Group to revisit cold cases

A group that investigates cold case homicides is itself being resurrected.

The Utah Attorney General's Office has launched the Utah Technology Assistance Program — a "reinvention" of a program that attempts to reinvestigate long-unsolved murders.

"These are cases where we can give resolution to families," said Ken Wallentine, the Utah attorney general's chief of law enforcement. "People getting away with murder — literally — can finally find justice."

The program was unveiled Wednesday at a U.S. Department of Justice conference in Salt Lake City to police, victim advocates, crime lab and political staffers. It included a presentation of some of the innovative new crime scene technologies that the program will implement.

"You bring a cold case to UTAP and what you get is an audience with a talented review board, support for as long as you work on the case and the AG's office resources," said Charles Illsley, a retired West Valley police detective who is a forensic consultant for the program.

Through a $58,000 grant from the Utah Commission of Criminal and Juvenile Justice, UTAP has been able to purchase some high-tech forensic equipment that could help solve the long unsolved murders. It includes ultraviolet cameras, portable lasers and a device still in the beta-testing stage that can detect bodily fluids. Some of the devices look like something not out of "CSI" but "Star Trek."

Getting that equipment is usually cost-prohibitive for individual police departments.

"The beauty is you don't have to have this technology," Illsley said Wednesday. "It's there when you bring it to UTAP."

Wallentine described the new UTAP as a "think tank" for unsolved crimes. The group does not take over a cold case investigation, he insists, but rather works with police agencies to bring more resources to an investigation that either doesn't have technology or staffing, and can't begin to afford it.

"You have the best prosecutors, the best investigators, the people who have a knack for solving homicides," Wallentine said. "It brings to the table forensic people, psychiatrists, other technologies."

The original incarnation of UTAP (then known as the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project) withered and died several years ago in part because of personnel issues and a lack of support from the attorney general's office. That has changed, Wallentine said.