State lawmakers are proposing legislation to help solve cold cases in Georgia.

Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens) and Sen. Randy Robertson (R- Cataula) each plan to file bills that would require law enforcement agencies release information to families after six years if the case is still unsolved. It would also allocate money in the budget to help the GBI or local agencies investigate them.

“Right now, the GBI is doing this with volunteer retired GBI agents.  It’s unfunded,” says Robertson.

He says it would also require all 159 counties to report the number of cold cases. There are 500 known unsolved murders in Georgia currently, but he believes the numbers are much higher.

“It’s my hope that the GBI will either be the one to solely investigate it or that the GBI partner-up with that law enforcement agency and in unison they’re able to look at the cases,” he says.

The two lawmakers were joined by families of two Georgia women whose cases have not been solved.

Tara Baker was killed in 2001. The 24-year-old UGA law student had been brutally beaten and murdered in her Athens apartment which was also set on fire. Her mother has had difficulty getting any answers over the years.

“I would love to do anything I can do to get new eyes on this case,” she says.

It’s been 32 years since 18-year-old Rhonda Coleman was found murdered in Hazlehurst.

“There’s not a day in 32 years that I don’t think about her,” says her mother, Gayle Coleman.

Both say they are members of a club no one wants to be a part of.

“People might say it’s been 30-something years… get on with it. No, you don’t get on with it, you just learn to live with it,” says Coleman.

It’s estimated the startup costs for a GBI cold case unit would cost $5.5 million and then require more than $2 million annually to keep it going.

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