Nearly 3,000 homicides unsolved in US Washington state: media

SAN FRANCISCO - There are still nearly 3,000 homicide cases that remain unsolved in the US state of Washington, according to local media.

Those unsolved cases happened from 1965 to 2019, and almost half of them in King County, local TV station King 5 reported Thursday.

Nationwide, approximately 270,000 homicides are currently unsolved, according to date from advocacy group Project: Cold Case.

The number reflects a national trend of declining homicide clearance rate, according to Murder Accountability Project, an organization that tracks unsolved homicide in the United States.

A decline in homicide clearance rate means the frequency of solving cold cases is trending downwards.

The clearance rate dropped steadily from 91 percent in 1965 to 54 percent in 2020, the organization's data showed.

There are many reasons the country is seeing the decline, and the primary reasons are an increase in random acts of violence and a more transient society, Ryan Backmann, founder of Project: Cold Case, told King 5.

"And nowadays, there's a lot more random acts, a lot more kind of code of silence, not coming forward when you have information or maybe taking justice in your own hands," he said.