Robert, you know, I, I'll go back to the first cold case that,
that I was really involved in, that, that had success.
And it was a case in the book. It was a case down in the Virgin Islands. And,
uh, a naval officer, uh, Dana Bartlett was brutally murdered, uh,
by three suspects there.
Former N C I S agent Joe Kennedy went on to establish the first
federal cold case homicide unit starting in 1986 with
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Kennedy investigated crimes involving sailors and marines around the world.
Hello, I'm investigative reporter Robert Riggs,
here to take you inside the crime scene tape to hear about cold cases
from the Real Life Agency popularized by Hollywood N C
I S.
Joe Kennedy is still out there lending his cold case experience to small law
enforcement agencies that seek help.
He serves on the Cold Case Coalition,
nonprofit volunteer organization,
comprised of retired law enforcement officers and experts.
And Kennedy has written a brilliant guide for cold case investigators titled,
solving Cold Cases, investigation Techniques and Protocols.
I placed links in the show notes.
Here's part two of my interview with Joe Kennedy.
How do you define a cold case? When does a,
an active murder investigation or rape investigation go cold?
Yeah, typically, Robert,
that is after one year in duration where the case has not been resolved.
You will also see some departments will designate it as a cold case if there is
a change in investigators or a change in detectives. But typically it's,
it's a year old.
And does it become more difficult?
Can you describe how you attack a cold case where you start.
Robert? You know, I'll, I'll go back to the first cold case that,
that I was really involved in, that that had success.
And it was a case in the book, it was a case down in the Virgin Islands. And,
uh, a naval officer, uh, Dana Bartlett was brutally murdered, uh,
by three suspects there, uh, beaten in the head with a baseball bat,
shot in the head, uh,
all over a robbery and his failure to comply with the robbers, right? And,
and got him killed. But, you know, when we first started that case,
we took it weeks to just look at it, the material. And,
and that case was only 18 months old. Uh, some things,
if you get in a 20 year old case, man, that can be, you know,
couple boxes and boxes of banker boxes of, of files. But the,
the first thing you have to do is you have to understand the case. You know,
when we respond to a hot homicide or a contemporaneous murder,
you have the ability to draw on the five senses, right? Sight, smell, taste,
feel. So,
so you still remember the smell of that crime scene and that decomposing body
or, you know, but with a cold case, you,
you don't have that ability to tap into those five senses. And so you have to,
you have to know it. You have to understand it. And so I would say that the,
and a lot of cold case investigators miss this step is,
is that you have to understand,
you have to know the file better than you do your hot homicides because you
weren't there to, to take in those things like sights, smell,
sound right at the original scene.
And you do,
what are you describe as evidence-based investigations?
How do you apply that to a cold case?
Well, in, in a lot of cold cases, what you're trying to do is you're,
you're trying to narrow down the pool of suspects.
That's what I have learned that,
that I probably do best and been doing for years. Didn't,
didn't really put that terminology toward that phrase.
But what you're doing is, as you look at the scene,
you are looking at simple things like the handedness of the offender,
the relationship or potential relationships between the suspect and the victim.
What is the crime scene telling us? And then, you know, as I said,
an evidence-based investigation, unfortunately, in North America,
not just the US but you'll see in North America, the Canadians, the Mexicans,
um, uh, they tend to follow suspects. And you'll find this is,
is predominant in Europe as well. In other words, we,
we can put a suspect at a crime scene on a video camera.
We can put a suspect's phone at a scene. And so we get, okay,
this is probably the right suspect, and then something happens,
which eliminates that suspect. And then we're like, okay, well,
who's our next suspect? Whereas I like to look at the evidence, right?
Okay. The offender had to be so tall, he had to, the victim had to,
this assault had to have started in this part of the room, right?
Based on the trajectory of the, the rounds that entered the victim's torso,
they would've had to been standing here or there.
Sometimes that's gonna eliminate potential witnesses and suspects,
but you gotta follow the evidence. And, you know,
the evidence can be something very minute at a crime scene.
I gotta be careful how I say this, but I was helping on a case recently,
and the victim's dead.
He's a mechanic and he's working on a car and he's dead under the car.
But in one hand, as a cigarette lighter and the other hand's a cigarette, I,
I feel pretty confident that when the offender walked up to him,
he knew him because he was like leaning up to light his cigarette, right?
To have cop and then he shot. So that's, that's minutiae or that's, and, and,
and I could be totally, I could be dead wrong.
And that's where we have to understand as investigators that sometimes as we
evaluate and review scenes, we could actually be wrong.
But we want to try to follow what the evidence or what the crime scene is
telling us.
So on the suspect based investigations is that the old motive
means an opportunity that you're pursuing.
That's exactly what it is. Now, I use components of that, Robert,
but I'm not looking for who had the motive.
The opportunity is much more important to me.
But I want to know who does not belong at the scene on
the day of the murder or the time of the murder. Let,
let me explain that a little bit more. So,
my sister-in-law is supposed to be at my house on Thanksgiving, Christmas,
and about 10 times a year on a Thursday night and Friday morning.
I love my sister-in-law, got a great relationship with her,
but she doesn't belong at my house any other time. You see what I'm saying?
I gotcha. So let's say,
let's say that my brother is found dead on the floor on Saturday morning,
but yet my sister-in-law's reported to have been seen in the parking lot out in
front of my house. She did not belong at my house on that day. Right?
Right.
You know,
how many cases get solved by just figuring out who does not belong at the scene
on that day? They know the family, they got a inter personal relationship,
but they just did not belong there that day. And that's what will,
that's evidence, right?
That's strong evidence that will lead us to the right offender.
Which could be a case of a ring camera captures a vehicle
outside the home of somebody's murdered.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. We look at those, you know, who had the means, motive,
and opportunity, but motive is so elusive, Robert,
and we investigate a lot of cases.
We think we're on the right track with the motive. And,
and then at the end of the case, you go, wow, that had nothing to do with it.
You know, it wasn't even a component,
wasn't even a consideration because motive is, I I also say it's fickle, right?
And there's, we w here's what we have to focus on.
When we do an evidence-based investigation,
we're focusing on three groups of people.
We're focusing first on family and friends, coworkers and neighbors,
and then associates and acquaintances.
And hopefully out of those three groups of people, you know,
we need to determine, okay, was our victim,
did she have a closer relationship with her family?
Was she estranged from her family?
Did she have a closer relationship with her associates than her family?
Did she always hang out with her coworkers?
Did she never hang out with her neighbors? You know, these are,
these are the questions. When we go back to that victimology is so important.
You know, what solves cases, and this is what's happening in America right now,
is there's a big battle between technology like green doorbell,
cameras and surveillance store cameras and gumshoe detective work.
And we need the new technology, right? I mean,
we would just put people in places. Now by a camera years gone by,
we put people in places through witnesses, right?
It's just instead of talking to people and they say, Hey, I saw 'em. Now we can,
we can generate an image of that. And the phones, you know, substantiate that.
We've always used phones, landline phones, what have you, you know,
to put people in certain places. But evidence-based investigations,
can the evidence support your theory? Right?
And you're gonna find that with cold cases. Is it how it,
the original investigators thought, thought it happened?
Are they onto the right suspect? Are they onto the right trail? Or,
or did they miss something?
So even though maybe the security camera caught a picture of them
at the location where the murderer occurred,
you're still going to need the forensic evidence to tie that person to the
murder.
Yeah, absolutely. Robert. And as I mentioned a little earlier, you know,
three things, saw the murder, physical evidence, witnesses,
and then we have to get 'em to tell us, right? The suspects or confessions,
you might find this interesting,
only about 15% of murders are solved with physical evidence, dna, fingerprints,
et cetera. About 35% of cases are solved with witnesses.
The problem with witnesses is they don't show up for trial.
They change their story. Maybe they have a, a, a, uh, you know,
not such a, they have a checkered pass, so they're impeached,
their credibility's impeached, right?
Or maybe we put 'em on a surveillance camera cuz a witnesses is surveillance
camera as well. About 35%.
So you think 50% of murders are solved with some, you know, d n a and witnesses.
But then half of 'em, we gotta get the folks to talk to us.
And that's the key of building,
building intimacy with the suspects to get them to trust us.
Cause they ultimately gotta betray themselves. Right? Right. We,
we have to get them to betray themselves.
And that's sometimes that's very difficult.
Well,
you talk about interrogation techniques and you talk about a detective
that really had an influence on you about,
you'd gotta keep him talking or get him talking.
Sort of the same thing I would do as a reporter, an investigative reporter.
Describe that.
Well, you know, I learned this from a guy named Eddie Hemphill.
He was an old school N C I s agent,
ironically was also also from North Carolina. So we had a natural bond.
You know, we're, we're, you know, some, a lot of common things. And you know,
some of the first interrogations that I set in with him on,
he just kept talking and talking. I thought,
are you ever gonna ask him about the crime? You know,
cause we'd be there for hours. And he taught me, let them bring that up.
Just get to know them and when they're ready to talk about that,
they'll let you know. And I thought that was so valuable.
And so from that day forward, I've done that for the last 35 years, is just,
hey, create rapport. You know, you know why,
where investigators fell in the interview room, Robert,
is that we run out of things to talk about. We think, okay,
well they didn't confess, we've been in here an hour.
They haven't said anything. Oh, okay. I guess they're not gonna, no,
that's just, that's where you just get started. Right?
Good interrogators will spend hours,
hours in an interview room or days if necessary with suspects to build that
rapport, to build that trust, to get them. Cuz I mean,
they're ultimately betraying themselves, right?
That's sometimes that's very difficult task to, to accomplish.
But I've seen other cases where they just wanted to get it off their chest.
I mean, I've interviewed inmates and suddenly confess.
Yeah, absolutely. You will see that with a lot of cold cases, Robert.
It's an instantaneous, they'll go into the interview room,
you're in there less than an hour, and they're, they're talking, you know,
and they're saying, Hey, I just wanna get this off my chest.
I've been carrying this thing around. I will tell you this,
I I've interviewed quite a few suspects after, you know,
like after the judicial proceedings are over. And I'll say, okay,
help me to learn from you as we do new cases.
And so I always say, okay, what, after you killed the person,
when did you think about 'em? And it's amazing to me. They'd say, Hey,
it's like taking a digital photograph.
I could not get the picture of that victim outta my mind.
I couldn't get the picture of the victim's car. You know,
every time I saw a certain color shirt,
like the one the victim was wearing the day I killed her,
it made me think of her. And it's really interesting that, you know,
contrary to, to what I'm sharing with you about lengthy interrogations, yes,
you are absolutely correct that some folks,
they have carried this burden for years and they just wanna get it out.
And a lot of times too, they just wanna say, Hey, I did it.
Then it takes rapport building to get the details. You know, the,
the devil's in the details. Okay? I, I get you're saying you did it,
but walk us through how you did it, what you did next, what you did next,
et cetera.
These other,
and I've seen 'em in cases post crime behaviors of drinking
and other problems among some of them.
Man, I tell you, I I, I was, I was consulting on a case, and I, I don't,
I think,
I don't think they would've a problem if I mentioned the state was in Arkansas a
few weeks ago and I was helping a, a police department. And so, you know,
there's a murder. So what's happened is, as I tell 'em,
we gather around the table and I say, Hey, look,
this is what I think you're gonna see.
I think it's a younger offender in this case,
based on what the crime scene was telling me. And I said,
you're gonna see a deterioration of that person's life since the murder.
And I think this murder was about, if I remember right,
it was about two years old. And I said,
so what you're gonna see is driving while impaired, you know, DUIs,
open container violations, these kind of things.
And that's very common in that people's lives were will deteriorate cuz they're
using drugs or alcohol. Alcohol as a coping mechanism.
You'll also see just the opposite, Robert, with suspects,
you'll see that suspects right after the murder cleaned up their lives,
they got better. They started going to church, right? I mean, they got a job.
So you see, wait a minute, before the murder, this,
this guy couldn't hold a job. He was a deadbeat.
He lived in the basement of his parents' house, you know,
within days after the murder. All of a sudden he is now, you know,
got this job and he's, you know,
now he's got a car and he is moved out of the house. So it,
it can run both ways.
One thing that will happen with post-defense behavior is also,
and this is hard on cold, it's easier with, with hot homicides,
but it can be done with cold cases, is a person.
And our personalities never change, right? I mean,
our personalities are formed late, late teens, early twenties.
But what you'll see is,
let's say your offender was a gregarious individual who always came into work
and greeted everyone, right? So that the day after the murder,
that person is not going to be so gregarious, right? In other words,
he walks in his head down. So you'll see there's,
there's complete changes in behavior.
The person that's normally always on time, the day after the murder,
a couple days after the murder is late. The person that's never on time,
the day after the murder. Now you see he's prompt, right? And so,
so these are some just some simple behavior things. And a lot of folks,
what I look for in cold cases is movement. Any kind of movement.
And that could be two blocks away, two streets away, two states away,
two continents. In my years at N C I S, it was not uncommon. I, I,
I can tell you that I at least got this call five or six times, if not more.
It was some homicide detective in, you know,
a fairly significant sized city that would call me and say, Hey,
we're looking for John Smith here. And he joined the Marine Corps. And I said,
let me guess you suspect him of committing a murder. And they went,
how did you know? Because that's what they, you know,
they immediately are trying to leave the area for what appear to be legitimate
reasons. In other words, the guy had no interest in the military,
he does the murder. And then he realizes, okay, I'll sign up for the,
for the army to get outta here. You might find this stat interesting,
I have seen where several folks that commit murder go on the cheap cruises,
right? Uhhuh the week after the murder, two weeks after the murder,
the hundred 99. Or they'll go on a mission trip with a church, you know,
or they'll go see their Aunt Becky in, you know, five states away.
And these are all classic signs that they're trying to,
to move away and avoid detection.
You said the, uh,
the age of the cases that cases between 18 and 14 years old
provide the best chance of solving cold cases.
Why is that?
Yeah, there, the older the case, the harder it is to solve. You know,
now with the advent of, of forensic investigative genetic genealogy,
that's changing. However,
the sweet spot for me is somewhere between eight and 14 years.
And the reason I think I have seen more success with those cases is
it's the maturation of the suspects, right?
A lot of murders are committed in early in life, right? Late teens,
early twenties, then the people go on, they get married, they have kids,
and think of how much differently you think, Robert,
today than when you were say 40 and how much different when you were 30
than what you thought when you were 40, right?
And how much mature you were at 25 than you were at 18. And and so I think,
you know, for me, those are the sweet spots that I,
I think the most success has come from.
Because if you're able to create that rapport with the suspects,
you have to be careful though,
because if you go too long with a suspect and they become grandparents, man,
it can get,
it can be very difficult to get grandparents to confess once the grandchild has
been born. And it's the same with parents, you know,
it's harder to get suspects to confess that have smaller children than middle
school or high school children, you know, because it just is what it is. Hey,
you know, in building that rapport, those natural obstacles of, Hey, I,
I gotta take care of my kid. Uh, I know this may sound strange, you know,
for a homicide discussion, but, but these are dead on. And I, and I can,
you know, I can tell you I've seen it time and time over the years.
You know, one of the things I've seen in my career, even with serial killers,
they confide in somebody that they've murdered
in a cold case.
Do you find the passage of time and the changing of relationships then will help
you?
Yeah. So that's one of the three pillars of cold case work. Number one is time.
The passage of time. As I said earlier, if you don't solve a case 48, 72 hours,
they, they tend to go cold. We have to turn what was, uh,
basically our nemesis of time. We have to turn that into an ally, right?
So we have to turn that liability of time into an ally for us.
A lot of that is with the changing relationships.
And so we have to find those old ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends,
ex roommates. And as you said in your introduction there,
they tell someone in the vast majority of cold cases that are closed, Robert,
the suspect has told at least one person, they did the murder.
A lot of times this is okay, they were out of the picnic table,
they had been drinking all night, and they tell their their next door neighbor,
oh, yeah, you know, 15 years ago, I, oh, I, I killed that girl. You know? And,
and then the person doesn't believe him, right? Oh, they were just drinking.
They were spouting off, they were trying to look cool. You know,
we were talking about cop shows. And,
and so sometimes it's discarded by the witness as not being
believable or truthful when in fact it it is.
And this is also part of that coping mechanism that a lot of killers will take
on, you know, of, of clearing their conscious or, or talking about it.
But what you just said is, is that's what we're after,
is those relationships changing and it is the number one thing that we have to
find. And and I I'll tell you, as you talk to cold case investigators,
they'll tell you, oh yeah, he told his sister, he told his aunt,
he told his brother, I, I know we did a case,
it was a cold case where a guy had,
had killed his girlfriend before he entered the US Navy.
And this case it was back in the seventies, and it was down in Florida.
And, uh, we ran this as, I don't know,
probably one of the first dozen cold cases we worked at N C I S. And so,
you know, after he kills the girl, he tells his brother,
and it's like two or three years after the murder,
and of course he's already went into the military,
and then it's 20 years before we get to him, right from the date of the murder.
And so during the confession, Hey, did you tell anybody? Yes, I told my brother.
And he had, he also had told an attorney, you know, but he says, Hey,
those are the two people that I've told, when did you tell your brother? Well,
I told him three years after. And, and these are just some examples.
They always tell somebody, Robert, to cope, you.
Know, one of the things in your book you advise, uh,
cold case detectives to do is pay to careful attention to the first 10 to
15% of the case file.
Yes, sir. The reason we do that, Robert, is research.
And there's been several folks that have done the research,
whether it was Robert Keppel out on the West Coast or you know, Roy Hazelwood,
who he's recently passed away, but in terms of a,
the suspect's name surfacing in the file,
in about 95% of cold cases,
the suspect's name has come up. Someone has introduced that name. Right.
Whether it's a witness Yes. Or a victim's family or whatever.
Isn't that a crazy stat? 95% of the time. So,
and what I used to concentrate on was the first 30 days of the investigation,
but I have ramped that down.
I think that name surfaces very early first seven to 10 days,
first 10 to 15% of the case file. Maybe they were in a neighborhood canvas.
Maybe they were one of those service industry folks that had, you know,
delivered something to the house. Maybe they have been the suspect all along,
right? That that would, that would go as well. So, but yes, they're, they're,
they're always surface early in the case.
We're gonna pause for a moment, uh, for a message. And when we come back,
I wanna talk about cold case murders that are staged to look like suicide.
I'm talking with Joe Kennedy, the author of Solving Cold Cases,
investigation Techniques and Protocol,
who spent years with the N C I S started a co first federal
cold case unit. You talk about in your book,
that cold case murder station look like suicide are one of the,
the most overlooked types of cold cases in America. Why is that?
I think so, Robert, you know, sometimes it's a mindset. We respond to a scene,
you know, on a Friday afternoon,
it's three o'clock and it appears to be a suicide.
I I will tell you that, you know,
this is kind of one of my pet peeves of if there was a call for assistance in a
triplex murder, every police officer in that department's gonna be on the scene.
Right? But if that call, let's say somebody says, yeah, we're out here,
it looks to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound and it's three o'clock on a
Friday, how many people are gonna want to just rush over to that scene?
And so I think it's an improper response to the scene,
or we're assuming the suicide position. Does that make sense? Right.
There was a, there's a, there's a well-known, uh,
homicide investigator who's just done tremendous amount of work for,
for all detectives in the country. His name's Vern Giber,
and he was with N Y P D. And he, he actually does a, a little, uh,
a segment on staged, uh, suicides. And these are a couple of other things.
And, you know, as assuming the suicide position, improper response,
not considering victimology, right? Not putting enough emphasis on hey,
because what you'll typically find with suicide is there's often some mental
illness, right? Depression, anxiety,
those are things that you should certainly be seeing, you know,
did that raise to the level of where, you know,
some type of medication was needed to treat, needed to treat the patient or not?
But, you know, sometimes that's overlooked. Hey, look, this person's dead,
but there's not a clear indication in their life they've ever had any kind of
depression, anxiety, or mental illness issues.
And that you're gonna find those are, those are synonymous with suicide.
You know, when you look at the,
the number of the backlog of cold cases in the United States,
a lot of people have gotten away with murder.
Yeah, it's Robert, it's, it's about two 80. You know,
that's my research and my stats. You know, the FBI might would argue that it,
you know, getting it down to 2 50, 2 60 something in there, but,
but I know those Allison, yeah. Yeah. 280,000. It's hard. I,
I use these stats a lot. In one, in five cold cases, will we get a,
a discernible suspect, right? Like a,
a clearly identifiable suspect in one of 20 of those will a
prosecutor bring forth charges,
but only in about a one in 100 of those will the cases be successfully
prosecuted. Now,
you'll see that with forensic investigative genetic genealogy that's finding
some of those ghost suspects.
Not that it's not still identifying suspects that are listed in a file,
but it's very good for when you don't have those, you know,
that 5% of cases where they're not in the file somewhere to, you know,
to kind of have some focus put on them. But yeah, that's, you know, it's a,
it's a staggering number when you think about it.
When you think about forensic investigative genetic genealogy,
and I may be off on this number, but since the Golden State Killer,
I think there's only been about a thousand solves in there. So,
you know, when you think that's five years since Golden State and, and it,
there's just not enough resources. We don't have enough, you know,
forensic genealogists, I know Texas has done some really good stuff.
I have partnered with Rudy Flores, an old ranger out there,
is now the sheriff in Anderson County, and,
and came out and done some cold case training for him in the past.
And I know the Texas Rangers do a really great job with their cold cases.
And I know the city of Houston's doing some stuff and the attorney general's
office. So I think in Texas, you folks are, you know,
you're probably hitting it out of the park, but there's some other states where,
you know, the, the, the emphasis is just not there on cold cases.
Well, the Fort Worth Cold Case unit, you know,
they had a big breakthrough using the forensic investigative genetic
genealogy, uh, with a case called about Carla Walker.
Our listeners, uh, I'll put a note in the show notes of link,
how you can go back and hear that episode with the detectives. But in that case,
you know, she was in high school with a date leaving,
it had been a Valentine's dance and all,
and was abducted a guy pistol whipped her boyfriend and took her,
and she was later found at another location, raped, murdered.
Interestingly, the suspect's name was in the case file,
and he lived about three blocks away from her.
Yeah.
And you talk about, you know,
cold case pri that crime is both geographic and intentional.
Yes. Yeah. And, and what we mean about geographic is, you know, to,
to your point, the suspect's work live or play,
and when I use the word play, we can intercept recreation, right,
right near the victim.
And there's something causing their paths to connect.
And if you just look at where they live,
you'll find that a lot of folks that commit murder, particularly if it's an,
if it's a disorganized murder, you know, not real sophisticated,
they almost always live very close by, or work very close by.
If you get a little bit more sophisticated offender, you'll see after maybe,
maybe they've killed multiple people after the first kill,
they'll tend to move further away, right? We,
we commit crime where we feel familiar, right? Even as, as kids,
when we're teenagers and we do, you know, mischievous stuff, you know,
we do it where we feel comfortable until the little old lady down the street
that knows us by our name turns us into our parents, and then we go, Ooh,
we can't do our shenanigans out here. We've gotta move to the next block over.
Right? That's kind of how it works with, with murder as well.
And you really wanna try to keep the focus on the
suspect. And you,
you talked about all these relationships or just crossing paths.
Again, if you're just focused on a suspect, though, case Oh,
crossing so many paths, it's, you gotta get back to the evidence.
You, you, you really do, Robert. I am. I don't follow suspects in a case,
you know, and one thing that I try to teach, you know, I do a,
I do a two day cold case class all, all around the country, is,
is that don't follow a suspect. And, and to hot homicide investigators,
you know, listen, don't let somebody tell you who they think is the suspect.
Don't let the first responders tell you what they found when they got to the
scene. Go in and look at the scene, evaluate it for yourself, right?
And don't let you know some type of confirmation bias go on or group think or
something like that. And I think that's what sometimes can happen or creep in.
But if you follow the evidence, it's always gonna take you to the right place.
If you follow suspects,
a lot of times it's gonna take you on detours that you don't need to take.
You know, so the clearance rate for murder 50 years ago was 90%.
Now the FBI says, more recently it's down to 64.1%.
What's.
Happened? Well, I, you know, one of those things is bystander behavior.
People will not cooperate with the police like they used to.
We do have a little bit of a mobile society, right?
You will see that periods of social unrest will increase, you know,
the inability to solve cases. We saw that in the,
in the early nineties with the, you know, the,
the Rodney King case in California,
and then you see it resurface again here during the pandemic with the
George Floyd. So people aren't as inclined to cooperate with the police,
but that has an effect, you know, as to, as to why cases don't get closed. I,
I will say this, I think right now in the United States,
these are the two things that I see.
I don't care where I'm at working or looking at a case and I helping, you know,
you name the state I've done helped on cases there,
there's an overreliance on dna.
A and we've gotten away from the gumshoe detective work of building rapport,
you know,
spending lots of time with witnesses in interview rooms and,
you know, and timelines, right? This,
this is an old school technique of can I put the person there? Yeah,
I can put 'em on a camera. Yeah, I can put their phone there.
But can we narrow down that timeline to seal them in to that murder scene to
where it couldn't be nobody else, right?
Sometimes you have to use negative evidence to prove a case.
Like I'm proving nobody else could have done it.
So it had to be you instead of starting out that it has to be you, right?
Because you don't want them to, you know, I always,
there's an old song called Wasn't Me right Back from the nineties, you know,
you don't want 'em saying it wasn't me, and then they can prove it wasn't them.
But I, I think we have a tremendous overreliance on,
on D n A and technology,
and we need to spend more time with this old gum sh gumshoe techniques of
rapport based interviews, spending long period of time with critical witnesses,
long periods of time with suspects to gain their trust.
So they will confess to us and tell us they did it. This is the success of,
of cold case investigators. They have to have three things, right?
They have to have compassion for people. Like, we wanna know,
does our boss like us, or does somebody like me? People know if you're,
if you're full of prunes, they can sense it. They can spot a fault,
a fraud immediately. So are you compassionate with people? The second thing,
or the second C word that I use is competent. Do you know what you're doing?
You know, even victims',
families know the cops that don't know what they're doing.
They're not competent. They're not technically skilled at what they do.
And then the last thing is, is, is character, right? A person's character.
And that comes to can they trust you? And so not only victim's,
families want to know that you've got compassion and that you're competent and
that you've got character, but do you know that's what the suspects wanna know?
And they can see it immediately, oh, this guy, he does okay,
even though he is got a job to do, he's treating me like another human.
I think he knows what the hell he's doing because he's act,
he's not acting like the normal cops do. And that's what I like to, you know,
don't act like the police. But then la lastly is, can they trust you?
That's the hardest one.
I don't think you should ever have to lie to a suspect in an interview, right?
I mean, you create rapport, get 'em to trust you and say, Hey, look, we gotta,
we gotta get there.
Touch the power of touch in those interviews is so important. Robert,
think about this.
Do you know 85% of the US prison population comes from a single parent?
Now many people grow up with single parents and turn out just fine and great,
do great stuff. Think of that. That is a huge number. And when you look at it,
a lot of folks that commit crimes, they lacked positive affirmation.
They lacked role models in their life, whatever that is,
whether it's a mother or a father. And so I think that's where it c to me,
you know, I think my parents taught me everybody is the same.
It doesn't matter the color of a person, it doesn't matter their income level.
It doesn't matter what if they've done something good to you or bad to you.
You treat people the way you wanna be treated, period.
And that's the way I try to investigate.
With N C I S. You worked cases all over the world.
Do you find that when it comes to murder? It's, it's the same everywhere.
Robert. It is the same everywhere. You know, they're shooting, stabbing,
and beating 'em to death, whether it's here, whether it's cart, HANA, Columbia,
whether it's in, uh, Manila, in the Philippines. It,
it's all the same. You'll see that in countries where there's not a,
a huge access to firearms, there's just more stabbing deaths. I mean, think of,
let's use France for an example right now, crackdown on guns.
You'll see the sharp instrument. Murders are up, you know,
tremendously the same in London. But I will say, you know,
when we talk about the difference that I see,
take me to a country like the Philippines, Argentina, Columbia,
Honduras. What you see from detectives there is, they don't have any resources.
They don't have the dna, they don't have the crime labs. Mm-hmm. .
So they have to solve cases like those old gumshoe detectives,
and they build rapport with witnesses, victims,
ultimately the suspects. And that's how they solve the cases,
what they lack in science,
they make up for in street smarts and tenacity and persistence.
And that's, that's what it takes to get a case closed.
Not everybody can do a cold case, Robert,
there's some detectives just do not cut out for it. Mm-hmm. ,
because there's a lot of hurry up and wait. There's a whole lot of analysis.
There's a whole lot of patience. And it is truly, you know,
if you think about this is the difference, I I sometimes make this analogy is,
I think working a homicide can sometimes be like checkers,
but working a cold case is more like playing chess or time chess even.
Do you ever find yourself wondering about the human condition with all the
interrogations you've done?
I have just sitting in prison across from serial killers, mass killers,
and I've called it a, it's a journey into darkness. I'm curious, what are your,
what are your thoughts just about the human species in doing this?
Yeah. Well, you know, you know, Robert, I'm, I, I'm, I'm not critical. I mean,
I think life is precious.
I think any second we get on this planet is a gift from God, right?
And we never know when our number's up. Well, you don't know your number.
Our number could be up when we get off this call. We don't know.
But I think life is precious. And,
and how I deal with it is I've never brought it home with me. This,
you might find this interesting, you know,
I have worked murder cases all over the world where all kind of crazy cases.
Do you know,
I have never come home and told my wife or my kids one thing about anything I've
ever done on the job. They'll tell you that, not once.
And the reason I do that is I just, we have to compartmentalize it.
So I'm just not affected by it, because that's just what I've always done,
right? And so that's my work life, and I leave it at work.
And when I come home, hey, we don't talk about it. Now,
it doesn't mean I'm not laying on my bed some nights thinking, oh gosh, what,
what are we gonna do to solve this case? How can we get this? Mm-hmm.
, mm-hmm. , because that happens quite often. I sure,
I tell you, I got insomnia now. I'm more than I've ever had, you know, so I,
I routinely find myself up by four o'clock in the morning,
four 30 in the morning on my computer, looking at a case, talking about a case,
sending a text about a case, right? And people are like, yeah,
you gonna keep sending me an email at three in the morning?
My little ringer goes off and I wake, well, I'm sorry ,
you put the thing on silent. But I think com compartmentalizing Robert,
is what I've been able to do to, when you asked me that question. I,
I really don't have an answer because, you know, I don't try to cope with it.
I've just compartmentalize it and, and move on.
And I'm not trying to seem like a tough guy or anything. It just,
it's just what I did.
Joe Kennedy, thank you very much. The book, again, is Solving Cold Cases,
investigation Techniques, and Protocol. Thank you so much,
and thanks for your work that you're still out there working cases.
Yeah. I'll be out here till I die, Robert. Uh, I, I got too much anxiety.
If I don't have something to do, I get anxiety. .
In closing, here's my reporters recap and reflections.
How remarkable is it that Joe Kennedy and his colleagues are still on the
job long after their official retirement? In this time of defunded,
police budgets, criminal investigators need all the help they can get.
Otherwise, we are all on our own. Fortunately,
there is a dedicated group at the Cold Case Coalition willing to serve
good over evil.
You've been listening to the True Crime Reporter podcast. Stay true,
stay safe,
and stay tuned for more stories from inside the crime Scene tape.
This is Robert Riggs reporting.