County investigators hope federal funding can help efforts to solve a handful of unsolved homicides and missing person cases.

The Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office is in the process of writing a grant request for Congressional Community Project funding. It’s open to eligible local and state governments as well as some nonprofit organizations.

Tom Di Zinno, a senior investigator with the Unsolved Crimes Unit, said if obtained the much-needed federal funding will go toward a number of operational costs. They include additional testing; the expedited collection of new evidence; the return and internment of victims when and if identified; additional investigative aide to help manage data; and a county/regional database for use with interaction with state and national databases.

Funds would be managed by the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and available upon request from other county agencies investigating open cases.

As noted by Di Zinno, new forensic testing is available across a “broad spectrum of sciences” such hair, blood, DNA, chemistry, anthropology, paleontology and now genealogy.

“We are working on cold cases,” he said. “One of the issues in these types of cases is time. Witnesses pass, memories fade, victims’ families lose hope and pass.

“It takes funds, money to ensure these new tests are completed in a timely fashion to capture the data while necessary folks are available.”

Notable cases currently under review include the March 1976 disappearance of Judith Threlkeld in Silver Creek; the January 1993 homicide of Melina Juul in Jamestown; the December 1983 discovery of a still-unidentified woman shot to death in the town of Ellery; and the 2004 homicide of Yolanda Bindics near Jamestown.

Funds also will go toward launching the Chautauqua County Abducted, Missing, Murdered and Unidentified Women Initiative.

As noted by the Sheriff’s Office in its efforts to obtain the federal money, 14 women between the ages of 14 and 35 have been “abducted, murdered and are either missing or have been dumped in some of the remote areas of Chautauqua County” between 1972 and 2021.

Di Zinno said the mission of the Chautauqua County Abducted, Missing, Murdered and Unidentified Women Initiative is multifaceted: identify the unidentified; reunite the newly identified with their families; identify murder suspects with new evidence; and pay for costs related to new searches on missing women who have never been found.