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COPYRIGHT 2000 Texas Monthly, Inc.
When two Houston detectives began investigating unsolved murders full-time, they hoped DNA testing would make it easy. They were dead wrong.
HARRY FIKARIS AND ROGER WEDGEWORTH miss the flashing red lights, the yellow strips of crime scene tape, and the stench of dead, bloated bodies. With little provocation, they'll wax nostalgic about the adrenaline rush of a call in the middle of the night and the frantic, sleepless chase that follows. This, after all, is why they got into the crime-solving business in the first place. But these days the star homicide detectives from the Harris County Sheriff's Department are using their experience to crack the toughest murders of all: the unsolved "cold cases." As partners on the cold case squad, their job is to solve the crimes that other detectives couldn't.
It's a worthy challenge. In Harris County, which has the third-largest sheriff's department in the country, nearly 450 unsolved murders remain on the books, some dating back to 1972. Even with a clearance rate of around 80 percent, the HCSD averages between fifteen to twenty unsolved homicides annually. Lieutenant Bert Diaz, a former investigator who has been with the department for more than two decades, created the unit nearly two years ago with 43-year-old Fikaris and 51-year-old Wedgeworth in mind. Though other law enforcement agencies routinely work old cases when time permits--last October, detectives from the Austin Police Department arrested four suspects in the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders after poring over evidence and following up on old leads--the Harris County cold case squad is one of the few in the state that have officers assigned to it full-time. Diaz thought it was a necessity. "It gives the victim's family some reassurance that their loved one is not forgotten," he says. "It's all about solving murders, whether they're ten, fifteen, or twenty years old or whether they're current."
Working on the second floor of an old warehouse...
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