ALCOA, Tenn. — Alcoa Police said they're already receiving new leads in a 34-year-old murder case after it was featured on a national television show.
Detective Woodrow Hughes said people have called, left voicemails and sent emails after Oxygen Network aired a Cold Justice episode featuring the case of Emmaline Croft. She was 80 years old when she was found dead inside her home on Garfield Street in Alcoa, on Dec. 8, 1991.
Police said she was stabbed and raped, and that they found a large amount of blood near her at the crime scene. They also said a large knife and a bent fork were near her body. Although police looked into suspects previously, they didn't arrest anyone.
"You cold call people all day, every day, working cases like this," Hughes said. "Now we're getting calls to us, and that's definitely a great feeling — that people are out there and they're seeing it, and wanting to give us the information that they have. "
Hughes said being featured on the show was a great experience, and he appreciates the extra help in solving this crime.
"It was a great experience, and everyone we worked with did a phenomenal job," Hughes said. "They were very good at guiding us at what we needed to do and helping us with the investigation. They were very knowledgeable on it."
Ron Schroeder, a retired police officer, has been re-examining Croft's case over the past few years and sees it from a new perspective. He said it was his idea to get in touch with Cold Justice because he said the resources for crime investigations these days weren't around in the 1990s.
"There's different kinds of genetic testing and genealogy," he said. "And there's other testing with DNA and with blood, and everything like that. It's so advanced that it needs a re-boot or a re-investigation."
Cold Justice's team joined both Schroeder and Hughes to re-examine the case, re-create the crime scene and give it a new set of eyes.
"There's a lot of information through the investigation myself and Detective Hughes found out," Schroeder said. "Then when Cold Justice got involved in the case, also, they gave us a lot more availability to do some of the testing and traveling we wanted to do, to interview different suspects and witnesses."
Anyone with information on Croft's murder can call Alcoa Police at 865-981-4111.