Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Make a sustaining gift today to support local journalism!
0000017a-15d9-d736-a57f-17ff8ca00001NHPR began broadcasting in 1981, and in the intervening years has documented the the stories of New Hampshire. From policy makers in Concord, to residents around the state affected by those policies; from notable Granite Staters, to our ordinary neighbors with a good story, NHPR has produced compelling radio for New Hampshire, by New Hampshire. These stories are the components of the NHPR archives, and on this blog we'll dust off some old stories that are newly relevant, and even find some that were never broadcast. We hope to demonstrate how we've changed as a state by charting our narrative on a longer scale.

From The Archives: N.H.'s Cold Case Unit

Brandon Anderson via Flickr CC

In recent decades, the nation’s overall homicide rate has dropped. 2013 - the most recent year for which statistics are available - had the lowest homicide rate, 4.5 deaths per 100,000 people, since 1957.

But as NPR reported earlier this week, about one-third of murder cases go unsolved.

Unsolved cases go into storage and become the propriety of cold case units around the country. In 2009, Gov. John Lynch signed a bill creating New Hampshire’s Cold Case Unit. In 2010, Word of Mouth spoke with Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker (now a N.H. Superior Court judge) about the work of the unit – including what constituted a “cold case." Delker's answer: the case has to have been unsolved for 12 months, with no active leads.

In 2012, NHPR’s Ryan Lessard produced a profile of the unit, as the State Police marked their 75th anniversary. In 2013, the cold case unit was on the chopping block as the legislature massaged the budget for the next biennium. The unit survived and as Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati explained, has a half-dozen staff members and a couple of volunteers investigating the 128 cases currently open. 

As the state legislature again grapples with the budgetthis year, Agati hopes funding for the unit continues.

"We're going to work these cases as long as they let us," he told NHPR.

Investigating these cases isn't easy, but when asked about the biggest obstacle the unit faces in solving them, Agati said it isn't the state of the various cases, or the deteriorating physical evidence, "but talking to people about the past. A lot of people don't want to talk about the past." 

  Despite these hurdles the unit did have a victory in December last year, solving the 1987 death of Judith Whitney. Using DNA evidence they positively identified her killer as Edward Mayrand, who died in prison in 2011 for another murder in Rhode Island.

You can find the full list of the cases the unit is working on right here.

Click here to take a look at our story map which features cases solved by the N.H. Cold Case Unit. 

Related Content

You make NHPR possible.

NHPR is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.

Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.