By Sheila McLaughlin
The Cincinnati Enquirer

LEBANON - A 73-year-old caretaker with a liking for the racetrack is found hacked to death in his Union Township trailer in 1986.

The wife of a Springboro police officer is fatally shot at the couple's small farm, three hours after she met her husband for lunch in a park in April 1995.

The body of a wealthy, 41-year-old furniture salesman from Dublin, Ohio, is discovered in November 1992, not far from an Interstate 71 exit ramp. It was a month after the father of four had disappeared following a sales call at a furniture store in Lebanon.

These homicide cases remain unsolved. But last week, Warren County police put together a new team to break through such stalemates.

In an unusual move in the Tristate, a multijurisdictional cold-case squad of six investigators will work full time on lingering homicides that so far have stymied police or eluded prosecution because of a lack of physical evidence against a prime suspect.

Such special investigative units have become more popular across the country, popping up from California to New Jersey since the mid-1990s with the advancement of forensic tools such as DNA testing.

However, devoting a squad of detectives to the investigation of cold cases is not as common here. For instance, Hamilton County does not have a countywide, full-time effort devoted to cold cases. Rather, police departments review their cases periodically and coordinate investigations through the prosecutor's office.

The Butler County Sheriff's Office has a lone cold-case investigator. His efforts recently renewed charges against a convicted rapist in the 1974 slaying of a 72-year-old retired elementary school principal. Mildred Ruth Doench was raped, stabbed and struck with a hatchet-like tool that the killer left embedded in her forehead.

Mike Werkema, whose February seminar for about 60 Warren County police officers sparked interest here, said that time commitment and exhaustive interviews, not forensics, are paramount to solving old cases.

The Kalamazoo city officer was instrumental in establishing Michigan's first cold-case unit in 1998. So far those detectives have solved 10 homicides in Kalamazoo County - only one of them using DNA evidence, he said.

"In 90 percent of the homicides, the attacker knew their victim and the victim knew their attacker. You have to find the right person to talk to," Werkema said. "Forensic evidence, as great as it is, without a name on it, it's no good. It's that little tidbit of information that you get from people that solves the case."

Detectives on the Warren County squad will start digging into unsolved homicides when their squad opens officially today.

Sheriff Tom Ariss was reluctant to say exactly what cases they will tackle or in what order. But he did say he thinks a fresh review by someone unfamiliar with the cases might provide some breaks.

"They're going to look at the case as a whole and not necessarily pick it apart. But, maybe there are things they will see that didn't get asked the first time around," he said.

Five investigators from Mason and Springboro in Warren County, and Oakwood, Moraine and Centerville in neighboring Montgomery County haven been sworn in as special deputies.

They have been taken off the job in their respective departments, although they'll still be paid by them while they do nothing but investigate the cold cases.

For the Montgomery County detectives, the cold-case squad is more than just a new assignment. Their motivation is fueled by allegiance to one of their own, said Oakwood Police Capt. Walt Conroy.

Springboro Lt. Jim Barton, whose wife, Vickie, a nurse, was slain in 1995, is a supervisor on that task force.

"This is a fellow officer whose wife was killed, and the case was not resolved," Conroy said.

That's one of the reasons Springboro Chief Jeff Kruithoff initiated the idea for a cold-case squad in Warren County. He invited Werkema to town to drum up interest from other police chiefs.

"People in this community haven't forgotten about that case," said Kruithoff, who came from Michigan a year ago to take the job in Springboro.

The squad will be headed by sheriff's Capt. John Newsom, who commanded the Cincinnati police homicide unit before retiring.

The sheriff already has been drawing on Newsom's expertise in death investigation. Newsom has quietly been working to solve the July 4, 1999, killing of 30-year-old Troy Temar, who was shot to death and left in the trunk of a burning car near an abandoned farmhouse in South Lebanon. Prosecutors could review Newsom's findings as early as this week, Ariss said.

Donna Temar is excited by news of the cold-case squad, saying it could help her family and the others find some peace. She's disappointed that her son's case remains unsolved, but credits police with doing what they can.

"It's always in the back of your mind," Temar said about her son's death.

She admits she has a lot to be thankful for in the past four years. A son and a daughter were married. A grandchild was born. But Troy's death always seemed to weigh in, no matter what the occasion.

"That's all I need is to have somebody arrested," Temar said. "Right now it's about the biggest hope I can possibly have. Once I can find out why, then I'll be OK with that."

Then, she said, she can she focus on her son's memory, instead of the horrible circumstances of his death.

E-mail smclaughlin@enquirer.com

Details of unsolved homicides