An immersive learning project to promote awareness about unsolved murder cases won the 2014 Best Community Initiative award at the Crime Stoppers USA Training Conference in Austin, Texas
In response, Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard has also proclaimed September as National Crime Stoppers month.
During the past year, 18 students worked individually on unsolved murder cases from as long ago as the 1940s and 1950s to write an extensive case report and make a public service announcement video for 16 cases.
The students, who were mostly junior and senior criminal justice majors, worked with central Indiana police departments and Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana to put together the reports and PSAs. Some of the PSA videos the students made are posted on the Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana’s website.
They looked at five types of unsolved death cases: unsolved murders, unknown persons, fatal hit and run, missing persons and fatal arson.
Bryan Byers, the faculty mentor for the project and a criminal justice and criminology professor, said the idea of the project was to get the students immersed in the world of cold case investigations.
“We wanted to learn about what the families were going through and how much they suffer, and also to connect with the criminal justice community,” Byers said.The students did research on the case through old newspapers and interviewed families of the victims, as well as witnesses and detectives involved with the case.
“A lot of times with these cases … it really helps to get a new set of eyes on the case in order to give it a fresh perspective,” Byers said. “The students were able to do that. We had a few cases where students were able to share info with detectives that was a new angle to look at it.”
Byers said there hasn’t been anything like this project done before, which is part of the reason why he thinks they won the award.
“This is something new and cutting edge and extremely unique,” he said. “There have been a few instances where university classes will get one case and work on it, but this idea of having each student work on their own case and do their own investigation and reexamine and do a report and a video is new.”Alison McCool, a public administration graduate student with a concentration in criminal justice, said her favorite part of working on the project was being able to interview the families of the victims.
“Many of [the families] hadn’t gotten to talk before or hadn’t got to talk in years, so one of the best parts was getting to hear their stories and showing them that someone actually cares about them and that someone wanted to help them find answers,” McCool said.
McCool said many people thought the project was about solving the cases, but she said the goal was to bring awareness back to these cases and get them back out into the public eye to get tips for them.“In a lot of cold cases, there is somebody out there who knows something,” McCool said. “So the more they push it, maybe it could help get some answers for one family out there. If somebody is watching one of the PSAs [and says,] ‘Oh I know something,’ they can call and help bring some closure to one of these families out there.”
David Blankenship, a senior criminal justice and criminology major, had a similar idea.
“When you put the exposure on these cold cases, somebody might crack, somebody might say something, the suspect might have a change of heart,” Blankenship said. “I think time will tell if our work could lead to a case being solved, but that would probably be the greatest feeling in the world.”
Since a lot of the project dealt with interviewing families, Blankenship said he liked being able to be in the detective’s profession and help the family members of the victims deal with the stress of it.“The action in the [cold] case has dropped off, and we go to those family members and they’re ecstatic we’re doing this,” Blankenship said. “Helping those people understand that someone cares about these cases and that we’re not forgetting about them is probably the greatest feeling from this project.”
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