Spotlight on Chatham Cold Case Club
Every student organization offers something unique to the students who join, but the Chatham Cold Case Club is certainly the only org that invites you to help solve real murders. Yep, that’s right—the Chatham Cold Case Club works on real-life cold crimes in their spare time, gathering new information for old cases using new technology and new eyes. We caught up with President, Rachel Wolfe; Vice President, Cara Cornelius; and Secretary, Hannah Perry to learn more about their forensic skills and favorite cases. Check it out—
Rachel Wolfe, Hannah Perry, and Tara Neikirk tabling for the Chatham Cold Case Club
Can you introduce yourselves & tell us a little bit about what you each do in the club?
Rachel Wolfe: I'm Rachel Wolfe and I’m president. I'm a junior majoring in policy studies with a minor in history and pre-law. We all work together to build up the club, send out communications, take notes, and work with people. It's not a hierarchy.
Cara Cornelius: I'm Cara Cornelius and I am the Vice President. I've been in the club since my freshman year. I'm a senior with a psychology and criminology double major. My interest in the club really lies within my criminology major. I'm specifically interested in serial murder and that's what we've been working on this semester.
Hannah Perry: My name is Hannah Perry, I am a second year and the secretary. I've been in the club for two years. This club helped me determine the career path that I want. At first, I was only a psychology major, but then I got into the club and started working on these cases, and I found a passion through that. I added on a double major of criminology and psychology.
Tell me a little bit about the Cold Case Club.
CC: The entire purpose of the club is to look at these [cold] cases with a fresh set of eyes. Whenever you're a police officer or in an agency looking at these cases for months and you can't figure anything out, it's probably because you've been doing that for so long. We learn the logistics and the basics of the case, and then we do research ourselves. It can be easier for us to see things from a different perspective.
RW: Right now, we're working by commission. Outside organizations contact our advisor, Dr. Christine Sarteschi, and [ask us to do investigative work]. We split off into small groups to do victim analysis and to try to connect other potential victims. Currently we're focusing on the Colonial Parkway murders, a serial killer case. We have due dates coming up where we will meet with the outside organization and present our information.
What's the outside organization that you are working with?
HP: Currently we work with a man named Douglas who has his own firm where he does forensics behavioral consulting. He does geographic profiling and has different strategies to help finding missing people. Recently, he has been contacting us, and he liked the work that we did for the last case so he decided to continue working with us.
Can you describe the specific kind of work you do on cases?
HP: With the cases that we've been working on for Douglas, he gives us a checklist of things that we need to find details on. We assemble timelines of when things happened. We find locations and put maps together on Google Maps. We also analyze assault and murder. How did they kill their victims? What did they use? How were they found? Where were they found? Basically every little detail from when the person was last seen to when they were found.
Tell me about some specific cold cases that you've worked on.
RW: Last month we finished doing a victim analysis for serial killer Ivan Milat. He is Australia's most famous serial killer. That was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, but we're trying to connect other possible victims by creating a standardization of how he left his victims’ bodies, evidence, and ritual.
CC: We worked on the Lisa Pruett case for the entire year last year; she was murdered in Ohio in the early ‘90s. The person who was prosecuted for that ended up getting off because it wasn't him. We briefly went over the Stephanie Coyle case—a more local case—last year. We might be going into that again next semester.
What projects are you most looking forward to on the horizon?
CC: I hope that we do a little bit more investigative research on the Stephanie Coyle case. That's a case that is very interesting; it's still unsolved, still cold. It's more recent than the cases that we've been working on, and it was right outside of Pittsburgh near New Kensington.
RW: Last year, I helped work on the Lisa Pruett case. I'm very invested in that now. I really want to understand what happened and find justice for her and her parents. I personally enjoy the final analysis part where we put in our own words what we think happened. I really enjoy being able to analyze not only the victim but the killer themselves.
HP: I really look forward to presenting all of the information that we have. We put in a lot of time trying to find out every single specific detail of these cases, and presenting them to someone working on the case is so rewarding.
What type of student might be interested in getting involved with the club?
HP: I find that a lot of students who watch crime shows like to get into this club because you're investigating a case.
CC: I'd say specifically if you're interested in communication, psychology, criminology, anything within the humanities or social science fields, there's always something that we're doing that would interest you.
What are the benefits are of joining the Cold Case Club?
HP: It narrowed down a career path that I'm interested in. I find that there is so much motivation with this. You want to find an answer. You know all of these top officials don't have an answer, so you want to do it. There's motivation to find closure for the victims and their families.
CC: One of the best benefits is that when we graduate and we're creating our resumes, we can add that we've done investigative work. That's definitely important for various jobs within the criminology field.
RW: It applies to so many different fields of study. You can have any major or minor and join our club. As long as you have a passion and a drive to do the work, you'll be accepted into this club.
Interested in getting to explore the Cold Case Club at Chatham? Follow them on Instagram: @chatham_coldcaseclub or get in touch with Rachel, Cara, or Hannah.
