In these times of so much information within reach, it is a wonder how major criminal cases could go cold and stay that way.
Surveillance cameras have been around us for decades. TV dramas spotlight ultra-tech forensic sciences. The internet and social media help people share stories and search for clues that might tie together the loose ends of a tragic mystery.
And yet, unsolved murders, robberies and missing person cases clog the files of Kansas City-area law enforcement offices.
Detectives and prosecutors wonder how that can be.
“Someone knows what happened to this baby,” Platte County prosecutor Eric Zahnd said of “Precious Joe,” a newborn whose body was found abandoned in a plastic shopping bag 13 years ago.
Kansas Citian Terri L. Allen was 16 when her body, partly disrobed, was found around 22nd Street in 1983. “Someone is still alive who knows about that case ... if only they’ll call,” said Sgt. Benjamin Caldwell of the Police Department’s cold-case squad.
“It’s a shame,” he added. “She was a good kid.”
The stories that follow highlight unsolved crimes that occurred not long ago — the audacious 2010 heist of a Country Club Plaza jewelry store — as well as one case dating back to 1949.
The latter, involving the public murder of prominent country-club owner Wolf Rimann, preceded the era of DNA testing and cameras able to record our every move. Still, at least 15 witnesses saw the two men who shot Rimann prior to their speeding away in a Ford sedan.
Never solved.
Investigators are hopeful that some of these cold cases might warm up with a new lead, a tip, a hit on DNA evidence now swirling through national crime databases.
But for now, the greatest heartache remains among victims’ relatives — widows such as Phyllis Ninemire, whose husband worked at a grocery on Mission Road and died in a 2003 robbery days before his retirement.
