AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — The Amarillo Police Department’s Cold Case Unit works to solve long-standing homicide and missing-person cases and to bring closure to families.“They call it a cold case whenever all suspects have been eliminated and we have no further things to send the lab at the time,” said Sgt. Joel Hodges, who leads the Cold Case Unit for APD.Sgt. Joel Hodges is one of the leaders of the unit, formed in 2022, which uses a variety of modern technologies and DNA analysis to bring justice to victims and their families.“We want these people to have justice. For these victims, we don’t want them to ever be forgotten,” Sgt. Hodges explained.
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Lt. James Clements is the Homicide Unit Commander for APD, and oversees the Cold Case Unit.
He was part of the unit at its inception and told MyHighPlains.com that, due to the caseload and time constraints, some of them didn’t receive the necessary attention.
“I started understanding that these families are still out there asking questions,” said Lt. Clements, who said answering families’ questions was one of the main drivers for forming the unit. “‘What’s going on with my case? Have you had any leads or anything further on these cases?’ And I put myself in those positions of those victims’ families, and I’m thinking, ‘how would you feel if you went years and years without knowing what happened to your loved one or wondering if somebody’s working your case?”They established a department and a team of investigators whose sole focus is cold cases.“They put all their resources in to develop outside relationships with different agencies and different federal agencies and (Texas Department of Public Safety) DPS and Texas Rangers to help us out,” Lt. Clements said.A few factors that make cases easier to solve: time and technology.“Throughout the years, science has developed, DNA has developed new computer science has developed which assist us. So a lot of these cases that were worked back in 1990s or even in the 80s, that DNA was non-existent, but now it is. And we were going through these cases saying, ‘Hey, let’s resend this off. Maybe they can enhance it. Maybe they can get new DNA’, and that has worked for us and several other agencies around us,” Lt. Clements explained.So far, the Cold Case Unit has about 48 open cases, but Sgt. Hodges and Lt. Clements say they won’t stop until they deliver answers for victims and their families.
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“When I took this job, that was the biggest thing for me. I wanted to attempt to give these people a little bit of information. You could always say that maybe you give them a little bit of comfort, maybe a little bit of justice for their family. You wanna try to help them, because they live with this their whole lives,” Sgt. Hodges expressed…