After the detectives leave and reporters stop calling, after the funeral is over and friends and neighbors have expressed all the condolences they have to give, there’s an attempt to return to life.

But the experience of losing a loved one in unexplained circumstances isn’t one that’s easy to shake. For the families and detectives tied to Frederick County’s unsolved murders, peace and peace of mind are forever elusive.

The Frederick Police Department lists 11 open homicide cases on their website. The Frederick County Sheriff's Office lists three.

Joshua Crawford

Joshua Crawford liked to draw and paint. He liked to fish and would make his own flies. He was a mama’s boy. He called Horman each day and came over for meals.

He especially liked chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream — the birthday dessert Horman planned to make for him when she received the call that Crawford had been found dead.

He was found beaten and bound with duct tape in his Kingsbrook apartment. It was June 2, 2003 — his 21st birthday.

Horman doesn’t remember much from the days following Crawford’s death. She was so distraught, her doctor placed her on medication.

One of the few things she has to remember the day of Crawford’s funeral and burial is a photograph. In it, she stands in the green grass of Clustered Spires Cemetery, wrapped in her mother’s arms, her face turned toward a mound of earth and flowers.

“I don’t even remember this picture being taken,” she said.

She gained weight. She couldn’t pay her bills. Not because she didn’t have the money, but because she couldn’t bring herself to sit down and write out the checks.

“Our credit got really bad,” she said. “I told companies they needed to call me and get on me about it because otherwise they weren’t going to get paid.”

The nights were the hardest, she said. When the daycare she runs out of her home closed and the children left, the quiet of the house was painful. There was no distraction to keep her occupied.

In the wood-paneled dining room of her Frederick home, she maintains a shrine for Crawford. His baby shoes are there, along with a drawing he did of the view from his apartment window and an old Mother’s Day card. A photo of him in his orange, white and blue Little League uniform. Another in the bathtub, a smiling little boy surrounded by soapy water.

“I know he did drugs,” she said. “I know he wasn’t perfect, but he was a good kid.”

Her other sons found different means to grieve. One turned to alcohol and the other had an emotional breakdown five years after Crawford’s death. They try to work together as a family. At dinners and holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, they like to share their favorite memories of Joshua.

Assigned duty

Body counts are inherently misleading, said Lt. Clark Pennington, commander of the criminal investigations division of the Frederick Police Department. There are always victims you don’t bury, that walk around deadened by the loss and burdened by uncertainty.

Every detective is assigned at least one long-term case in addition to their regular caseload in the criminal investigations unit, Pennington said, and the officers work to maintain a support system.

They watch each other to ensure that a particular case doesn’t begin to wear down an officer.

They find it helps to rotate the cases among officers, Pennington said, both for the emotional health of the detectives and the case’s progression.

They also make sure to reach out to the victim’s family several times a year to provide updates.

“This victim, and we hate to call them victims, has a family that deserves closure,” Pennington said. “That’s what motivates these guys. They’re looking to close them.”

Tracey Lynn Kirkpatrick

Deonda Kirkpatrick brought a bouquet of yellow daffodils; a color that would complement the plum leaves of her sister Tracey’s memorial tree outside Brunswick High School.

In 1989, Tracey Lynn Kirkpatrick, 17, was found stabbed to death in the back room of the Frederick ladies’ clothing store where she worked. No motive has been discovered. No arrests were ever made.

Deonda said she's a talker. Her personal form of therapy is talking about it to those she meets, and it serves a dual purpose: she can search for leads, evaluate acquaintances as possible suspects. She’s been doing it so long, it’s become a habit.

She was 19 when they found Tracey’s body. Jack, Tracey’s brother, was 21. Angie, the youngest, was 16.

The family had been living in Point of Rocks for only about 2 1/2 years. It was a shock to the community and the family — she was a nice girl, they said.

Tracey liked to write poetry. She was quiet and thoughtful. She cared about her schoolwork and her two jobs and was saving money for college. Yet, her murder was so violent and sudden.

Diane and Billy Kirkpatrick, Tracey’s parents, kept their surviving children on a tight leash afterward. Deonda and Jack moved back home. They called each other constantly to check in and if they weren’t home when Billy estimated they should be, he went looking for them.

And when Deonda Kirkpatrick had her two children, she never felt comfortable with them out of sight.

“I don’t know if this guy who did it, does he have a vendetta against my family?” Deonda Kirkpatrick said. “Is he going to come for one of us next? Is he going to take my kids?”

The family gets recognized on the street and they answer questions, but it’s still hard after all this time.

“It comes up at dinner and you talk about it for a little bit,” Billy Kirkpatrick said. "But then you don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

The Kirkpatricks live with constant tension. The Frederick police, who are handling the case, have kept their word and update the family as they can, but knowing of a development and not having it pan out is almost as bad as not knowing at all.

“They usually call around the anniversary. They build you up and then nothing happens,” Billy said. “Sometimes, it seems like stuff just to get me off their mind.”

The long wait

As the years go on, there’s a shift. Where once the hardest part of living was knowing that Joshua or Tracey were never coming back, feelings of not being heard become the greatest struggle.

Horman said she feels angry and frustrated that the investigation seems to be going nowhere. She’s actively investigating herself, finding suspects and tracking down their contact information.

She feels as though her son’s case doesn’t matter to the sheriff's office, even if investigators are still working on it. On a few occasions, she’s been close to getting arrested for hindering the investigation.

“These are open doors for me. I can’t just sit here,” Horman said. “What does the community care about victims of crimes?”

Still, Horman said she would go to jail for her investigating if it came to it.

“It’s sad that it’s 10 years later,” she said. “Ten years. It’s like biting a bullet.”

The Kirkpatricks have taken a less aggressive approach. Both Jack and Deonda were turned down for jobs at the city police department, and have considered hiring a private investigator.

“You have to believe that they’re doing it,” Billy said.

The cases are still open. The families live life each day with the knowledge that they don’t know what happened, and the fear they may never find answers is constant.

“There's a fear of dying," Jack said. "Once we’re all gone, there’s no one to push the investigation and remember."

Follow Laura Blasey on Twitter: @lblasey.

BY THE NUMBERS

In 2010, Maryland ranked 2nd nationally for highest murder rate, with 7.7 murders per 100,000 people.

In 2010, Frederick County's rate was 1.3 murders. (source: Maryland State Police)

In 1980, police charged or identified the culprit in 72 percent of cases nationally.

In 2008, police charged or identified the culprit in 63 percent of homicides nationally.

In a survey of cold case units, the greatest factors in solving a cold case are DNA evidence, fingerprint evidence and new witness information (source: National Institute of Justice, Cold Case Strategies report 2011)