Cold Justice
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she’s the most prepared person you’ll ever
meet,” Bruno says.
After graduating from Tollgate High
School and going to college “on and off,”
Cormier says, to study criminal justice,
she worked at an insurance agency. The
day she was notified of her acceptance to
the police academy was the day she gave
her two-weeks’ notice. She graduated the
academy two days before Christmas in
1993 and immediately joined the Paw-
tucket police department — never actually
having been to Pawtucket or many other
places in her birth state.
“It’s hard to believe, I know,” Cormier
says with a laugh, acknowledging Rhode
Island’s fabled parochialism. “I’d never
driven through the state before coming to
Pawtucket. I was twenty-three, but before
that I had no reason to be in this part of
the state.”
She worked her way up, loving the com-
munity, the cops, the camaraderie. She
spent twelve years on patrol working with
seasoned officers, learning, yearning for
more, making detective, working juvenile
crimes, fraud, then major crimes, including
murders. She earned a criminalist certifica-
tion at the University of Rhode Island’s
crime lab in 2014.
A few years ago, she was contacted by
a Warwick detective investigating the cold
case of Wendy Madden, murdered in Paw-
tucket in 1991, two years before Cormier
became a cop. Cormier was Facebook
friends with old classmates who knew a
suspect in the case, and when the Warwick
cop investigating it found out Cormier was
in law enforcement, they traded thoughts
on the case.
“From there, my passion for cold cases
grew,” Cormier says. “I looked at old pho-
tographs, interviewed people, talked to
other detectives about it.”
In March of 2018, she spoke with supe-
riors about starting a cold case unit, and
her idea of using a deck of victim cards as
a way to trigger old memories, as she’d
seen done in other places. The command
staff gave her the go-ahead.
“We gave her the leeway and resources
and said ‘take the ball. If you can make it
happen, make it happen,’ ” says Pawtucket
Police Chief Tina Goncalves. “She made
it happen.”
One way she did, Goncalves says, was
60 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l
JANUARY 2020
finding a tiny space in Pawtucket City Hall
to make her own, away from the twenty-
person detective unit at the police station,
an indication of Cormier’s drive.
And the community is noticing, the chief
says. One day while Goncalves was off duty
in a local store, a woman approached her.
“She told me her niece was in that deck
of cards and she was grateful,” Goncalves
says. “Sue’s tenacious, and her determina-
tion will make her successful. There is no
doubt cases will be solved.”
Ryan Backmann started the Project: Cold
Case database in Florida in 2015 a few years
after his father was murdered in 2009. It
is a case that remains one of Florida’s 15,000
unsolved homicides. Cormier reached out
to his organization and they’ve stayed in
contact. He cites her compassion as a key
to her motivation, saying that many cops
stay detached and compartmentalized from
the victims and families.
“Sue is so balanced, she understands how
important these cases are and that the
families deserve answers,” Backmann says.
“I’m impressed with her commitment, the
cards, embracing the media, not things law
enforcement is usually comfortable with.
She’s proactive, going on TV, distributing
the cards. She’s taken it up a notch and
raised the bar. Rhode Island and victims’
families are lucky to have her.”
Cormier’s modesty and desire to be no
better than anyone else sticks out, says
Cumberland Detective Peter Sweet, a mem-
ber of the Cold Case Task Force.
“She’s very even keeled; she’s been on
the job more than twice as long as I have
but she never comes off as ‘I’ve done this
longer than you, come talk to me when
you’ve been at this as long’ — that air that
some have,” Sweet says. “She doesn’t have
to be tough; she has a commanding pres-
ence. It’s not intimidation, it’s the profes-
sional way she carries herself.”
Dr. David Keatley is an international
consultant in criminal investigations, cold
cases and behavioral profiling in Australia.
He and Cormier met at a conference in
Boston and became kindred investigative
spirits and peers. Keatley comes to Rhode
Island several times a year to attend con-
ferences and seminars with her, when
Cormier says they turn her family’s living
room into a war room, spreading out photos
and evidences from cold cases to discuss.
“She and her task force are so focused
and eager to take in advice, like maybe
something they missed,” Keatley says.