Selena Gomez Spent Her Weekend Helping Solve a 38-Year-Old Cold Murder Case

Thirty-eight years later, I got a call out of the blue: “Mr. Sova, this is Chief Majoy with the Newburgh Heights Police Department.” I thought he was contacting me about something my brother Kenny had done because he was always in and out of trouble. But he wanted to talk about Kurt. We had a short conversation. I wanted to get off the phone. I wasn’t ready to deal with it. My wife convinced me to give him a chance.

I told him later that I would come in and talk to him and he told me about CrowdSolve. He had done his homework on it and was confident it could help. I left his office very optimistic. It brought up feelings about Kurt that I had stuffed away for years. It showed me that they were serious about trying to help his case.

When my brother Kenny died, he was dead inside our family home for ten days. I wanted to set the whole house on fire. There was nothing in the house I wanted anything to do with. Kenny had sold everything he could get his hands on, but among the mess, in Mom’s old closet, I found boxes and boxes of documents, news clippings, and notes that Mom had kept on Kurt’s case. I took those and left the rest of it to the dope dealers and copper salvagers.

Two and a half years later, when I went to meet with Chief Majoy, I took some of the boxes with me. His eyes lit up like he had just hit the lottery. I told him to take it all. I felt like I was getting energy from my Mom above and that all she had done had finally paid off.

I wish right now that my Mom was sitting here instead of me. She’s the one who deserves to be treated the way CrowdSolve and Chief Majoy are treating me. She never let go. Eventually everyone gave up on her. Kurt died in Newburgh. We lived in Cleveland. There was always conflict between the two jurisdictions. Nobody wanted to talk about it. I told her so many times “Mom, give it up, nobody cares about this anymore. Nobody cares about Kurt.”

Now I know that hundreds of people—complete strangers—have it in their heart to do something. It’s a way to do these things in the future. These people are nothing but optimistic about their ability to help and you can see it in their eyes that they want to help a total stranger’s family. How do you not encourage that?