Thursday, February 6, 2025
And there you were, at a dead end.
Your GPS sent you there, didn’t it? Or it looked like an interesting road, an adventure in the middle of an otherwise normal day but it simply … ended, and the progress you made stopped with it. Now you’re lost. As in the new book, “The Cold Case Foundation” by Gregory M. Cooper and Thomas McHoes, it’s time to retrace your steps.
He thought it was a good idea to give a North Carolina prosecutor his honest opinion.
There were two murder cases that weren’t yet solved, and FBI profiler Gregory Cooper had told the man he thought the cases were linked. Then Cooper met with his unit chief, the very esteemed John Douglas, who told Cooper that, having spoken to the prosecutor, the case was now his. Cooper took the task seriously, and helped solve both cases.
In the U.S., the authors say, “more than 200,000 unsolved homicide cases” are waiting for solutions. Thousands of families are hoping for closure, even if it’s bad. Publicity helps shine light. Police departments “do the best they can,” but it’s often not enough and that bothered Cooper greatly.
In 2014, shortly after he’d retired from the FBI. Cooper took a handful of unsolved cases he knew about, and he started the Cold Case Foundation, a nonprofit organization now staffed by knowledgeable people who are passionate about the issue.
Here, among others, is a case of a murdered star football player; and that of two vulnerable young women in separate cities. The authors share a story of a newlywed, stalked; and that of a young mother whose bones went unidentified for years.
“In the United States alone,” the authors say, “there are more than 40,000 unidentified bodies … still lying in medical examiners’ offices across the country. That also means there are thousands of families ... wondering what happened to” missing loved ones.
As a procedural, “The Cold Case Foundation” is solid, riveting and real. It’s filled with hope and closure for families that sometimes wait decades for results.
Unfortunately, that authenticity is greatly marred by pages and pages of re-created and made-up dialogue, which inherently makes this somewhat of a fictional tale. Yes, authors Cooper and McHoes explain that one of their methods of cold-case solving is to imagine exactly how a crime happened, including conversations — but what’s in this book often extends way beyond methodology and into plain old-fashioned novel-like storytelling.
You may also notice a number of case-solutions that seem ridiculous in their simplicity, and at least one exciting account that ends so flatly you’ll wonder why it was included in the first place. Add in story omissions, repetition, sentences you’ll have to read twice, and head-scratchers that True Crime fans will spot quick, and, well, tackle this book if you will, but go in with eyes open. Initially, “The Cold Case Foundation” seems to hold such promise and it has its very good parts, but ultimately, it’s more of a dead end.
