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Australia Today

NSW Police Are Reopening Every Unsolved Murder From the Past 40 Years

There are 500 cases in total.
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It's a podcaster's dream: every single unsolved homicide (aka cold case) in NSW over the past 40 years is set to be revisited, in an attempt to bring the loved ones of murder victims some relief. According to The Daily Telegraph, the NSW Unsolved Homicide Unit, which is made up of 43 detectives, will review 500 cold cases. From there, they will identify "priority" cases that could benefit from factors such as advanced technology. Detectives will also investigate the availability of witnesses and any leads that were not sufficiently explored at the time. The first 20 cases up for review will be examined this week. “We want to make sure we are looking at the right cases—the solvable cases—now, so [the victims' families] are not languishing there for years while we work slowly through the list from oldest to newest,” Detective Superintendent Scott Cook, NSW Police homicide commander, told The Daily Telegraph.

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“The review process will look at the best opportunities to solve the matter, and cases that could be solved now, given the right resources, will be prioritised to be reinvestigated­.” “Every case is going to get reviewed and I’m sorry to the families if their case is less solvable than others," he continued.

"It’s not forgotten and it will be looked at again and again. I think most families will understand that we have to work on evidence and if the evidence isn’t there—we could spend a lifetime searching for evidence that just isn’t there.” The NSW Unsolved Homicide Unit was officially formed in 2004, and has solved 30 cases since then. A major achievement was the arrest of family-court bomber Leonard John Warwick, who goes on trial this week charged with four murders that occurred after a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife in the 1980s.