Laurie Doan, a librarian in a Philadelphia suburban library, has helped cold case victims’ families reopen and research such cases. To date, she has worked on four unsolved murder cases in depth.
“Being a librarian means that I am a trained researcher so I have the time to really dive into things and go into history. So, all I do is help families find the facts of their case and find out a little more background,” said Doan.
A murder of a woman from a shotgun 5ft away. A murder of a 28-year-old man from a gunshot. A murder of a cook. Ms. Doan has been a driving force in trying to uncover the truth about such cases and passing along the information to the victim’s families who have reached out to her through her Facebook page called “Justice for Franklin Doan.”
“I had a lot of faith in the justice system but then my dad was getting older and nothing had been solved, nothing had been done. And I started to think well, because it's an older case and they haven't paid attention to it, which was true. So I started looking into it to bring justice to our family.”
Laurie’s desire to solve cold cases and give families closure stems from her personal experience. Four years before she was born, her uncle Franklin Doan was murdered. She could still see the imprint it left on her family: her grandmother, who was heartbroken at the loss of her 28-year-old son, and her father who fought for his brother's justice for 60 years until his death. They all had the same goal--Franklin Doan deserved justice and the family deserved closure.
“Peace runs deep and families deserve to know if there is something to investigate or a road to go down. It doesn't matter how old the case is. If it's two years, 20 years, or 40 years, these victims, they have a civil right to justice,” said Laurie Doan, Franklin's niece.
Franklin Doan was murdered on May 5th, 1957, in Tucson, AZ. The Tucson Police Department had misplaced the case file because it had been misfiled with pages scattered all over. “It was really messy. And the significance of the mess was really what made me lose faith in our case that they had the will to do what they could to solve it.” Around 2016, she reached out again to TPD, even offering to pay for testing the DNA but learned they had lost the evidence.
After pushing and contacting the department over and over again, the Doan family was able to re-open the case and get the police to contact the suspects. The investigations ended abruptly with the police leaving an Immunity Agreement with the suspect. On her Facebook page dedicated to her late uncle, she writes- “Justice is still possible for my dad’s brother who was murdered in 1957. Please support our effort.” One of the suspects has passed away but as long as the other one lives, Laurie has some hope that justice for her family can still be attained.
Having researched her uncle’s case so thoroughly, people would comment on her posts with their stories about unsolved cold cases in their families. Laurie would reach out to them, help them put a timeline together, and get as many facts as they could before they go back to the police or sheriff's department and demand justice.
One such person who Laurie helped was Dani Ruth Mercer. Ms. Mercer, an 80-year-old woman living in Spokane, WA was also the niece of a murder victim in Tucson in 1957. Her aunt, Ruth Martin was murdered under a Mesquite tree where she had been shot in the back of the head. The case was closed as a suicide case even though it seemed practically impossible for her to shoot herself in the back of her head from 5 feet away. After a comment on one of Laurie’s posts, Laurie reached out to her to help her put a timeline together and most of the case since the sheriff’s department had completely lost the case file. “Laurie encouraged me to open the case with the sheriff again. She gave me ideas and I went to the department, but when they said they couldn't do anything, my reaction was “Okay, it’s fine” but Laurie, she wasn’t willing to let them go so easily,” recalls Dani.
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Laurie put together a timeline of the events that took place that night and reached out to more people than the Sheriff even contacted. She reached out to relatives of Ruth's husband, after one of his relatives saw a Facebook post, and contacted her about the murder. She provided information as requested and was told they would talk to another relative (a possible witness) and get back. After a long time, there was no response from the relatives and Laurie asked the Sheriff's Department to interview the possible witness but that did not happen. Despite this, Laurie was still trying to help. “She just wasn't willing to take no for an answer. You know, she kept pushing the department to find answers.”
Laurie was able to get closure on some aspects of her own family's case and believes every family deserves to know the truth about their loved one. “The grandchildren or nieces or nephews of the deceased are the ones who care also by taking stories of anyone alive in the family from that generation so the story doesn’t die.”
Laurie is a reminder that even after several years, justice can prevail.
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