MONROE COUNTY, Georgia — Behind each unsolved crime there is a face, a family and a community yearning for closure. But someone may have one piece of information that could be the key to unraveling years of uncertainty.
Monroe County Sheriff Brad Freeman says that people should come forth when they hear information about a cold case.
"The best thing they could do was if they hear something, a cliche, if you hear something, say something. So if they heard rumblings in the community or something about, hey, so-and-so may have did this, even though they may not have anything to go on, because we could always backtrack where they're hearing this information from. And it may be somebody that actually can give us some information," Sheriff Freeman said.
Investigator Mark Mansfield, who solved the 33-year-old cold case of the murder of Mary Wilfong, said that people will sometimes hear information from the perpetrators themselves.
"Jack Daniels, Budweiser gets in them, and they just start running their mouth and don't realize they're doing it," Investigator Mansfield said. "Then somebody hears that conversation and goes, 'Hey, I was at a party the other day, or I was here the other day. And I don't know if this guy or girl knows what they're talking about, but they said they're involved, you know, in a killing.' And so then you research and find, okay, there was a killing, or there was a shooting or stabbing or whatever back about that same time frame."
Sheriff Freeman also says that any information a person has is good information.
"You can't have a person out there that says, well, I heard something, this isn't useful information. Anything they hear about a case could be useful information," Sheriff Freeman said. "They need to give it to the investigator or reach out to the sheriff's office and say, this is what I heard about this. It's up to the investigator to say, " okay, yeah, we heard this too. We've already tracked down this lead, and there's nothing to it. But they don't know that until they let us know."
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