Cold Case

For Dottie Cambray, whose brother's murderer has never been brought to justice, one "cold case" is one too many. Since 1998, Cambray, of Fairless Hills, founder and president of Families of Unsolved Murders, has been on a nearly one-woman crusade to bring her brother's 1988 case, and thousands of others like it, to the public's attention. Now she is hoping county officials will create an investigative unit dedicated specifically to unsolved cases, something she says is rare but necessary.

Philadelphia police have rereleased a surveillance video of an armed robbery in Hunting Park last year in an effort to keep the case alive. The stickup occurred about 10:35 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2011 at the Middle Brook Bar, 601 W. Bristol St. Police said a man armed with a sawed-off shotgun entered the bar, pointed it at the barmaid and demanded cash. He fled out the rear door with $250 and a cellphone. Anyone with information is asked to contact the East Detective Division at 215-686-3243.

In a June 27 column, "A long-ago murder solved only in secret," Mike Kelly said he was told by a policeman "in confidence" that the parents of Candy Clothier's killers were "pillars of the community. " He implied that because of this "pillar" status, I am protecting their names, and he further claimed that if the suspect's names are made public, somehow justice will be done. Kelly tells a moving story. He is no doubt impassioned. He is also completely wrong. I know he didn't get this "pillar" stuff from the Northampton Township investigators who worked for decades to close this case.

AMSTERDAM - A murder mystery has been solved - 65 years later - with the confession of a 96-year-old woman. The 1946 killing of Felix Gulje, the head of a construction company who at the time was being considered for a high political post, roiled the Netherlands, and the failure to find the assassin became a point of contention among political parties. Yesterday, the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, said a woman has confessed to the killing, saying it happened in the mistaken belief that Gulje had collaborated with the Nazis.

A 45-year-old woman is found beaten and strangled in the bathtub of her California home in 1998. Detectives find blood samples, hair, a possible suspect (her estranged husband?), even a motive (a $1.5 million inheritance?). But with no arrests by 2003, it is officially a cold case. So in June, seven years later, Det. Erik Longoria of tiny Indio, Calif., seeks help in Philadelphia - not from the police but from the Vidocq Society. Millions tune in for Cold Case and America's Most Wanted , but few know Philadelphia is home to the real thing - an international society of forensic experts who consult, free of charge, on baffling murders.

It seems the stuff of historical, heaving-bosom romances: An Italian baroness and her lover are stabbed to death in bed in her 16th-century castle, and their killer slinks successfully into oblivion. But the double murder was far from fiction. Next week, a Philadelphia crime-solver will try to help crack one of Italy's oldest, coldest cases when the International Crime Analysis Association examines the 1563 deaths of Donna Laura Lanza and her lover, Ludovico Vernagallo. William L. Fleisher, founder and commissioner of Philadelphia's cold-case-cracking Vidocq Society, and forensic experts from around the world will gather March 23-25 in Carini - a city in Italy's Sicily region, where the slayings occurred - to reopen the case at the request of Carini Mayor Gaetano LaFata.

AMBRIDGE, Pa. - U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is calling on the FBI to try to close the case of a Western Pennsylvania girl who has been missing since 1958 and declared legally dead by a court. The Democratic senator sent a letter to the FBI after reading a recent story about 15-year-old Rebecca Triska's disappearance in the Beaver County Times, the newspaper reported Friday. Police identified a 26-year-old man named Frank Senk as a suspect and found strands of red hair and blood in his car after witnesses said they saw Triska riding in an older man's automobile shortly after leaving a teen dance on Sept.

All Abdul Salaam has left of his cherub-faced baby girl is a faded black-and-white photo and memories of their brief life together. But he has never given up hope that the toddler who disappeared 22 years ago will some day return to him. Yesterday, for the second day in a row, Salaam stayed away from the wooded spot in Pleasantville where investigators from the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office cut through the thicket, dug and sifted dirt and...

A cold case turned hot yesterday for Philadelphia police. Police went to the 2600 block of South 72d Street to execute a cold-case murder warrant for Jamar Wayne Warren, and, in making the arrest, wound up recovering $150,000 in narcotics and cash as well as six weapons. The police fugitive unit and members of U.S. Marshal's Office also discovered a 16-year-old female runaway living with Warren. The runaway was returned to her mother. With the arrest of Warren, 22, of Southwest Philadelphia, police said they closed the case on the 2005 murder of Malik Sims on June 1 and also pulled down a "midlevel" drug distributor in the city, who was said to have been "loaded for bear.

Philadelphia police have rereleased a surveillance video of an armed robbery in Hunting Park last year in an effort to keep the case alive. The stickup occurred about 10:35 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2011 at the Middle Brook Bar, 601 W. Bristol St. Police said a man armed with a sawed-off shotgun entered the bar, pointed it at the barmaid and demanded cash. He fled out the rear door with $250 and a cellphone. Anyone with information is asked to contact the East Detective Division at 215-686-3243.

LOS ANGELES - The defense rested yesterday in the love-triangle murder trial of former Los Angeles Police Detective Stephanie Lazarus, a case dating back 26 years. Lazarus' attorney, Mark Overland, ended his two-day presentation focusing on three letters that have defined the case - DNA. Overland suggested in questioning a witness that critical genetic evidence linking Lazarus to the murder of her romantic rival was mishandled in an era before the value of DNA was known.

Right away, investigators knew that whoever killed 55-year-old Arunkumar Ingle had no interest in robbery. They found no signs of a break-in at his modest ranch home in the Glen Riddle section of Middletown Township, Delaware County, no knocked-over furniture, no ransacking, no TVs or jewelry taken. The only thing deemed missing was a pipe wrench that they believed was used as an assault weapon. What they did find at the home on the afternoon of Jan. 21, 2008, was evidence of shocking brutality - multiple stab wounds; blood covering the victim's head, which rested atop his knocked-out teeth; his testicles mutilated.

AMBRIDGE, Pa. - U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is calling on the FBI to try to close the case of a Western Pennsylvania girl who has been missing since 1958 and declared legally dead by a court. The Democratic senator sent a letter to the FBI after reading a recent story about 15-year-old Rebecca Triska's disappearance in the Beaver County Times, the newspaper reported Friday. Police identified a 26-year-old man named Frank Senk as a suspect and found strands of red hair and blood in his car after witnesses said they saw Triska riding in an older man's automobile shortly after leaving a teen dance on Sept.

MIAMI - A vial of Ted Bundy's blood has been found in Florida, and investigators will use the newly discovered evidence to try to solve cases that went cold decades ago. Before he was executed in 1989, Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders and was suspected of many more, including two in South Jersey. A complete DNA profile couldn't be developed for the serial killer until the blood was found. The full profile will be uploaded to the FBI's national database Friday, giving authorities key evidence to possibly link Bundy to long-unsolved crimes.

In a June 27 column, "A long-ago murder solved only in secret," Mike Kelly said he was told by a policeman "in confidence" that the parents of Candy Clothier's killers were "pillars of the community. " He implied that because of this "pillar" status, I am protecting their names, and he further claimed that if the suspect's names are made public, somehow justice will be done. Kelly tells a moving story. He is no doubt impassioned. He is also completely wrong. I know he didn't get this "pillar" stuff from the Northampton Township investigators who worked for decades to close this case.

Almost four years later, Antonio Quintin Clarke's murder had grown cold. Police discovered the 15-year-old's beaten and stabbed body wrapped in plastic behind the loading dock of a Grays Ferry electrical warehouse on the morning of Nov. 26, 2007. He was naked, except for a T-shirt pulled over his shoulders. The Bartram High School special-education student had never been in trouble with police. He had an after-school job at a community center near his Southwest Philadelphia home and helped his single working mother take care of his physically disabled sister.

AMSTERDAM - A murder mystery has been solved - 65 years later - with the confession of a 96-year-old woman. The 1946 killing of Felix Gulje, the head of a construction company who at the time was being considered for a high political post, roiled the Netherlands, and the failure to find the assassin became a point of contention among political parties. Yesterday, the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, said a woman has confessed to the killing, saying it happened in the mistaken belief that Gulje had collaborated with the Nazis.