‘Cold Case Live’ brings investigations to Wichita’s Orpheum

A veteran of 30-plus years of solving cold cases is taking his investigations from the squad room to the stage.

Joe Kennedy, special agent for the Carolinas field office of Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, hosts “Cold Case Live,” whose first tour stops at the Orpheum Theatre this weekend.

Even though it’s produced and presented by an entertainment company, Kennedy said, “we are actually hoping to solve some cases and bring an end to the epidemic problem of cold cases in the United States.”

“It’s really hard to solve a cold case,” Kennedy said from a hotel room in Anaheim, before the start of the tour. “We go through some of the investigative steps: what we’re looking for as cold case detectives, how we get into the mind of the offender, how we’re able to read crime scenes for behavioral clues.”

The program is not only intended to showcase some of the best-known unsolved cases, including the Zodiac Killer, Golden State Killer and JonBenét Ramsey’s murder, but provide information about how cases are solved.

“We try to make the audience aware,” Kennedy said.

“There’s only three ways to solve a case,” he said. “We have to have physical evidence: fingerprints, DNA, hair fibers. The second way is witness testimony: Somebody saw it, somebody heard something. But that last way is to get them to confess. People don’t realize that about 15% of murders are solved with physical evidence, and that includes DNA. Thirty-five percent of cases are solved by witnesses, unfortunately witnesses change their story before the trial, they don’t show up to testify. A lot of things happen there.”

Once the case has narrowed to four or five suspects, Kennedy said, agents begin looking at them as individuals.

“Whose life has deteriorated?” he said. “It’s fascinating how quickly you’ll see that right after the murder they’ll start coping through either drug use or alcohol. They can’t maintain employment; they can’t stay at the same residence.”

Confessions, Kennedy said, are a part of human nature – confiding in a friend or relative during a discussion about regrets.

“One of the unique things about cold cases is that the suspects always tell somebody they did it. It’s a coping mechanism,” he said. “This is how we unravel old school cold cases, gumshoe style.”

Kennedy said “Cold Case Live” will also make audiences aware of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy, or FIGG.

FIGG was used – for the first time in Kansas, Kennedy said – to convict 53-year-old Ted Foy last month of a 2007 sexual assault.

“What people don’t realize is that just by submitting your DNA to one of those direct-to-consumer databases – 23 and Me, Ancestry.com – they can actually help solve a case,” he said.

FIGG can make a big difference in investigations, Kennedy said.

“We have over 300,000 unsolved mysteries in the United States. That’s just incredible, an astronomical number,” he said. “If you add all the sexual assaults and armed robberies, that number rises exponentially.”

From podcasts to TV series and even networks devoted to the subject, true crime has become a hot topic. Kennedy said he’s noticed changes on both sides of the crime tape.

“Everything’s been sensationalized,” he said. “Even as recent as five years ago, we in law enforcement were more parochial. We didn’t want to share anything. It wasn’t that we were trying to stonewall the public, it’s just the culture. With technological advances …, it’s just made people much more aware and it’s encouraging people.

“A lot of us old-timers were at first very reluctant,” Kennedy added. “Now we’re kind of losing that element of surprise. The citizenry solves cases. There’s all kinds of ways – crowdsourcing, GoFundMe pages to help agencies pay for DNA testing. It’s a tremendously different landscape.”

Americans have a “huge appetite” for true crime, Kennedy said, but cautions fans not to go overboard.

“We have to remember the victim and the victim’s family,” he said.

The NCIS veteran said the TV version of his career is true to life, and that the cases the first few seasons were based on real events.

“The unique thing about an NCIS agent that the public is now aware of is that we’re very different,” he said. “All of us are kind of tactical federal agents. We’ll find ourselves on another continent or another country and it’s literally us and some foreign police officials and we’re doing joint investigations with them.

“If you take out some of the theatrics,” Kennedy added. “Actually, it’s pretty accurate.”

‘COLD CASE LIVE’

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 200 N. Broadway

Tickets: $29.50 to $164.50, from the Orpheum box office, selectaseat.com or 316-755-7328