The Sexual Assault Cold Case Unit in Charlotte receives Funding

Filed under Testing on 3/13/2012 by Author: .

The Sexual Assault Cold Case Unit within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has received a federal grant of almost $500,000 to give higher priority to unsolved sex crimes and homicides.

In 2003, the Police Department set up a Homicide Cold Case Squad to tackle a growing backlog of hundreds of unsolved murders. Three years later, in 2006, the Sexual Assault Cold Case Unit was launched. It was one of the nation's first cold case sex crimes squads. This Unit has since reviewed 860 cases and has solved or cleared 132 of those, mostly through the use of DNA.

Some of those cases dated back to the 1980s. Twenty nine men have been arrested and charged with 45 sexual assaults. Some rapes were dating back to the 1980's. Twenty-two of those men have been convicted. Among the arrests were six serial rapists. One of the rapists who was arrested nearly 30 years later after his crime was Roger Dale Honeycutt.

The police department has more than 2,500 unsolved sexual assault cases and more than 500 unsolved homicides. Each year, about 100 new sexual assaults and homicides are added to the unsolved violent cold cases.

Read the article here.