Six black girls were brutally murdered in the early ’70s. Why was this case never solved?

Retired D.C. police detective Romaine Jenkins with case files in her home. (Pete Marovich/For The Washington Post)

By Cheryl W. ThompsonMay 22

Retired D.C. police detective Romaine Jenkins doesn’t remember many of the cases she handled during her four years in homicide. It was the late 1960s and early ’70s, and the unit was overwhelmed with murders. She was in her 20s then, and the first woman to make it to homicide. She’d been sent there by the department’s top brass to investigate baby deaths, including abortions, which were illegal at the time. Some of the male detectives, particularly those who were fathers, didn’t particularly like investigating the deaths of children. Such cases hit too close to home. But Jenkins, then single and childless, didn’t mind.

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