SALT LAKE CITY — It's almost impossible to talk about cold case homicides in Utah without bringing up the name Todd Park.
The Unified Police Department detective has won many awards and received numerous accolades over the past six years for his work with cold cases along the Wasatch Front.
Now, Park has another honor to add to his resume: he was recently selected as the newest member of the prestigious Vidocq Society, an exclusive organization of just 82 members from around the world who are considered the experts in solving cold case crimes.
"It's like the who's who of every type of discipline," Park said. "For them to pick me, I'm really just kind of dumbfounded."
The Vidocq Society was named after the groundbreaking 19th century French detective Eugene Francois Vidocq. Today, the crime-fighting group meets once a month in Philadelphia to consider cold cases from around the world that may have local law enforcement agencies stumped.
The group has a stringent criteria of what cases they will hear.
The group consists of experts from many different fields such as psychology, homicide investigators, prosecutors, doctors, coroners, FBI profilers and other forensics experts.
While Park, who has been an associate member of the group for several years, is humble about his selection to full-member status, his list of solved cases backs up his selection.
Among the cases Park and his cold case unit at UPD have solved: The stabbing death of 14-year-old Chris Mosier in 1993; the 1974 murder of BYU student Barbara Jean Rocky, a cold case that was 34-years old; and the 1991 killing of Kennecott security guard Bryan Patrick Ruff.
Park said it was with assistance from the Vidocq Society that he was able to solve the Ruff case.
In that case, he was able to talk to one of the society members who helped him look at the "psychology aspect of the killer and type of crime it was."
The idea is to get someone to look at a case differently than a detective might normally do, Park said. In the Ruff case, it "absolutely" helped, he said.
The Vidocq Society is currently exploring the idea of branching out to help with more than one case a month.
"The bottom goal is to get cases solved," Park said. "It's quite an honor for me (to be selected)."
The Vidocq Society was the subject of Michael Capuzzo's recent book, "The Murder Room."
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