Many homicides and cases of missing people in the city of Flint, Michigan have gone decades without being investigated, leaving many families without answers or closure. The Flint Police Department reports that over two hundred homicides have gone unsolved since the 1970s; many of these murders are now considered cold cases. Since 1980, we've compiled some data on unsolved incidents of homicide and disappearance in Flint, Michigan.
Around 500 cases of missing people have been reported in Flint between 1980 and 2021, with about two-thirds of those involving adults and the remaining one-third involving minors. Some of these cases go unsolved for a long time, even though the vast majority are eventually closed.
There are now over 2,000 missing person cases in Michigan, and several dozen of those are in the city of Flint, as reported by the National Missing and Unidentified People System (NamUs). Adults, rather than minors, make up the vast majority of victims in these situations.
Almost 800 people were murdered in Flint between 1980 and 2021, and over a third of those murders have never been solved. Many of these incidents have not been resolved and are still being looked at.
The Murder Section of the Flint Police Department is in charge of looking into these incidents, but due to a lack of manpower, many of them go cold. Lack of physical evidence, unwilling witnesses, and a lack of information all contribute to the large percentage of unresolved homicide cases.
The Flint Police Department and other local groups have been trying to get more people interested in helping solve cold cases and get more funding for doing so. The agency has released a cold case webpage in 2019 with details on how the public can provide information and tips about unresolved homicide and missing person investigations.