Full house in the big house could help solve cold cases

Local police agencies are starting a new game when it comes to solving some of their most prominent cases. And they’re hoping jail inmates will play along.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers announced Thursday they are teaming up with local law enforcement on a new way to solve older murder and missing-persons mysteries. Cold cases will be featured on a new deck of playing cards to be distributed to local jails.

The standard playing cards, which carry a photograph and factual information about either a murder case or a missing person’s case, will be distributed to the Charlotte and possibly Collier county jails, where officials hope inmates will recognize certain cases and alert officials to any details they know, said Larry Long, public information officer for the FDLE.

The idea is to introduce the cards to inmates who spend a good portion of their day playing cards anyway, Long said.

Each card features one of 52 cases from Lee, Charlotte and Collier counties. Forty-nine of the cards are dedicated to murders; another three feature missing persons who may or may not be alive, Long said. All the cards feature a photo of the victim, along with their ages, where they lived or where they were killed, and a brief description of what happened to them. The front of each card features the Crime Stoppers logo and a phone number to call.

Participating departments include the Cape Coral Police Department, Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, Collier County Sheriff’s Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Fort Myers Police Department, Naples Police Department and the Punta Gorda Police Department. Each department submitted cases it wanted to see on the cards.

Detective Randy Durniak of the Naples Police Department’s homicide division said his department wanted to get involved as a way of being persistent and, possibly, even lucky.

The Naples police submitted all three unsolved murders they have on file and all three were chosen to appear on the cards. All three appear as aces, which, Durniak said, he hopes makes them more visible to inmates playing cards.

Unlike the Iraqi-themed sets distributed to U.S. soldiers during the war, card suit and rank have no significance in the Crime Stoppers sets, said Crime Stoppers board President Paul Atkinson.

The program cost Crime Stoppers about $9,000 for 5,000 sets of cards, a cost that would pay for itself if just one of the cases is solved, Long said.

“If we can solve just one case, then this project will be well worth it,” Long said.

The idea behind the sets came from FDLE Special Agent Tommy Ray, who first introduced the idea in the Lakeland area.

Ray got the idea about a year ago, because he thought it would be like interviewing every prisoner at the Polk County jail about 52 different cases to see what they know.

Since issuing the cards last summer, Polk County Crime Stoppers already have received information that solved a 2004 murder. The information came after an inmate at the jail said he recognized the name of a victim as someone a friend of his claimed to have murdered.

Inmates have been surprisingly cooperative without fear of being labeled a snitch, Ray said. In addition to the one solved murder, officials in Polk County have received “good” tips on eight other cases, and hope to get indictments on at least three of them, Ray said.

“Inmates won’t give you information on drugs or thefts or burglary, but it’s different with murders,” Ray said.

The anonymity of the tips is what Atkinson said he hopes will help kick-start results in Southwest Florida. If they are successful, Crime Stoppers plans to release another deck with an additional 52 cases.

As the sets come in, the FDLE plans to first distribute cards to the Charlotte County jail. The Collier County jail still is hammering out details on whether they will distribute cards, said Kristin Adams, public information officer with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. The Lee County jail will not participate, however. The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is one of the few local departments that did not offer any cases. The sole Lee County Sheriff’s case in the set is a December 1999 murder of Bonita Springs resident Denise Long, who was added at her family’s request

LCSO Chief Charles Ferrante said the idea did not sit well with them, because they were worried about inmates defacing the playing cards. Defacing a card or a picture on a card would be very disrespectful to the family of the victim, who may be seeking closure, Ferrante said.

“We need to put our heads on the pillow and know that those pictures (were not) possibly defaced,” Ferrante said.

Additionally, Ferrante said the department is planning its own cold-case initiative later this year. Starting in October, the jail’s television circuit will cut out for a few hours a day, as information on unsolved murders is beamed to televisions.

Inmates will be all but forced either to watch or listen to the requests for information, because it will be the only viewing option for a few hours, Ferrante said. Coincidentally, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office has 52 unsolved murders.

Defacement of cards has not been a problem, Ray said. And family members have been pretty forthcoming about wanting their loved ones’ information on cards, he added.

After the solved murder last November, Ray said, one mother came forward and requested that her daughter be on the next deck, only months after she requested she be left off.

The November arrest also led to widespread attention for the cards. News spread around the county and, in March the “CBS Morning News” did a story on the cards.

From there, other Crime Stoppers have caught on, too. Ray said he has helped set up similar card sets throughout the state, and he recently was in Texas where he helped two counties get a similar program going.

“I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and I haven’t had many good ideas,” Ray said. “I guess I was overdue for one.”