Detroit – When a murder case remains unsolved and detectives move on to other investigations, victims’ relatives are often left with a longing for answers that never seem to come and a pain that seems to have no end.
With two unsolved murders in her immediate family, Cynthia Evans has twice as many questions to ask and twice as much pain – but after years of waiting, the latest news has given her hope that she and her family can finally have closure.
Evans’ sister and brother were victims of murders 24 years apart. On April 9, 2018, Emma Jean Davis was found strangled in her Highland Park apartment, and Antonio “Blu” Hindman died after being shot once in the head on August 21, 1994. His body was found wrapped in a blanket in a Detroit alley.
On the 30th anniversary of Hindman’s death, Evans and her family learned that there had finally been a possible breakthrough in Davis’ eight-year-old case.
Highland Park police said last Wednesday that they had identified one or more suspects in connection with the murder and were working to submit an arrest warrant to the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office.
“Investigators have been working to gather evidence and identify suspects in this tragic case,” Highland Park police said in a news release. “As a result of their actions, the individuals of interest have been identified. We continue to work with the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office to complete tasks that advance the investigation and anticipate filing an updated warrant application in this tragedy.”
Evans called the news a “blessing” and said it was the first movement in the case in years.
“I’m glad to hear they’re finally doing something,” Evans said of her sister’s murder case. “We’ve been waiting a long time to hear something.”
Thousands of families in Michigan are feeling similar pain and frustration, even as efforts are underway to resolve some of the state’s unsolved cases.
In June, Governor Gretchen Whitmer allocated about $1 million of the $82.5 billion state budget for 2025 to cold case research. About $400,000 will be split between Western Michigan University and Northern Michigan University, both of which offer cold case research courses in which students help state police solve old cases.
An additional $400,000 is earmarked for MSP’s Special Investigations Division, “of which $250,000 must be used to support cold case investigations in Lansing,” MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner said.
Another $200,000 is earmarked for MSP’s forensic division’s work on unsolved cases, Banner said.
In Highland Park, Evans and her family are hoping the reopened investigation into Davis’ murder will lead to an arrest and charges. But even if investigators solve Davis’ case, Detroit Police Department officials have no updates on Hindman’s murder 30 years ago, meaning the family will continue to have unanswered questions until there is a resolution.
“That was my little brother,” Floyd Davis said of Hindman. “He was a good guy. He really didn’t bother anybody, so it was such a surprise that he was killed like that. We just want to know what happened, and nobody’s saying anything.”
April Milton said she fell to her knees when she learned of her mother’s death. She misses her mother and is frustrated by how little she has heard from authorities about the case.
“My mom and I talked on the phone for hours. She came by almost every day and we just sat and talked,” Milton said. “I think about her every day. … It’s been eight years and we still haven’t heard anything. We deserve to get answers.”
Thousands unexplained
Michigan had the 17th highest rate of unsolved murder cases in the United States in 2022, according to the most recent statistics available from the Murder Accountability Project. The project tracks unsolved murder cases using FBI crime data and information on nearly 40,000 murder cases obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that were not reported to the FBI.
In 2022, police in Michigan solved 375 of 692 homicide cases, for an unsolved homicide rate of 45.8%. In the 10 years from 2012 to 2022, there were 3,866 unsolved homicides in Michigan, 2,044 of which were in Detroit.
Detroit police solved 163 of the 308 murders in 2022, for an unsolved homicide rate of 47.1%, compared to a national rate of 46.4%. The highest rate of unsolved homicides in the United States in 2022 was in New Mexico, where 80% of homicides in 2022 were unsolved.
According to data from the Murder Accountability Project, there were 9,472 unsolved murders nationwide in 2022, and there were 78,856 unsolved murders in the decade between 2012 and 2022.
One of these unsolved murder cases is the case of 20-year-old Jacquez Anlage, who was shot and killed in his Jacksonville, Florida, apartment on October 17, 2020. The murder prompted the victim’s mother, Crystal Anlage, to take a job with Project Cold Case, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling and other services to grieving relatives of murder victims whose cases are unsolved.
“Families experience pain on a daily basis,” Anlage said. “They struggle with grief and uncertainty, they feel unheard and they feel their loved ones missing. The services that Project Cold Case provided me as a survivor before I worked here helped me a lot.”
The nonprofit employs counselors who are licensed only in Florida, but other services are available throughout the United States, including free support group meetings held monthly via Zoom.
“We make it a point to focus on our loved ones as people, who they were as people, not what happened to them,” Anlage said. “Our loved ones are not just statistics.”
Anlage said the monthly Zoom meetings are cathartic.
“They’re all survivors like me, and we come together to share our lives and talk about what we’re doing to advocate for our loved ones,” she said. “We really learn a lot from each other.”
Waiting and hoping
Northern Michigan University launched an unsolved murder course two years ago, in which students study unsolved murders that have occurred in the Upper Peninsula, said program coordinator Chris MacMaster.
“The State Police came to us and asked if we would be interested in implementing the program,” MacMaster said. “We have developed a permanent course offering and are running it as a course under the direction of the Department of Justice.”
Each class consists of eight students who go through old cases, he said.
“Sometimes the files are in old boxes, and the students digitize all the old documents. Then we give them to the state police so they can access them on their phones or laptops,” MacMaster said. “We tell the students they are not investigators, they are researchers.”
The number of courses is limited to eight students, but MacMaster said that thanks to funding from the state budget, the university will be able to offer two courses in 2025. Students must sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure the confidentiality of the findings of their research.
MacMaster said the students’ work has not yet led to the closure of any cases, but the school’s investigations have made progress in some cases.
“We found things where MSP said, yes, that’s an actionable lead,” MacMaster said. “They sent samples to the lab, but DNA takes a long time. Plus, they’re conducting interviews based on information we’ve provided.”
Emma Jean Davis’ family hopes recent developments in the eight-year-old case will bring results.
Highland Park police solved three of the five murder cases in 2018. One of the two unsolved cases was the fatal knife attack on 58-year-old Davis in her bedroom. There were no signs of a violent break-in. The apartment was ransacked and items stolen, police said.
Evans said she had not heard from her sister in the days leading up to the gruesome discovery.
“I talked to her every day, so I knew something was wrong, and I told my husband, ‘We better go there,'” Evans said. “So we drove to her building and had the manager open the door for a wellness check. I told my husband, ‘You go up there.’ I didn’t want to go into the apartment because I had a feeling something was wrong.”
A few minutes later, Evans received a call from her husband.
“He said he could smell the odor as soon as he opened the door. So he called and said, ‘You better come over here. It looks like someone broke in and their stuff is scattered everywhere,'” Evans recalled.
“But I didn’t want to go in there. We just waited for the police to come.”
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