Yakima Valley families cope with pain as loved ones' murders remain unsolved

Feb. 03--For Penny and Jerry Scroggins, the killing of their 23-year-old son Jared nearly a year ago on an east Yakima street remains an open wound.

The pain surfaces every day, triggered by otherwise mundane events, such as his mail arriving at their Cowiche home or just seeing his fishing pole.

But the pain is exacerbated, they say, because his killing remains unsolved and the status of the investigation is inactive since police say the leads have dried up.

"We just want to know why he was killed," Penny Scroggins said, fighting back tears as her son's urn sits on a mantel in the living room.

And they, like other families of homicide victims, want police to do more to bring their loved ones' killers to justice and are frustrated by what they say is a lack of communication.

Yakima police say, of course, that they would prefer to solve all their cases. But they say there aren't the time or resources to continue working old cases that have hit dead ends while also keeping up with the new cases.

"It's frustrating to us to have these cases go unsolved," said Capt. Jeff Schneider, who commands the department's detective division.

Eighteen of the 45 homicides in the city of Yakima from 2012 to 2018 are unsolved. The Yakima County Sheriff's Office reports nine unsolved killings out of 32 in the same time period.

The Yakima Police Department's homicide clearance rate went from a high of 90 percent in 2005, when the national rate was 58.1 percent, to 43 percent in 2015, when the national average was almost 65 percent, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports. In 2016, the city's clearance rate was 75 percent, compared to 59.4 percent nationally. A clearance is defined as those cases ending in an arrest.

Living with the pain

For some families, the passage of time does little to ease the pain.

Denise Johnson-Englehart was 17 when her brother, Leroy Johnson, was killed in Yakima in June 1974. Johnson's death was initially considered a hit-and-run, but Johnson-Englehart said further investigation showed he'd been beaten to death and his body staged to appear as if he had been hit by a car. His body was found on West Yakima Avenue between 28th and 29th avenues.

Johnson-Englehart said Yakima police had a possible suspect, but not enough evidence to move the case forward. She also says police told her that physical evidence had been thrown out over the years.

The case continues to eat at her to this day.

"In 43 years, you would think you'd get over it," Johnson-Englehart said. "But it doesn't happen."

She said watching staged fights in television shows is too much for her, because it reminds her of how her brother died. And she'll call police every so often to hear if there's any new information, especially after an arrest is made in another homicide.

Schneider said cases going back that far can be extremely difficult to solve, as evidence may get lost and witnesses die or have trouble remembering what happened decades ago.

A case will move to inactive status in roughly nine months to a year if no new information is forthcoming, Schneider said.

Jared Scroggins' case is one of those that has been moved to inactive status as investigators hit roadblocks.

Scroggins, who had worked in warehouse jobs and was preparing to attend a job-training program at OIC, was with friends in the area of North Eighth and D Streets around 10:40 p.m.March 5 when someone opened fire on him as he and a 17-year-old walked in the street, according to authorities. He died of a single gunshot to the abdomen.

But information was hard to come by, even with the Scroggins family offering a $5,000 reward for any tips that would lead to an arrest.

One thing that Jerry Scroggins and Schneider agree on is the department doesn't have the resources to thoroughly investigate every single homicide case.

"I think they're so overwhelmed," Jerry Scroggins said. "They don't have the resources to handle all the cases."

Schneider said some departments have detectives assigned to "cold case" units who can go back and review inactive cases and see if there are any new developments. But Yakima's detectives need to focus on the current cases, and can take on older cases only if there's time, he said.

Detectives share the family's frustration when cases cannot be closed, he said.

"It really eats at them," Schneider said. "Nobody has more determination to find (the killer) than they do."

Both Jerry Scroggins and Johnson-Englehart expressed frustration with what they called a lack of communication with detectives on how the case is progressing.

That's a common complaint with families of those killed in unsolved crimes, said Amelie Pedneault, an assistant professor of criminology at Washington State University. The lack of communication makes people think the case is not progressing or lacks importance to law enforcement, Pedneault said.

That leads to some families trying to investigate the crime on their own, she said.

She said researchers found a good solution is to have regular contact between police and the families, and even allowing them to see a case file so they know where the case stands.

Schneider said the department does not have the staff to assign someone to serve as a liaison between it and victim's families. Usually, that falls to the detective handling the case, and Schneider said they are limited in what they can say to avoid jeopardizing an investigation.

While the Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney's Office has a victim's advocate program, it works with families only after a charge has been filed.

And sometimes when cold cases managed to go to trial, the victim's families did not get the justice they hoped for, said Aaron Buchanan, a senior manager and senior investigator in the Victim and Witness Assistance program.

Due to the passage of time, prosecutors may not be able to pursue a full murder charge because there's not enough evidence to guarantee a conviction, and instead seek a lesser charge, he said.

In one such recent case, Barry Beckford was allowed to enter an Alford plea to second-degree manslaughter with a sentence of time served after jurors deadlocked in his original trial on first-degree murder charges. Beckford was accused of shooting his wife in 1997, and was arrested in 2015 after the case was featured on a television program highlighting cold cases.

An Alford plea allows someone to maintain their innocence while acknowledging prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them.

"Some families are open to the discussion," Buchanan said. "They have come to some kind of acceptance (of the situation)." But others feel that they were denied justice.

For the Scrogginses, they are continuing to advocate against violence in the city, and have taken in former gang members who want to go straight while they wait for a break in the case.

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