While officials have all but given up on the missing person investigations of Natalee Holloway and Chandra Levy, a group of college students is going to review the cases one more time.
Today Auburn University-Montgomery will open a Cold Case Investigative Research Institute for its criminology students to revisit crime scenes and evidentiary collections of the two high-profile cases.
Students will also interview the professional investigators who previously handled the cases in hopes of new leads.
Faulkner University, also located in Montgomery, and Atlanta’s Bauder College will participate in the seminars and exercises.
Levy was a Washington, D.C. intern who was found dead in a city park. Holloway was a Mountain Brook High School student who went missing during a senior trip to Aruba.
Neither case was solved.
Because the investigations did not lead to criminal indictments, the cases are considered cold.
Students will be trained alongside faculty and law enforcement officers, examining the unique cases. Lessons will be taught in crime scene investigation, evidence analysis and victimology theory.
Students will be challenged real-life roles, but administrators feel they are up to the task.
The program is a collaboration of the AUM’s Department of Justice and Public Safety and the Continuing Education Office.
These groups run the Alabama Crime Prevention Clearinghouse,
Clearinghouse director Linda Wright is excited to get started. She is proud that CCIRI has been in direct communication with the mothers of Levy and Holloway, and asked the women for permission to reexamine the cases before progressing any further.
“The mothers were ecstatic.” Wright said. “And law enforcement officials have bent over backwards working on these cases. To have a fresh set of eyes — they’re all for it.”’
Between reading Holloway’s mother’s book, visiting the site where Levy’s body was found and spending time in Panama City, Fla., to study tide currents that may have affected Holloway’s evidence, those fresh eyes will be busy.
Exasperated investigators will not be the only ones aided by CCIRI.
She hopes the budding criminologists will benefit from practical experience in the field, creating resumes even before graduation.
