Cold case 2024-2025 in Meaningful

Through a state recommendation a young woman contacted me. Making this shirt it was a cold case involving a suicide and drug overdose. It was also possibly 2 murders and a slew of other charges. The woman mainly wanted closer from her mothers death 3 years ago. It was closed as a suicide but the daughter didn’t think so. I took everything with a grain of salt. She wanted me to look into her step father, bank transfers involving the mafia, life insurance fraud and see if anything was related to a cousins suspicious overdose around the same time. I started with the basics. Emails, names, numbers, addresses… I got a copy of death records and autopsies. I contacted the sheriffs department for the county the suicide happened. The way the case was handled didn’t quite fit standard procedures, felt rushed and ignored. Digging… I looked into the step father/husband and cleared him. The daughter thought he murdered her mom. Yes he didn’t handle the death well and did shady things immediately following the incident but nothing illegal and his timeframe, bank transactions and other things didn’t match up correctly with accusations from the daughter. I uncovered some more relatives and numbers and read/watched the old news coverage from everything including the cousins death. I stumbled upon a court record from the deceased mother involving her taking out a loan from a loan company, defaulting 6 months later and losing in court. This was new. More later discoveries included several family members also taking loans from the same company the same year, all defaulting and losing in court the same time. Coincidence? None of this was known my client. I continued investigating the loan company and court battles. The company turned out to be terrible with a long negative record that matched the statements of the harrasment, phone calls, shady emails, death threats and so on of the mother. Also the weird western union transfers to Mexico, matched with the loan company. Things continued to explode. I found the mothers brother and his wife were involved with owing money and problems with the loan sharks and started making connections with the cousins death. I ran into walls eventually with western union but there was security footage and recites I viewed. Eventually what I discovered after many twist was the mother had been telling the truth about people harassing her, coming to the house, death threats… but it wasn’t the mafia it was the shady loan company sending their thug family members out. The mother became frantic and started taking a lot of anxiety medication I found out including heavy marijuana use. The paranoia combined with abusing medication with weed and the constant threats to her family matched up with her suicide, including letters she left to the daughter that helped put the pieces and clarify things. Also looking into the loan company I discovered the family who ran it had records and arrests, some active. Connecting the cousins overdose… she didn’t do drugs to begin with. I followed the trail connecting the brothers defaulted loan and his own cases involving losing the house, assault charges and the death of his daughter (the cousin). The heroin found with the daughters body matched with what I found out about the loan business and the arrests. Turns out the owner and his nephew of the loan company, who were involved with the court cases I found earlier matched with the cousins death and mothers suicide, basically the loan company owner nephew kidnapped the cousin for non payment and made it look like a drug overdose, later dumping the body but was caught. What wasn’t made public was he was arrested for something else(speeding) as to not draw attention and the uncle and were being held for information on a larger case involving drug trafficking to Mexico and the FBI. Dang, I stumbled onto too much. In fact soon after I started making official searches and reports I received a warning letter from the FBI to back off basically. I had to drop the case there. I did help my client find closure and it was extremely emotional when I told her the real story of what happened and what was currently happening. Her mothers suicide wasn’t in vain and she was probably trying to protect the family from the loan sharks by keeping info to herself and the guilt of the cousins death because of the loans taken out. Also that the loan company was being monitored by the FBI with the suspects in custody to help take out a main drug highway to Mexico. She was blown away and comforted knowing the FBI was watching her and the remaining family too. It’s wild to uncover something so large and connect the dots to a major case. You never know what’s behind the scenes from what you see in the media and real life. I’m happy I helped her and glad I stopped where I did.