Harry Brooks DanielsIt started with a moldy satchel.
The faded leather pouch had been buried in Chattanooga Police Department files for decades. Inside were photos of an old fedora hat, of a crime scene off South Holly Street, and of the body of Leon Hicks.
Inside, too, were mugshots of the man investigators now say shot Hicks in 1972.
On Wednesday, District Attorney General Neal Pinkston announced his cold case unit had cleared the 43-year-old case. Much of the evidence needed to wrap it up was found in the satchel, which was only discovered when Pinkston requested boxes of two other cases’ files in March.
“[The satchel] just appeared in this box, and we don’t know what it was doing there,” Pinkston said.