Criminals are getting smarter

COLFAX - The Whitman County Sheriff's Office has evolved rapidly in the past decade in its technological advancements in solving cases.

Sheriff Brett Myers credits a lot of the success in solving modern cases to using digital cameras, cell phones, credit cards, DNA testing, and digital databases.

"A lot of this comes down to outstanding police work. It's blending old-school techniques and new-school technology," he said.

Three major unsolved cold cases remain open to this day, and Myers believes that had the technology been as it is today, back then, the probability of them being solved would've been much higher.

"That's when modern tools come into play; that opens up so much. That makes a difference between today and fifty years ago."

The oldest cold case still open is the death of Joyce LePage.

LePage was a Washington State University Student when she died. Her body was thrown into a gully deep in Wawawai Canyon along the Snake River. Her remains were wrapped in a carpet taken from WSU's Stevens Hall.

Her body was found on April 16, 1972.

"Right now, we live in a day and age where the vast majority of businesses and homeowners have cameras on the doors," he said. "Fifty years ago, we didn't have digital cameras. We had film, so it depended on lighting conditions and how good you were with a camera. For example, the pictures in the Joyce LePage case are hard to look at. They had one shot at it. It comes down to how well someone documents the scene."

In comparison, the Kristen David and Dorothy Walker cases had been thoroughly documented despite the time of their crimes.

Kristen David, a University of Idaho student, was dismembered and washed up along the Snake River near Red Wolf Bridge in sealed garbage bags on July 4, 1981.

Officers at the scene located the bags and documented their findings.

"Stranger-on-stranger crimes were tough to solve. Cell phones, now, are basically tracking devices, and people love their cell phones more than anything. People take their cell phones with them everywhere, which can show where they are at any time. Also, what we have today, are credit cards. We are merging in a time where I could travel across the country and be tracked everywhere I go," said Myers.

Cell phones make a significant difference in cases. In the Moscow, Idaho Murders, law enforcement was to track the location of phones and utilize social media to assist in the investigation.

Many police departments are using social media to solve their crimes. For example, Whitman County Sheriff's Department uses the internet and partnerships with other groups and organizations to catch online predators.

"It is a lot easier to catch predators online, but I would still say that many cases aren't just done by specialist units online. In many cases, it's just someone that finds their information at home, and they send it to us, and we can find them," he said.

More often than not, Sheriff Myers believes that most investigations can solve themselves.

"A lot of them are crimes of passion; they are obvious. We must be on the scene and have our eyes on it. Criminals may be getting smarter, but those cases often solve themselves."

Despite the new technology helping streamline the investigations, police need to work harder and more carefully than before, believes Myers.

"Probably half the murders that happen today still don't get solved. People think it's the easiest job because we can track people, but it's not easy," he said. "It's a lot of work and a lot of dedicated work."

Several suspects have been named and narrowed in on in the cold cases.

"If you can develop enough information to find that a person was involved, you can corroborate where they would've been. That information makes a big difference now. A few different steps by the perpetrator in Moscow could've made it a difficult case to solve."

However, it's a sign of the times changing. Not all procedures were followed and enforced like they are today.

Dorothy Walker was murdered in Apartment 304 at the still-existing apartments at 203 N Mill St in Colfax on April 16, 1980. The 65-year-old had been struck approximately five times in the back of the head with an object.

The object was never found, and it has never been determined what kind of object would have caused the wounds.

"I think that was a case that should've been solved," said Myers.

However, scene preservation was not honored once the police were called as blood-stained evidence, including the apartment, had been scrubbed clean and discarded.

"Now we have a computer forensics lab, a trained crew in many cases, and the technology. DNA testing has developed as an incredible thing that I hope doesn't get overused. It's a great tool that didn't exist forty years ago."

DNA testing has taken a turn in technology and evolved into something new. The recent craze of genealogy testing has proven beneficial to investigators nationwide.

People voluntarily give away their DNA to help catch criminals, which narrows down to identifying suspects that lived in a particular area during a time.

"Once we get the DNA from the crime scene, we can break it down and find that there are so many relatives and narrow it down within a radius of where the crime took place," added Myers.

With the technology to over-document crime scenes, track phones, and identify so much more in a lab, Criminals will have to evolve to commit the "perfect crime."

However, because of the technology and digital databases, Myers believes that the art of communication needs to be recovered.

"It comes down to officers going to the scene and looking for those little clues. It's an interesting time, but if you don't have officers that know how to communicate with people, we won't get help from the neighbor on the corner, the person at the gas station, or the person who says their child didn't come home last night. What we have now is this vast information of technology that we created. You have to blend it [technology and communication] altogether for it to be perfect."

Author Bio

Olivia Harnack, Editorial Reporter

Olivia Harnack is a Journalist at the Whitman County Gazette. Olivia is enrolled at University of Idaho and is majoring in digital film studies. She serves in the United States Army National Guard and is proud to serve Whitman County.

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