In the early hours of April 6, 1979, my 20-year-old brother John Donaldson was murdered as he sat in his car outside our Harvard home. My brother Jim found him in a pool of blood, slumped over the steering wheel, a few feet from where my parents were sleeping. The car was riddled with bullets from a .22 rifle; he was killed instantly. Police found spent shell casings at the scene, but the gun was never recovered.

The trauma of Johnny’s still unsolved death set off a cascade of events that have haunted my family for the past 45 years: leads that led nowhere, infrequent updates from the forces order and a roller coaster of emotions. Every time state police thought they had a suspect and then went silent, hope turned to despair.

In 1984, a former Harvard officer, the last person to see Johnny alive, was briefly arrested for complicity in the crime. But because the local police had bungled the case by not following protocol and their evidence was circumstantial, the case was dropped. The officer sued the city of Harvard for false arrest and won, further complicating the case.

An estimated 330,000 homicides remain unsolved nationwide, according to statistics from the Murder Accountability Project. Johnny’s murder is just one of 10,130 that took place in Massachusetts between 1965 and 2022. Of those, 6,139, or only about 60 percent, have been solved. The state has one of the lowest credit ratings, alongside Alabama, Michigan and Illinois.

Even with technological advances such as forensic genealogy, breakthroughs in cold cases are rare, according to a report in the New York Times. Resources are limited, detectives juggle cold cases with active cases, and officers assigned to cases change over time.

Globe reporter Emily Sweeney admirably shed light on many of the state’s unsolved murders in the series. “Closed case files”. Victims’ families are often neglected by law enforcement and frustrated by a justice system that only provides support in cases brought to court. They are prohibited from consulting police files, even though those files have been gathering dust for decades. These families, whose cases account for more than a third of all homicides in Massachusetts, deserve more transparency and accountability.

“All cases deserve our attention,” insisted the Worcester County prosecutor. Joseph D. Early Jr.., who created the Worcester County Cold Case Squad in 2007. But, he told me last year, “if we put information in the hands of families and it becomes public , this may compromise the investigation. We must protect suspects’ due process rights while we examine them.»

Loved ones lost in unsolved homicides are not the only victims. Their families are plunged into emotional purgatory. They experience a unique type of pain that we know well: the complicated grief of never knowing who killed their loved one or why. Studies show they are at greater risk of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The tentacles of their grief destroy family relationships, trust in law enforcement, and their physical well-being. Psychologists say healing from the trauma of a violent death comes from facing grief head on. But how is this possible when families are forgotten as murder cases go colder and colder?

Over the past 45 years, our family has witnessed a multitude of lead investigators assigned to our brother’s case. Many of them are detectives in training, soon to be promoted off the cold case team and replaced by recruits who need to be brought up to speed. During an interview with state police and the prosecutor’s office in 2023, we received empathetic nods, but still no answers to our most basic questions: Was our brother’s murder accidental or intentional ? Do police have any main theories or suspects? And has there been any recent progress in Johnny’s case?

The hardest thing for human beings to deal with is the unknown. Whenever there is trauma, we want to have a story, an idea of ​​what happened and why. For the victims’ families, it is an unfinished story that complicates their mourning. Better communication from law enforcement would go a long way in helping families cope with decades of uncertainty and pain and give them a narrative and some sort of peace.

If Johnny’s case is indeed unsolvable, as we suspect, by collecting cobwebs at State Police headquarters, then open the files and show us what you’ve got.

Susan Donaldson James is a former reporter for ABC News and NBC News.

Anyone with information can contact Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the Worcester DA at 508-453-7589 or [email protected].