Columbia police have 17 unsolved homicide cases involving 19 victims, with some dating to 1985, according to ABC 17 News. The cases illustrate how investigators may have to reconstruct violent events from surviving physical evidence when witness accounts are incomplete or inconsistent. Bullet holes and bullet paths can help establish what happened years after a crime.
Inconsistent witness statements, a lack of admissible evidence and limited or no video footage have complicated some of the older investigations, according to ABC 17 News. The report said physical evidence, including bullet holes, can help investigators test witness accounts rather than relying on memory alone.
Bullet Holes Become the Star Witness
Columbia police evidence technicians receive specialized training to analyze shooting trajectories and estimate where a shooter may have been positioned, according to the ABC 17 report. That work can help investigators reassess an old scene, although the available evidence may still leave important questions unresolved.
The investigation into Dominick Roland illustrates the kind of reconstruction involved. Roland, 25, was found with a gunshot wound in a car that had crashed near a gas station in the 3800 block of Range Line Street around 2:55 a.m. on January 26, 2019. Roland's twin brother, Darius, was driving him to a hospital when the crash occurred.
Fifteen Minutes, Three Bullets, One Crash
Investigators believe Roland was wounded about 15 minutes before the crash while riding in the back passenger seat of a friend's car, according to ABC 17 News. Police records documented apparent bullet holes or defects in the front passenger fender, the rear hatchback between the fender and license plate, and the rear driver's-side bumper. Investigators found that one of three bullets traveled through the rear passenger seat and struck Roland in his lower left side, while witness statements described a drive-by shooting.
Mid-Missouri's Cold Case Files is set to air more on the Roland case Monday after the game on KMIZ, the ABC 17 News report notes.
A Death Nearly Two Years Later, Still Unresolved
James Hundle's case offers less publicly disclosed evidence. Hundle, 52, was found dead with a gunshot wound in the 4800 block of Marble Cedars Drive on the morning of October 13, 2021. Columbia police criminal investigator Lt. Matt Gremore told ABC 17 News that evidence showed the fatal shot was not self-inflicted. Police have not disclosed whether a gun was recovered or how many times Hundle was shot.
Resources for Revisiting Cold Cases
Columbia police can seek assistance beyond their own case files. According to the Missouri Attorney General's Office, its Cold Case/SAKI Section supports law-enforcement agencies statewide investigating unsolved homicides and other violent crimes and collaborates with the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Lab. The Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Laboratory says it provides firearms, toolmarks, latent-print, trace-evidence, DNA and CODIS services to Missouri law-enforcement agencies. In a separate Columbia murder from 2000, Sentrell Wilson was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on February 24, 2026.
Older Columbia homicide cases are often hampered by exactly this combination — inconsistent accounts, thin admissible evidence and little to no video footage. Police were involved in investigating a separate 2019 Columbia double homicide. For a stack of cases now numbering 17 and going back four decades, that means the work of matching a bullet's path to a witness's memory isn't finished — it's still underway.
