Solved cold cases in District of Columbia
1 documented case.
Pamela Butler
Pamela Butler, a 47-year-old computer specialist at the Environmental Protection Agency, was last seen on February 12, 2009, outside her home on Fourth Street in northwest Washington, D.C. Her boyfriend at the time, Jose Angel Rodriguez-Cruz, was a suspect, and cameras at her house recorded him entering and leaving, but police had no body and no concrete evidence and made no arrest for eight years. A court declared her legally dead in 2016, which allowed police to pursue murder charges. In early 2017 a cold case detective, Michael Fulton, re-examined the file; police said he found information suggesting a troubled history of domestic violence that, with evidence already collected, supported a first-degree murder warrant. Rodriguez-Cruz was arrested in Arlington, Virginia, on April 7 or 8, 2017. On October 6, 2017, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, said he had punched and strangled her, and agreed to show police where he buried her, for 12 years in prison. He pointed to the median of Interstate 95 in Stafford County, Virginia. Police searched on December 8, 2017, and then decided the remains could not be recovered. Her body has never been found. His first wife, Marta Rodriguez, disappeared from Arlington in 1989 after telling police he had assaulted and kidnapped her; remains found on I-95 in 1991 were identified as hers in 2018, and he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in her death in 2020.