5 Questions with Camela Hughes, Cold Case Analysis Center Director

ALBANY, N.Y. (July 13, 2026) — As more colleges and universities across the county started to offer cold case programs, Camela Hughes saw an opportunity.  

“I needed something to frame my class around and so I was either going to do it for just me or I was going to publish it,” said Hughes, who, in 2024, became the director of the University at Albany’s Cold Case Analysis Center (CCAC), which aids investigative agencies and families in the resolution of cases while providing students with a hands-on, project-based learning experience. 

She opted for the latter route, co-authoring Cold Case Investigations for Colleges and Universities with Diana Orem, a forensic psychologist based in California. Unlike many other books in the field, it’s not written for practitioners but for undergraduate students from any academic background.  

Released by Cognella Academic Publishing in April, it covers everything from the ethics of cold case work to emerging methods like investigative genetic genealogy and the implications of wrongful convictions. 

We recently sat down with Hughes to learn more about why more cold case programs are popping up at colleges and universities and the impact they can have not only on students but also in the criminology field.  

What made you want to write this book?  

When I started directing the Cold Case Analysis Center, I realized that there's no way to center what everybody's doing. Folks are coming in with a lot of different backgrounds and when you think through the tasks you want students to do, there wasn't really a single book that had everything that I needed.  

There were a couple of textbooks that were written more for homicide investigators, but a lot of the stuff that they talked about in those would have been inappropriate for our students. For example, most of them have several chapters on how to interview. Our students shouldn't be interviewing people. That's not our role. Part of the concern with some of those books is that they were giving students a false expectation of what they'd be able to do through the course of their work. They do some very important things, but there are some things that, for legal purposes, we leave to the professionals that are developing a case.  

I also wanted to make sure it was approachable for all students, making sure there's some theoretical information in a very general sense that will help get them on the same page when they're having discussions with each other. All the criminal justice students will have had some exposure to criminological theory or victimology but, a French major may not have that background coming in. The idea is to talk about those sorts of things, but from the lens of how this might help you understand the case. 

The first chapter is ethics because there are examples of people who do this work unethically, so I thought it was important to start there. There’s also a conversation about the victims who get ignored, known as the “less dead”, which is my favorite chapter. It ends with wrongful convictions because if somebody is wrongfully convicted of a crime, that means the actual perpetrator hasn't been identified. So it's two parts of what the work could be. Part of what you're doing is trying to figure out who might have done it. It's a cold case analysis, but from a different lens. It's an important part of looking at the justice system.  

Why was it important to write for all undergrads, not only criminal justice students?  

Part of what we did in the process of getting this published was a pretty significant market review and analysis of what was out there. There are a lot of programs nationwide and internationally that really are trying to get into this work.  

I wanted the book to be general enough that anyone could pick it up and use it to try to do the work because one of the biggest things about our kinds of centers is that they're giving new viewpoints. If we only take criminal justice majors, then we might be missing viewpoints. Making sure it's accessible to all people with all backgrounds is what allows us to say, “You aren't coming in with these preconceived notions out of this class. What do you think?” And have some healthy debate about it.  

I thought it was more universal and could be applicable to other universities. There are a lot of these programs, so there was a need for it.  

What were some of the challenges that you had in writing this?

The chapter I had the hardest time writing was the criminology chapter because it could cover a lot of content but not necessarily a lot of information that's applicable to cold case analysis. Some of it you have to talk about because it's the foundation of the system that we have, and each concept builds on the other.  

Trying to think about, just from a pure writing standpoint, how to frame it and thinking about how to unify it into something that's actually readable was difficult. I woke up one morning and thought “I'm going to use Ted Bundy.” Because we know a lot about Ted Bundy. I was trying to condense hundreds of years of studies and theories into a chapter that also keeps the attention of the reader.  

Another challenge was the chapter on police investigations to help students understand what components of a police investigation were useful, and what might have been problematic for how we ended up where we are today. Also recognizing that what we would say, ‘oh my god, that was such a dumb move’ wouldn't have been a dumb move in the ’70s because they didn't know any different. It's about understanding how investigations work, how you get their evidence, and what evidence is actually usable in court. 

What led to the increase in these cold case programs? 

I think it's a combination of a few programs having significant success and a recognition that they can actually do beneficial work, while recognizing the benefits of project-based learning and a desire to try to create a meaningful opportunity for students. Sometimes project-based learning by nature has to be just an exercise. Cold case analysis is not.  

The nature of what we do contributes a lot to how much students are invested in it. It feels like they're actually making a difference even though we could be waiting years for results to come back. There's been an ongoing recognition that there might be some potential for these cases as new technology has come forward, but there's just a lack of resources within police departments. They have a very large job to do and being able to offer them some support with things that we can work on is really helpful. 

What surprises students the most about doing this work?  

How hard it is and also the time it takes. We get this impression nowadays, of this sequence of crime, video footage, arrest, trial, conviction, and even when you have all those things, it takes way longer than all of that.  

When you're reviewing some of this stuff, it's not as simple as “it was right there the whole time!” Most of these cases are cold because they're difficult to solve, not because somebody incompetent just missed something. The process takes longer than they realize. I think that's hard and the lack of finality can be tough.