Cold Case investigator solves decades-old crime
It's April 13. Today we talk to James City County's cold case investigator. Plus, Wiliamsburg defends its Flock cameras, and a week of government meetings.
Jake Rice keeps a stack of unsolved crimes next to his desk in the property and evidence room of James City County’s law enforcement center, searching for clues that might help him solve a cold case decades old.
“You’re the voice for all the people in these files” Rice says, explaining his motivation. Some victims no longer have living relatives to press for resolution, leaving Rice to seek justice for them.
His latest victory was solving a 32-year-old rape case and tracking the assailant to Knoxville, from where he was extradited. Lorenzo Hawes pleaded guilty to the 1994 rape of a woman who lived at the Las Brisas Court trailer park, and will be sentenced May 18.
The year before, Rice worked with Williamsburg Police to secure the arrest of a man charged with raping a William & Mary student in 1987.
Not bad for a retired policeman who came back to work in 2021 to handle cold cases on a part time basis.
Rice credits two advancements for the recent cold cases he closed:
1. DNA technology has improved dramatically over the years since the crimes originally occurred.
2. Virginia’s move to centralize all information from rape kits and upload them to a national system that tracks for matching DNA types.
Back when the rapes originally occurred, Rice says, “the only thing they could tell you is pretty much blood typing. They could tell you male DNA, or female, but they couldn’t say it was definitely this (individual’s) DNA.”
Virginia now uploads suspects’ DNA into a nationwide DNA Index System that tracks activity across the country to see if a similar DNA profile turns up in another arrest. That led Rice to Lorenzo Hawes.
“I found he was in Tennessee, in Knoxville. And he was on the Sex Offenders registry. He had raped somebody in Tennessee, and was already convicted.”
Though Hawes had served his time, he had to report monthly to the Knoxville Police Department.
Rice and another James City police officer travelled to Knoxville and got a search warrant that allowed them to take a DNA swab from Hawes and interrogate him. Hawes told him that he had lived in James City County decades ago and worked as a maintenance man at the trailer park where the rape occurred.
His DNA swab was a match for the DNA in the system, which allowed police to get a grand jury indictment to extradite Hawes to Virginia last year.
Rice keeps stacks of rape evidence kits in the police department’s evidence room, and those that contain fluids are kept under refrigeration.
He also goes through the files in his office searching for changes that might break a case.
“You look for life changes” that might break a case, Rice explains.
“You might have somebody who was a suspect, who was married back at the time. Well, now if they’re divorced, I might want to go and talk to that wife” he explains “Because over the years, he might have said something to her…If…somebody’s not doing well, who might have been a suspect, it might be a time to go and talk to them also, because they might want to tell you something, at the end of their life. That they want to get off their chest.”
Williamsburg chief defends Flock cameras
Williamsburg Police Chief Sean Dunn told Williamsburg Watch the city uses its Flock security cameras responsibly and maintains control of how they are used and who accesses data.
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