You're listening to a stage talk titled Investigating
Coal Cases. This week we were joined by my colleague
Bellingcat researcher Peter Barth. Peter spoke
about his latest investigation into the death
of a Texan oilman and provided invaluable tips
for investigating coal case crimes, admitting
much of it he'd picked up over the three years
he'd looked into this particular case. Sharing
his lessons learned. He encourages everyone interested
in open source research to have a look at local
cold cases, as there are too many to count unsolved.
This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Ma, on
Thursday the 3rd of July 2025 in the Bellingcat
Discord server. Hi, you're tuning into this week's
stage talk. Today we're joined by my fabulous
colleague, Peter Bach. On an average day, you
might find Peter reporting on environmental issues
like the illicit wildlife trade or organized
crime groups like the Kinnerheim cartel. But
over the last year, he's been taking on something
a little different, diving into a murder that
took place over 50 years ago. Now, you might
argue that cases like this don't necessarily
matter, with so much time passing and many of
those alive at the time now passed on. But the
volume of cold cases that exist is staggering.
In the USA alone, the Murder Accountability Project,
MAP, counts almost 346 ,000 cold cases of homicide
between 1965 and 2023. And this is still likely
and undercount since many homicides from the
earlier decades are excluded. and not all US
police departments report to the FBI Uniform
Crime Reporting Program on which this data is
based. Online crowdsourcing efforts have also
sprung up to tackle cold cases, including groups
like Uncovered, with almost 50 ,000 unsolved
murder and missing persons cases. All of these
cases represent families who are still seeking
justice, just like the one that Peter's going
to talk about today. Peter's investigation was
an exercise in showcasing what can be uncovered
with modern investigative techniques. In this
session, we'll hear a little of the tale he unraveled
and how he unraveled it and talk about why open
source techniques can be an incredibly beneficial
skill set to have when looking into these cases.
We'll discuss what it takes to investigate and
what things you might need to look for as an
independent researcher. As we talk, please make
sure to add your questions in the chat box as
I just mentioned. via the message bubble icon
in the top right corner of your screen. And please
note within your question if you do not want
me to read your username out. Okay. Peter, tell
us a story of murder, hitmen, and pigeons. Thank
you, Charlie. Hello, everybody. Hopefully you
can hear me okay. Thanks so much for joining
us today. I'm really, really excited to talk
about old case research and some of the ways
we can use open source to shed light. on unsolved
murders. So yeah, without further ado, I'll just
kind of launch into it. I'm going to talk a little
bit about my story just kind of touch on it here
and there. But I mostly wanted to give you guys
some tips in case you're interested in looking
into cold cases yourselves from the open source
side of things. I'll talk about a little bit
about some of the lessons I learned in doing
that and some of the challenges. And yeah, give
you guys some suggestions and then just leave
a ton of time open for questions at the end.
So basically, I'm going to talk mostly today
about unsolved homicides in the US, just because
that's what I'm familiar with. That's what my
story touched on. And it's a huge, huge issue
here. It's obviously a huge issue in other countries
as well. So hopefully what I'm talking about
in the US still applies to wherever you are.
And you can still take some of these open source
techniques and adapt them to wherever you are
around the world. And yeah, if the screen share
hasn't worked, maybe you can pull up my story
on the Bell and Cat website, and you'll see a
lot of that in there too. So anyway, it'll be
focused on the US today, but hopefully some of
the same principles apply everywhere else. In
the US, this problem is almost unfathomable in
terms of scale of unsolved homicides, as Charlie
was saying. The best estimates are about 346
,000 unsolved cases is one estimate. The most
conservative one I heard in the story was 270
,000. hundreds of thousands of unsolved murders,
which means even more folks, family members,
friends of all of these victims who are left
with a gaping hole in their lives from losing
a loved one. It means that there are potentially
tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of
killers out there as well. Dead, alive in some
cases. So ultimately, this is a huge problem
for a whole lot of reasons. It's an accountability
issue. It's a public safety issue. And it's a
problem that's so big that we don't even really
have the data that like fully captures it because
murder is typically handled in the US by local,
county and state law enforcement. it sometimes
will be looked at by the FBI if the killing involves
crossing state lines, if it's a prolific serial
killer, if it's organized crime related, if there's
some kind of federal crime tied to it, they might
look at it, but usually it's local authorities
investigating. Not all of those local authorities
report all of their data to the federal government.
It varies state by state. So states like Mississippi
are not as great at reporting as some other states.
So this is really just sort of a our best guess
at the scale of the problem. Yeah, behind each
one of these is a story of somebody who was killed
and whose case remains a mystery. And it's also
a problem because police are usually incredibly
under -resourced to deal with this. And the story
that I looked at, for example, takes place in
a city called Corpus Christi in Texas, right
on the coast. It's about 600 ,000 people. Their
police department has two detectives who are
working a hundred plus unsolved murders part
time while they're working on murders that are
happening every day right now. So these are detectives
who are already struggling to keep up with current
homicides and who are already dealing with that.
And in any free time they have, they're working
on historical cases. And bear in mind that when
I say working on historical cases, they usually
have a paper file with like old interview notes,
old handwritten notes and stuff. And that's all
they're working with. These cases often are so
old. But the policemen who originally worked
them are dead or retired. It's a huge, huge issue.
And essentially, with several of the cases that
I looked at through this story, the police didn't
even know that these cases were still unsolved
and that they had them on file. So that's kind
of the issue we're talking about here. That's
why I encourage anybody and everybody who's interested
in this subject to try to join some kind of community,
which I'll get into in a bit, and try to research
this problem in your local area. because we need
more folks working on it. We need more bodies
on this problem trying to help with this issue.
Okay. Homicides aside, there's also a huge problem
with unidentified folks. Some of them are murder
victims, some of them died of natural causes,
but there are tens of thousands of unidentified
bodies and unclaimed remains all over the country.
It's a related problem. a lot of them are homicide
victims. So you'll look into the, you know, a
file of a skeleton found in the woods, for example,
I was just doing this and had two bullet holes
in the back of the skull, which means this person
was murdered and dumped in the woods. And not
only do we not know who killed that person and
why and all of that, but we don't even know who
that person was. It's a whole sort of separate
and related issue. But I just I'm mentioning
this because we just The scale of the problem
is so huge, and not only do we have unsolved
murders, we have unidentified victims themselves.
We also have tons and tons, tens of thousands
of missing folks out there. These problems, a
lot of folks who work cold case homicides are
also interested in missing persons cases, are
also interested in unidentified remains. Okay,
so one of the first things, if you're considering
looking into cold cases, one of the first things
you should ask yourself, and I think... Honestly,
one of the most important questions you can ask
in the whole course of it is, is the case you're
interested in even mentioned online? Is there
anything about it online at all? And the Bill
Richardson murder that I looked into and wrote
about, there was nothing on the open web about
it. The only information out there in the public
about this murder was in old newspapers, some
of which had been digitized. So when I did Google
searches for the victim, there was hardly anything
at all. And I had to go out there and just collect
everything I could. And honestly, my number one
goal with the story was to collect anything I
could about this victim and about his murder
and put it online so that other folks in the
community can access it in the future. So that
if someone else wants to look into this, they
can. And I talked to some folks who basically
said, look, even just collecting, organizing
and putting this stuff online is a huge help.
even for law enforcement because these detectives
have paper files and they go online and search
for anything just like we would and there might
not be any info out there on them. So there's
a couple websites that are actually open source
focused crowdsourcing efforts out there. They're
both nonprofits and just a quick plug for them.
Uncovered is one. It's the largest. There's about
50 ,000 unsolved murders in the US logged on
Uncovered. It's a community effort. It's really,
really good for collecting and organizing information
on victims. And it's run by a small nonprofit
and managed by volunteers. A very similar one
to that would be solve the case, which is a lot
newer. It was actually created by a homicide
detective that I interviewed for my story. And
same thing, there's a community of people uploading
information about cases and commenting on them
and sharing info. So if you're working on this
kind of issue, and you're wondering where to
get started, start by participating in a community
like this. There's Loads of other ones out there
as well. There's all kinds of message boards
and forums. I'm sure you guys know True Crime
is a huge, huge community and world. There's
different shades of it, but I would encourage
you to kind of join a community if you're just
getting started. Also, just a plug, we do have
a cold case channel that's pretty new in our
own Discord. So definitely join that if you're
interested in the topic. There's a few of us
in there chatting. I plan to be a lot more involved
in there. And this is a topic I care about a
lot. So I encourage you guys to join that one.
Okay, jumping back in. So let's say you're interested
in looking at cold cases from the open source.
You need to think about whether the case you're
looking at is even possible to research in open
source. It's a big question to start with. Let's
just start with the basic fact that people commit
murder for a whole plethora of different reasons,
right? You have sexually motivated crimes like
serial killers usually are right where they're
going out there and selecting a type of victim
and Killing sort of someone who matches the same
profile over and over again because of some sort
of deep you know, psychological impulse that
they can't control. You also have domestic violence,
family disputes, disputes over money, robbery
has gone wrong. There's all sorts of different
reasons folks commit murder. That means that
each murder you look at is going to be pretty
sort of its own thing, right? They're each going
to be unique. They're each going to be different.
There are commonalities between them you can
work with. But in my case, I happen to be really
interested in organized crime, specifically the
American mafia and different organized crime
groups that have been active here in the U .S.
over time. Some of them still are. Some of them
aren't anymore. And one of the reasons I looked
into Bill Richardson's murder in particular is
that I gambled on the fact that it was pretty
apparent he'd been killed by professional killers.
And so I went off of the assumption that, hey,
these people probably killed other folks and
they probably have. pretty hefty paper trails
through agencies like the FBI who are probably
monitoring these people for other crimes. So
what I figured was, okay, this is a killing that's
probably mob related. I don't know which mob,
I don't know who did it exactly yet, but it was
so apparently done by professionals, by hitmen,
that I figured if I could try to figure out who
those hitmen were, I could discover more public
records about them and work it from an open source
angle. So some murders are going to be easier
to cover from open source. Others are going to
be extremely difficult, like the unidentified
skeleton example I just gave. There's almost
no public information out there on that. In order
to dig into that, you would have to make information
public by requesting police records and things
like that. So just consider that when you're
starting your case. I will get to the family
question. That's really, really good. And we'll
get to that. later. So a couple more considerations
really quickly. When you're thinking about doing
a case, it's important to consider how extensively
it was covered originally. Is there maybe just
one local media mention of it? Are there multiple
newspaper articles? Are there TV reports on it?
There's sort of a couple different sides to this.
The more coverage you have, the more data points
you have to start working with. However, the
more coverage you have might mean that folks
have already kind of run the public research
side of this, the open source side of this to
the end, right? So if it's covered extensively
and there's a ton of journalists working on it
and a ton of people in the true crime community
or something who have worked on it and researched
it and uploaded everything online, that's one
thing. I will tell you guys just anecdotally
that I found multiple murders looking into this
one unsolved case. I found multiple murders that
there was public data out there for, there were
newspaper articles about. archival records and
things like that, but there was nothing on them
online. There's a lot of room to do really important
good research here and to contribute towards
research into these cold cases. I would just
say that it's a huge problem and it doesn't take
very long to find cases where you're like, oh
my God, there's nothing off of Google about this
murder that happened in my town. I have some
newspaper articles about it. I should upload
this to Uncovered or solve the case or something.
Backing up a little bit, each case is going to
be completely different, like I said. Is it even
going to be possible to cover from a public record's
open source angle? If it's someone like a gangster,
a mobster, that means that there's going to be
a hefty paper trail you can probably work with.
It also means if it happened a long time ago
that they probably committed, they probably went
on to commit other crimes later on, and those
might be relevant to the case you're looking
at. What data points are public? What can you
start to use to research? Do you have the victim's
death certificate? Are there names of suspects
involved with the murder? Were those suspects
cleared already by the police? In my case, one
of them was put on trial and acquitted. We found
out some more information about him that actually
turns out to be pretty incriminating. But yeah,
it's something to consider. Did the police even
reveal that many details about the death? In
a lot of cases, they might withhold a lot of
information, a lot of the details of how the
person was killed, how the body was found, where
it was found. they oftentimes strategically withhold
that information so that it doesn't interfere
with their investigation and so that if they
get things like witness statements later on,
they can corroborate it with information that
kept secret. So it depends on how much information
was released about the murder, how much has been
reported, that sort of thing. A really key thing
is were suspects named or not? Are they still
alive or not? That's a huge question. Another,
this is a little bit more, if you're doing a
traditional journalist approach, where you'd
be going and interviewing family members, which
I'll talk about more later. And I saw we have
some questions about. But if you're looking strictly
from an open source side, are there family members,
say, who've created a Facebook group for their
loved one? Oftentimes with a cold case murder,
there'll be a Facebook group with members of
the local community that's open and you can see
people. posting news articles about it, leaving
comments, posting information about their family
member, posting photos. There is a lot of that
online around this topic. So. Other factor factor
to consider, and then lastly, which law enforcement
agencies worked the case because that determines
where you're going to file your public records
requests, which I'm going to focus on in just
a second. And Bill Richardson's case, it had
been reported a lot. Initially, there were a
lot of newspaper articles for me to start with.
None of them. were indexed by Google, I had to
pay for a newspapers .com account to find this
information and kind of unlock it. But there
was enough for me to get started on the case
where there were suspects named, there was a
related murder that was mentioned. So there was
some information I could start with and then
I just started blasting out FOIAs based on that
information that I started with. I also took
information from those newspaper articles. went
to Ancestry .com and started to use that to pull
more. So I was able to get death certificates.
I was able to find family members that were still
alive that I could try to reach out to. I was
able to find a lot of information that helped
me dig further on using the combination of newspapers
.com and Ancestry. Not an endorsement of them.
Those just are the paid tools that I happen to
use for this because they're great for US -focused
research. Yeah, some key suspects were named.
They had extensive criminal careers, which meant
that I could file FOIAs with the FBI. I could
request records from local and state police.
I could map out the course of their criminal
career and figure out whether that was relevant
to this murder. And then because these guys were
dead, the suspects in my case are dead, it made
it much, much easier for me to get records from
them from the FBI. because I could send them
the death certificate and say, this person is
deceased. I'm requesting any files related to
their criminal history to FBI investigations
into this person. And because of privacy laws,
they're able to release more if the subject is
deceased. OK, so I'll just keep going real quick.
You guys all know this already as members of
the Bill and Kat Discord, but these are the sort
of typical tools we use for our open source work,
right? If you're looking into a cold case homicide,
it might look something more like this. I was
using digitized newspapers, in my case, paid
services. There are some freely available out
there through libraries. If you're a student
or you're a faculty member of a university, that's
a nifty way to be able to access digitized newspapers
as well. I also used ancestry .com, like I said,
to pull some pretty vital information. So certificates,
which gave me social security numbers and birthdays
and surviving family members. I also did a lot
of social media work, honestly, even though this
case happened in 1971 before the internet. The
survivors and family members are on Facebook,
and they tend to be in this case, they were anywhere
from in their 50s to their 80s and 90s even,
and they were real active on Facebook. So I was
able to reach out to some of them for interviews
on here. There were people posting information
and leaving comments and stuff like that. So
social media, even for a case like this that's
really old, was still relevant. And lastly, and
crucially, FOIAs and public records requests,
which I did entirely online. And many of them
I did before I even joined Bill and Kat. I just
had a completely different job. I wasn't a journalist.
I wasn't working in the journalism space. And
I was just filing FOIAs because I was interested
in learning more about this murder. And because
we have public record laws here in the US and
in Texas that let me do that. So huge plug, huge
plug for Muckrock. If you guys are at all interested
in ever filing any kind of FOIA with any agency
ever, Muckrock is your place to go. I say that
because you can go in there, search for FOIAs
that are similar to the ones that you want to
file. So I can go in there and search for FOIAs
sent to the FBI. And I can find example letters
that other people, including journalists, have
sent in. And I just use those as a template for
my own. So I went in there and I found someone
who had requested FBI records related to a mobster.
It was a journalist and I took their letter.
I changed a couple things around and I sent it
into the FBI. And the second I started doing
that was the second I started getting better
results from FOIAs. So big plug for Muckrock.
They're really, really awesome. You can also
just file them directly through agency websites
like the FBI. But more on that in just a second.
Speed up here. What's the muckrock site? We can
draw there. Charlie just dropped the link. There
you go. Yeah, so I kind of I want to speed through
this a little bit. But when we're doing our typical
Bellingcat investigations, where we're looking
at maybe the social media accounts of someone
who's accused of some wrongdoing, right? We're
pivoting around using different data points.
We're finding a username and an email and a phone
number. It's a very similar idea when you're
doing this type of research. In my case, I often
started with a newspaper article, which would
give me the name of somebody, a suspect maybe.
I could search for them on ancestry .com, figure
out if they were alive or dead, figure out where
they lived. So if they were deceased, I usually
got a death certificate with a date of birth,
surviving family members that I could find on
Facebook. And using those points above, I could
also file FOIAs. If the suspect was deceased,
it meant that I could... Okay, and you know,
it sucks. I can't talk to this person. I can't
interview them. However, it does mean I can request
their records from the FBI or the local police.
So okay, just an example of how it worked with
in this case, in my story, if you read it, there
was a suspected hitman who belonged to something
called the Dixie Mafia, this really fascinating,
shadowy, extremely violent organized crime group
that used to be real active all across the American
South and the Midwest. This guy was tied to my
murder. He was a suspected getaway driver. He
belonged to essentially a team of hitmen who
thought to have killed the murder victim in my
case. He was murdered himself, it turned out.
I figured that out researching. The local police
didn't even realize that his case was still unsolved,
which was really interesting. I filed a FOIA
with them and they responded by saying, basically
they acknowledged that they didn't realize that
the case was still unsolved and that they were
going to treat it as an unsolved case. And they
gave me some files related to it, surprisingly.
So I pivoted around with different data points.
In this case, I ended up using his tattoos. I
had his autopsy report. I could see different
tattoos he had all over his body. And because
he had multiple aliases, he used multiple names,
his tattoos ended up being really important because
I could match up the tattoos under his autopsy
in one name with his prison records, which listed
his tattoos under another name. And I could prove
that, hey, this is the same guy. Did that all
through open source? Yeah, too long. Okay, so
the other thing is just search terms, just like
you would with any other investigation, right?
Increasingly, a lot of older documents, especially
things like FBI documents related to mobsters,
people with prolific criminal careers, serial
killers, things like that. As government documents
that have been foiled by other people are released
online or even released by the government themselves,
search engines are going to start indexing some
of the language in there. Even if it's a document
that's handwritten, that's been OCR'd, sometimes
those terms will show up off a simple Google
search. In my case, a huge finding came from
the most simple Google search, essentially. I
searched a variant of one of the friends of the
victim. I searched for a variant of his name
and I got a document from the JFK assassination
record collection act. It kind of made my stomach
churn because I thought like, Oh, boy, I'm getting
into JFK territory. I'm not prepared for this.
But it ended up being huge because it involved
organized crime connections, actually, to the
Sicilian -American mafia, because of Nostra.
So it was just off a simple Google search, like
many of our investigations are. So be creative
with your search terms, use every possible combination,
spelling variations, use search operators like
quotation marks, file type, site. usual stuff
that you guys know from our other Bellingcat
cases. And then like I said with with FOIAs and
public records, use Muckrock, find examples that
are similar to the type of FOIA you want to file
and file those early, as early as you possibly
can. And then get ready to A, have to negotiate
a little bit, you'll have a little bit of an
email back and forth, right? They'll usually
email you and say, like the FBI emailed me and
was Hey, we have 12 ,000 pages on this one guy
you just requested for. If you want all of those,
you have to wait eight years, or we can give
you 50 of them in the next two months. Which
do you prefer? So I had to learn just off the
cuff. I'd never done that before. I had to learn
off the cuff how to negotiate with them. And
once I did it once, twice, three times, it got
much easier each time. I got more confident doing
it. And anyway, Muckrock is a good resource for
learning how to do that. And you can also just
shoot me a message on Discord. I'm happy to help
with FOIA questions. I find the whole process
really fun, frustrating as well, but also really
fun. A couple things to consider. Each state's
totally different in the US. For example, in
Texas, it's actually easier for me to get autopsy
records than it is where I live in Massachusetts.
It's a lot harder. They're not considered in
the public record up here, unfortunately. So
just learn your state's public records laws.
Learn how to game it a little bit. There's different
tips and tricks for that. There's folks that
do really awesome FOIA work online. File it with
as many agencies as you can. If you think your
murder was looked at by the local police and
the county sheriff, then file a public records
request with both of them for the same case.
Fire them off in the same go. I would just do
it in the same morning. Don't be afraid to learn
as you go. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Don't be afraid to reach out to them. I was a
little intimidated with my first couple of FOIAs.
But these are public record laws for a reason.
We're members of the public. We can request these.
You're essentially requesting that information
be made available to us because we are looking
into a public issue, which is unsolved murders.
So keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that
a lot of these officials actually want to help
you. Someone told me that early on and it actually
It helped me out a little bit with the process
because I kind of assumed that these people wanted
to hide every record from me, right? And that
they were trying to fight me on these record
requests. In some cases, that was a little bit
true. But in a lot of cases, the public information
officer at the local police department, they're
like excited that someone's looking into some
case that they don't have time to deal with,
right? And maybe they want to strategically release
a little bit of information about it. That happened
to me in a couple cases. So don't be afraid to
head out to negotiate with them. You'll have
some email back and forth. It's really common.
A lot of people do this. You don't have to be
a journalist to file FOIAs. Yeah, 404 Media also
has a FOIA workshop. Yeah, thanks for that. 404
is really, really awesome for that. And so is
Muckrock. Those are my two faves. Okay, just
a quick note. A lot of the research happens off
of weird, obscure archives. A lot of the coolest
stuff that I found that was very relevant to
the murder I was looking into. was off of university
libraries, was off of special collections at
local libraries. They were bits of information
available in archives that weren't reachable
just from simple Google searches. I had to dig
a little deeper, go to the library website, access
photo collections, and search in there. They
weren't all indexed, essentially. Get creative.
Look around. You never know what you'll find.
Go to your local library and talk to a reference
librarian. Honestly, they're awesome, and they
can help you get started, especially if you're
looking at local cases. Hyperlocal Facebook groups.
Find them if they're out there. Here's an example
of this one, old gangster days in Fort Worth
for mine. This is populated entirely by the kids
and grandkids of the gangsters I was looking
at. There are hundreds of family members of these
gangsters who are posting photos of them. telling
old stories. It's a treasure trove for journalists
and crime historians and it's really awesome.
And then those crowdsourcing sites I mentioned,
that's a good place to start too. Maybe your
case is already in there, you can start working
from that. Another really good resource, NamUs.
This is the national database basically for missing
and unidentified people. I just searched my county
in Massachusetts right before this. There's 27
unidentified remains just in the database alone
that I could start searching with. If you're
looking at an unidentified murder victim, you
can go in here and you can look for similar cases
in a similar area. You can look for, you know,
maybe victims who meet the same general profile,
maybe the same age group, male or female, or
you can search by different categories in here,
and it's NamUs is a really good place to start
as well. There's a couple other in here, and
I really just wanted to emphasize One thing which
is that if you're trying to get started in this
topic and you're interested in it I urge you
to look in your local area first And I urge you
to dig a bit deeper than just google searches
A lot of these murders are not even publicly
listed online as I mentioned So get a paid, you
know newspapers .com account go to your local
library get a university account Ask a friend
who has one start searching through your local
paper or for terms like murder, Jane Doe. Look
in your local area though and I guarantee you,
you're going to find unsolved cases. In the couple
of towns around me since I started this, I have
been honestly appalled at the number and I also
just hear people out and about. I heard a woman
at breakfast the other day talking about how
her mom is the victim of a cold case, actually
a mafia related cold case too. So it's not that
hard to find these everywhere. These people's
family members are often posting on Facebook
about it, like urging people to come forward
or posting on the anniversary of their death
or their birthday. Looking at these cases, we
need people working on them, join groups that
work on them. If you want to learn more skills
about how to do this, how to do it responsibly,
how to engage with, you know, family members
in some cases are like parts of these groups
and they're willing to chat with people you never
know. So I'd say if you're just getting started,
join a group and look local. Yeah. Okay. I'm
going to open it up to questions. We went a little
bit over time. Thanks for listening to Yap. The
last point I'll say is that with a lot of these
cases, especially if there's not much on them
off of the Google search, if there's not much
on them online, you might be the only person
who is looking into that case. There's a really
good chance that you will be the only person
interested in a given case. So this is important
stuff. There are too many of these to deal with
and I hope people get out there and start working
on them. Even in other countries, this is a huge
problem everywhere. So reach out to me on Discord.
Here's my Blue Sky account. Open the floor to
questions. Thanks so much, Peter, for giving
us so many useful tips there. Hopefully, we can
find out some more in this discussion. Obviously,
we've already dug a little bit into the FOIA
requests, but quite a lot of the questions are
focused on that. So I just want to Just return
back to that conversation while we go. Thank
you to everybody who's been popping really useful
links in the chat, particularly for non -US based
stories. For example, Miss B, thank you for sharing
Right to Know that's useful in Australia, Ask
the EU, which is useful in the EU, and the IGF
.org, which is useful in Canada. Again, if you're
listening to this on the podcast, all of these
links will be in the description of the podcast,
so you don't need to worry about that. And Scoot
asked earlier, how long before the FOIA requests
were answered? Because that's the big thing when
it comes to FOIA requests is the actual length
that it takes. And as someone who has filed a
lot in her life, being an investigative journalist
prior to this job, I know that often when it
comes back, a certain word that you've used or
a phrasing that you've used might not fit what
they have on their side. And therefore you might
get a rejection and that is gutting after you've
waited months, maybe a year to get a response
to then be rejected and not get the data you're
looking for. So how long did it take you to get
your data back? And did you have any instances
like that where you realized that you weren't
using the right legal speak or the right phrasing
that you should have been to get the data that
you needed? Yeah, yeah, oh man, so the the short
answer to how long I waited it ranged from like
a month in some cases To I think the longest
FOIA that I filed was like close to 15 months
with the FBI and that was I was the first big
one that I filed with them and it took a lot
of Negotiating but I also was new to it and and
once I had learned Kind of what I was doing a
little bit more. I could have sped that up. But
essentially if you're doing a case like this
put out the foyers at least months ahead of time
and look at it like you're just you're putting
irons in the fire. You're putting your casting
fishing lines out there and you're hoping that
months later they will start trickling back in.
So the more of them you file, the more targeted
you are in that language. So with the FBI, for
example, I learned kind of instead of saying
I'm requesting all of your files related to this
person, I would And I did this just by kind of
asking them how to do it too. Like I honestly
would email back and forth with them and be like,
I'm trying to get this, can you help me kind
of adjust the language a little bit? And in some
cases, they would help me do that. Not always,
but sometimes. So I learned to be more specific.
And I would say, I'm interested in any information
you have on this person related to organized
crime activity in Texas between 1965 and 1972.
And that would narrow it down. And then they
would say, okay, we have files from 1968 and
1969. We'll send those to you in a month. The
more specific you can be, the better. But again,
there's people posting like 404 and Muckrock
have really, really good tips on how to use that
language. I would just say, look for FOIAs at
the same police department that you're interested
in filing with. and try to find ones that are
written by a journalist or a researcher that
sounds professional and that are citing specific
laws. Because the minute I started doing that
and basing my FOIAs off of what other people
do was the minute it started happening quicker.
I'd start getting files back sooner, but I literally
got FBI documents yesterday that I had filed
eight months ago or something. Wow. More stuff
to uncover then. Hopefully. I would also say
that some authorities, not really the police,
but if you're looking at local authority documents,
like councils and state -led departments, sometimes
they can be a little bit mean. If you start asking
questions after you've filed your FOIA, they
can then reset the clock. They can say, oh, well,
you inquired about something. Therefore, we're
going to reset the clock that we have to respond
to. Just be aware of that. But absolutely, kind
of being as specific as possible is really useful.
And there's so many good books out there as well
on FOIA requests per country as well. For example,
if you're looking for it in Holland in the Netherlands,
I'm sure you could find Netherlands specific
advice as well in a book form, because there's
lots of journalists that specialize in kind of
the best forms of FOIAs for each country. Lots
of questions coming in. Keith has asked, any
comments on safety when investigating these?
Did you encounter any issues? I was going to
ask that as well, because obviously, you talked
about reporting on mafias and organized crime.
What would be your advice for people starting
to investigate these kinds of cases in terms
of safety for themselves? Yeah, that's a big
issue. My murder was 54 years old. I had a lot
of people who were very, I don't want to say
afraid, but there was a stigma about talking
about this, folks in their 80s, 90s, including
folks in my family, by the way, because I'm from
Texas, who it just didn't feel safe either talking
about it or having their name attached to it
because they just assume that there's this mafia
presence that's still there. And understandably,
they're They're worried about safety concerns
for that. In my case though, because this was
so old, the suspects that I was able to identify
tied to this were all dead. All of them. I mean,
every single person I was looking at, I found
a couple of folks who were sort of tangentially
related to them. But pretty much everyone was
dead by this point. The mafia group that they
belonged to, which was the Dixie mafia, was sort
of... other topic is pretty much defunct. There's
a couple guys left but pretty much gone. I'm
also across the country now, which helped a little
bit with safety. But if you're looking at a murder
that's more recent, especially one tied to gang
activity or organized crime, that's absolutely
a concern. And it's more of a concern when you're
starting to work on it publicly when you're when
you're posting about it online or talking to
folks. However, you're also keep in mind you're
doing public records research. So filing foyers
to the police department, looking for newspapers
online, that sort of thing. Take the same precautions
you would doing a modern day ongoing type of
research or type of crime that's going on today.
Take the same approach. A lot of cases are gonna
be so old and they'll have suspects that are
named who are now deceased. But you still might
be able to find stuff in the open source out
there. So don't let it hold you back either.
But I would also say lastly, and most importantly,
another good reason to join a community of people
who are working on this issue. Participate in
a forum and a local group of some kind. Plug
in with other people who can share safety concerns
and resources with you in your local area. Absolutely.
Take away, don't do organized crime if you're
interested in longevity. Yeah, that's a good
one. We had a question earlier actually about
how you find the family members, particularly
as they probably aged quite a lot. Could you
maybe talk about the technique of how you discover
the people to talk to and then how you approach
them on this particular subject? Because it's
quite a hard thing to kind of bring up and possibly
retrain someone about. Absolutely. It's a really
good question. It's a really tough issue. It's
something I was just at a... investigative journalism
conference two weeks ago. And it's a thing that's
like at the top of everyone's minds because each
case is so different. And this is a really hard
topic. I mean, even when these murders happened
50 years ago, you can hear it when you're talking
to these folks. I mean, this stuff is, it doesn't
matter how much time has passed, it is raw. And
there's a lot of anger often mixed in there.
There's confusion at why the authorities have
haven't been able to solve the case. There's
suspicion. Who are you? Why are you looking into
this? It's such a huge question, but I will start
by saying I guess that I would find the family
members usually I'd find their names on ancestry
.com. So I would search for like I was looking
at Bill Richardson, the main murder victim I
was focusing my story on. I quickly was able
to find birth records basically for his kids
that had their names. I knew he was from Corpus
Christi in Texas. So I started working with that
information that I got off of genealogy websites.
I started doing searches on Facebook, searching
for people um, with those names in Corpus Christi.
And I quickly found a couple of them. Some of
them had changed their names, they'd been married
or divorced and their names had changed and whatnot.
Um, but I was able to find them. I was able to
find them through mutual friends. I would, I
would cold reach out to them and just say, you
know, on Facebook, which isn't great because
when you're not friends with somebody that, you
know, it goes to their hidden inbox or whatever,
I would then, um, later on I started finding
phone numbers and stuff like that. But it was
really scary at first because I'm I'm reaching
out to them as a random nobody asking about their
dad who was murdered 54 years ago. I sent out
Facebook messages and I think it took about a
month until I got my first reply back. It was
one of the daughters and she said, hey, I heard
through my family that you're trying to reach
us. Why are you looking at my dad's case? It
was a scary question to get, but I was straightforward
and I just said, I'm a journalist with Bellingcat.
I'm looking to publish an article on this murder.
And I'm hoping to get some more information beyond
just what's out there in the newspapers. And
she very graciously agreed to talk with me. We
still text all the time. So I was able to do
that. But granted, I work in a journalism space.
So I have a little bit of experience doing that
already. So that helped. In the case, if you're
not a journalist and just work in cold cases,
it's a lot harder to do and it's harder to explain,
hey, I'm just a random person who is into research
cold cases. And yeah, so I'd say again, being
part of a community where there's folks that
know how to do that. Maybe there's victim advocates
and stuff like that, even who already do that
already. There's, in fact, here, I'll drop it
in here later on, but there's a podcast that
I love here in the US that's really good about
how they reach out to family members and doing
it in a considerate way and stuff. Otherwise,
they're often available in Facebook groups and
stuff too. They're literally often want people
to be researching these and they're posting about
it themselves or they've created a group about
it themselves. Okay, I yapped a bunch about that.
I want to make sure to get to other questions.
If you have more questions on contacting family
members, definitely reach out to me. You send
me a message on Discord and stuff. I'm happy
to chat. And we can also talk about it in the
thread that we mentioned earlier that is in the
Discord for cold cases, because we're always
in there looking at potential tools and tips
for looking into these cases. So please check
that out. If you scroll up, you'll find it in
the chat. I put it in there earlier. And thank
you so much for everyone putting in missing person
links as well for the various countries. They
are super useful as well in these particular
cases. Scoot asked, could you talk about your
methodology a bit? Did you formulate hypotheses
and then test them? You mentioned earlier that,
for example, you kind of suspected that organized
crime was involved in this particular case. I
wanted to ask you, is it often hard to stop yourself
pulling the thread because you found multiple
murders and ended up with a huge pin board, as
we see in the article? So how do you know once
you've started pulling that thread, once you've
started unraveling that methodology? How do you
stop? How do you say, okay, well, this is the
story. This is how far I can get at this point
in time. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, hi, Scoot.
Nice to see you here. Second of all, I wish I
had an organized methodology behind doing this.
I tend to work in all of the research I do pretty
freeform. I have a running Google Doc of notes
and I just... let myself go down to a rabbit
holes and pursue it. However, with this one,
I did develop a methodology kind of over time,
because there were so many other murders tied
to this, because it was a mafia thing. I say
that loosely there, there was the mafia, but
also other mafias involved with this. I started
to see sort of the same types of like murders
over and over again, the same suspects popping
up over and over again, similar crimes. So there
were a lot of different strands with this investigation.
I would kind of treat each one like on an individual
basis. So I'd get the name of a suspect, I'd
start doing open web searches for them. I'd start
running searches on newspapers .com for that
same person. Same thing with ancestry .com. And
I would try to find any family members online
that might have posted photos about them on Facebook,
for example, or posted in the forum somewhere.
So I sort of I use the same set of tools on each
person individually. And that was sort of the
methodology approach. When it came to putting
it all together, this crazy detective cork board
that you see is like what was going on in my
mind for three years. So I would definitely recommend
being more organized. I would recommend a couple
things. Become friends with Google Docs, learn
how to use their organizational features, which
are really awesome. I'm still learning them myself,
but keep a running list of notes and keep it
organized. So have contact information for people
in one. Have a tab for each individual person
with all of the data points you have about them,
the knowns, the unknowns. That would be a good
place to start. Definitely I would keep a spreadsheet
of the foyers you've sent off. I would also keep
a spreadsheet of like contact info for people.
So in a lot of cases, I just have like four or
five phone numbers per person. And I'd have to
figure out which one was their current phone
number, which ones were old. So yeah, being being
a bit more methodical would be good. But I didn't
I didn't have like a formal methodology of like
hypothesis and test it was a lot looser than
that. I wish I had a better answer, but pretty
chaotic. Hey, we like chaos, as well as order.
So I want to revisit, we've got about 10 minutes
left. If you have any other questions, please
pop them in the chat. I want to revisit Saiba's
question. Saiba asked earlier about whether you
felt the need to wait to publish in order to
make sure that the family were informed and also
local law enforcement. Perhaps you can talk a
little bit about the ethics behind publishing.
Perhaps if you can't get in touch with the family
members that you might want to. Is it worth just
not reporting if people aren't responding to
you, for example? And then how you manage that
local law enforcement issue if the law enforcement
isn't happy to kind of share details with you
and vice versa. Yeah. Okay. So a couple of sides
to this. Okay. So to start with, it was really
important for me to try to talk to someone from
the family, because just from my own sense of
Ethics behind it. I felt it was important that
they know that I'm looking into it and I wanted
to sort of for lack of a better term I kind of
wanted their blessing a little bit just just
to I'm digging up old heavy stuff, right their
dad was murdered and in front of some of them
and I'm I'm another person not in the family
looking into it. So yeah when I heard from the
daughter, it was sort of a big win for me and
she basically said look We haven't heard from
the police since the 1970s. We don't think this
will ever be solved. So if you think you can
find new information, good on you. Good luck.
Here's what I know. And we kept in touch. That
was really, really important for me. You're not
going to get that in all cases. You might not
even know who the person is. So how are you going
to find their family? The victim could be an
unidentified skeleton in the woods. That doesn't
mean you shouldn't work on it. Those communities
that I posted earlier uncovered and solve the
case. There's others out there. There's tons
of others out there Those are a good place to
start because You know these people a lot of
them might even have like fallen out of touch
with their families You never know it could be
a very stigmatized person like a sex worker or
something who? Came from a rough family background
or doesn't have a family or no one knows who
they are there's still a person whose death remains
unsolved their killer still remains out there
and one way or another and That doesn't mean
that if anything, that means I think people should
be working on those cases even more. So it's
ideal if if you're able to kind of have a family
that's willing to share information and stuff.
But that won't always be the case with the law
enforcement side of that. I would basically file
the public records request with them very early.
I say, hey, I'm I'm looking at this murder. Please
give me. The public information portions of your
report on this murder, you know, I'm going to
release it to the general public. I'm a journalist.
That's what I would say. And sometimes they'd
share more than I asked for. Usually they'd send
me a heavily redacted single page document or
they wouldn't respond or there'd be a back and
forth. It was all over the place. Sometimes the
public information officer was willing to chat
and they were happy I was looking into it. Other
times they clearly didn't want to be dealing
with me. You know, they see I'm a journalist
and automatically shut off because I'm talking
about the American South here. So so it's kind
of all over the place. Sometimes they'll be they'll
be retired policemen, for example, who used to
work for the police department, who've maybe
spoken to journalists before who are involved.
who've spoken publicly about the case, who've
been interviewed in newspapers. You might be
able to reach out to them and talk to them about,
hey, you worked this case when you were back
with the department. Can you share anything about
it? They might even have old files sometimes.
I mean, these cases are old on paper. Sometimes
people share stuff like that. However, most of
the time the police aren't going to release information
to you. They'll consider it an active and ongoing
case, even when it's not, even when they have
a hundred other cases and they're not looking
at this one and they know nothing about it. So
by all your information requests, don't expect
much from them. It doesn't mean that they are
like, you know, hate folks looking into it, but
they usually just are prohibited from releasing
information about cases that are technically
still open. What part of that question, Charlie,
did I miss any? I think you answered it very
well. I was going to just ask, did you send the
information to the police as well afterwards?
A couple of the public information officers,
so sometimes it'll be like a policeman assigned
to the role. Sometimes it's just an administrative
person who responds to these. A couple of times
when they were working with me and we had a little
bit of a rapport when the article was published,
I'd send it to them. Just because I kind of got
to know the person a little bit or whatever,
we talked on the phone, we had an email back
and forth. I didn't know if it was just a police
official who shared the bare minimum and I wouldn't
send it to them. But once the article was published,
I would. But I shared it to them in the published
form. I wasn't going with them and working with
them actively. Yeah, we don't do that at Bell
and Cat, so it wasn't like that. The last part
of the question, Charlie, that you asked ethically
about like interacting with the family and when
to publish and everything. That was the big reason
why we partnered up with Texas Observer. We partnered
with local journalists who cover crime in Texas
because they're familiar with all of the nuances
of that area. Again, the more local you can go,
the more you can team up with folks in your local
area to do this type of research. The better
off you'll be. The reaction locally was pretty
good, right? Yeah. There's a couple of things.
Because this case dealt with the Southern mafia
for lack of a better term, the Dixie mafia, there's
still a lot of stigma around that. Especially
folks in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. I don't want
to talk about this stuff a lot of the time. So,
for example, I learned through some of the family
members and stuff that I talked to and keeping
up with, that the article is definitely going
around Corpus Christi, that people are sharing
it and talking about it and calling each other
and stuff like that. They're not necessarily
commenting on it on social media, reaching out
to me or anything like that, but I know that
it's making the rounds because I've heard that
from multiple people. And the reaction has been
surprise from the family members. They had no
idea that a lot of these people were tied to
this kind of organized crime. They didn't know
the extent of it. The murder victim's family
knew he was probably involved with gambling,
but his friends and stuff had suspected mafia
ties and their families didn't know a lot of
that. So it was a kind of a mix of surprise.
Um, a little bit of shock. Um, uh, but it was,
it was sort of mostly, wow, you know, we, we
didn't know that this was kind of going on in
the background and it kind of explains why the
killing happened the way it did and who might've
been involved in the types of people, um, that
the victim was associating with. So it's been
interesting and I'm still, I'm still hearing
back from people. I've gotten some, some interesting
texts and phone calls and stuff like that. So.
I'm glad it's resonating on the ground. Last
question, final one. Mossman asked, when investigating
a cold case, how do you decide when or if to
throw in the towel if you're not finding what
you need to find? That was a question that a
lot of journalists were just asking me, so it's
a really good one. It's one that we all struggle
with. I would say this, if you're hitting dead
end after dead end, or if you're burning yourself
out, or you're frustrated, or you've kind of...
Run the public information open source Angles
to their to their end. Don't give up on it. Just
put it on the back burner have it like Have it
on a Google Doc that you revisit every now and
then I worked on this off and on for three plus
years I wasn't Actively 100 % of the time. I
was doing other stories. I had other jobs. I
You know life happened So I would have to pause
pause my research on do it and jump back in it
at a later date I'd get like a shower thought
where I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't search for
this set of search terms. I'm going to go do
that. Just keep it on the back burner. Don't
give it up. Be part of a group. Share information
with them. Keep it going. You don't have to just
like permanently give things up. It's not black
or white. You can keep it on the back burner.
So how do you know when to stop? I encourage
you like with any other research. If it's coming
from a place of curiosity and excitement at the
most basic level, for me, I was just obsessed
with this group of people. I need to know what
their organized crime ties were because there
were hitmen involved in gambling. I have to know
which mafia this was, where these people were.
I was obsessed with it. I just pursue that. getting
tired of it. If you're hitting dead ends and
you need to pause it, pause it, but you don't
have to give it up. Hope that helps. Thanks so
much, Peter. And excitingly, this week's, this
month's Bell and Cat challenge is actually inspired
by cold case research as well, which you helped
design. So if you have been having a go at the
Bell and Cat challenges, look out this Sunday
slash Monday for the release of a new set of
challenges from Peter. And you can let him know
how you're doing on that in the Discord server
as well. Yeah, good luck, everybody. It was hard
to write them. So hopefully it's not impossible
to solve. But it's been really fun. And some
of them are tied to the story. And yeah, I love
the historical stuff in general. So yeah, reach
out to me guys on Discord. I'm on Blue Sky as
well. But shoot me a DM on Discord if you have
questions. I'm always happy to help with like
a FOIA question or... even ethically, you know,
just hit me up and work on cold cases. Please,
please, please work on them. We need lots of
people. Thank you for listening to the stage
talk. If you'd like to catch a stage talk live
where you can ask the guest questions, join the
Bell and Cat Discord server by visiting www .discord.
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