In the early hours of April 6, 1979, my 20-year-old brother, John Donaldson, was murdered while sitting in his car outside our home in Harvard. My brother Jim found him in a pool of blood, slumped over the steering wheel, just a few feet from where my parents were sleeping. The car was riddled with bullets from a .22 rifle; one killed him on the spot. Police found spent shell casings at the scene, but the gun was never recovered.

The trauma of Johnny’s still-unsolved death set off a cascade of events that have haunted my family for the past 45 years: leads that went nowhere, infrequent updates from law enforcement, and a roller coaster of emotions. Every time state police thought they had a suspect, then went silent, hope turned to despair.

In 1984, a former Harvard officer, the last person to see Johnny alive, was briefly arrested for being an accessory to murder. But because the local police messed up the case by not following protocol, and their evidence was circumstantial, the case was dropped. The officer sued the city of Harvard for false arrest and won, further complicating the case.

An estimated 330,000 homicides remain unsolved nationally, according to statistics from Crime Accountability Project. Johnny’s murder is just one of 10,130 that took place in Massachusetts from 1965 to 2022. Of those, 6,139 — only about 60 percent — have been solved. The state has one of the lowest creditworthiness rates, along with Alabama, Michigan and Illinois.

Even with technological advances like forensic genealogy, breakthroughs in cold cases are rare, fittingly a report from The New York Times. Resources are limited, detectives juggle cold cases with active ones, and officers assigned to cases change over time.

Globe reporter Emily Sweeney admirably highlighted many of the state’s unsolved crimes in the series “Cold Case Files”. Victims’ families are often overlooked by law enforcement and frustrated by a court system that only offers support once a case is brought to trial. They are not allowed to see police files, even though those files have been gathering dust for decades. These families, whose cases account for more than a third of all homicides in Massachusetts, deserve more transparency and accountability.

“All cases have our attention,” insisted the Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr., who created the Worcester County Unsolved Case Squad in 2007. But, he told me last year, “If we put information in the hands of families and it goes into the public eye, it can jeopardize the investigation. We must protect the due process rights of suspects as we screen them.“

Loved ones lost to unsolved homicides are not the only victims. Their families are thrust into an emotional purgatory. They experience a unique kind of pain, one we know well—the complicated pain of never knowing who killed their loved one or why. Studies show they are at higher risk for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The tentacles of their grief destroy family relationships, trust in law enforcement, and their physical well-being. Psychologists say that healing from the trauma of a violent death comes from confronting the pain head-on. But how is that possible when families are forgotten as murder cases grow colder?

Over the past 45 years, our family has seen a revolving door of lead investigators assigned to our brother’s case. Many of them are detectives in training, soon to be promoted out of the cold-case team and replaced by newbies who need to be brought up to speed. In a meeting with the State Police and the district attorney’s office in 2023, we were greeted with empathetic nods, but the most basic questions were still unanswered: Was our brother’s killing accidental or intentional? Do the police have any big theories or suspects? And has there been any recent progress on Johnny’s case?

The hardest thing that human beings face is the unknown. Whenever there is trauma, we want to have a narrative, an idea of ​​what happened and why. For the families of the victims, it is an unfinished story and it compounds their grief. Better communication from law enforcement would help families deal with decades of uncertainty and pain and give them a narrative and some kind of peace.

If Johnny’s case really is unsolvable, as we suspect it might be, gathering cobwebs at state police headquarters, then open the files and show us what you’ve got.

Susan Donaldson James is a former reporter for ABC News and NBC News.

Anyone with information can contact Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the Worcester DA at 508-453-7589 or [email protected].