State deals prison inmates a better hand

[Scurrilous]

Source: Miami Herald

Florida hopes to get inmates involved in the game of solving murders and finding missing persons.

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"In a macabre game of cold-case poker, top state law enforcement officers on Tuesday announced a new way to try to crack old cases -- by giving prison inmates 100,000 playing cards of unsolved Florida murders and missing persons.

The state hopes the starved-for-entertainment inmates at 129 state prisons will not just play, they'll start talking to one another. And pretty soon, officials hope, someone will tip off investigators.

"Using these cards is like interviewing nearly 93,000 inmates for new leads," prison chief Jim McDonough said. "Criminals are connected to other criminals. They know each other, know each other's habits and share common contacts so that often they are more than prepared to provide information that would allow us to bring other criminals to justice."

The cards cost the state $80,000 and were printed by Plant City-based Effective Playing Cards, which based the cold-case concept on playing cards the United States distributed during the Iraq invasion.

The cold-case cards were first distributed in Polk County jails, where they led to the arrest of two others connected to the May 2004 killing of a man named Thomas Wayne Grammar, who was the three of spades. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent took the idea to his higher-ups and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum."




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