Cracking Florida’s cold cases: A new investigations unit aims to solve years-old killings

Amid a nationwide spike in killings, a new initiative to tackle cold cases is taking off in Florida.

State Attorney General Ashley Moody on Thursday announced a new statewide investigative unit that is tasked with solving cold cases. They are the most “difficult-to-solve” cases, which take “the most time intensive and investigative efforts,” Moody said during a news conference outside the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regional office in Palm Beach County.

The Cold Case Investigations Unit already has helped: It assisted in an investigation that led to the recent indictment of a suspect in the 2010 killing of a 16-year-old boy in Alachua County. During an attempted home burglary, a man named Timothy Thomas shot the teenager four times, which killed him, authorities say. It was not until September 2021 that investigators found DNA on a shirt collected near the crime scene, which ultimately led to Thomas’ arrest, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

Thomas is already serving a life sentence for attempting to kill a police officer in Key West.

The Cold Case Investigations Unit also would address the common issue of trying to solve a cold case involving multiple municipalities.

“Let’s say we have a case where we found a body in Palm Beach County, but the offense may have taken place in another county in North Florida,” Moody said. “How do we, as a state, reconcile the different jurisdictions all together with pieces?”

“Extra expertise” is needed, Moody said, especially in pockets of the state with strained financial and staffing resources.

“A community can mourn for decades when someone goes missing, and they have absolutely no understanding or an answer of what happened to a loved one,” she said.

This announcement comes amid high rates of homicides and clearance rates, which is the reported rate of how many killings are solved, across not only the entire United States but specifically in Florida, too.

“In 2022, police departments nationwide on average solved only 37% of violent crimes, and that number is astounding,” Moody said.

Homicides and clearance rates rose significantly in 2020 and have continued to stay that way, according to the Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit that pulls data from federal, state and local governments.

From 2020 to 2022, more than 3,000 homicides happened in Florida, and nearly 1,800 of them were solved, creating a clearance rate of about 58%, according to the Murder Accountability Project. In Palm Beach County, 209 homicides happened from 2020 to 2022, with 110 of them being solved, creating a clearance rate of about 53%.

Standing at the lectern, Moody was flanked by various authorities to illustrate the collaborative effort, including police dogs that sat attentively as everyone spoke.

Moody and Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw urged people to come forward with any information they feel could be relevant to a case.

“There are people out here that know something, either about something that’s happened or something that might happen. You need to give us that information,” Bradshaw said. “You don’t have to give us your name. You don’t have to be personally involved, but give us that piece of information that will help us either prevent a crime or solve one that is occurring.”

If you believe you have any information about a cold case, you can do so anonymously by dialing **TIPS (8477).

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