Cam Hughes directs the Cold Case Analysis Center at UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy. In this week's episode, Cam explains what cold case analysis actually involves, how she imparts investigative best-practice to students from a range of disciplines, and how representations of true crime portrayed in popular culture can shape how cold cases are perceived and pursued.
Cold case analysis is difficult, complicated work, and even explaining what it entails comes with its own set of challenges. Investigators often have to dig through old stores of evidence that may be damaged, incomplete or badly disorganized. Plus, the cases that get a second look tend to be serious crimes involving real harm and graphic evidence that can be disturbing to handle. Every aspect requires care — from preventing a misstep that could compromise future legal proceedings, to protecting the people reinvestigating and survivors affected by the crime.
That’s a lot to convey to someone who has never worked a case. So how do you show and tell without showing, or telling, too much?
Cam created a card game to fill that gap.
Maggie Hartley: How do you talk about this work with people who don't have any idea what you're doing?
Cam Hughes: That was actually a really big struggle for me because a lot of what we work on involves not only confidential information, but also some really graphic information that you just don't want to share with people in general. As I was thinking about how to give the cold case experience to people who haven't signed all the confidentiality agreements and that I'm not carefully monitoring to make sure that they're not getting burnt out or having a traumatic response to the things we're working on, I developed a card game.
It's called “Build a Case,” and it presents a more generic description of some of the things that we run into when working a case. To play the game, you draw cards which show things that make a case more likely to be solvable, or less likely to be solvable. Then you can work through a facilitated discussion, and can even link it to a current case if it's appropriate for the group you're working with.
Maggie Hartley: What kind of information is on these cards?
Cam Hughes: The cards cover a few different categories, so, for example, information about the evidence. We get cases where the evidence is extremely well documented. We know exactly what it is, what bag it's in, where it's currently being stored. We also know there are examples from the cold case world of evidence being stored in basements, the basement floods, and all of the evidence gets destroyed, which is the worst card you can draw in the deck.
Maggie Hartley: So the card says "evidence destroyed in flood"?
Cam Hughes: Right. And any other evidence they had has to be thrown out because now all of that is gone. It's a point-based system. The more negative cards you have, the less likely you are to solve the case. You can also pull helpful cards like a well organized case file. The LAPD did an extensive review of their homicide cases and created a system for organizing a homicide case. Every single case file for homicide from LAPD is organized the exact same way. Well, that's super useful. And so if you get that card, it's a really beneficial card.
We talk about witnesses and whether or not the witnesses feel like they can talk to the police.
We talk about the status of the victim. Are they from a community that would make it more likely for them to be ignored, or thought of as participating in their crime?
We talk about whether or not the body was found. That's part of a homicide sometimes too, and why cases go cold, is because you can't find the body.
So that's how we work through some of the things we see in cold cases without having to rely on confidential information, or expose people to things that could potentially be traumatic.
Learn more about UAlbany’s Cold Case Analysis Center.
While developing her curriculum, Cam found there really was no textbook for students working on cold cases. She solved that problem by writing one. Cold Case Investigations for Colleges and Universities, co-authored with clinical psychologist Diana Orem, was published in April.
Want even more? It’s in the works. Cam is currently writing another book focused on how society views victims and why certain victims seem to get more blame than others for their own victimization.
Audio editing and production by Scott Freedman
Photo by Patrick Dodson
Interview by Maggie Hartley
Research and writing by Maggie Hartley
Writing by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist
Hosted by Erin Frick
Host (00:02):
Welcome to The Short Version, the UAlbany podcast that tackles big ideas, big questions and big news in less time than it takes to cross the Academic Podium. I'm Erin Frick, in UAlbany's Office of Communications and Marketing.
Cam Hughes (00:16):
The frustration comes with not being able to prove it, at a level necessary for conviction. It's not necessarily that they don't have any more leads, it's that we don't have enough information at this moment to say this person would be considered guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And sometimes that means we have to do some more tests and that could solve it. It might not.
Host (00:38):
Cam Hughes is not a detective, at least not in the traditional sense. But she still helps solve crimes as director of UAlbany's Cold Case Analysis Center. There, she teaches and mentors student interns as they work with law enforcement agencies and families to shed new light on old cases, whether a decades old homicide or a missing family member.
Cam's father was a detective in the traditional sense, and Cam recalls that he never spoke much about his work at home. It was Cam's mom who triggered her crime solving tendencies. The two of them read crime novels together, which helped seed Cam's fascination with forensic science.
As a lecturer in UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice, Cam has the opportunity to see firsthand how true crime's grip on popular culture through podcasts, YouTube sleuths, and seemingly endless streaming documentaries is impacting the way the next generation of young people approach the work.
While closing a case and delivering justice for a victim or their family is the goal, the center also tackles more systemic issues. High among them, how do we as a society decide which cold cases are worthy of our attention, sympathy or a Netflix deal?
Answering that goes much deeper than the mechanics of what appears to be the perfect murder or the means by which someone disappeared without a trace. It challenges us to ask more difficult questions about our criminal justice system and the way popular culture mines it for content.
My colleague Maggie Hartley spoke to Cam about what college students can bring to cold cases that experienced investigators might miss, why the center needs more than aspiring criminologists and lawyers to thrive, and the power that some less ethical true crime portrayals have to warp our view of evidence and justice.
Here's their conversation.
Maggie Hartley (02:28):
How did you get into this line of work?
Cam Hughes (02:33):
So, it's not exactly a direct path. I was originally interested in criminal justice from a very early age. My dad was a police officer and was a detective. He explicitly told me I shouldn't be a cop, and that was always a joke. Then he started saying I should be a lawyer because I was really good at arguing, but it was really my mom's reading and she and I would share books. And so as a teenager, I was reading things like Patricia Cornwall's books about Kay Scarpetta, who is a forensic medical examiner. And I went to college thinking that's what I was going to be. Got into my first chemistry class, didn't do as well as I wanted to, which for me was a B, and so really focused in on criminal justice from there, but had always had this interest in solving crimes and thinking about how criminals thought.
As I moved into my senior year, I was working on an honors thesis. That honors thesis focused on the fan clubs for serial killers. So serial killers, always really interesting for everybody, but for me, I am particularly interested in the people who get not just obsessed with serial killers, but supportive of those serial killers. There are instances of women marrying serial killers who have been convicted and are in prison, so that was really interesting to me. Then I kind of detoured for a little bit when I got into my PhD program here at UAlbany. There wasn't anybody who was working in that area. And so I was assigned to a different project that was related to residential treatment and juvenile justice and child welfare. So, I got very embedded in that world for quite some time. And then when I was working at the College of St. Rose, the opportunity opened up to become the director of the Cold Case Analysis Center and that was when the stars realigned for me and it was where I was supposed to be. Then the College of St. Rose closed and I was given the opportunity to bring it to UAlbany, which is great because my office is now the same office that my dissertation chair had when I was a student and it's the same desk. I'm just on the other side, which is really cool. But yeah, a lot of it was just being really interested in it from a young age.
Maggie Hartley (04:33):
What is the Cold Case Analysis Center?
Cam Hughes (04:35):
So the Cold Case Analysis Center is basically an internship program that allows students to work on actual cases with investigative agencies to try to determine if there are additional avenues for some investigations or some more lab testing to determine if there's a way to move a case forward. We predominantly work with homicide and murder cases, but that doesn't have to be all that we work on. We are looking into some other opportunities related to long-term missing persons cases as well as things like shootings that did not result in somebody's death. So it's kind of a work in progress as to where we'll go next.
Maggie Hartley (05:14):
And what kind of agencies do you work with?
Cam Hughes (05:16):
So, we work with any agency that's willing to partner with us on these kinds of projects. We work very closely with the City of Rochester Police Department and there are detectives there, which have been a great opportunity for students to be able to look into some pretty significant cases, but also smaller departments as well. We also accept cases from families who would like to have a better understanding about what has happened in the case related to their family member and to see if there's any possible avenues for them to move forward as well.
Maggie Hartley (05:47):
How do law enforcement agencies look at non-police groups looking into unsolved cases? Do you get pushback? Do you get requests for help? How does that relationship work?
Cam Hughes (05:58):
Letting people who are non-sworn officers in could potentially be a risk. We have to worry about confidentiality. We have to worry about potentially altering a case, making it so the prosecution can't go forward if a big mistake is made. And so it's understandable when departments are not really interested in having outside folks come in. Other departments are very open to it. So they are willing to say, "Hey, come in, sign a few agreements and we'll be able to work together on that sort of thing." And because we come from the University at Albany, that comes with a level of respectability that really helps open doors for us and makes that conversation a little bit easier knowing that it is a state entity, we have a lot of legal protections and data support agreements that make it much more stringent and safe for their information.
Maggie Hartley (06:46):
So besides a fresh set of eyes, what is it that students bring to the table that's maybe a little unique to what an agency might already have working on a case?
Cam Hughes (06:56):
Some of it is literally just time. Students can dedicate time to it in a way that an agency that's working active cases just can't do. If there's crime going on today, there's a hope that those police officers are working on crime today. And so our students have the ability to dedicate a significant amount of time to being able to do things that officers just wouldn't have the time to be able to do.
We also do a lot of work organizing files and that sort of thing, which can be really useful if there's a new detective on a case or if the case hasn't been reviewed in a while, just to be able to bring them up to speed on here's everything we know about this case and what we think might be useful and then they can use that as their jumping off point as they start to look at the case themselves.
Maggie Hartley (07:40):
How much guidance do the students get? Are they just sort of like, "Here's a case, see what you can find?", or are there specific things you're looking at or specific things that you do to help them move along?
Cam Hughes (07:53):
So, obviously it is going to depend on the case, but in general, I have students walk through the same process with each case. It's partially to familiarize themselves with the victim and who potential offenders are, but also to get things organized for the case. And so we work through a process of looking at who the victim was, more about them kind of doing what is called victimology. So what was it about this person that put them at risk for this crime? Not in a way to say that they're to blame for it, but in order to really understand who committed a crime, we have to understand how the victim and the offender met up with each other, how they managed to interact in some way. What we know about crime is you're far more likely to be victimized by someone you know, and so we start there.
Then we look at timelines and maps. We take whatever the agency has, we add any information that we have about what was occurring at the time. We try to map based off of what the location looked like when the crime occurred. So when we're talking about cases that are 40 years old, things will look very, very different today. And so to understand what happened, you have to understand what it looked like at the time. So sometimes that might involve things like archival research and looking at information from a historical lens. And then we do start to go through cataloging of all the evidence, and what tests have been done, what tests might be available, and identifying which things might be the best choice for doing certain tests.
Maggie Hartley (09:19):
I imagine your students aren't all going to become detectives. What kinds of skills are they building here? What are they getting out of it? What are they learning from this process?
Cam Hughes (09:28):
So, I think they learn a whole lot about the criminal justice system itself and kind of what that process is. And even if they're not going to be in the criminal justice system going forward, every individual is involved in the criminal justice system in some way. It's part of all of our lives, hopefully not the more formal aspects of it, but understanding the reality of criminal justice, I think, is important for everyone. As far as some of those, what we'd call hard skills, some serious organization and review, being able to keep track of large amounts of data. We had one case that was more than a dozen banker's boxes full of stuff. And so trying to figure out what goes where and how that all matches up, being able to summarize that information. We almost call it a qualitative data analysis, looking for where things get mentioned in what ways.
And then even things like mapping softwares, being able to review peer reviewed journal articles as it makes sense for the case. So, things like water flow tables and understanding how rivers move, or some sort of medical journal about what we would expect to see in a case like this versus what we're seeing based off of the autopsy. So, lots of critical thinking as well. And they work in small groups, so small group discussions, they put together presentations and present it to the detective, which they're always very stressed about the first time they do it. Then they meet the detectives and it's usually like, oh, these are just people and they're really excited that we are excited. And then even stuff like social media analysis. So, they'll go through and try to identify where a person is, who their family members are. We don't ever speak directly to those people, but if they have their stuff on social media and it's public, then we can kind of look through who's around and make it easier for the police if they need to go and find a person.
Maggie Hartley (11:15):
The students who are interning there, are they all criminal justice students or they come from all over the university?
Cam Hughes (11:21):
The Cold Case Analysis Center is open to students of every major at the University at Albany. We do get a lot of criminal justice students, some psychology students, students that are interested in homeland security or cybersecurity. But for me, because the point of the center is to have people from different viewpoints, I feel like having folks that are outside the criminal justice department is beneficial for getting those other viewpoints. And folks may come in with skillsets because of their interest or their major that could be really, really beneficial to a specific case depending on what we're really navigating with that case. So for example, if somebody's a history major and we have to do some archival research, boy, they really know where to go and who to ask and have had that experience. It can be really helpful for students. And so in that way, I don't think it needs to be limited.
I can teach everybody basic criminology. Who's likely to commit crimes? I can teach them victimology. Why did this person potentially end up in a situation where they were victimized? But those other viewpoints I can't teach. And so having folks come in from different perspectives, even just within our own center can be really, really helpful.
Maggie Hartley (12:25):
Cam, true crime has been a massive podcast topic, I think probably the main podcast topic. What is it about it? Why are people so fascinated? Why do people want to listen to hours and hours of discussion about crimes?
Cam Hughes (12:41):
I don't think it's a new phenomenon. True crime is something that has interested people for a very, very long time. All you have to do is look at coverage in the media of crimes. One that always comes to mind out of England is Jack the Ripper, but even in the United States, Edgar Allen Poe was the creator of the original detective novels and those are in the 1800s. So people have always been talking about this kind of dangerous thing that could happen out there and wanting to understand it more. I think it's just that the accessibility of podcasts makes it easier for folks to be able to listen to it hours and hours on end. And I will freely admit, I'm one of those people. Oh, I've got to fold more laundry? That's fine!
Maggie Hartley (13:21):
Do you think part of it is that people are thinking of ways that they might be able to solve a crime?
Cam Hughes (13:27):
I think it really depends on the specific podcast. So, some of them really do focus on, here's this case, does anybody have any ideas about what could have happened here? And I think that really is a touchpoint for a lot of people because we like to be able to solve puzzles. We like to be able to find the missing thing, and it also creates kind of this sense of justice because an unsolved crime lacks that justice for the families.
Maggie Hartley (13:52):
I understand that you've written a textbook to help other cold case centers that have this kind of internship program.
Cam Hughes (13:58):
Yeah. So one of the things that we recognized as we were talking about these kind of programs is that there really wasn't a good kind of resource textbook for running this in higher education. There are a lot of textbooks about how you solve crimes and cold case homicide investigations, but those are geared toward sworn police officers. And so some of these textbooks that existed really just weren't appropriate for what we do. It wasn't going to give students the right perspective on what their role was going to be. And so I decided to write a book myself because I just felt like it needed to exist in the world. I was fortunate to be able to partner with a clinical psychologist to talk about that some more, so she could come in from that perspective. So, we could have some forensic psychology and some criminal justice and criminology in the book. And we really, really like what we put out. It's very useful to me for sure.
Maggie Hartley (14:53):
So you're working on another book right now?
Cam Hughes (14:54):
Yeah. So if you write books, the thing you do after you finish one book is you start a new book. This one is really more focused for a more general audience than the textbook focus and is really trying to talk about how we look at victims and how a person's status as an individual may have impacted how we saw them as a victim. The concept is that there are more 'ideal' victims than others. Victimology really started with this idea that the victim had something to do with their own victimization. Now in modern times, that's victim blaming and we don't do that, but understanding how we ended up in a position where people were saying victims cause their own victimization and who we think of as a victim impacts how we see them today. So how the media portrays them, how some investigators might see them as more of a victim or as less of a victim. And there are some really good examples in history of groups being ignored because of their status.
Maggie Hartley (15:57):
Yeah, I think we see that in media, in cases that get picked up. If an adorable blonde girl gets kidnapped, it makes news, yet, it happens all the time in other communities and it doesn't make news.
Cam Hughes (16:10):
It's referred to as "missing white woman syndrome." There's a researcher who coined that term in 2004 really focusing on there are some people that get portrayed as more of a victim than others, even though similar people have disappeared under the same circumstances, but they're not getting that kind of press coverage, or things aren't being published about them in the same way, or they're being discounted because of their status. There's a very telling case out of Toronto related to that where folks just kept saying, no, this is just a quote unquote transient population, but it turned out that there was actually a serial killer operating and murdering a lot of these folks.
Maggie Hartley (16:49):
What other projects are you working on?
Cam Hughes (16:52):
One of the projects that I'm working on is another opportunity for students to really get into that true crime world, but from a different perspective. So, looking at how true crime is portrayed on YouTube.
YouTube is another avenue where folks talk about crimes, cold cases, all of that stuff pretty significantly. And some people do it really well and some people do it in ways that violate what we'd think of as journalistic ethics and might present information or evidence that really wouldn't be considered evidence if it went through the legal process. So, I have students review YouTube videos and they start to document what kinds of things are they seeing within them, and do they follow the journalistic ethics, was where we started, but moving into kind of legal evidentiary value or whether or not if somebody presented it this way in court, how much of that would be objected to by a defense attorney and just wouldn't be viable evidence.
I think it's important for students to understand that even if something is interesting, it isn't necessarily accurate. And so by watching, they're supporting things that aren't necessarily ethical or an appropriate use of material and content, and that by supporting someone else who's doing it the right way, they could contribute in a more meaningful way, even just with their watching.
Host (18:11):
That was Cam Hughes, director of UAlbany's Cold Case Analysis Center and lecturer in the School of Criminal Justice at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy in conversation with Maggie Hartley.
In this episode, Cam walked us through her approach to teaching students how to safely and ethically investigate cold cases. From organizing case files to protecting mental health, she literally wrote the book. What you didn't hear was that she also created a card game to help explain what they do at the Cold Case Analysis Center without jeopardizing case integrity, or inadvertently exposing people to things they might not want to see. For more on that, check out The Long(er) Version in our show notes.
If you missed last week's close encounter with UAlbany physicist Kevin Knuth on the serious science behind the study of unidentified aerial phenomena, be sure to check it out.
The Short Version would not be possible without contributions from many people, including for this episode, Maggie Hartley, who you heard in this interview and who also contributed research and writing, and Scott Freedman, who provided audio production and editing from the UAlbany digital media studio deep inside the podium tunnels.
One news item before we go, and it's a big one. Today's episode marks Maggie's final appearance on The Short Version and her last day at UAlbany. From newsroom reporting to more than a decade here on campus, Maggie has spent her career finding the story and bringing it to life with heart, precision, and her peerless eye for detail. As of today, she's heading into a well-earned retirement. Congratulations, Maggie, and happy trails!
We'll be back next week with another quick conversation about something interesting.
I'm Erin Frick here at the University at Albany, and this has been The Short Version.
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