Yakima police create interactive map to develop new leads in cold homicide cases

Yakima police Detective Drew Shaw believes all homicide cases can be solved eventually.

“Every murder has someone out there who knows something or heard something,” said Shaw, who was on YPD’s Major Crime Unit for 11 years and worked numerous homicide cases.

It’s the unsolved cases that bother Shaw, the ones where either the killer is unknown to authorities or detectives don’t quite have enough evidence to make an arrest, let alone have the case tried in court.

Shaw now works in the department’s Professional Standards Office but still follows his unsolved homicides. He and the YPD are asking for the public’s help to tie up some of the loose ends by using an online interactive map.

The “Murder Map” shows the locations of 113 homicides that happened in Yakima from Jan. 1, 2010, to the present. Along with showing the cases and their status, it provides a way for people to leave information with police that could crack the cases.

It’s an effort that the family member of a Yakima woman who was killed in January 2020 hopes takes off and helps solve that case and others.

The idea for the map came from Chief Matt Murray, who said Denver police used a similar strategy with some success at addressing cold cases.

“It is a good way to generate new leads, and to remind families that we never forget these cases,” Murray said.

To start out, Shaw has listed all the homicides since 2010 to see how the system works. In time, more cases will be added.