part of the challenge. (Judging from most comments I later received about my stories, I did.)

Once, however, I did get a complaint. I interviewed a radio personality as he was leaving his job for another town. He recited some of the things he remembered most about his career; one of which was participating in a memorial after a tragic accident involving two teenagers. I mentioned that memorial, in one line, toward the end of the story. Soon, my phone rang. “Don’t EVER mention my son in your paper again,” demanded the grieving mother. “What?” I said. I didn’t even remember mentioning the accident because the radio guy and I had talked about so many other things. But I promised to do what she asked.

With the cold cases, I am more likely to contact relatives (if I can locate them) because there are so few other people who would remember much about the victims. When I began the series, I expected that in some cases, I would be talking to people who suffered years ago, and may prefer not to have their stories told publicly again. I have tried to be aware of their feelings, and write carefully. But I also think it’s important to remember all of these victims while someone who knew them personally, or handled their case, is still alive.

The 1925 case was easy to write, because everyone involved is dead, and cannot be affected by any story I write.

But the other, more recent cases all involve people who are still alive, and some who still live among us. Reading these stories will remind some people of some of the more difficult (or in some cases, most difficult) days of their lives. I have an obligation to tread as lightly as possible.

But I also have an obligation to those people whose lives were cut short by another human, an obligation to point out when justice was not served.

There is also, perhaps among some citizens, a sense that society has failed – the feeling or fear that someone, somewhere made a mistake that caused a killer to remain free. Since the officers and prosecutors investigating those murders were all humans, it is likely that some mistakes were made – even significant ones that kept a killer from being arrested, convicted and sentenced. The purpose of our stories is not to place blame, but rather to shed light on the challenges that law enforcement officers have faced throughout the course of history. For instance, while the officers of the 1950s did not have DNA or computer forensics and video cameras, the officers of our era have much stricter regulations governing how they are allowed to interrogate suspects.

Suspects arrested for a crime have much more than “a right to remain silent;” several court cases after the famous Miranda ruling of the 1960s expanded the rights of the accused, and made it more difficult for officers to obtain a confession, and more likely that a confession made in court could be ruled inadmissible by a judge. It was particularly tough in the 1970s, before new technology became available to help law enforcement with their investigations.

We have a few more cold cases left in our series; I am still trying to get comments, quotes and histories to fill in some of the missing pieces. I wish I had more information to share, more details about what happened, for the stories which you have already read, and for those I am still trying to finish.

With each passing day, it seems that those details may be harder to discover. But the pain of those crimes remains with our community – and with those who were most affected by those crimes when they happened. So we owe it to them – and to all of you – to do what we can to make those old cases a little less cold.