COLD CASE UNIT PAYING OFF

Shortly after Neal Pinkston became Hamilton County District Attorney General in 2014, he told the Times Free Press editorial board one of the plans he had in mind was a cold case unit.

He believed there were unsolved cases in the files that might be solved with a little extra scrutiny, another crack at this or that potential witness, a bit more shoe leather expended. “Which cases?” Pinkston was asked.

The new district attorney obviously had some in mind but was vague in his response, not wanting to reveal his hand to those who still might be hiding something. But he did mention the Goetcheus case, that of brothers Sean and Donny, who were killed in their Brainerd home in 1997.

That one, Pinkston thought, was solvable.

On Monday, an inmate already serving prison time pleaded guilty to the murder of the young brothers and to that of Melissa Ward, who disappeared in 2004 and whose body was found two months later.

Those were the seventh, eighth and ninth cases the cold case unit has solved, and they undoubtedly won’t be the last.

Real life isn’t always like television, which neatly can wrap up a cold case in a one-hour drama. But some of the elements are the same.

The cases take a lot of re-examination, a careful combing through of evidence already poured over scores of times. Those cases often take a pair of new eyes, a look at the files by someone different from previous detectives or investigators — not better, just different.

The element of time also can be a factor. Guilt may work on a potential witness, the desire not to keep carrying a burden of the knowledge of a heinous crime.

Some of that evidently was at work on the Goetcheus case. Certainly “hard work and effort … for many, many years,” Pinkston said.

The killer, Christopher Jeffre Johnson, already was in prison for the kidnapping and rape of two teenage girls. When confronted about the kidnapping and rape case, he admitted his complicity in the Ward case. Later, when interviewed about the Ward case, he was asked about the Goetcheus slayings. He admitted killing the pair and provided information only the person responsible for the deaths would know.

In pleading guilty, he said, the culpability apparently weighing on him, he wanted to avoid a trial to spare both his and the victims’ families the pain of reliving the nightmarish details of their loved ones’ demise.

Unlike television, some cold cases never get solved. But we’re fortunate in Hamilton County that some are, whether it takes a mini-series worth of time, a season’s worth or even the span of a long-running ratings hit.