What if the millions Arizona spends on capital punishment went to solving cold cases instead? Shifting Arizona’s capital punishment funds to cold cases would redirect millions of dollars from costly death penalty litigation toward investigating thousands of unresolved homicides and supporting victims’ families, according to advocacy groups like Arizonans for Effective Public Safety.
Family members of crime victims and policy advocates are urging Arizona lawmakers to move away from funding capital trials and felony murder prosecutions. They argue that money spent on executions would achieve a far better return on investment if used to solve active, unsolved violent crimes
The following commentary piece “Nearly 6,700 Arizona homicides remain unsolved. The victims’ families deserve better” appeared in the Arizona Mirror on September 17th and is written by Karen Dana.
Excerpts from the commentary appear below.
September is National Cold Case Month and on Sept. 20, my cousin Loretta Lynn would have turned 65 years old. Instead, my family has spent nearly four decades waiting for the identity of who killed her.
On June 14, 1988, I was traveling in Europe when I picked up a pay phone and received the news that changed my family forever: Loretta had been murdered in her own home.
She and her husband had just moved into a duplex in Mesa the Saturday before she was killed. She was a beautiful young mother with a loving husband who was in awe of her presence. My cousin and her husband had a seven-month-old baby together, with another on the way.
When I heard what happened, it felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped out my heart. I desperately wanted to come home, but I stayed in Europe. I was left trying to process that Loretta had been murdered with a child in her womb while I was grieving with one in mine.
Life kept moving after that phone call. Children grew up. Careers changed. Decades passed.
One thing did not change: Loretta’s murder remained unsolved.
Eventually, waiting wasn’t enough for me.
When Bryan Patrick Miller, known as the Phoenix “Canal Killer,” was arrested in 2015, I became increasingly interested in advances in DNA testing and the investigative genetic genealogy that was used to catch Miller. I started researching cases, attending DNA conferences and learning everything I could about the technology that was helping investigators solve crimes that had once seemed impossible to resolve.
From 1965 through 2024, Arizona recorded approximately 18,490 homicides. About 6,695 of them remain unresolved — roughly one out of every three.
Those aren’t simply old case numbers sitting in filing cabinets.
They are somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s son. Somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, cousin or friend.
And every unresolved case leaves a family living in a strange space between grief and hope. You mourn someone you love while wondering whether the next phone call could finally bring an answer.
We should invest in modern forensic laboratories and technology, expand dedicated cold case resources, strengthen DNA collection and testing, and improve information sharing among law, public safety agencies and detention systems.
Executing Loretta’s killer would not bring her back. And if pursuing the death penalty requires enormous amounts of public money and government resources, I have to ask a different question now: What if some of those resources were used instead to help us find the killers we haven’t caught?
What if we invested more aggressively in new DNA testing, forensic genealogy, cold case investigators, missing persons investigations and support for families?
Arizona continues to devote significant resources to punishment, including capital punishment. Since 2007, providing defense in the hundreds of death penalty cases pursued by Maricopa County prosecutors has cost $289 million alone, while thousands of unresolved homicides sit alongside missing-person cases, unidentified remains and other unsolved violent crimes.
Public safety should not only be measured by how severely we punish someone after a case is solved.
It should also be measured by whether we can solve the case in the first place.
You can read the full commentary “Nearly 6,700 Arizona homicides remain unsolved. The victims’ families deserve better” on the Arizona Mirror website. The Arizona Mirror is an independent, nonprofit news organization that is focused on fearless journalism that shines a light on injustice and creates real-world change, and looks to connect public policy with the people it affects and bring a fresh perspective to coverage of the state’s biggest issues.
Karen Dana is an Arizona native and lifelong Tempe resident, a mother of two and the creator and host of the “Missing or Cold Podcast”. After the 1988 murder of her cousin, Loretta Lynn, remained unsolved, Karen turned her personal experience with unresolved loss and her 17 years in talk radio into advocacy for families searching for answers. Through “Missing or Cold,” she shares the stories of people who have gone missing and victims of unsolved homicides, working to ensure their lives are remembered and their families’ voices are heard.
