By Caitlin Byrd

The two detectives continue their alternating cadence, exchanging nods and exasperated sighs after every name. For Kevin Taylor and Yvonne Cobourn, Asheville’s 24 cold cases are an all-too-familiar story. But the plots are not conventional: Cold cases don’t have endings. Instead they consist mostly of interviews, evidence and theories — and if they end in anything, it’s typically a question mark. By definition, a case becomes cold when all the leads have been exhausted.

“If they were easy, they would have already been solved,” stresses Cobourn. “But that challenge is what we embrace.”

The Asheville, N.C., Police Department established its official Cold Case Unit in July 2008, and Cobourn and Taylor got the nod. Across the country, such entities seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

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Source: Mountain Xpress