Oct 5, 2008 6:29 pm US/Mountain
Group Raises Money For New Cold Case Team
DENVER (CBS4) ―
Grieving family members met with frustrated law officers Saturday to discuss the many murder cases still unsolved in Colorado and how to help find the killers.
There are 1,300 unsolved murders in Colorado.
One of the victims was 21-year-old Bruce Harrell, who was shot two years ago sitting at a stop light in his car. Police still have no idea who did it.
"I just go on, I don't know how I do it, but I do," Bruce's mother Dianne said. "It's hard living without my son."
Out of the type of pain Dianne feels, "Families of Homicide Victims" was born. Howard Morton is the executive director. His 18-year-old son was murdered in 1975 and the case has never been solved.
"We have killers walking among us. We have murderers walking in our neighborhoods and this is everybody's problem because you could be next," Morton said.
Morton's group is trying to raise money for a special cold case team, at the state level, to assist local law enforcement agencies.
"I believe they're trying and I believe they're overwhelmed and I believe we need additional specialists in cold, unsolved murders," Morton said.
"We get it and we try our best to deal with each and every one of our cases," David Fisher with Denver police said.
Fisher was the first law enforcement officer to attend the conference five years ago. He started a cold case unit with Denver police in 2004. They went from solving two cold cases a year to an average of six. But he's was at the meeting to warn families the cases are much different than those in popular TV shows.
"People are led to believe they are only one commercial break away from the case being solved, and that is certainly not accurate," Fisher said.
Hazel Brewer helped police crack the unsolved murder of her daughter Rhonda Holland. Greg Parker was eventually arrested and his trial starts in February
"I'm not going to use the word closure because there's no such thing as closure, but its going to be closing a door for us," Brewer said.
Families of Homicide Victims was started seven years ago with 11 people. Today there are more than 500 members.
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