I was delighted to sit down with Sergeant Rob Jaberg of the Vancouver Police Department this week for an exclusive interview about his position as supervisor and manager of the VPD’s first ever cold case team. Sgt. Jaberg tells me that his team was formed in January 2026 and consists of three investigators – Jaberg and detectives Vivian Wu and Kevin Prasad. While the cold case team operates independently under the umbrella of major crimes, they continue to work closely with other units such as homicide, missing persons, sex crimes and forensics.
You can listen to this bonus episode of Cold Case Canada by clicking on the audio above, or click on the “listen on” dropdown menu at the top right of this page and links will take you to Apple, Spotify, Podbean or Goodpods. If you’d prefer to read, the Q&A is transcribed below. Thank you! Eve.
When I wrote Cold Case Vancouver in 2015 the VPD had 337 unsolved homicides on its books dating back to 1970. Is it safe to say the VPD would now be looking at more than 400 unsolved murders?
I would say it’s safe to say that. I can honestly say that I don’t have a specific number as we continue to go through our archives and we also are solving cases so our numbers are always fluctuating. You said in 2015 you were told that they date back to 1970, our oldest case actually dates back to 1945. It’s the homicide of Reginald Price. He was a taxi driver who was shot to death on October 1, 1945 and his body was found in the driver’s seat of his cab in the 4500 block of Quebec Street.
How many cases are you currently working on?
We are actively looking at 10 cases right now.
Are you able to tell me which cases you are working on?
The answer is very simply no. We intentionally do not identify the cases we currently have under review. Even though many years have passed, these remain sensitive investigations involving serious crimes, so publicly identifying a case could alert a suspect or affect our witnesses, retraumatize the families or otherwise compromise the investigation. Any decision to identify a case or ask for public assistance is carefully weighed against the need to preserve the integrity of the investigation.
What criteria do you use to choose these cases?
We look at what evidence remains, the condition of that evidence, and whether or not new technology or forensic testing can be applied in a way that was not previously available. We also reconstruct the history of the investigation by reviewing reports, notes, photographs, negatives, exhibits, video, digital data and previous investigative steps. This helps us identify any gaps or any unanswered questions and leads that we can still pursue.
What new tools can you apply to old cases?
We use a wide range of major crime investigative techniques and forensic tools. These include advances in DNA testing and where appropriate FGG. I’m sure you’ve heard that term before.
EL: FGG or IGG stands for forensic or investigative genetic genealogy. It’s only been around since 2018, but it’s proven a gamechanger in solving cold cases and identifying human remains. For example, when you spit into a tube and send it off to a site like Family TreeDNA to find out about your ancestry or look for a relative you didn’t know you had, and if you give your permission, your DNA goes into a database called GEDmatch. Investigators can then look for similarities between the DNA from a missing person or a crime scene and search for close family members on GEDmatch. Genealogists will then search through public records such as obituaries and social media, to build a family tree and narrow down a list of suspects for police. The most famous Vancouver cold case solved through IGG, was the identification of the two boys known as the Babes in the Woods in 2022.
Have most of the cold case files been digitized now?
I would say no files prior to about 2000 have been digitized. Basically we’re looking at digitizing almost all of our files. Even a file we did 10 years ago – there might be a detective’s notebook that is handwritten and not digitized and we want to drag that information into additional archives so we can look at it and mine it for information.
Each time a file gets opened up and looked at or investigated, it creates another volume of information for us because many aspects of the file are duplicated in that investigation and each one stands alone. We have to go through and identify what is duplicate, what is new and what is added on to a file and also try to find gaps and information there. So, if we have over 400 unsolved homicides, we are probably going to be going back and checking the digital review of all of those files.
That’s a huge job
Yes, it is
But I an imagine it’s going to make life a lost easier once it’s done?
It will help investigators in the future to be able to look back and go okay, it’s all here. Rather than I have to go back into the hard copy archives and pull it all up. We are also exploring how Artificial Intelligence tools may assist us in organizing large volumes of data we are creating as we digitize all this material, and to help us identify any potential connections or leads we may have in there.
How will AI help you?
We are hoping that AI will be able to make connections for us. For example, let’s say you have 100 contacts on your phone and each contact has 100 text conversations with each person, there’s a considerable amount of data there that you have to look through. But if we put that into AI and ask it to tell me how many times Eve talks about the weather today, it will be able to go through all that information and instanteously pull out all the keywords that we were asking it to look for. It’s a tool that will help us make connections. It doesn’t prove our case, we still have to verify the data, because as we know, AI still make mistakes. So we still have to go through and do a wholesome investigation to ensure the validity of the information that we get from it.
And that segues well into my next question – what are the biggest challenges for you in working a cold case in 2026?
That’s an easy one actually. As investigators our biggest challenge is the passage of time. Memories fade, witnesses and persons of interest may pass away, and physical evidence may degrade, become contaminated or be lost.
You mentioned that you were the first ever major Cold Case team, is there any reason why now?
While my team maybe new, the work is not. Many of these cases have been reviewed and reinvestigated over the years, sometimes more then once, I can honestly say, so far as I have been reviewing these files I haven’t come across one documented historic homicide file that hasn’t been reviewed at least once by other homicide investigators. Historically, homicide cases are routinely assigned to homicide investigators to review. However, when a new homicide occurs, the historic case will often have to be put on hold so our detectives can focus on and conduct a full investigation on the new case. If it’s a busy year for new homicides, very little focus or time will be spent on the historic case review, and that’s where the Cold Case team is different. Our sole focus is on the unsolved homicide case.
The VPD currently has 17 cases on the Cold Case website, do you have plans to add more unsolved cases?
Honestly, if I could, I would put all of them up there. And that’s my hope at some point in the future, that we can put all our files up there or at least acknowledge them. Every victim should have a voice.
How do you decide which cases will go up on the website?
We are reviewing cases to determine whether they are appropriate for the cold case website. We have to make sure that what the public sees on the site are verifiable facts or photographs or timelines or specific questions that investigators believe may generate useful information. At the same time, we need to very sensitive to the victim’s families
Is it kind of Like a Hail Mary where you are hoping that public information will come in and help move the investigation forward?
No, I don’t think it’s a Hail Mary. For a lot of our investigations somebody out there knows what happened. It might even be the suspect themselves and if we can convince somebody who is a witness or may know about the events or may know our suspects that know about the events, we certainly hope that they may come forward.
What are the most common misconceptions about cold case work?
That cold case work is not like television. Evidence does not go to a lab and come back in 10 minutes with the suspect’s photograph and address. You watch a lot of these streaming services and there are a lot of shows on murder where things are solved in an hour and that’s not the case. Our work is methodical, it’s often complex, our investigators may have a strong theory or a good idea of who is responsible but suspicion is not enough. Our job is to develop reliable evidence that can be tested and ultimately proven in court.
Sgt. Jaberg, is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to mention?
For us, one unsolved case is too many. We are here to give the victim a voice, to make the person who is responsible for the crime accountable, and to bring some sense of closure to the victim’s family. That’s what is really important for us on the cold case team.
As I talk to you, I really get the sense that you personally care about these cases, that you want to solve them. Do you take your job home with you?
We all do. It’s not just me. We’re all human. We all take our cases home. You wouldn’t believe how many retired detectives that called me since we started this team seven months ago now, saying ‘hey Rob can you look at this file. I’m retired this many years, but this file keeps haunting me. Could you take a look at it?’
I’ve heard that every detective has a case that keeps them up at night and it sounds like that’s true?
We do one hundred percent. I might be weeding the garden in the back yard and I’ll be thinking of a case that I haven’t solved yet. And the thing is, we really do care. I think that gets lost somewhere in the communication.
I agree. I think part of the problem is that you can’t talk about these cases, in case it jeopardizes a future court trial. But that can be hard for families to understand that, so they think that nothing is happening.
Everybody who is working on the cold case team has their heart on their sleeves. We want to solve these cases and even if we can’t go to court we want to be able to provide some closure to the family. We may not be able to tell them who it is, but we can say we have a belief of who the suspect is and we have evidence of who the suspect is, but it doesn’t meet the standard of proof for court.
If you have information about a Vancouver case that could help police, call the Homicide tip line at 604-717-2500, send an email to coldcase@vpd.ca which will be read by a homicide investigator, or phone the non emergency line at 604-717-3321. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
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