PHILADELPHIA — At times, Grace Bowen has caught herself forgetting her sister is gone. ADVERTISING PHILADELPHIA — At times, Grace Bowen has caught herself forgetting her sister is gone. At 30, Bowen is older than her sister, Joy Hayward, was
PHILADELPHIA — At times, Grace Bowen has caught herself forgetting her sister is gone.
At 30, Bowen is older than her sister, Joy Hayward, was when someone strangled her a decade ago in a Chester, Pa., hotel room. Police found DNA and other leads. But the case went cold.
“Whoever it was, they must have stopped leaving DNA, or they died,” Bowen said recently from Annapolis, Md. “In the end, I think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think there was no motive, no reason.”
Across the country, unsolved murders are increasingly common.
National homicide rates have dropped over the years, but so has the arrest rate for such crimes. In the 1960s — long before the advent of cellphones and the technology to identify or trace DNA — police made arrests in about 90 percent of homicides nationwide each year. According to a recent FBI report, that number now hovers around 63 percent.
A 2010 study by Scripps Howard News Service found that of more than half a million killings between 1980 and 2008, almost 185,000 went unsolved.
Experts such as Bill Hagmaier, a former FBI agent who heads the International Homicide Investigators’ Association in Florida, cite a few reasons.
Funding cuts have eroded training and manpower in many detective units, meaning fewer resources for cold cases, he said. At the same time, television shows, movies, and the Internet offer the public a broader understanding of police techniques, possibly helping killers cover their tracks.
Even officers are not immune to the “CSI effect,” which leads juries to expect DNA evidence and fingerprints, Hagmaier said.
“As veteran investigators are retiring, you’re seeing a new crop come in,” Hagmaier said. “Some of these officers expect that all these forensic tools are going to make their job a lot easier when it comes to solving crimes, when the truth is that’s not always the case. DNA is great, but it’s not everything, and it’s not a substitute for the best old-school techniques.”
Some experts also cite the changing nature of violence in big cities over the last few decades, saying gang- and drug-related killings can be more difficult to solve than crimes of passion, especially amid a rising “no-snitch” culture.
A study last year by the U.S. Department of Justice found police departments that work at building relationships with the community are better equipped to solve homicides. Not surprisingly, the study also found departments that use best practices for investigating homicides, such as allocating overtime pay to allow officers to work around the clock, have the most success with closing cases.
In Chester, Bowen said more help from the community where her sister was killed would help the officers working on the case.
“It takes a lot to go to the police and say, ‘I know who did this,’ ” Bowen said. “I’m not sure everybody is strong enough to do it.”
Hayward, an Annapolis native, was 28 when she came to Pennsylvania with her fiance, who worked in the area. Days later, on Feb. 12, 2004, Bowen says she believes, an argument led Hayward to check into a Days Inn near Philadelphia International Airport shortly before 2 a.m.
She was later seen getting into the elevator with a man. Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan said she called the front desk soon afterward and said she had a problem, but no one went up.
A hotel employee found her body in the bathtub the next morning. Police found two cigarette butts floating in an ice bucket, and DNA from a black male. Hayward’s fiance was cleared as a suspect.
“This is not the type of case that usually remains unsolved,” said Whelan, whose office recently reviewed the case file. “It’s somewhat unusual to go this long and not be able to match the DNA.”
