Last year, when retired V.I. Police Sgt. Liston Gumbs was shot and killed while trying to stop a robbery at the Shop-Rite Grocery in Lindbergh Bay, Gumbs was just a week away from returning to full-time duty as a charter member of an elite police unit whose mission it is to solve old crimes.
Now, almost a year and a half later, that same unit is keeping Gumbs’ memory alive as a cause, marking his killer as another target of the VIPD’s new Cold Case Squad.
In its second year now, the squad’s St. Thomas team has made three arrests and has three more cases open, including the hunt for Gumbs’ killer.
“It’s all about closure,” said a VIPD corporal, a member of the St. Thomas squad, in a recent interview with the Source.
The corporal, whose name the police would not disclose, is one of five officers that make up the squad devoted solely to investigating homicides that have drifted off the radar of the Major Crimes Unit or have gotten buried under the piles of new cases that arrive all too frequently these days—at least 53 new homicide investigations this year alone.
The idea behind the squad, said one lieutenant on the team, is to free up experienced detectives who can build on existing cases or second-guess the original detective work to start anew.
“The cases are coming in so fast that you never have time to concentrate on one thing,” the lieutenant said. “With this team we can take our time because, if something comes in, we don’t have to respond.”
So far the squad cautiously claims a nearly 50 percent success rate. They don’t boast, though; as elders on the force they say they’ve seen and heard too much over their long careers—and too many still needlessly die—for them to get cocky.
All but one of the cold case detectives are retired VIPD officers or detectives who were brought back to form the squad under then VIPD commissioner James McCall in 2008, when the team finally debuted that September.
Between them they have more than 125 years of collective experience on the force, said Melody Rames, spokeswoman for the VIPD and aide to current commissioner Novelle Francis. Upon his appointment and confirmation, Francis promised to nurture the Cold Case Squad and has made it a pillar of his program. So far, he has fulfilled his promise, and the squad has produced some encouraging results.
They say they choose cases based on new evidence—especially tips from the public—and based on fresh looks at old investigations where they scour the files for holes.
It’s not cliché, they said, that cases often dry up if solid leads aren’t found in the first 48 hours. Time can make it harder, but time can also give relationships a chance to shift and free up information on the street, they said.
Their first case was that of Stewart Elliot Sargeant, aka “Boy Blue”, who was found stabbed to death in his Estate Wintberg home on Dec. 11, 2003. Through close cooperation with other police departments and the use of new DNA technology, they tracked their suspect to Florida, where they found her serving time on unrelated charges. When she finishes her Florida stint next year, 28-year-old Crystal Irons faces charges of first-degree murder, weapons possession and a $100,000 bail in the Virgin Islands.
The unit’s second break came that same year in the case of Clement Smith Jr., who was also mortally stabbed and found near the 1982 Bar and Restaurant in lower Kronprindsens Gade in the early morning hours of December 15, 2001.
After receiving new information from the community, Cold Case detectives reopened that case in October 2008. After reinvestigating the case for nearly a year, they finally snatched Rasheed “Jimmy Mo” Wilson the following September. Wilson was eventually charged with second-degree murder.
Three cases, including that of retired Sgt. Gumbs, are still open on St. Thomas and 10 are under way on St. Croix, the detectives said.
The active cases on St. Thomas include that of Kenrick Mason, who was gunned down in front of the Cost-U-Less store in the Market Square East shopping center on Dec. 26, 2001.
“We need the community on these,” said the corporal, who, along with the lieutenant, served with Gumbs during his 20-plus years on the force.
He said his own son followed in his footsteps and became a cop in Puerto Rico, but like Gumbs, was killed in the line of duty trying to stop a convenience store robbery, in 1996.
“For me, I never got closure,” he said. “But bringing closure to others eases my mind.
“We get a lot of satisfaction,” he said. “I love my job.”
The corporal said that when he notified the mother of victim Clement Smith that he had found the man who killed her son, she broke down in joyous tears.
“She just cried and cried,” he said. “She was so relieved.”
He said the tears often start the moment they notify a family that the Cold Case Squad has reopened a file.
“The first thing we do is go to the family and say, ‘We’re back and we’re working it,’” he said. “They’re glad it’s reopened because they sometimes feel they’ve been abandoned.”
The other side of the work, said spokeswoman Rames, is that “it reopens old wounds. It reopens old feelings,” she said.
So far, the detectives say the community’s response has been warm and getting warmer. With more exposure, new information is called in every day, and the portfolio of homicide files the Cold Case Squad can tackle continues to grow, they said. A solid lead from a new tip or fresh shred of evidence is all they need to turn a cold case hot.
“The community has been helping us tremendously so far, and we encourage them to continue,” said the St. Thomas lieutenant before heading back to work.
The detectives said they will continue enlisting the public’s help as they reopen new investigations on killers who thought they’d gotten away. The more the community participates, they said, the more motivated the officers are department wide.
“We’ll go public whether they run or not,” said the corporal, holding up a reward poster for whoever killed Sgt. Gumbs.
“Like white on rice,” he said, “we’re comin’ down.”
Cold Case detectives can be reached by calling (340) 714-9843, (340) 774-2211, (340) 774-5610 or on their cell phone at (340) 642-8450.
