I wanted to mention that I am the user who has been submitting cases of wanted fugitive homicide suspects. I understand that this site’s policy is that law enforcement must be aware of the case. That means the agency has at least one investigator that can recall the case and preferably has at least reviewed the case recently. To comply with this, I have focused on posting fugitive cases from law enforcement most wanted websites along with cases that have had recent articles.
As part of my research over the years, I have discovered older cases through online newspaper archives and other sources. These cases have been verified as still being open criminal cases through an online warrant database or online court record database. Certain locations permit this information to be accessible online. An example is the Florida Department Of Law Enforcement’s statewide warrant database along with the official court records database for Las Vegas, Nevada.
The issue with these older cases is if investigators have reviewed the cases in recent years. Detectives retire, get transferred and promoted so it is possible that no one currently in the agency really knows about some of these older fugitive cases. The lack of publicity regarding older fugitive cases in recent years makes it difficult to tell how many of these are being actively investigated.
There are some of these cases that I would really like to submit to Solve The Case, I just want to understand what would be involved in letting law enforcement be aware that I am submitting one of their forgotten cases.
In the cases, I have added as long as there is a case number or some updated information (news article or updates on the pages recently), I have added it.
If you are comfortable with calls or reaching out to people you could call their office and just tell them who you are and what you are doing. Most will probably be glad to get some extra help on older cases. You might able to ask who the person is working on it.
I hope this helps and I am happy to hear someone is actively helping add the cases!
Very valid points and thank you for your reply! I think I will first cover the fugitives on up-to-date websites and those who been covered in the news media “recently”. I’ll consider recently to be during this decade.
If I run out of those cases at some point to profile, I will consider reaching out to law enforcement to inquire about older cases that have not been publicized recently.
Great questions and I’m appreciative of your initiative. For fugitive cases, for them to be wanted, law enforcement is already of the case so that covers what we are looking for. The more important thing is having timely info. Are the fugitives still wanted? Having outdated cases in the world of fugitives is really a negative.
I’m REALLY excited watching what you are doing and as we’ve already caught one wanted murder fugitive from STC, your work matters!
The law enforcement is mainly for cases like missing persons where we don’t want people coming to STC first and not making a report to the police. We need to make sure a proper report has been made first.
Valid points and thank you for your support Aaron! As long as the state or county has a warrant database or a public court records database, that can be used to validate that fugitives are still wanted. Western and Southern states tend to be more willing to make this information accessible to the public, compared to Northern and Eastern states.