BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — The Bakersfield Police Department (BPD) is asking for the public's help as they seek information on six unsolved murders.
Jarvis Naff Jr, Ahmaya Alexander, Luis Castillo Jr, Tony Charles, Destiny Freeman, and Jeremy Littlejohn were all shot and killed. Investigators believe the homicides were gang-related.
The suspects involved in the murders of these people have never been identified.
Anyone with information on these cases is urged to call the BPD at (661) 321-7111.
A deeper look at the subject shows that a recent historic rise in cold case murders has occurred across the country.
The Murder Accountability Project, a volunteer-run nonprofit organization, has gathered data from both FBI and police departments nationwide.
According to that data, the FBI listed nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter that went unsolved from 1965 to 2021.
During that period, California had the most amount of cold cases in the country by far, at 49,792 cases. That is almost 20,000 more than the unsolved cases in New York, which has the second highest number.
In 2021 alone, out of more than 14,000 homicides in the United States, over 7,000 were listed as unsolved.
