Since its inception in 2020, the Cold Case Unit at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has compiled a track record of success built on a simple formula.
“Our playbook remains the same — the three T’s: teamwork, technology, and tenacity,” said Attorney General Dave Yost, who directed BCI to create the unit soon after he took office.
Underscoring Yost’s point is the unit’s progress this year in six high-profile, long-standing investigations. In four of the cases — all homicides — suspects have been identified, taken into custody, and are awaiting trial. In the remaining two, skeletal remains that were a mystery for decades have finally been identified.
Every cold case that BCI takes on is a partnership with the law enforcement agency that originates the case — one involving a collaboration of BCI investigators, criminal intelligence analysts, and forensic scientists who offer fresh detective work and advanced technology.
“Cold cases rarely get solved in isolation,” said Special Agent-In-Charge Roger Davis, who has led the Cold Case Unit since its inception. “It takes a united team committed to finding answers.”
In addition to Davis, the Cold Case Unit includes Criminal Intelligence Director Dana Forney, DNA Lab Supervisor Hallie Dreyer, four special agents, and a research assistant. When needed, agents from BCI’s Special Investigations Unit might also be asked to help with cold cases.
The six cases described below share a common theme.
“Each one had its share of dead ends and unexpected turns,” Forney said, “but the investigative team persisted, revisited the evidence, applied new technology, and used every tool available to keep the cases moving forward.”
Divorce attorney arrested 12 years after client’s grisly death
Aliza Sherman, unsolved homicide in Cleveland, 2013
On Sunday, March 24, 2013, at about 5 p.m., Aliza Sherman was killed outside the Stafford Law Co. in downtown Cleveland where her attorney, Gregory Moore, worked.
A security video recorded a person approaching the 53-year-old nurse from behind and stabbing her 11 times. Sherman, a mother of four whose divorce trial was to begin the next day, had received a text from Moore to meet her at his office late that afternoon.
Eight years later, in June 2021, with no suspect in hand and few leads, Cleveland Police asked BCI’s Cold Case Unit to lead the investigation.
On May 2 of this year — after a grand jury indicted him on murder, conspiracy and kidnapping charges — Moore was arrested in Austin, Texas, and returned to Cuyahoga County.
In the indictment, prosecutors allege that Moore and “at least one other unnamed individual” conspired to kidnap Sherman because Moore was unprepared for the trial and was unlikely to be granted another delay. The indictment noted that Moore had a history of calling in bomb threats to delay court appearances — “a pattern that members of Stafford Law Co. were aware of.”
The Cold Case Unit’s investigation ultimately zeroed in on Moore’s cellphone use. The indictment details how the crime allegedly unfolded:
Moore texted Sherman to meet him at his law office, then disconnected his phone from the Verizon network to prevent it from leaving cell-tower location evidence. In texts to Sherman later that afternoon — texts designed to keep her waiting outside his office — Moore used his law firm’s mobile WiFi hotspot, which masked his location.
After Sherman was attacked, Moore sent four texts to her phone via the hotspot to create the impression that he was unaware that anything had happened to her. Later, he went inside his law office, reconnected his phone to the Verizon network, and called Sherman’s phone three times, again to create false evidence.
The next day, according to the indictment, an unidentified Stafford Law employee tried to cancel the mobile hot spot and deleted a voice-mail message that Sherman had left from a call box outside the building.
To unravel the case, the Cold Case Unit spent thousands of hours analyzing and aggregating all the available, disparate digital evidence, which helped investigators and analysts to piece everything together and prompted prosecutors to pursue an indictment.
Moore has pleaded not guilty. A trial date is set for March 2026.
Man arrested nearly 24 years after wife’s disappearance
Regina Rowe Hicks, unsolved homicide in Willard, 2001
On Oct. 18, 2001, at about 8 p.m., Regina Rowe Hicks, 25, left her boyfriend’s residence in her white Chevrolet Camaro to pick up her son. But she never arrived.
Her family searched for her for four days, until her submerged car was discovered in a pond along Townline Road 12 in her hometown of Willard. Hicks’ body was in the passenger seat.
Suspecting foul play, the Huron County Sheriff’s Office opened a homicide investigation. Despite their work — and despite the efforts of Hicks’ mother, who for 10 years offered reward money and spent thousands of dollars on billboards and newspaper ads to keep the case in the public eye — the investigation ground to a standstill. The sheriff’s office turned to BCI for help in 2017, three years before the Cold Case Unit was officially created.
On April 22, 2025, a Huron County grand jury indicted 50-year-old Paul Hicks of Sandusky on three counts of murder and one count of kidnapping in the death of his estranged wife, and agents from BCI and the U.S. Marshals Service took him into custody.
According to the indictment, Hicks and her husband met on Townline Road 12 on the night of her disappearance. Paul Hicks allegedly knocked her out, put her in the passenger seat of her car, put the car in gear, and guided it into the pond.
On Oct. 19, a day after his wife went missing, Paul Hicks filed for a divorce.
The case is being prosecuted by the Huron County Prosecutor’s Office with help from Yost’s Special Prosecutions Section. Hicks is scheduled to stand trial on Dec. 9.
DNA provides break in 1989 slaying of elderly woman
Helen Stuart, unsolved homicide in Newark, 1989
On April 21, 1989, the body of 71-year-old Helen Stuart was discovered in the back seat of her car on State Route 16 east of Newark. Investigators with the Newark Police Department determined that she had been raped and strangled to death at her east side Newark home before being driven 5 miles to the site where her body and car would later be found.
Detectives considered a neighbor, Delbert Saunders Jr., to be a person of interest but had too little evidence to arrest him. That remained the case for decades despite the efforts of the Newark police, a Licking County Crime Stoppers reward of $20,000, and a Facebook page created to generate leads.
In March 2021, Newark detectives met with BCI’s Cold Case Unit to review the case. Using pieces of evidence later submitted by the detectives, BCI’s lab employed the latest advances in DNA analysis to develop a genetic profile that connected Saunders to the crime. Additional evidence, submitted in 2024, provided further proof. On June 4, 2025, a Licking County grand jury indicted Saunders on charges of murder, rape, kidnapping, and burglary.
He is currently serving 18 years to life in the Noble Correctional Institution for kidnapping, rape, and possessing a weapon under disability in an unrelated case from 2003. He will be returned to Licking County to stand trial in the Stuart case. No date has been set.
BCI develops lead in 1992 slaying; suspect brought to Ohio
Amy Hooper, unsolved homicide in Columbus, 1992
After 20-year-old Amy Hooper failed to report for work at Westland Mall on March 9, 1992, her family went to her apartment to check on her. To their horror, they found her bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
Authorities believed that she knew her attacker. DNA from a male was found on Hooper's naked body, but a profile could not be developed. Stymied, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office sought BCI’s help in 2019, and the FBI started the initial genealogy work. BCI eventually stepped in to assist to make sure the case moved forward.
Their hopes paid off.
In late 2024, through forensic genetic genealogy, BCI’s Cold Case Unit and the sheriff's office identified Bruce Daniels, 58, of Tumwater, Washington, as a person of interest. The investigative team traveled to Washington to interview Daniels and obtain his DNA, which was submitted to the BCI lab and proved to be a match to the DNA recovered from Hooper’s body.
An arrest warrant filed for Daniels on Dec. 4, 2024, in Franklin County Municipal Court led to his arrest the next day in Washington. He was extradited in March to Ohio, where he faces charges of rape and murder. No trial date has been set.
Investigators restore man’s identity after 45-year mystery
Danny Mitchell, unidentified remains case in Cleveland, 1980
Danny Mitchell was 20 when last seen on April 2, 1980, at a house on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. The next month, remains were discovered about a quarter-mile away in a derelict building set to be torn down. Unidentified and unclaimed, the John Doe was buried in Potter’s Field.
It took 45 years to confirm the connection, but the remains would turn out to be those of Danny Mitchell.
The first bit of progress came in 2017, when the Mitchell family saw a BCI press conference featuring a clay facial reconstruction of a man whose remains had been found in 1982 in nearby Summit County.
The DNA submitted by Mitchell’s siblings didn’t match DNA from the remains, but BCI added Danny Mitchell’s information into NamUs, a national database of missing and unidentified persons. That decision proved crucial because three years later, in 2020, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office added the Cleveland John Doe to NamUs as part of an internal initiative to add cold cases to the database.
That entry prompted a possible match: Could Cleveland John Doe be Danny Mitchell? To answer that, investigators turned to the one item of DNA preserved from John Doe’s autopsy — a cluster of scalp hair.
Extracting DNA from rootless hair is difficult, and BCI’s DNA lab was unable to obtain a DNA profile in 2020 and 2021, prompting the forensic scientists to pursue additional testing methods, including mitochondrial DNA analysis. Meanwhile, investigators sought to exhume Cleveland John Doe to obtain additional DNA samples but couldn’t locate his burial site in Potter’s Field.
In 2022, BCI and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office requested help from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The center agreed to fund additional advanced DNA testing and, later, secured federal funding for another round of testing.
In February 2025, Astrea Forensics, a California lab known for difficult cases, developed a full DNA profile from the hair samples. BCI and experts from NCMEC then collaborated with genealogists from Innovative Forensic Investigations to compare the profile to DNA from Danny Michell’s siblings.
Forty-five years later, they had their match — the Cleveland John Doe found in 1980 was in fact Danny Mitchell.
Remains found nearly 24 years ago ID’d as Michigan man
Anthony Gulley, unidentified remains case in Canton, 2001
On Dec. 22, 2001, two men discovered a bleached skeleton near a county road just south of Canton. No clothing, jewelry, or identification were found.
An initial assessment suggested that the remains belonged to a 5-foot-7 African American woman between 22 and 31 years old, but a subsequent DNA analysis would show that the unknown person was actually a male.
Investigators worked for years to identify the remains, but without advanced DNA technology, the man’s identity remained a mystery.
In September 2023, BCI and the Stark County Sheriff’s Office unveiled a clay facial reconstruction of the John Doe. Investigators also partnered with a research center at Ohio State University to create digital images of what the man might have looked like.
Meanwhile, BCI forensic scientists worked to develop a DNA profile from the remains. Unfortunately, it didn’t match any identities in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
At an impasse, investigators solicited the help of the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that identifies remains using forensic genetic genealogy. The process involves uploading the unknown person’s DNA profile to databases for comparison to the profiles of ordinary citizens who have agreed to allow matching and analysis of their shared DNA. Investigators then rely on traditional genealogy records to build a family tree, hoping to find the branch that includes the John Doe.
After 24 hours of genetic genealogy research, Anthony Gulley, 24, was identified as a possible match. Family members provided DNA samples that confirmed the identification.
Gulley had been reported missing in Pontiac, Michigan, on Sept. 11, 1994, and his burned-out rental car was found in Akron shortly after. That same month, Akron Police had been looking for George Frederick Washington, a Michigan resident who had childhood ties to Akron. Washington was a suspect in two rapes and an armed robbery, and investigators also suspected him in Gulley’s disappearance.
Detectives surmised that Washington might have returned to Akron to dispose of Gulley’s body. They would never find out. On Sept. 30, 1994, Washington killed himself as law enforcement officers tried to arrest him. The search for Gulley’s body continued but was unsuccessful.
It would take seven more years for Gulley’s body to be found and nearly 24 years to identify it.