Beverly Griffith spent 30 years looking for news of her grandfather's killer.
She was 17 in 1972 when Leon Hicks was murdered. Later, she became a police officer interested in cold case investigation. But when she called Chattanooga authorities to ask about her grandfather's death, she was told all the files attached to the unsolved crime had been destroyed in a flood.
"There was something in me that made me just keep looking, with just a name," Griffith said.
The Internet changed everything. She started periodically typing her grandfather's name into Google. That's how she discovered, about a week after the fact, that a Chattanooga cold case unit solved his case.
"To even spot his name coming up was amazing," Griffith said.
That led her to District Attorney General Neal Pinkston's new website, and a contact form she used to reach out to him.
It turned out the county's cold case unit had been looking for her, too. Pinkston hopes the new website, launched in April, will turn up more long-lost family members, more tips, more leads and even more cases that can help the unit move forward.
"What we need to make this work is people who remember something about those cases finally coming forward and talking about it," said public information officer Melydia Clewell, who created the website.
The site includes a dedicated section with news about the cold case unit. It also includes a listing of more than 150 active cases the team is working, organized by last name or by year. Since Clewell launched the site in early April, the unit's members have been inundated with requests from desperate families who want their cases solved, too.
"I hope you'll find who killed my mom," they say. "I hope you'll find who killed my brother."
The site has generated only one new lead. Pinkston hopes that number will rise as people take advantage of the anonymous form on the office's website or the cold case tip line.
Joe Giacalone, a former New York Police Department cold case team leader who now trains investigators, says online portals can be precarious when it comes to gleaning useful information.
"You're just hoping to get that tip or that phone call that can lead you to what you really need," Giacalone said.
Internet tipsters don't always offer all the answers, Giacalone said.
"It's a double-edged sword. You get a lot of information that you don't need. You get a lot of speculation, you get a lot of people accusing people of things," he said.
Speculation doesn't solve cases, he said, but more information is generally a good thing.
The site's other features, including an office directory, basic information on cases that have captured the public interest and even simple directions to follow up on a court date, are just meant to make the office more transparent.
"It's a good educational tool for the DA's office to be able to provide people with a general sense of what we do and how we operate," Pinkston said.
Pinkston also wants to continue to flesh out the cold case section of the site with pictures and stories. He wants to find more families like Griffith's and keep their histories in mind.
"Even if it's 20 or 30 years ago, they remember it like it was yesterday," Pinkston said. "It's still at the forefront of their mind. Those guys remember it like it was yesterday."
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow her on Twitter @clairelwiseman.