Dr. Camela Hughes explains how University at Albany students are helping investigative agencies and families solve cold cases, including missing persons cases and unsolved crimes. Dr Hughes directs the Cold Case Analysis Center within the UAlbany School of Criminal Justice and oversees an internship program that provides students with hands on project-based learning experience in forensic science, law and criminal investigation techniques.
Cold Case Analysis Center at the University at Albany
Article from the UAlbany News Center -- Cold Case Analysis Center Comes to UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice
Article from UAlbany Student Press: St. Rose Cold Case Analysis Center Joins UAlbany
News report on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio’s Midday Magazine: Cold Case Analysis Center Opens at UAlbany
Article from the Times Union: University at Albany relaunches Saint Rose's former Cold Case Analysis Center
The Engagement Ring, Episode 27: Turning Up the Heat on Cold Cases
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to The Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
CAMELA HUGHES:
Through the process of reviewing a case, organizing a case, you might identify new scientific possibilities for the case, new potential ways to look at the case that couldn't be used before.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Camela Hughes explains how University at Albany students are helping investigative agencies and families solve cold cases, including missing persons cases and unsolved crimes.
CAMELA HUGHES:
A great thing about the University at Albany is that we have a whole lot of experts here. And so, when we get an interesting bit or something that's particularly unusual for a case, I can say, hey, this is what's going on do we know anybody who's doing research in this area, or that's an expert in this area? And there's a lot of folks at the university who have expertise that can be helpful for these kinds of cases.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Hughes directs the Cold Case Analysis Center within the UAlbany School of Criminal Justice and oversees an internship program that provides students with hands on project-based learning experience in forensic science, law and criminal investigation techniques.
CAMELA HUGHES:
In some cases, progress for these crimes really deal more with helping a family feel like they've been heard, that they wanted somebody else to take a look at it, and somebody finally is, and that may be the best we'll ever be able to do for a case, and that is invaluable.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here's my conversation with Cam Hughes.
MARY HUNT:
Cam, welcome to the podcast.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Thank you.
[Music fades out.)
MARY HUNT:
I've been thinking about this topic and lately, knowing that you're coming, and looking forward to our conversation, and I suspect that I’m in good company, I think there's a lot of people who find the topic very compelling. There's something very compelling about an unsolved mystery.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Absolutely.
MARY HUNT:
Today we see an abundance of podcasts, documentaries, TV shows, even true crime clubs where average citizens are trying to solve crimes. So, I guess I want to ask you first, what is it that makes this topic so fascinating?
CAMELA HUGHES:
I think part of it is thinking about, you know, puzzles. A lot of people are really interested in the puzzle aspect of a cold case of mystery. They want to be able to find a solution. And, you know, a lot of the really good true crime reporting, regardless of, you know, how it's being done, podcasts versus television show, et cetera. They're very good at making the case compelling and making it so that people are really interested in trying to add to the situation, trying to answer the question. But I think it really is that there are a large group of the population who are interested in puzzles and also want to help. So, it's kind of that combination of, you know, what, what thing could I hear, what detail could I see that might make things different. And, you know, it's not, it's an important kind of puzzle, because we're talking typically about human life. And so, it doesn't feel trivial to be able to say maybe I can hear the thing that gives some resolution to the family. I can see the piece of the puzzle that can lead to a conviction. So, it kind of plays on both parts of it, that that enjoyment of a mystery and trying to solve it, but also feeling like you can contribute in a meaningful way in somebody's life.
MARY HUNT:
What is the definition of a cold case?
CAMELA HUGHES:
So, it's, it's funny, typically, if a definition exists, it's going to be in some sort of legislation. But in general, there isn't a true definition of a cold case. Some folks will give you a time range. It's been unsolved for five years. It's been unsolved for 10 years. You know, it really depends on how people are viewing an active investigation. Typically, investigative agencies, and I use that term broadly, because it's not just police departments that are investigating these sorts of cases, they don't ever really close a case that hasn't been solved. On some sort of routine basis, somebody will go back through and see if there's been any tips associated with the case or review some material. If a tip comes in, they will address it. And so, you know, they don't necessarily close a case, but you know, over time, the active ability to investigate that case can be overshadowed with things that are happening today. So, we know that there are constant concerns about today's crime and crime rates and so you know, sometimes it's just not the area of focus, immediate focus. If a crime occurred yesterday, the goal is to solve the crime yesterday because it could continue to be an issue ongoing, whereas a crime that occurred 15 years ago, the concern for public safety might be less.
MARY HUNT:
What percentage of cases would you estimate go cold or unsolved?
CAMELA HUGHES:
It's probably higher than you think, but some of that has to do with the fact that people don't report cases. And so, you know, typically when we're talking about cold cases, people are talking about murders, but there are other kinds of unsolved cases that go unsolved for quite an amount of time, so things like sexual assaults, other forms of assault and battery on persons, those also are cases that go unsolved at a higher rate than you would think. In general, the estimate is something in the 300,000 to 400,000 unsolved murders in the United States since about the 70s. But I also think that there's some overlap between unsolved homicides and unsolved missing persons cases. There's a lot of research that suggests that a group of people who are determined to be long-term missing cases may, in fact, be murder cases that were not addressed appropriately at the time when the person was reported as missing. These typically are with populations of marginalized people who historically might have been termed to be, oh, they're transient in population. They move around a lot. People come and go out of this neighborhood all the time. They're not really missing. They chose to go someplace else. And so historically, police, the research suggests, police have not addressed those cases in the same way they might address a case of a different person not from a marginalized population. So for example, people who have substance use disorders, people are who are homeless or unhoused, those kinds of cases which can turn into missing persons cases may, in fact, be unsolved murders, but now it is kind of hard to determine, since a body hasn't been found, whether or not they're long-term missing or, in fact, murder cases. And those can be some of the most difficult to resolve because without a body it is hard to determine are you searching for a living person who's hiding for whatever reason or are you looking for a deceased person And depending on how long ago that occurred, that gets harder and harder to locate an individual.
MARY HUNT:
It’s interesting. You make me think of some cases recently in the national news of people who voluntarily went missing.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Right.
MARY HUNT:
I guess there was wrongdoing in that they were trying to pull a vast one and disappear or change their lives, leave their existing life, but no one had done them harm.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Right and in some cases, like people can choose to leave their lives and aren't doing anything illegal, in which case go, fine. You know, do whatever life you want to have going forward. But the issue is, when you know people go missing, and the response is, well, this is just a group of people that, how do you know they're even missing? They'll be back in another month. They come in here and out of here all the time, where the people who know them know differently. There's a really good example of that out of Toronto related to a serial killer where gay men who were also immigrants had been going missing and the police, you know, their response was something similar. These are people who are either trying to hide who they are because they are gay men or they're part of a transient population. They move all around all the time; they're not actually missing. And in fact, there was a serial killer actively operating in Toronto for quite some time. And so, I think that's the struggle with defining how many cold cases there are at any given time. You know you have to you pick your definition. Unsolved murders are the easiest to count because typically when somebody is murdered people are aware of that, whereas unsolved sexual assault cases, that number could be astronomical because not everybody reports when they have been sexually assaulted, but there could be serial rapists operating in an area, and people would be unaware
MARY HUNT:
You direct the Cold Case Analysis Center at UAlbany. Tell me about the center and tell me about the ways you're involving students in the center's work.
CAMELA HUGHES:
So the Cold Case Analysis Center moved to the University of Albany in the fall of 2024 after the closing of the College of St Rose, and our goal is to help investigative agencies and families try to find resolution for cases. So we work with investigative agencies like sheriff's departments, police departments to do things like scan and digitize cases so they're easier to retrieve information from which kind of sounds like this boring administrative task, but in some of these cases, there's a lot of material, and even just trying to get it all in one place so that a new investigator can get fully briefed on all of the information would take more time than if we were able to have students kind of create a collated and organized document to do so. And so to do things like index and annotate material for easy reference, which means they're reading all of these interviews and documents and, you know, figuring out how they fit, creating timelines and maps, looking at previous forensic tests and results and what have been seen so far. And that's really cool for students, because they can see what was done, but then they can also start to think about what else could be done now with new technology. So, you know, cases can be pretty old, and if the material still exists to do new, for example, DNA analyses on the material from the case, then that's something that we can recommend that agencies engage in. We look at all the different scientific methodologies that were used in the case in creating those timelines. We look at social media for folks that might be involved, depending on how old the case is. Social media has a whole lot of information in it, and students are very good at finding that information and kind of creating a collation of the information found there that the investigators might be able to use to add to timelines or change how they ask specific questions of people that they're interested in. And then I also work to identify experts that might be useful for a specific case. So, if there's something unusual about the case and the department hadn't already reached out to an expert about something in that case, then I can help, you know, make those connections. The great thing about the University at Albany is that we have a whole lot of experts here. And so, when we get an interesting bit or something that's particularly unusual for a case, I can say, hey, this is what's going on. Do we know anybody who's doing research in this area, or that's an expert in this area, and there's a lot of folks at the university who have expertise that can be helpful for these kinds of cases.
MARY HUNT:
Are all the students that are participating in this, and they understand it's through internships, are they criminal justice students? Are they students from other disciplines, and how are they qualified to look at these, you know, this kind of information, and make these judgments? Are they receiving training from the investigative agencies or from their professors in forensics or other fields that prepare them?
CAMELA HUGHES:
So, a good portion of the students right now are criminal justice majors. Unsurprisingly, they are the group of folks who are very interested in true crime and less concerned about some of the more difficult aspects of reviewing a case, such as looking at autopsy photos and those sorts of things, which is why they're choosing criminal justice to begin with. I do have chemistry students this year, and it's open to all students, so any student can put in an application, and I can help assign them to a case that will be particularly useful for their background. So for example, if there's a student who is a history major who's really interested in archival research, I have lots of cases that, you know, we can dive into some state archives to really get more details about the things like the city of Albany when the crime actually occurred. So like, the physical makeup of the city of Albany has changed drastically when the Empire State Plaza was put in. And so to really understand the nature of a case that might have occurred in that area prior to that, you need to look at some really old maps and some more information about the history of Albany to truly understand that kind of case. And so it is available to all students. We do have mostly criminal justice students at this point, but my goal going forward is to try to create opportunities for anyone who is interested, because, you know, the specifics of each case may be interesting for different kinds of students with different kinds of skills and backgrounds. So they go through a process of an application process, they have letters of reference from their professors, and then, depending on what they're working on in a case, you know, they may get some more applied learning opportunities. For example, in some cases right now, we're creating some timelines, and that doesn't require any specific training, per se, but it can use some of the applications in Microsoft Office which can kind of help a student build their resume in the same way that you know, creating databases in Excel can also be useful when students go looking into the job market later. And so, it's an interesting way to start to practice and use the tools that are necessary for their careers going forward, but in a way that doesn't feel the same as, you know, doing straight data entry on something they're less interested in. Another opportunity for skill development for students is related to analysis of kind of qualitative data, which means things like listening to interviews between the police and subjects, or even any sort of recording and kind of transcribing them and looking for themes and patterns that are emerging within the material that they're seeing. And this can, you know, give them this practice of hands-on qualitative data analysis that feels more interesting than, you know, being assigned some sort of project in a class that isn't related to something that the students are interested in. And so since they are interested in true crime, you know, reading through 500 pages of documentation of something maybe really, really interesting to them, but they'll be applying a skill that they can then use in their careers later of being able to review and summarize a substantial amount of information in a digestible way for other people trying to get more information from a case.
MARY HUNT:
A lot of this information is very sensitive, and I would imagine is confidential information…
CAMELA HUGHES:
Yes.
MARY HUNT:
… would jeopardize a case if it were used inappropriately, or if too many people talked about it, or it got public. So, what kind of preparation do you give your students in terms of that about the discretion they have to exercise with this kind of evidence, this kind of data that they're being given.
CAMELA HUGHES:
So, prior to getting access to any of the materials that are sensitive, students have to complete a non-disclosure agreement, and we also go through a process of better understanding what happens when things get leaked. And so, kind of thinking about not just you have this legal document that says you can't talk about these things, but why, ethically we don't want to talk about these things. So it's not just there's this thing that tells me I can't, but I can't because I'm an ethical person and I understand why I won't be making these, you know, disclosures. I think that's important because, you know, an NDA is an important legal document, but it isn't necessarily something that students truly understand and internalize in a way that you know helps them make the best decision. When somebody asks a question, and they feel like, well, I don't understand why I can't talk about this thing right now, but when we talk about it some more and kind of what can go wrong if you know confidential information is released to the public, then that that can help them make better decisions in those situations.
MARY HUNT:
Also, for building trust, I would think, with the partner agencies that you work with. They want to know your students understand the importance and the sensitivity of the information.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Absolutely.
MARY HUNT:
They want to know they can trust them. They can work openly, and that'll lead to the best results.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Yep, and students go through a background check process to make sure there isn't anything concerning in their backgrounds that agencies would be wouldn't want somebody with that kind of background looking at their material and so there are definite safeguards in place to avoid that, but also a focus on helping them truly understand why this, why confidentiality is so important for what we're doing, and really helping them build that ethical decision-making capability.
MARY HUNT:
How many students are involved as interns currently?
CAMELA HUGHES:
We have a little more than 20 right now. Again, we just started here at the University at Albany in the fall, and so really working on the processes that need to be in place to have those security safeguards, confidentiality safeguards, and to have those strong agreements with other investigative agencies and partners, I expect we will continue to expand. We have a lovely space in Richardson Hall that will allow us to continue to expand. And so once we get all of our footing set up, and going forward, I think we'll continue to increase our enrollment.
MARY HUNT:
You touched on it a little bit, Cam, when you talked about they see some difficult things to see... autopsy photos and other sensitive materials. What kind of toll, if any or emotional toll does it take on the students? I mean, we hear long-time veteran cops who work, you know, in investigations and difficult investigations have worked in them for years, and you see them moved sometimes or visibly moved about the work that they're doing and upset. So what does it do to students for whom all this is kind of new?
CAMELA HUGHES:
I would say, you know, when thinking about the sensitive nature of any specific case… so I'm the one who decides which groups, who work in small groups, which groups are going to get which cases and what and what they're going to focus on at any given time. And so depending on the case, I may sit down with them in advance and say, here's kind of the nature of what we're going to talk about, what was involved in this case. Do you think this is going to be difficult for you? Because some of the specifics of individual cases might be more difficult than others, right. And so that's kind of the first gate. A student can say, I can't do that particular case, and then I'll find a different case for them to work on. A student saying this material is too much for me is never something that will get them removed from the center. In fact, I would prefer them to come to me and say, hey, this is getting to be too much, because then we can address that in a way that… at no point should concerns about the grade get in the way of their mental health. I do think it can weigh on them pretty significantly, depending on the nature of specific cases and what they're working on. You know, some cases with autopsy photos can be really, really upsetting. If a case involved a young child that can be really tough for folks depending on… and remind somebody of somebody they knew growing up, or you know, a case that might be similar to something that happened to them. And so, the hope is that there's open communication about the impacts that it has. We have a lot of material associated with the resources available at the university if some of the material is getting to be too much for them. But the hope is that there is that open communication of I just can't keep working on this case. Can I do something else for a little while? There's always something else they can work on if they need to.
MARY HUNT:
Have you cracked any cases with students’ help or have you made significant steps toward helping investigators take the next step in a cold case yet? I know it’s new and it’s a new endeavor for the university.
CAMELA HUGHES:
No. What's difficult with these kinds of centers is that that's often a question, right. What have you solved? What progress have you made? In some cases progress for these crimes really deal more with helping a family feel like they've been heard, that they wanted somebody else to take a look at it, and somebody finally is and that may be the best we'll ever be able to do for a case, and that is invaluable, right for a family member to feel like somebody else took a look at this, somebody else asked the same questions I had, but actually had the material to look at. It wasn't just, you know, this group over here and the police, and I'm not sure that they turned over every stone. We had another group of people turn over more stones. That's the kind of, you know, progress that we can always offer. We can always say somebody else had another look at this, somebody else asked more questions, somebody else recommended more testing. It's tough because, you know, cases go cold for a reason, and you know, if they were something that would be easily solved, then they probably would have been solved. And so, the hope would be that through the process of reviewing a case, organizing a case, you might identify new scientific possibilities for the case, new potential ways to look at the case that couldn't be used before, right. If the case was last reviewed in depth a long time ago, well, in the last five years, the changes in DNA technology have been astronomical, and so, hey, let's try something new. We still know where this information is. Around the country I know that there are some centers who have successfully helped police identify suspects for cases, and so that's always the hope, but sometimes the most progress we make is with the families of the victims and helping them feel at least a little more has been done to help answer questions.
MARY HUNT:
I think that's a very sincere and I think it's an important answer. Sometimes progress is slow, but just taking steps toward progress, or feeling that somebody's listening and someone cares and someone's helping is so valuable.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Yeah, and in some cases, you know, when it’s a 50-year-old case, even if we identified, hey, we could have done this test, this stuff might not be testable anymore, right. And so that's super frustrating, but the family can then say, okay, well, maybe the police did do the best they could at the time. That's a level of resolution for families like no, there really wasn't anything they could do then. Sure, if it had happened today, they might have been able to do things differently. We might have been able to find an answer, but this is just going to be the best that we can do. And yeah, it's unsatisfying, but it’s the reality. I mean, again, if, if these were easy things to solve, they would have been.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Unfortunately.
MARY HUNT:
Where did your interest in criminology come from?
CAMELA HUGHES:
So, my dad was a detective and a police officer for more than 20 years in my hometown, well outside my hometown, he was in Sparks, Nevada. So I grew up outside of Reno, Nevada, so I spent all of my early formative years around police officers and around those sorts of things. I also really like puzzles. So that's always been interesting to me. And then as I continued to think more about what kinds of cases go cold and you know, the kind of folks that are involved in that, really thinking of it, kind of from a social justice perspective right, that historically, people from marginalized communities are more likely to have their cases turn into cold cases or be unsolved than other groups within the United States, and so not only is it something that's interesting, but it's also something that might help move the needle toward a more just society by bringing attention to cases that didn't get attention at the time when they occurred.
MARY HUNT:
Did you consider being a police officer?
[Camela Hughes chuckles.]
CAMELA HUGHES:
So the answer to that is no.
MARY HUNT:
I bet your dad is pleased with that.
[Laughter]
CAMELA HUGHES:
Yeah. Specifically, why did you get interested in criminal justice? Because my dad told me not to.
MARY HUNT:
Well, that's a typical dad.
CAMELA HUGHES:
That's a pleasing answer. No, I never really thought about being a police officer. I'm all of five foot one, a very small person, and while I have a good skill set for many things, I'm not great with dealing with authority and hierarchical systems, so I just not, would not have fit into that very well.
[Laughter]
MARY HUNT:
You made a good choice then. Made a good choice.
[Laughter]
MARY HUNT:
What are your future plans for the center? What’s on the horizon?
CAMELA HUGHES:
So, I have two areas that I'm really focusing on right now in addition to making more connections with departments and agencies who would like our support. So in addition to continually reaching out to investigative agencies to try to form partnerships with investigators and find cases within the State of New York, I'm also forming relationships with prosecutors in the areas that are interested in conviction integrity units, which when they're formed within the prosecutor's office, that's a conviction integrity unit. When it's external to them, it's more like a wrongful conviction unit, terminology difference. But there are a lot of prosecutors who are really interested in reviewing their cases to determine if there are any wrongfully convicted individuals within the history of that prosecutor's office, and so students can help work with those cases, do the same kind of process of, you know, organizing the material, reviewing the material, and then, you know, particularly for students who are interested in the legal field, seeing how the law was applied in that case, and whether or not somebody might have been wrongfully convicted. And I think that's an important avenue to consider. I think it gives an opportunity for students who are less interested in law enforcement, but also interested in that true crime idea. It's another way of getting students interested in these kinds of analyzes, but also because if a conviction is overturned, then it's possible that the case is now a cold case, and so that gives an opportunity to help the investigative agency start again with the case and determine who might be a suspect now that the person who was originally convicted of the crime is no longer considered to be guilty of that crime. Another area that I'm really interested in is forming connections to work with indigenous populations related to missing and murdered indigenous persons. It is a significant issue, both in the United States and Canada and certainly throughout the world, but we see it, you know, more locally in the U.S. and Canada that typically those situations have not been investigated well historically and so offering our resources to indigenous communities who might not have those kinds of resources available to them is something I would really like the center to be able to focus on as well.
MARY HUNT:
What one unsolved case anywhere, anytime, infamous or little known, would you solve if you could? Or what one are you most curious about? Could be one, could be two. I'm sure it's hard to narrow it down if you're a true crime solver and aficionado like you are. But what,
CAMELA HUGHES:
How do you narrow it down? Because there's, there's the large national cases that that folks have heard more about that have really gotten some good attention. So things like JonBenét Ramsey and better understanding how that is centered within the political and social sphere of that space and time combined with could it possibly be related to other cases. You know, that would be really important. The Black Dahlia is a big one. You know, some of the FBI files have been released associated with that, but there's still a lot of that that's classified, but that gets a lot of people's attention, but there are a lot of smaller individual cases that haven't received the same kind of attention that maybe if they do there might be some more answers available, right. So JonBenét Ramsey has gotten so much attention at this point, but there's, you know, other cases that we could pay attention to. And so, you know, I can remember, you know, true crime and podcast and that sort of thing, being particularly moved by a podcast called, Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom, about the case of Renee Bergeron, who the nature of the case, you'd think, would have gotten a whole lot of publicity, but because she was the member of a marginalized community, there was a lot of victim-blaming associated with what happened to her, and a lot of downplaying of her victimhood because of the nature of the activities that she engaged in. She was a sex worker, and so it was one of those, well, if you weren't a sex worker then maybe you wouldn't have gotten murdered horribly. And when I think about the cases, the big ones obviously are interesting, but some of the ones that haven't gotten the attention are the ones we really should be focusing on.
MARY HUNT:
How open are the investigators that you work with to working with students? Are they open? Are they happy to have the help?
CAMELA HUGHES:
Yeah. So every investigator that I've talked to has been extremely happy to have our help. They have opened files, walked students through, been there to answer any questions that students have had related to any case, or why something was done a specific way, or what avenues they they've researched so far, even if it's something that the investigators have already done. So if the if a student says, “What if we do this?” And the investigator goes, “Well, actually, you haven't gotten there yet, but that's, you know, over in this file over here.” But they really like how invested students are in, you know, assisting in the process and trying to find solutions where they haven't. So most every investigator we've worked with has been excited to have another set of eyes, or group of eyes on a case to just see what they missed. I have found investigators to be very humble about their own abilities to do very, very well on cases. And so, they're always saying, I'm a human. I could have missed something. Please, please find the thing I missed so that we can solve this case.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, you talk about the students helping to organize it and go through detail and prepare things and review files. We kind of are accustomed to seeing people on TV through drama, you know, they get this case, they close it, they finish the case, whatever. But I would imagine true investigation and real crime solving is painstaking. It takes time. It's not glamorous.
CAMELA HUGHES:
No.
MARY HUNT:
… You don’t have all these breakthroughs and discoveries. It's plotting through a lot of details.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Well, and for obvious reasons, like over time, the investigator is going to change and trying to get up to speed on a case that can be very old or just had a lot of stuff done appropriately at the time but now, you know, investigators retire, and that's the nature of the way policing works. Nobody stays for forever. And so, trying to get people up to speed in something that's in 10 boxes somewhere is difficult. But when students are able to put something together and say, this is this folder with these things in it. You can view this material there. It can really, really benefit just, you know, getting somebody up to speed and being able to review a case in a real meaningful way. Instead of I have all this stuff and I don't know where to start, somebody has organized it and helped you figure out where to start.
MARY HUNT:
Are you a real crime show watcher yourself or podcast listener or are you a member of any clubs.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Big podcast listener. Less show watcher these days. I have a young son, and so it's much easier to pause a podcast and like, everything goes away. But if you're watching a show, if you pause the show, there could still be something up on a screen that you don't want your child to see. So I kind of switched over to podcasts when I had my son. But when I travel like on streaming in the background, it's just things like Forensic Files. So when I know no child can see it, I will watch it. But I think it's important because sometimes you'll see things in those shows that will make you think of something that might help you with your case. And so I have, you know, I had listened to a podcast that talked about this one scientific thing to examine that is related to a case we're currently working on. And so that's something that students are going to be doing this semester, is doing something very similar to what was done in this case, so I would not have thought about it otherwise. Then they also make references to scientific studies that can be super helpful too. There's a whole body of research associated with forensic science that can help us with individual cases, things like how much lungs should weigh versus how much they would weigh if the person drowned. That can be important in cases. And so that's another, you know, interesting part of working in cold cases that students start to access these, you know, journal articles and research articles to develop, you know, a justification for why they think something might be different…
[Theme music fades in.]
CAMELA HUGHES:
… So they aren't even thinking about the fact that they're doing applied research, but they're still getting all those skills that they can then translate, you know, and it's not all about translation to career, but, you know, I have worked with a number of students as they're working on job applications when they're trying to describe the kinds of things they did in the cold case analysis center. And they're like, “Well, what the heck do I say that we did?” And I can really say, “Well, the job that you're applying for asks you to have these skills, but you did some of those skills, right? You worked on this in this way. You did a bit of database management and entry. You know, you worked with large, complex files. You've worked on your organizational skills,” And that's something indirect that students get from the experience that can help with careers in addition to potentially helping with resolution of cases.
MARY HUNT:
Dr. Cam Hughes, thanks for being my guest today.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Absolutely. It was fantastic chatting with you about the Cold Case Analysis Center and the opportunities that it provides for students and families of victims and in agencies around the state.
MARY HUNT:
Best of luck with your important work at the center.
CAMELA HUGHES:
Thank you so much.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Camela Hughes is a visiting assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice within the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany. There she directs the university's Cold Case Analysis Center and oversees an internship program that aids investigative agencies and families in the resolution of cases while providing students with hands-on, project-based learning experience in forensic science, law and criminal investigation techniques. For more information on Dr. Hughes’s work and the Cold Case Analysis Center at UAlbany, visit the resource page for this podcast online at the dash engagement dash ring dot simplecast dot com. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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