It launched cold-case playing cards in Florida in hopes of attracting potential customers

Florida officials are reviving an old initiative to solve cold cases by handing out thousands of playing cards in jails and prisons, hoping it will help “generate new leads and insights from inmates,” the state Attorney General’s Office announced Monday.

More than 5,000 decks of playing cards containing photos and information about unsolved murder and missing persons cases will be printed and released to Florida correctional facilities, law enforcement officials said at a news conference Monday. The cards will be distributed to more than 60 county jails overseen by local sheriff’s offices and 145 facilities overseen by the state Department of Corrections.

“We’re pleased to announce a special initiative that hasn’t been done statewide in Florida in about 15 years, but we know it’s something that works,” Frank Brunner, president of the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers, said at a news conference. “The time was right to create and distribute another deck of playing cards on cold case homicides in Florida jails and prisons. We will certainly also make them available on the Internet, in another media form.”

According to Brunner, the new version of the Cold Case Playing Cards is part of Attorney General Ashley Moody’s efforts to prevent violent crimes and solve unsolved homicide cases in Florida. Since 2019, Moody said her office has been working to enlist the public’s help in resolving outstanding cases.

In 2020, Moody and the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers launched an anonymous statewide hotline. Officials then significantly increased cash rewards for anonymous tips, “nearly doubling the amount for tips on unsolved homicides,” Moody said.

In February, the attorney general announced the creation of a new state Cold Case Investigation Unit to help resource-limited local agencies screen potential clients for cold cases.

Officials say the latest efforts are being made in partnership with the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers, the state Sheriffs’ Association, the state Department of Corrections and Season of Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to solving cold cases.

According to the nonprofit groups Project Cold Case and The Murder Accountability Project, the rate of solving homicides in the United States has been declining over the past five decades. In its analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, The Murder Accountability Project found that nearly 340,000 murder and manslaughter cases between 1965 and 2022 remained unsolved.

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Cold case playing cards have already been a success in Florida

Cold case versions of playing cards have been successful in the state, according to Florida officials.

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, in July 2007, state officials distributed approximately 100,000 decks of older versions of playing cards to inmates. Both editions included 104 unsolved cases from across Florida.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, an older version depicted a 2004 case in which construction workers found the body of 34-year-old Ingrid Lugo in a retention pond.

“After reviewing the information on one of the cards, three inmates reported the murderer, it turned out to be Lugo’s boyfriend, Bryan Curry,” the Attorney General’s Office said. “In March 2008, Curry was tried and found guilty of second-degree murder.”

As the Tampa Bay Times reported at the time, playing cards also led to the arrest of Derrick Hamilton in October 2007 after an inmate tipped off police. An inmate told authorities that Hamilton bragged about killing James Foote, who was found dead with a gunshot wound in a parking lot in Fort Myers, Florida.

Foote’s photo and details about his case were posted on seven clubs, according to The Tampa Bay Times.

In 2008, state officials released another version and distributed it to 65,000 inmates in 67 county jails and 141,000 supervised offenders on state probation, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. There were 52 unsolved murder and missing persons cases on board.

In the latest development, officials announced Monday that tips leading to an arrest are eligible for a reward of up to $9,500.

Similar initiatives are being implemented in other states

Law enforcement officers in Polk County, Florida, were the first to hand out unsolved crime cards in correctional facilities, Massachusetts State Police said in its 2022 Unsolved Crime Cards announcement.

According to the Massachusetts State Police, the initiative was inspired by playing cards depicting members of Saddam Hussein’s regime that were given to US soldiers in 2003 during the Iraq War. Then in 2005, the Florida Crime Stoppers group designed a deck of cards featuring local cold cases, according to a 2006 article published in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service’s virtual library.

The article said the deck of cards was distributed to about 2,500 inmates “in hopes of generating new leads in unsolved cases.” In less than three months since Polk County introduced the cards, authorities have received more than 60 tips and solved four cases, according to Massachusetts State Police.

Since then, cold case playing cards have been used throughout the United States by state and local law enforcement agencies. According to the Florida Attorney General’s Office, similar solutions have helped resolve 20 outstanding cases in Connecticut and at least eight cases in South Carolina.

CBS Minnesota reported in November 2023 that a man helped identify the woman’s remains using a cold playing card. The remains belonged to Deana Patnode, who was 23 when she was last seen in St. Paul, Minnesota in October 1982.

“Deana’s former neighbor Mike Doherty recently shared his story for the first time. He recognized Deana’s clay likeness on one of our cold case playing cards,” the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a statement last November. “Deana was Four Diamonds, listed as an unidentified Jane Doe.”