A cold case is an unsolved criminal investigation no longer actively pursued which remains open pending the discovery of new evidence.

The Washington Post (2016) reported "The mystery of 1,000 missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada". Worldwide about 400,000 homicides occur per year — in the USA alone as follows:

	Homicides	Unsolved
2019	15,449	6,544
2018	15,877	6,537
2017	17,004	7,154

Worldwide, including previous centuries, the number of unsolved murders, rapes, other terrible crimes, false guilty verdicts, and people permanently missing is horrific —  hundreds of millions.

Have the perpetrators including those who avoided retribution by suicide escaped justice? Were their crimes in that sense "perfect"? Will they forever suffer neither justice nor vengeance?



For decades I've investigated the accuracy of the Bible.

I search the Bible for statements that can be tested by consulting the scientific literature, and quote people who disagree with the Bible, and investigate who's right and who's wrong.

Disagreements occurred in archaeology, theology, astronomy, biology, psychology, ethics, genetics, health, futurology, oceanography, zoology, botany, history, politics, law, logic, religion, medicine, and geography — and in all these disagreements the Bible usually triumphed.

The topic we'll examine this time is cold cases.

Criminals destroy evidence and flee, deceive and hide. These behaviors indicate they believe they can avoid retribution. But the Bible teaches there is no final escape, not even in suicide, because: "God will bring every deed into judgment including every secret thing whether good or evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:14)

Who is right, the criminals or the Bible? To answer this I will make inferences or predictions from three trends. The first trend is all those disagreements mentioned above.



The second trend is that Law enforcement is becoming more effective, and permanent escape from justice more difficult. Let's review the progress and consider, "How far, to what level of success, could this trend continue?"


London's first professional police force was the "Bow Street Runners",  founded 1749. They did not patrol but travelled nationwide to serve writs and arrest offenders on the authority of magistrates.

Prior to the Bow Street Runners law enforcement depended largely on private citizens. If someone cried out "Murder!" or "Stop thief!'" bystanders joined the pursuit. Parish constables or night watchmen made arrests and victims of crime paid the cost of prosecution. People who apprehended criminals often took bribes to release them. Corruption was common.

Improved administration of criminal law came in 1782 when Britain's government established the Home Department and salaried foot patrols. In 1829 the London Metropolitan Police was established with its first headquarters at Scotland Yard. In the USA, New York City got its first publicly funded police department in 1844.



"The French Sûreté is considered a pioneer of all crime-fighting organizations in the world... Founded in 1812 by Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), who headed it until 1827, it was the inspiration for Scotland Yard, the FBI, and other departments of criminal investigation throughout the world. Vidocq was convinced that crime could not be controlled by then-current police methods, so he organized a special branch of the criminal division... By 1820 ... it had blossomed into a 30-man team of experts that had reduced the crime rate in Paris by 40%." (Wikipedia)

In London the Metropolitan Police set up a Detective Branch with eight detectives in 1842. In 1878 this became the Criminal Investigation Department.

British colonies and other countries also began to set up police forces with a criminal investigation wing.

In large police agencies the detective branch became organized into specialized sections such as homicide, robbery, auto theft, missing persons, juvenile crime, fraud, narcotics, vice,  assault, sexual assault, computer crime, domestic violence, arson, etc.

INTERPOL, the International Criminal Police Organization, founded in 1923, facilitates worldwide police cooperation.



Private detectives and agencies separate from government police departments also started. In the USA Allan Pinkerton, a detective of the Chicago Police Department, founded the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1851

Detectives collate information, interrogate suspects, question witnesses, do surveillance, collect physical evidence, and search public records.



Forensic science (or forensics) refers to scientific methods for investigating crimes.

Edmond Locard (1877-1966), French pioneer in forensic science, founded the world's first forensic laboratory (1910) at Lyon to investigate physical evidence. He formulated the principle, "Every contact leaves a trace."

Forensic scientists analyze evidence collected by police and detectives and prepare reports of their findings. Forensics progressed to include the following:

Photography
Photographing of criminals began in the 1840s. It was standardized in 1888 by French police officer Alfons Bertillon (1853-1914) including the modern mug shot.

Fingerprints
The potential of fingerprints in forensic work was proposed by a Scottish medical missionary in Japan, Henry Faulds in 1880. Francis Galton placed fingerprint-study on a scientific footing in 1892-1895 and devised a classification system. Juan Vucetich (1858-1925), a Croatian who moved to Argentina, pioneered the use of fingerprints in murder investigations (the first conviction in 1892). Edward Henery (1850-1931) published Classification and Use of Fingerprints (1900) and introduced fingerprinting to Scotland Yard.

In 1986 Australia started its National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, eventually with millions of people on file. (Cullen 2008)

Ballistics
In 1916 came "forensic ballistics" to investigate guns and bullets in relation to crime scenes.

Handwriting
Handwriting analysis began with the recognition that no two people have exactly the same handwriting.

Lie Detector  
In 1908 an English heart specialist invented the "heart recorder", an early version of the polygraph or lie detector.

Blood Test
Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner distinguished the main blood groups in 1901.
  
Criminal profiling
Profiling uses crime-scene details to make inferences about the characteristics (e.g. age, sex, race, intelligence, personality) of the offender. "Geographic profiling" employs complex equations to estimate where a repeat criminal lives or operates from.

Forensic Psychology
King Solomon once judged between two women when one of their babies died and both claimed to be the mother of the living one. “Bring me a sword!” Solomon commanded. “Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other.” (I Kings 3:16-28) This command identified the true mother. Hall (1976) writes: "the story ... can be taken as marking the arrival in the courts … of forensic science in the form of experimental psychology. Today it would be called forensic psychiatry and it would all be done by doctors."

Surveillance cameras
Jennifer Golbek (2014) noted that surveillance cameras capture her image 100 times a day, and her iPhone tracks and records her "every movement". Surveillance along with facial recognition software is advancing and video footage from thousands of cameras can track peoples'  movements.

Database Images
Sexually exploited children may be displayed in online ads where wallpaper, furniture or the actual victims could potentially be recognized. Lu (2019) described an "AI that attempts to identify hotels from these adverts … by comparing the advert images to a database of more than 1 million photos of 50,000 hotels…" The "Stop Child Abuse — Trace an Object" website was launched by Europol in 2017 in The Hague, and in Australia in 2020.

Cellular Communications
An example here in 2018 is operation Trojan Shield which gave thousands of phones with an encrypted phone service to criminals and let police analysts intercept millions of messages.

DNA testing/profiling
DNA-testing of items collected from crime scenes (e.g. cigarettes, cups, clothing) and comparing this DNA with that of suspects began in 1983 in England. Although only about 20 genes out of a human genome of 30,000 genes might be compared, the method could identify perpetrators via mass DNA screening. It could also exonerate people in prison wrongly found guilty. In NSW a whole town was tested to find the rapist of a 91 year old woman.

In 1995 the world’s first national DNA data base was set up in the UK. DNA samples taken from suspects charged for serious offences were compared with DNA profiles from unsolved crime scenes.

In the USA the National DNA Index System created by the FBI in 1998 allowed law enforcement agencies throughout the USA to compare DNA profiles from around the country.

In Australia Whittaker (2007) reported: "In NSW alone, more than 2000 people have been convicted through "cold hits" on the DNA database..."

Forensic genetic genealogy
A further advance used the entire genome of 3 billion base pairs instead of only two dozen "markers" as in standard profiling.

People who order a Home DNA test kit from genealogy web sites to find unknown relatives supply a saliva sample from which their DNA is sequenced. Fifty million people worldwide have uploaded their DNA profile.

Some of these 50 million are related to perpetrators of cold case crimes whose DNA from a crime scene is on file but whose identity is unknown. The creation of a "family tree" and standard police work will then zero in. In South Australia the first success (in 2015) was the "North Adelaide Rapist" whose DNA profile retrieved from two rape locations matched a relative's DNA on a government database.

This method can also identify long-term unidentified human remains.  Murray (2020) reported the unveiling of Australia's National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons: "Attempts will be made during the program to identify remains, which in some cases are decades old, through medical, dental and DNA data matching..."




An illustrative sample of cold-cases solved by DNA analysis follows:

Bonvillian (2021) reported that Montana law enforcement officials solved a 1956 double murder "using a single sperm cell and genetic technology."

Britain's "Saturday night Strangler" raped and strangled three 16-year old girls in 1973. In 1998 when DNA profiling became available, semen that stained the  girls' underwear identified him — but the murderer had died in 1990.

Convicted rapist Michael Sumpter died in 2001 while on parole for a 1975 rape. In 2012 DNA from his brother identified him as the 1969 rape-killer of a 23-year-old Harvard University graduate. DNA analysis also linked him to two other 1970s murders.

The "Golden State Killer" murdered thirteen people and raped fifty in 1974-1986. He was found in 2018 after a second-cousin uploaded her DNA sequence which investigators matched to DNA from a 1980 crime scene and to DNA obtained from a bin outside his house. He had stopped his crime spree when he heard about DNA fingerprinting, but further DNA advances caught up with him.

Comic-book dealer Ronald Castree (b.1953) was convicted in 2007 for the 1975 stabbing death of a schoolgirl in Lancashire. A DNA sample he gave after assaulting another child in 2005 identified him for the 1975 murder.

Charles Coleman, 65, was charged in 2020 on DNA evidence for the 1976 rape-murder of a woman in South Carolina and pleaded guilty in 2022.

Donald McQuade, 62, was arrested in Oregon in 2019, for the 1978  rape and murder of a girl in Alaska, after DNA from the autopsy matched DNA on a cigarette he discarded.

James Dobbie shot dead one man and raped two women during attacks in a Melbourne park in 1980 and 1983. He started a new life but 35 years later, aged 65, he was arrested.

The young mother of an 18-month-old son, was sexually assaulted and murdered in 1985 and her body dumped next to a Florida highway. 35 years later the killer, 57, was identified from DNA on a cigarette butt he discarded.

A Geelong (Australia) woman raped in her home in 1985 when she was 44, saw justice done at age 77 when her attacker pleaded guilty after his DNA linked him to the crime.

In 2020 Australia's "Claremont killer" was found guilty for the 1995-1996 murders of two young women in Perth. The case hinged on DNA evidence discovered under the finger nails of one of the victims.

In 1996 a 17-year-old girl in Alaska was raped and strangled when walking home. In 2018 a 66-year-old male found by genetic genealogy refused to give a DNA sample and committed suicide. His DNA was later matched to DNA from the girl's body.

Steven Downs was arrested in 2019 after genetic genealogy tied him to a 1993 rape and murder at the University of Alaska. Downs, 47, was found guilty in 2022.



The Bible (Job 21:7-26) notes that wicked people often go unpunished.

Today, despite DNA databases, many terrible crimes remain unsolved. A few examples:

A woman dubbed the “Belle in the Well” was found strangled in 1981, decomposed, inside a water cistern, and remained unidentified for 38 years. Her mitochondrial DNA was uploaded to a public database and got 180 matches none closer than third cousin which produced a family tree of 43,000. Among these she was eventually identified as Louise Flesher born 1915 in West Virginia. Her killer remains unknown.

Evelyn Hartley, 15, of Wisconsin, was abducted while babysitting in 1953. Blood was splattered around the house and yard but her body was never found. She is included in the book Getting Away With Murder: 57 Murders With Reward Information (1991).

The "Zodiac Killer", so named due to cryptograms he sent to the San Francisco Bay Area press, has remained an open case since 1969.

The remains of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews, who disappeared from her Colorado home in 1984, were discovered 24km away in 2019 by a crew digging a pipeline and identified from DNA. She had died from a gunshot to the head. The case remains unsolved.

In 2014 in the Mexican town of Iguala five people were killed and 43 college students forced into trucks and taken away. Mexico's drug wars killed 300,000 people in 2006-2020 with another 73,000 missing.





Could the technology trend, outlined above, advance further and reach God-like potential?

The Bible says that to God "all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27) and "nothing will be impossible with God." (Luke 1:37)

This allows us to predict future crime-fighting technology because the same is said about humans:


We can therefore look at miracles and abilities that the Bible attributes to God and predict that humans can do similar — human abilities and technology will ultimately mimic God's abilities.

What about claims that God sees all the deeds and thoughts of all people?

Camera surveillance may soon be everywhere. In some cities peoples' movements can already be followed on computer screens throughout the day.

Mind reading technology is also coming:


With "all things possible" we can imagine future mind-scanning technology operating from the sky, recording every thought, mimicking what the Bible says God does:


Such technology would solve cold cases if the criminal is still alive by revealing his memories.

What about crimes still unsolved long after the perpetrators die?  What about perpetrators who escaped justice by suicide?

The Bible predicts the resurrection of all people who ever lived. (John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15; Revelation 20:12-13)

Human technology may eventually clone deceased people from their DNA and reintegrate the mind using brain scans taken before death. Or the mind might be converted to bits and bytes and stored on computer. The person will then be conscious when the computer is switched on.

Bell & Gemmell (2007) discuss technology for recording a person’s life — all that he sees, says, hears and does. It cannot restore his mind if he dies but shows what's doable already:


What if someone is totally gone — no DNA remains and no scan of his brain and mind?

Science is revealing the Universe as ever more amazing, with "worm holes", "black holes", "singularities", "dark matter", "quantum entanglement", possibly "mirror matter" and "teleportation", and 100 trillion neutrinos (and other subatomic particles) passing through every human body every second, and everything perhaps encompassed by a fifth dimension.

Who can say what future technology all this can lead to?

Consider time travel. New Scientist says:


Deutsch & Lockwood (1994) state:


Potentially, every crime can be solved by being watched when it occurred, and the felon, if he has since died, be brought back from before he died to face justice.

The NRSV Bible says: "to the only God our Savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen". Taken literally this allows for time travel to "before all time". (Jude 25)





Perhaps the Universe is so structured that no information, no knowledge, no event, is permanently lost. If "every contact leaves a trace" perhaps all is retrievable. Or perhaps all information is stored in "the mind of God".

In summary my reasoning regarding cold cases and retribution is this:

1 There is a trend of ever more of the Bible getting confirmed — and one biblical teaching is that all will be judged by what they have done.

2 There is a trend of crime detection becoming more effective — many cold cases get solved because felons did not anticipate new technology.

3 If nothing is impossible and we see a trend of human technology heading in that direction, then what's possible will include universal mind scanning, time travel, and resurrection.

4 If God exists His powers would exceed anything that humans could achieve with the laws of science and nature that He created. He could by-pass all His laws and resurrect the dead direct from memory.

These considerations support the biblical teaching that every evil ever done by every person who ever lived will be exposed and unrepentant perpetrators condemned.



Baraniuk, C. End of anonymity, New Scientist, 26 October, 2013, 34-37

Bell, G. & Gemmell, J.A Digital Life, Scientific American, March 2007, Volume 296, Number 3, pp 40-47

Bonvillian, C. June 25, 2021
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Coghlan, A. Mind-reading MRI can tell what you’re thinking, New Scientist, 4 June, 2011, p. 11

Cullen, D. Sleuths across state borders, The Weekend Australian, November 22-23, 2008, Weekend Professional, p. 2.

Deutsch, D. and Lockwood, M. The Quantum Physics of Time Travel, Scientific American, March 1994, pp. 50ff

Golbek, J. All Eyes On You, Psychology Today, September, 2014
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/articles/201409/all-eyes-you

Graham-Rowe, D. Mind Readers, New Scientist, 28 May, 2011, pp 40-43

Hall, A. 1976 The Crime Busters, Reprinted 1991, Macdonald & Co., London

Harran, P. DNA, the crime buster, Sunday Mail, October 11, 1998, p. 16.

Lu, D. AI helps rescue trafficked children, New Scientist, 16 February, 2019, p. 7

Murray, D. Database DNA key to past murders, The Weekend Australian, February 19-20, 2022, p.5

Murray, D. Game Set & Match, The Weekend Australian Magazine,  February 19-20, 2022, pp 16-20

Murray, D. When Family Go Missing, The Weekend Australian, August 29-30, 2020, p. 15

Project Coldcase  https://projectcoldcase.org/cold-case-homicide-stats/

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