Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is urging Iowans to call in tips to a new cold case unit in her office.
“Every victim deserves justice,” Bird said this morning. “Every family deserves answers. No one should get away with murder here in Iowa.”
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 said 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.
“Justice for victims, answers for families, accountability for the perpetrator,” Ponsetto said, “these are the goals for this cold case initiative.”
The attorney general held a news conference today at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to preview the project, which will be launched July 1 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.
“It’s important for these families to have closure,” he said. “It’s important for the folks that are doing the investigations to get closure…I know my staff is not going to quit until they get that closure.”
Jody Ewing founded the Iowa Cold Cases website in 2005 as a service to the families of victims and she joined the attorney general at today’s news conference.
“This cold case initiative has been needed for a very, very long time,” she said, ” and I’m so thrilled that it’s finally going to become a reality.”
Bird’s office has prosecuted two cold cases in the past 18 months. “It takes law enforcement, investigators, prosecutors and community members working together to find answers and to bring criminals to justice,” Bird said as she stood among a group of sheriffs and the families of murder victims whose cases are unsolved. “Every victim deserves justice and every tip helps. It might just be the lead we need to get to the bottom of a case.”
There are more than a quarter of a million unsolved murders in the U.S. and most states have a cold case unit.
Over 100 of the state’s cold cases are in Polk County.