U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ronald Machen’s last case as a line prosecutor was a cold case. The suspect Patrick Hewitt fled to England after beating his girlfriend Jacqueline Glover to death with a hammer and shooting her in the chest the summer of 1996. He was captured four years later after he returned to the United States under an alias, and federal agents at the airport discovered his true identity.
The case stuck with Machen, and after taking office last year, he created a unit within his office to do nothing but work the city’s unsolved homicides. With homicides down in the District compared with the 1990s, Machen said it’s time to focus on the cold cases.
“They are hard cases. You have to really get in the weeds to get a fresh look,” he said.
Machen assigned some of his best prosecutors to the unit, Vinet Bryant, Amanda Haines and Deborah Sines, who work closely with D.C. cold-case detectives. The team had proven that they could solve tough old cases. Haines successfully prosecuted the 1996 D.C. slaying of Shaquita Bell, even though her body had never been found, and then won a conviction in the notorious Chandra Levy killing.
Glenn Kirschner, the former head of the office’s homicide section, also works on these cases, but has other responsibilities as well. Another prosecutor specializes in the use of DNA and forensic evidence.
