A Lakeland sergeant has decided to come out of retirement to take some of the workload off detectives investigating cold cases in the area.
Gary Gross started his career in law enforcement as a jailer at just 18 years old.
“At the time, I was the youngest jailer that the city had ever hired,” Gross said. His nickname was “Boy Jailer.”
“There were a lot of times on the evening shift, you were the only jailer and you had 100 inmates,” he recalled.
Gross went on to spend 32 years at the Lakeland Police Department, working on investigations as a sergeant and retiring as public information officer.
He retired four years ago, but recently got a phone call from Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor.
“He reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in coming back as a civilian cold case investigator and I said, ‘yes, absolutely’,” Gross said.
It’s a part-time job. Gross will be working 30 hours a week.
“There are times that I’ve jumped into one case and you want to keep going. You just don’t want to stop. It can certainly take on a life of its own,” said Gross.
Unlike detectives, Gross will not be taken away from his work by active investigations or violent crime calls.
“I’m not subject to any call-out. I’m gonna focus strictly on this case and again, work it as far as I can,” he said.
In his first two weeks on the job, Gross has zeroed in on one case from over 10 years ago.
He is not sharing which one, in order to protect his investigation.
“It involves 38 witnesses, and right now, I’ve spent the last two weeks reading all those witness statements, all the police reports,” he said.
In late 2019, DNA submitted to public genealogical databases was used to solve a cold case from 1981, the murder of a Lakeland mother Linda Slaten.
“It’s been rough for me my whole life. Not knowing who it is. Always scared to death I was friends with him,” Slaten’s son, Jeff Slaten said at a press conference announcing the arrest of her killer.
Last year, Joseph Clinton Mills pleaded guilty to the crime.
To Gross, it’s an example of how, with fresh eyes and cutting edge technology, cases can move from cold to solved.
“With Linda Slaten case, they didn’t know about DNA so it was perceived differently. Luckily they had some evidence that they could use so I’ll have to look at all that as well,” he said.