PRESCOTT, Ariz.—Before she began investigating old homicide cases, in times of trouble Theresa Higdon would bring to mind the phrase: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Now, when she’s looking at photos of a victim from an unsolved murder that happened years ago, she has another thought.
Higdon, 74, said there are moments when she tells herself, “But for the grace of God, I could have been there,” and saved the person’s life.
She said it’s only human to be angry with a suspected murderer and have deep sympathy for a victim. It’s easy to get emotionally involved in a case in a way that goes beyond death.
Above all, Higdon said, “You have a job to do”—and that is helping to find the victim’s killer.
A cold case is a crime that has yet to be solved and is no longer actively investigated by detectives.
Retired as a business analyst from a major insurance company, Higdon joined the volunteer cold case unit believing her professional expertise would be helpful.
She and her fellow cold case investigators receive no payment for their work.
“The only pay is a pat on the back, which beats a kick in the butt,” Higdon said jokingly, sitting at her workstation with two computer screens.
But it’s serious business to solve a murder case, she said.
Her shared office is a 6-by-20-foot space in the sheriff’s office building, with a row of tall filing cabinets and cardboard boxes containing evidence from unresolved cases.
Some of the crimes include murders from the 1950s or, more recently, high-profile fraud cases in which the victims lost millions of dollars to online schemes.
Higdon works two days a week, giving her full attention to her murder cases from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
She said she doesn’t worry about the age of a case because there is no statute of limitations on homicide in the United States.
“It has to do with evidence and witnesses and points to follow. The case could be 60 years old or six years old,” she said.
A higher rate of clearance in 2023 coincided with a drop in the number of murders, which allowed over-burdened homicide units to make progress on the nation’s enormous backlog of unsolved murders, the project noted on its website.
During this 57-year period, more than 1 million people were murdered nationwide. Of those, more than 673,000 (nearly 67 percent) were solved.
Texas had the highest number of homicides at more than 92,500 and it cleared more than 67,000 at a rate of nearly 73 percent.
A Fresh Perspective
Lt. Michael Dannison of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office CIB told The Epoch Times that volunteers bring their unique skills and a “new set of eyes” to each cold case.Out of the approximately 300 police volunteers across the county, a small subset are the cold case volunteers. While some had careers in engineering, finance, or other fields, two had law enforcement experience.
“Not everybody can do it—or wants to do it because some of the stuff they see—they’re looking at old crime scene photos,” Dannison said. “They’re looking at autopsy photos. They’re looking at things that the everyday citizen should never have to see.
“So, it takes a special person to be able to want to do that and can do that.”
Dannison said that sometimes detectives get “stuck in their ways,” so it’s good when a layperson looks at the cases from a different perspective.
“Sometimes, it’s better to use somebody who doesn’t have that [law enforcement] background. They can come in and look at a file and see if anything was missed,” he said.
Volunteers have to pass a background check, be interested in solving crimes, and receive special training.
Dannison said that the group started in 2006 because the CIB, like many law enforcement agencies throughout the country, needed more detectives, money, or time to work on cold cases.
Out of more than 200 unsolved cases in Yavapai County, the volunteers were able to remove those that were not cold cases, mislabeled, or related to crimes in other counties.
Dannison said the volunteers have solved at least 30 cases in the past two decades and cut the backlog by about 85 cases.
“There’s no closure, and the detectives don’t have the time to dig into the cold cases themselves. They’ve got cold cases they’re doing daily,” Dannison told The Epoch Times.
“Some cases are so old, they’re not viable,” he said.
A challenging cold case concerned the 1960 discovery of a 5-year-old girl’s charred corpse in a shallow grave.
She was only known as “Little Miss Nobody” for many years until volunteers, using forensic genealogical DNA analysis and other tools, assisted in identifying her remains in 2022.
Her name was Sharon Lee Gallegos, and she lived in New Mexico.
Dannison said investigators believe the girl died of strangulation and that someone close to her disposed of her body in Yavapai County.
“She was killed and brought over here and dumped. We believe it was probably a close relative,” he said.
The case remains active, Dannison said, but the chances of solving it—“other than giving Little Miss Nobody her name back”—are slim.
“We run into a lot of these cases,” he said, where the DNA evidence linking the killer to the victim is strong, but the suspect either died in prison, of natural causes, or from suicide.
Cold Case Solved
He said detectives were able to close the 1987 murder case of Catherine Sposito with the help of cold case volunteers.On June 13, 1987, as Sposito hiked along Prescott’s Thumb Butte, her killer ambushed her from behind, using a ratchet wrench to smash her head. The suspect used a knife to stab her in the head and a.22-caliber gun to shoot her in the eye during the attack.
Sposito, 23, put up a fierce fight, according to detectives, leaving a 125-foot blood trail and calling out for assistance that came too late.
Despite the physical evidence, investigators were unable to identify a likely suspect. Years passed before Higdon and a few other volunteers teamed up with detectives and looked at the case again.
Contemporary forensic DNA analysis ultimately solved the case. The problem, however, was that the wrench had multiple DNA sources. But Sposito and the killer contributed the most.
“Unfortunately, budget constraints can get in the way” of an investigation, Dannison said. “Any time you have a piece of evidence tested and you run a DNA profile on it, you’re looking at close to $8,000—for one test.”
Authorities later tied Bennett to a third female sexual assault victim in Chino Valley. Detectives and volunteers cast their investigation further and identified a fourth female sexual assault victim.
Bennett allegedly abducted 22-year-old Renee Sandoval in Yavapai County on June 2, 1993, at knifepoint, according to investigators.
After failing to dim his headlights while driving, Bennett was stopped by a police officer, which allowed Sandoval to escape.
The officer arrested Bennett. However, prosecutors were unable to obtain a conviction of Bennett due to disparities in each case’s witness testimony.
With this new blood evidence, Dannison and other detectives were able to get a warrant to exhume Bennett’s body and extract his DNA for analysis.
“We ended tying him to three rapes and a murder,” Dannison said. “It was the only way we could 100 percent prove that he was the culprit that was responsible for these sexual assaults and Cathy’s murder.”
At the press conference, Rhodes said that cold case volunteers were crucial in solving Sposito’s case.
“There has never been a time when full-time detectives could spend this amount of time working on cases that are so old. The resources are not there,” he said.
Volunteers Essential
Ron Norfleet, another Yavapai County cold case volunteer, specializes in solving fraud cases.The retired chemical engineer has been volunteering for the cold case unit for the past six years as a way of giving back to the community. He’s working on two cases right now; one about a registered nurse in her 60s who lost nearly $900,000 to an online fraudster.
These fraudulent incidents, where the victim falls for the perpetrator’s romantic advances and then asks for money, are known as “sweetheart scams.”
“Emotions. Loneliness,” come into play, Norfleet said. “I hate to see people lose their money in these scams.”
“With more than 300,000 unsolved homicides and disappearances, law enforcement simply does not have the time or resources to tackle all of these cases.
“We know the desire is there—our nonprofit receives hundreds of applications for volunteer service every year,” Porter told The Epoch Times.
“The value of volunteers goes beyond budgetary or staffing issues. Everyone brings different life experiences to a problem.”
Porter said many volunteers are retirees who want to keep using their skills or try something new and challenging. If need be, volunteers can devote weeks or months to a single case.
“They evaluate evidence thoroughly before suggesting possible resolutions. Volunteers will play a huge role in giving families and communities answers in cold cases,” Porter said.
She said that the group’s skills have resolved more than three dozen cold cases, located missing persons, and identified human remains.
Solving Puzzles
Dannison said the Yavapai County cold case volunteers unit often use genealogy DNA services such as Ancestry.com to find missing persons and identify human remains where earlier investigations failed.“It’s just detail, solving puzzles, solving different things,” Higdon said. “We’re closer on some cases than we’ve ever been. Some have been out there for years.”
She’s still working on her first case from 2017; the year she joined the unit. “It is a homicide. Female victim,” Higdon said.
Dannison said that the satisfaction she experiences after cracking a complex murder case such as Sposito’s is indescribable.
“I couldn’t believe how many detectives worked on that case throughout the years,” he said. “There is satisfaction in saying—‘Yes! Nobody else could do it. But we did it.’”
The Sposito family recently installed a bench in a rolling field of grass at Heritage Park in Prescott in memory of Catherine’s “spirit, her smile, and her love of nature.”
The bench stood empty one late afternoon in December, facing the place where Catherine was killed. At the foot of the bench, dry red roses lay fading in the peace of the setting sun.
Though Sposito’s memory endures, Higdon believes no one truly gets over losing a loved one to murder.
“Many survivors don’t like to hear the word closure because there is no closure,” she said. “There’s only moving on.”
