The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad
Crimeculture talks to Stacy Horn
The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad enquires into the thousands of New York murders that remain unsolved: where does the police department begin after an unsolved case has gone cold? In producing this very favourably reviewed, in-depth study, writer and broadcaster Stacy Horn had unprecedented access to the elite unit of homicide detectives struggling to solve cold cases going back as far as 1951. Crimeculture asked Stacy how she came to write The Restless Sleep, what researching it was like and what her most fascinating and disturbing discoveries were:
"I first heard of the existence of the Cold Case Squad while delivering cupcakes to a 9/11 command center at Pier 40, on West Street along the Hudson River, less than a mile uptown from the World Trade Center. A Cold Case detective was assigned there that night, and he explained what the squad did and what a cold case was. I've always been drawn to stories of the lost and forgotten and I felt like I had the entire history of New York death in front of me. I imagined questioning this Cold Case detective long into that disturbing night. But he got called to the site and I was left with questions. Who are these guys? What are they working on? How far back did the cases go?
"I was drawn to what turned out to be thousands of unsolved cases. That's what surprised me most, just how many there are -- just under 9,000 since 1985 alone. As I say in my book, even if you want to say some of these murders were committed by the same people, as if attributing the crimes to serial killers is a better way of looking at this, that's still a lot of murderers walking around. But all these cases sitting untouched for decades, and all the evidence from over 100 years of murder that will never be needed for court, just sitting in warehouses around the city -- I had to see all of it. I had to find out about them.
"There was nothing boring about all the research, every bit of it was fascinating. The worst was talking to the families, though. I don't know how the detectives do it. There's a look of expectation on their faces whenever you talk to them. They can't help hoping you have some new information for them, that you're going to give them some reason to hope. Disappointing them is unbearable. The detectives live for the moment when they can be heroes. When they can finally say, "We got him. We got the guy that killed your mother, brother, son, daughter." But that moment doesn't always come."
Some quotes from reviews of The Restless Sleep:
"Several notches above the typical reporter's insights into the realities of criminal justice." Publisher's Weekly (Starred)
"Horn proves herself a top-notch journalist, delivering stories from inside the New York Police Department's Cold Case Squad -- the nation's largest office devoted to solving forgotten murder cases." New York Magazine
"Horn's gripping writing and palpable sense of outrage ensure that its narrative trail never runs cold." Entertainment Weekly
"Horn captures with crackling intensity the work of cops who investigate long-unsolved homicides." Kirkus Reviews (Starred)
"These cases haunted Horn, and because of her masterful storytelling, they are quite likely to haunt her readers, too." San Francisco Chronicle
" ... there is rarely a dull page as Horn portrays her colorful band as they challenge the perplexing past." Baltimore Sun
STACY HORN grew up on Long Island, has degrees in Fine Arts and Telecommunications and lives in New York, where she is a celebrated writer, broadcaster, commentator and founder of the online community, Echo. Cyberville, her account of this extraordinary community, was a US bestseller. Photo credit: George Duncan, from "Feature Investigator: Stacy Horn", online at newyorkmetro.com
