{"id":80681,"date":"2017-05-11T13:34:12","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T17:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=80681"},"modified":"2017-05-10T20:53:45","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T00:53:45","slug":"morrisville-state-college-criminal-justice-students-assist-with-1999-cold-case-murder-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=80681","title":{"rendered":"Morrisville State College criminal justice students assist with 1999 cold case murder investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Students who worked on the cold case, from left, Honor Williams of Truxton; Nicole Allen of Canastota; Shelby Scholefield of Morrisville; Erin Brown of Cragsmoor; Mason Craine of Red Creek. Absent from the photo are Courtney Gaines of Baldwinsville and Gregory Puzo of Brooklyn. Photo courtesy Franci Valenzano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shelby Scholefield lined up diagrams that illustrate the relationships between a male murder victim and people he may have known.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ones close to the center, the closer they are to the victim,\u201d said Scholefield, one of seven criminal justice students from Morrisville State College who recently assisted the Chenango County Sheriff\u2019s Office with a cold case murder investigation.<\/p>\n

In July of 1999, police found 38-year-old Thomas \u201cTomcat\u201d L. Francisco dead at his residence on One Eye Road in the Town of Pharsalia, located east of the city of Norwich. According to police reports, he had\u00a0several gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n

Francisco\u2019s murder has never been solved, but MSC students acting as law enforcement investigators and detectives were eager to generate new leads in the 18-year-old cold case.<\/p>\n

Guiding them were Mark Blakeslee and Gregg DeLuca, both assistant professors of criminal justice at MSC and retired police officers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advantage is to have a fresh set of eyes reviewing the case,\u201d DeLuca said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese students have learned a lot from the criminal justice program and we could see the evidence of their learning while they were investigating this case,\u201d\u00a0Blakeslee said.<\/p>\n

Students handled the case file and desk notes, but not the physical evidence. Among their tasks were\u00a0reviewing, organizing, tabbing and indexing volumes of police reports, crafting evidence lists and writing case summaries.They also reviewed the medical examiner\u2019s reports, lab tests, statements and crime and forensic reports from evidence analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went through all of the leads and did a lot of reading,\u201d Nicole Allen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to come up with a lead or a different way of looking at the case,\u201d Mason Craine said.<\/p>\n

The project offered the students hands-on investigation experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis opportunity allowed me to see how an investigation works from the inside out,\u201d Courtney Gaines said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s different listening to lectures and hearing what you do,\u201d said Scholefield, who wants to be an FBI profiler. \u201cThis allowed us to apply what happens in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMorrisville State College has opened the door to so many experiences such as this one,\u201d Gaines said. \u201cThis has been one of the most monumental experiences of my collegiate career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students who worked on the cold case:<\/p>\n

Honor Williams of Truxton; Mason Craine of Red Creek; Erin Brown of Cragsmoor; Shelby Scholefield of Morrisville; Nicole Allen of Canastota; Courtney Gaines of Baldwinsville; and Gregory Puzo of Brooklyn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shelby Scholefield lined up diagrams that illustrate the relationships between a male murder victim and people he may have known. \u201cThe ones close to the center, the closer they are to the victim,\u201d said Scholefield, one of seven criminal justice students from Morrisville State College who recently assisted the Chenango County Sheriff\u2019s Office with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23813,32,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-crime","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-kZj","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Cold-case-students.jpg?fit=3600%2C2363&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}