Advisory Board Helps Counties with Cold Cases

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LANSING, MI – A team of investigators, police, and practicing and retired prosecutors will review some of the 10,000 unsolved homicides that have occurred in Michigan since 1980 in an attempt to get convictions.

A primary reason so many cases go unsolved is that local prosecutors lack the money and adequate staffs to focus on cold cases, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan said.

Members of the cold case advisory board “may see things from a different perspective, and may offer insight or advice that someone who’s very, very close to the case cannot see,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jerry Jarzynka told Michigan Radio.

Jarzynka expects the advisory board to begin reviewing cases in 2016. He hopes the formation fo the advisory board will inspire more county prosecutors to begin reviewing cold cases.

“It’s very painful for family members, they’ve lost a family member and can think that nothing’s happening, that nothing’s being done to bring justice,” Jarzynka told Michigan Radio.