Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is urging Iowans to call in tips to a new cold case unit in her office.
Iowa briefly had a cold case unit to examine unsolved murders, but it was financed with a federal grant and closed down more than a dozen years ago. The legislature has provided Bird’s office with over half a million dollars and she’ll be hiring three investigators to review the more than 400 unsolved murders or missing person cases in Iowa. Steve Ponsetto, a retired state trooper and Division of Criminal Investigation agent, will lead the office. He says they will review homicides and cases involving unidentified human remains as well as people who’ve gone missing under suspicious circumstances if local investigators have exhausted all leads.
Bird held a news conference Tuesday at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to preview the project, which will be launched July 1st when the next state budgeting year starts. Polk County Sheriff Kevin Schneider has had a group of retired officers volunteer to go through records and evidence for the over 100 unsolved cold cases in Polk County — and he thanked legislators for providing the money to launch a state-funded cold case unit.
Jody Ewing founded the Iowa Cold Cases website in 2005 as a service to the families of victims and she joined Bird at Tuesday’s news conference.
Bird says her office has prosecuted two cold cases in the past 18 months.
There are more than a quarter of a million unsolved murders in the U-S and most states have a cold case unit.
