Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit has recently played a pivotal role in solving a murder that had remained unsolved for nearly a decade.
The unit’s recent efforts in the case resulted in the arrest of 27-year-old Cameron Cheatham, who is now charged with the 2014 killing of Xavier Rollins, according to a press release from the Attorney General’s office.
On June 17, 2014, Rollins was found shot to death outside his apartment on College Drive in Texarkana, Texas.
Despite extensive witness interviews and DNA evidence collected at the scene of the crime, the investigation stalled in Texarkana, leaving many questions unanswered for years. It wasn’t until March 2024 that the Texarkana Police Department sought out the additional help and expertise of the Attorney General’s Cold Case Unit, which specializes in unsolved homicides and missing persons cases around the state.
The collaboration between the Attorney General’s office and Texarkana detectives helped expedite forensic testing on the case and provided more general resources to the department that led to Cheatham’s recent identification and arrest, according to Paxton’s office.
Paxton’s office launched the Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit in 2021 to support local law enforcement agencies in their efforts to investigate and prosecute unresolved cases, such as Rollin’s murder case.
The Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit received an additional boost in 2023 with a federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, with much of that funding allocated for more comprehensive forensic testing at no cost to police departments. Many police departments are struggling with the financial burden of investigative services, general understaffing issues, and high caseloads across Texas.
According to the attorney general’s office, by 2020, the U.S. had more than 270,000 unsolved homicide cases, with around 20,072 of those taking place in Texas.
Per the Dallas Police Department’s Crime Report, there have already been 151 murders in the city year to date.