Forty-five years ago, a man named Thad Christian died of a shotgun blast to the stomach. Yet, his death did not garner the notice of the other killings that summer, even though the circumstances, according to news reports, were disturbing.
cold case
Thad Christian’s death still raises questions 45 years later
WaPo: Journalists crucial to solving civil rights era cold cases
An opinion piece the Washington Post ran Sunday says the Justice Department is slow to prosecute what appear to be "racially motivated" murder cases from the 1950s and '60s.
I goes on to say that all the Justice Department's successful prosecutions on these types of cases have only come about because of investigative journalists' work, like that of the Center for Investigative Reporting's Cold Case Project.
CIR responds to FBI decision to close unsolved civil rights cases
Over the past 20 years, every unsolved civil rights murder case that has been reopened and successfully prosecuted in the South was the direct result of an investigation initiated by a journalist.
So the FBI’s decision to close, without prosecution or further disclosure, all but a few of the 108 unsolved murder cases it began re-examining three years ago, only highlights the vital need for investigative reporting that can find the truth, tell the stories and fill in the gaps in our nation’s history.
