Machen makes cold cases a priority

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.