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A local police officer from DES MOINES, Iowa believes that the 31-year-old double homicide he has been investigating will be solved once the crime-solving reality television show is through with it. The case will be featured this day, Friday.
Aside from the investigation of some expert from the show, Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty was also counting on the viewers that will have some useful tips, aiding the investigation into the 1983 slayings of Steven Fisher, 20, and Melisa Gregory, 17.
"A case is never over. â?¦ You're always looking for more information, you always have unanswered questions," Halferty said. "I'm hopeful that (the show) will create some additional leads."
He knows that solving a homicide case that is more than a decade is never easy. Once that the case is cold, it gets harder to solve since some of the witness and other concerned in the crime might be gone in the area. Luckily for him that there was a website that tracks such cases. Currently, authorities manage to close at least four cold cases since it started back in 2012.
The difficulty in solving such case is why you would find an officer seeking help from a TV show. The show has several experts that are willing to track the case from end to end. In February, the show's cast members spent eight days in Jasper County to review evidence and to interview witnesses as they film their work.
Theresa Supino, 53, was arrested March 3 and charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Fisher and Gregory. Supino was the wife of Fisher. Based on the investigation, Fisher and Gregory got an affair, which angered Supino.
The "Cold Justice" episode will also feature the interview with Supino that investigators conducted in a vehicle in a parking lot outside Supino's Altoona apartment, as stated by Kelly Siegler, the Texas prosecutor who stars in the show.
Supino's family doesn't fear that the show might convict Supino in any way. Supino's daughter, Casey Supino, said she believed that the show will only bring light to the case.
"They didn't solve it," she said. "I think that they had to charge somebody for it, and they don't have anything."
Steven Addington, Supino's attorney with the state public defender's office, doesn’t want to talk. The case is just one of nine cases that makes their way through Iowa's courts in which arrests were made in years-old homicides, said Ewing, of Iowa Cold Cases.
Legal experts believe that there are several factors that can make a cold case hard to crack. Most of the time, it is because of the witness moving to another location, have died, or has a hard time remembering things anymore, as stated by Denise Timmins, an assistant Iowa attorney general who prosecuted Pilcher.
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