Cold Case Answers In The Cards?
Cold case detectives may have an ace up their sleeve to help them solve murder mysteries.
A program in a Florida jail uses playing cards to try to get inmates to shed new light on old murder cases.
As CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann
"Roni was sweet, little, athletic, very outgoing, loved the outdoors," says Gayle Conley, Gamble's surrogate mother.
Gamble was brutally attacked and left to drown at a Florida lake in 1984. She was only 18, and five months pregnant.
"She loved her family, and she also loved our family, too," says Lee Conley, Gamble's surrogate father.
The Conleys took Gamble into their home and their hearts after her biological family fell apart.
For the Conleys, her unsolved murder is their continuing sorrow.
"It's hard, even 22 years later," Strassmann said to Lee.
"Yes, it is," Lee confirmed. "Hard, hard, hard. And I'm not gonna give up. Somebody knows something."
Finally, after all that time, there's a possible break in the mystery of her death, Strassmann says, thanks to a clever new way of coaxing leads from people with secrets.
Jails are the Internet of unsolved crimes, Strassmann says. Prisoners know things, they hear things and sometimes they talk. Now, at Florida's Polk County Jail, a deck of cards is helping to heat up cold cases.
"Instead of interviewing each inmate individually, which is impossible, I thought this is a perfect way to get the information out there," said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Tommy Ray.
Strassmann says Ray had a brainstorm. He knew inmates spent hours playing cards, so why not have them play with a special deck? Fifty-two cards, 52 unsolved murders, some of them decades old.On each card, Strassmann explains, a murder victim's face is shown. A brief story describes what happened, just enough maybe to jog a memory, or a conscience, for guys who hear things.
Inmate Scott Northern told Strassmann that he reads a lot of the stories.
Fellow inmate Johnny Luster said: "You'd be surprised the gossip that goes around in a jail. People bragging about this, bragging about that. It's easy to let something slip."
Most of the inmates Strassmann spoke with are in on drug charges. Murder, they say, is a different deal.
"I don't care if it was a family member. I'd still have to turn him in," says inmate Jerry Lavalley.
Northern says he'd pick up the phone right away if he overhead a fellow inmate talking about having committed any of the murders depicted on the cards.
"We said at the time that we put the cards together," the DLE's Ray recalled, "if we could just solve one case, it would make it all worth it."
After just one month, Strassmann says, Ray's idea paid off: A prisoner recognized the three of spades, Thomas Grammer, shot dead in a botched robbery, and the inmate made a call. Det. Brad Grice arrested two suspects in the killing.
Before that tip came in, Grice says, the names of the suspects had never even been mentioned in connection to the Grammer murder.
And, says Strassmann, the next lucky card just may be the seven of spades: Roni Gamble. An inmate recently gave authorities a fresh lead.
Strassmann asked the Conleys what it would mean to them to see Gamble's killer brought to justice, all these years later.
"It would mean peace for me," Gayle responded.
"It would me, too," Lee agreed. "It really would."
Other states have expressed interest in the Florida program, Strassmann concluded.