America: The Gear-Up Detective

To be honest, when Rod saw the message from Hank, he instinctively thought Ida was making a false police report.

However, at the moment Rhodes received the dossier, the system issued a task update notification.

[Mission Update: Mysterious Disappearance - Was it a wandering or deliberate act? Corpse Found in the Wilderness - Was it an accident or a provocation?]

A reward will be given for solving this case.

Completion Rewards: Hidden

Looking at the information on the panel, Rhodes raised an eyebrow. "This case was indeed strange, but why is it closed now?"

For a moment, Rod lost all interest in going to the gym.

He sat in the driver's seat, opened the file Hank had sent, and began reading it intently.

Rhode activated the [Scan] skill and quickly flipped through the pages with his fingers.

He finished reading the entire case file in less than a minute.

The first half of the content is almost identical to what Ida described.

......

Fifty years ago, in the Sicammore community in Midwestern Los Angeles.

Two very close little girls were playing under a big tree not far from their home. It was sunset, and the sky was getting dark.

While they were having a great time, a man who called himself "Johnny" walked over.

According to the surviving little girl Linda, the man had blond hair, a slender build, and was about 180 centimeters tall. He had a very obvious gap between his two front teeth.

Johnny offered to play with the two girls.

The innocent little girl, engrossed in her play, was completely unsuspecting and happily agreed to play with Johnny.

Soon after, eight-year-old Linda suggested that she go home first to get her favorite doll, and then come back to play together.

Because it was close to home, only a four or five-minute walk for the little girl, the seven-year-old victim, Sofia Grant, did not go with them, but instead stayed under the big tree to play with Johnny.

As expected, the unexpected still happened.

When the little girl Linda returned to the tree with her beloved doll, there was no one there.

After failing to find her, Linda went to Sofia's house and told Sofia's parents.

Not long ago, Sofia also had a similar incident of going missing. She hid in a church not far from her home. When her parents couldn't find her, they immediately called the police, but she eventually came back on her own, which made her father feel a little embarrassed.

So this time, Sofia's father did not call the police immediately, but the family went to search for her on their own.

But just an hour later, Sofia's parents, having found nothing, finally decided to call the police.

After two days and one night of searching by the police, there was still no news of Sofia.

Fifty years ago, although the United States did not have the AMBER Alert, it always took the disappearance of children, especially children from white families, very seriously.

According to the case file, the detectives at the time initially suspected members of the same community.

The investigation began with community members and soon focused on Kerry Emerson.

The reason given is that someone saw a man who looked remarkably like Kerry Emerson that night, carrying a suitcase and driving away in a hurry.

The Kerry family had only recently moved in, and Linda and Sophia had never met Kerry before, treating him as a stranger.

According to the police's initial investigation, Kerry Emerson's movements from afternoon to dusk were indeed suspicious, so the police went to his home to formally question him.

As Ida had said on the phone, Kerry's parents provided an alibi, clearing him of suspicion.

The detectives later suspected other suspects, but they were all quickly ruled out.

Just when the case was making no progress and was about to be shelved, three months after the incident, two elderly people who were out for a morning walk discovered Sofia's body in a wooded area ten kilometers from the Sicamor community.

The case was officially changed from a kidnapping and disappearance case to a murder case.

The discovery of Sofia's body caused a huge uproar, and the case was reopened for investigation, but still yielded no results.

The case of Sofia's disappearance has been temporarily shelved due to the lack of significant discoveries.

Ten years after the Sofia disappearance case was shelved, DNA technology began to enter the field of criminal investigation. Breakthroughs in new technologies brought new clues to some cold cases, and the national crime database in the United States was also improved.

This is why, when a detective was comparing data in the database, he noticed a new suspect – Leonard Spencer.

The new suspect is a touring amusement park performer who travels to different towns throughout the year. At the time of the incident, he happened to be in Los Angeles, performing near the Sicamor neighborhood.

More importantly, Leonard Spencer had a history of misconduct involving minors prior to this.

Even eight years before Sofia's case, he was suspected of causing the tragic death of a nine-year-old girl.

According to the profiling analysis conducted by Los Angeles detectives at the time, Leonard Spencer's behavior and psychology were very similar to those of the killer in the Sofia disappearance case.

At this point, the description that Rod found most incomprehensible appeared.

According to Leonard's cellmates at the time, he had boasted in prison that he had committed at least three similar crimes that went undetected by the police.

Therefore, although Leonard Spencer had died three years earlier due to illness and no statement was recorded when the case was reinvestigated, the authorities and police still believed that Leonard Spencer was the murderer in Sofia's disappearance and closed the case perfectly six months later!

"call..."

After reading through the entire file, Rhodes couldn't help but let out a deep breath.

Now there's no need for system verification. Any person of normal intelligence who reads the case's resolution will know that there are serious problems with this case.

"But the detectives, prosecutors, judges, and even the jury (whose usefulness was questionable) all believed Leonard Spencer was the murderer. Could the case be closed?"

There is clearly a vulnerability.

There is only one possibility: the prosecutors or police at the time just wanted to close the case as soon as possible, so they found a plausible 'scapegoat'!

But now...

According to Los Angeles Police Department regulations, cases that have been closed after the perpetrator has been identified can, of course, be reopened and the investigation can begin again.

However, it is very difficult.

Of course, the Los Angeles Police Department has had similar cases before.

For example, in 1986, Detective Stephanie Lazarus shot and killed her ex-boyfriend's newlywed wife. The case was initially wrongly convicted of robbery and murder, but it was only reopened in 2009 due to a breakthrough in DNA technology, which finally brought the police officer to justice.

This falls under the category where the original conclusion of the case has been overturned by new evidence or significant clues, allowing the investigation to be reopened.

However, the difficulty lies in the fact that although the case can be reopened, there is a judicial principle that strictly limits subsequent prosecution, namely the prohibition of double jeopardy as stipulated in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Most detectives are unaware of this rule, but Rod had to listen to his uncle Wesley explain it to him.

He happens to be a criminal defense lawyer.

According to regulations, if a reopened case is handed over to a jury but ultimately results in an acquittal, then even if irrefutable evidence is later discovered, the suspect cannot be prosecuted again for the same crime.

This means that if Rhodes wants to reopen the investigation, he cannot afford to make the slightest mistake!