The Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit's cold case division officially began work Monday. It consists of Sgt. Dale Phillips and investigators Marty Sellers and Billy Sharp. They will review dozens of cases that have gone unsolved since the homicide unit's creation in 1976, including the one of the unidentified murder victim. Baker said that they are searching for stored DNA evidence and could exhume her body for samples to submit to a national missing persons database that didn't exist 30 years ago.
On a cold December day in 1981, 13 people gathered at a cemetery in Taylorville to bury a murder victim referred to only as “Mystery Woman” in the headlines.
The young woman’s body had been stored for nearly two years in a freezer at the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. No one knew who she was. They still don’t.
She had been found dead on a logging road in Brookwood in July 1979. The county coroner believed she was stabbed in the left temple with a screwdriver.
Her death may have been related to a string of similar killings in Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties, but police were never able to prove it.
Her case is typical of a criminal investigation that grows cold. No witnesses ever came forward. DNA testing had not yet revolutionized forensic science in 1979. The case became just one of many relegated to the cold case files.
Those files are now being re-examined by a newly created three-man team within the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit.
“Our investigators have worked on older cases in the past whenever the opportunity arose, but their caseloads prevented them from committing all of their time to the older cases,” said Capt. Loyd Baker, homicide unit commander. “Now we have a team assigned to do nothing but look at cold cases.”
The unit officially began work Monday. It consists of Sgt. Dale Phillips and investigators Marty Sellers and Billy Sharp. They will review dozens of cases that have gone unsolved since the homicide unit’s creation in 1976, including the case of the unidentified murder victim. Baker said that they are searching for stored DNA evidence and could exhume her body for samples to submit to a national missing persons database that didn’t exist 30 years ago.
“They’re not only focusing on old cases. They’re also focusing on cases that have happened within the last couple of years,” he said. “We’re starting with cases based on solvability factors. We’re considering why the cases weren’t solved in the first place. Were there uncooperative witnesses who might be cooperative now? Is there evidence that can be tested today where we lacked the technology to do that in the past?”
Phillips said that he and the other two investigators have started evaluating cases and are focusing on about five or six that they’re working on. Most are at least 25 years old, but a few are more recent.
“Eventually, we will evaluate every unsolved homicide that we have,” he said. “Our first goal is to work on cases in which we know there is something that can be done.”
The homicide unit has more than 34,000 pieces of stored and preserved evidence, including DNA samples, firearms, clothing and other items collected at murder scenes. There are old crime scene photos, interview transcripts and tapes.
Original investigators are always willing to help when contacted by someone going over old evidence, Baker said.
“Every investigator has cases that they want to see solved that haven’t been, for whatever reason. Those cases tend to follow that investigator, they never forget them,” he said. “A lot of times they knew or had a feeling of who committed the crime, but just couldn’t prove it. Other times there wasn’t enough evidence to point at anyone at all.”
Phillips expects that the unit will be busy for a long time.
“We’re excited. We have a lot to do,” he said. “We hope that we can get some of these families a little closure, maybe answer some questions that they haven’t had answered before. That would make it all worth it.”
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