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Cops Crack Cold Case from 1999, But Won't Be Able To Lay a Finger on the Alleged Killer

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Thanks to the hard work of cold case detectives, the 1999 murder of a Colorado woman has finally been solved.

Unfortunately, the alleged killer of Jennifer Watkins will never face justice on this earth.

Watkins was a 23-year-old working as a dietary aide at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs at the time of her death, according to Fox News.

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In November 1999, Watkins disappeared at work before the end of her shift. A few days later, police found Watkins’ body in the hospital stairwell, bound with duct tape and wrapped in plastic. She had been raped.

On Dec. 9, the Colorado Springs Police Department cold case detectives reported a breakthrough in the 21-year-old case.

Detectives had uploaded DNA from the crime scene to a public genealogy website and successfully identified the killer — Ricky Severt, a Memorial Hospital coworker.

Unfortunately, Severt won’t have to answer for his alleged crime.

In 2001, he died at the age of 31, due to a traffic collision near Colorado Springs.

“After all these years, we are grateful to finally give Jennifer Watkins’ family the answers they deserve,” Police Chief Vince Niski said.

Niski also noted that the cold case detectives who worked Watkins’ case never lost “sight of what was most important: finding the truth for the Watkins’ family.”

Anti-police rhetoric and distrust in law enforcement has largely defined the year 2020.

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Led by the radical Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, calls to defund the police are now commonplace among American progressives.

The work of these Colorado Springs cold case detectives is further evidence of just how valuable police resources are.

When leftists defend the notion of defunding the police, they often describe it as a form of “redistributing” money to various social programs.

Do you think police departments should be defunded?

These liberals imagine that the only consequence of this action would be fewer cops on the streets, somehow deemed as a good thing in the current political climate.

Setting aside the fact that fewer police officers on the streets does, obviously, make streets less safe, it should be noted that cops aren’t just out there busting heads for ongoing crimes.

Many are paid to actively work loose ends on decades-old cold cases. Less funding for police departments across the nation means less funding for cold case detectives.

Police officers are seeking a pursuit of justice beyond time.

Stripping their funding won’t only make the world less safe — it will also rob many families, like that of Jennifer Watkins, of finally getting the answers they deserve.

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Michael Austin joined The Western Journal as a staff reporter in 2020. Since then, he has authored hundreds of stories, including several original reports. He also co-hosts the outlet's video podcast, "WJ Live."
Michael Austin joined The Western Journal as a staff reporter in 2020. Since then, he has authored hundreds of stories, including several original reports. He also co-hosts the outlet's video podcast, "WJ Live."
Birthplace
Ames, Iowa




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