The Deck - Javed Akhtar (Jack of Diamonds, Connecticut)

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Our card this week is Javed Akhtar, the Jack of Diamonds from Connecticut.When 32-year-old Javed Akhtar was fatally shot outside his convenience store in East Windsor, Connecticut, on a cold winter night in 2007, his wife, their two young children, and a community of loyal customers were desperate for answers. Police soon found the murder weapon, but solving the case wouldn’t be simple, and the investigation stalled for years. Now, after reviewing case files for this episode of The Deck, investigators are pursuing new leads on three suspects, including one man with a direct link to that gun.If you have any information about the death of Javed Akhtar, please contact the Connecticut Cold Case Unit at 1-866-623-8058 or email [e-mail]. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/javed-akhtar Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Javid Akhtar, the Jack of Diamonds from Connecticut. And hi, the deck listeners, Brit here. And this week, Ashley's passing the mic over to me to deal you in on our last case of the year. And this case is a special one. It's true testament to what's possible when our reporting team works closely with law enforcement on decades-old cold cases, sparking new questions that send them chasing down new leads,

leads that hopefully will bring the answers loved ones have been searching for for nearly 20 years. On a freezing cold winter night 17 years ago, Javid's wife, Raffia, was at home with their young twins, waiting for her husband to return from work at their small town convenience store. But Javid never did come home. Shot once outside his store, he'd spend 10 agonizing days fighting for his life in the ICU before succumbing to the injury. To this day, no one knows who fired that fatal shot,

but investigators are close to putting the pieces together. I'm Brit Prawad, and this is the deck. It was around 9.15 p.m. on February 28, 2007, when a local sandwich shop owner named Brian closed up his store and headed home from work. on February 28th, 2007, when a local sandwich shop owner named Brian closed up his store and headed home from work. Even though it was only 15 degrees outside, he had his car window cracked open, letting in just a bit of frigid New England winter air. And as he drove through the dark, down Depot Street in East Windsor, Connecticut, he heard a sudden pop sound ring out in the otherwise quiet night, loud enough for him to hear over his car radio.

Seconds later, he saw two people run across the road and jump over a fence that led to a nearby apartment complex. They appeared to be running away from another local business in a sleepy small town, a convenience store called The One Stop. Brian got the feeling that something bad had just gone down at the Little Corner store, so he pulled into the parking lot to check. And sure enough, his gut feeling was right on the money. He spotted a man who looked to be in his 30s on the ground in the parking lot.

Brian jumped out of his car, raced to the man's side, and saw he was bleeding out fast from a wound in his chest. Brian recognized this man. He didn't know him personally, but he knew of him. Most people in town did. 32-year-old Javed Akhtar ran the One Stop convenience store pretty much all on his own. He was there seven days a week.

And just like the name suggests, One Stop was a place the residents of East Windsor stopped into often to stock up on everything from groceries to coffee to cigarettes and lottery tickets. Brian dialed 911 as quickly as he could from his cell phone and within minutes, police and EMTs were screeching into the parking lot. East Windsor police chief Matthew Karl was a detective with the department at the time. He was nearby investigating an unrelated robbery at a gas station that night when he got the call about the shooting. He was on the scene at the one stop in less than three minutes,

and he says Javid was in bad shape as paramedics loaded him into an ambulance and raced him to the hospital. He had been shot in the chest, and so he was fighting for his life. The ambulance lost him a couple of times. I can tell you he wasn't talking. He might have been some level of conscious, but it's not like he could communicate with us.

With Javid clinging to life at the hospital, detectives back at the scene started trying to figure out what had happened, first checking to make sure no one else had been hurt. When they stepped into the one stop, they found no other victims. In fact, the store was quiet and tidy. There was nothing to indicate something had just

gone horribly wrong only a few steps outside. No signs of a struggle. Cash still in the register. In fact, the only things that seemed out of place were a single snack cake and a broom, both lying on the ground. It was as if Javid had been sweeping the floors and dropped the broom when he was interrupted by whatever went down. As detectives surveyed the store, Javid's brother, Muhammad, pulled up outside. He'd been sent to check on him by Javid's wife, Rafia. Rafia doesn't have him at home, calls the brother,

says, hey, he's not home. He's usually home. Something's wrong here. It's not hard to imagine the sinking feeling Muhammad must have felt when he headed toward the one stop and saw the red and blue flashing lights from a distance. And he understandably didn't stay at the scene for long. He told police Rafi had sent him over to check on Javid and confirmed that his brother had been

working alone at the store that night. And then, Muhammad raced to the hospital where Rafi had met him to wait for news on Javid's condition. Meanwhile, detectives searched the store parking lot and began to canvas the wider area. Ryan, the guy who'd called 911, had stayed at the scene. He told police about the pop sound he'd heard and the brief glimpse he'd gotten of two people running across the street, but it was really dark out, so he couldn't make out much detail. Here's Detective Scott Roberts, now the lead detective on the case.

The two men were described, two black males, one wearing a white jacket, the other wearing a dark hoodie. Now that's important because we spoke with another person who would have been in the area of the one-stop who also described hearing some sort of a commotion at the one-stop and when he looked over he did see two people running, one in a white jacket and one in a dark hoodie. So it's two witnesses describing similar suspects and pointing police toward the fence on the edge of the Mill Pond Village Apartments.

A sprawling housing complex with multiple buildings, a few big parking lots, and hundreds of units. A place Chief Carl said police knew well. We had had murders in there before, very familiar with the area and some of the residents. Detectives found physical evidence that backed up those witness accounts as they shone their flashlights across the snowy ground outside the store.

There were cracks in the smooth white surface, shoe prints. They showed that two people were headed toward Mill Pond and fast. And there were long strides like they were running. We established that that was their exit. Police followed the prints, but the path suddenly stopped at the Mill Pond parking lot. It had been plowed. No snow means no more shoe prints.

A canine handler and his dog, Mack, were also brought out to the area to see if they could track a scent from the parking lot where David was found to wherever the shooter or shooters may have gone. And Mac did track ascent, right along the same path to the fence. In fact, Mac took them even further into the complex and to one set of apartments called the U-Building. Police talked to the folks who lived there,

but no one had seen their suspects running over there. It would be a dead end for investigators. The first of many. Investigators kept canvassing around Mill Pond through the night and into the next morning. And as the sun rose, they took a closer look at the scene. They found a latent fingerprint on the fence and took it into evidence along with castings of the shoe print impressions and more fingerprints, many of them from the door to the one stop. You can imagine that door was covered in prints because people were going in and out of the store all day, every day. So sorting through those was a bust. There was no way to tell which ones might be from a suspect.

And despite several eyewitness accounts of the suspected attackers running away, no one could say who they were. Even though police had arrived at the scene of Javid's shooting quickly and were able to lock down the parking lot at Mill Pond almost immediately, witnesses did say they saw two vehicles, a red Mustang and a black SUV, leaving the neighborhood after the gunshot with a couple of guys inside. So it sounded like at least a few people

had left the area that night after the shooting, but before the area was secured. Chief Carl said they put out Ebola on that Mustang and did a lot of work with the DMV in an attempt to track it down, but no luck. And the black SUV isn't exactly a unique car, and they just couldn't track it down without even a make or a model. But since Mill Pond was a high crime neighborhood and home to multiple people with criminal

records, they had a long list of folks they wanted to talk to, and they asked for some help. We contacted the state police Major Crimes Unit. They helped us canvas the neighborhood. We started to develop the usual suspects. Some of the people that we knew were violent or capable of this or had been accused of this in the past. We started to alibi some of those guys out. And one by one, their list of potential suspects dwindled, and then dried up entirely.

And although they weren't getting any closer to a suspect, there was one common thread as they asked locals what they'd heard, what they saw, who they knew in the neighborhood. Pretty much everyone knew and liked Javid. Here's Detective Roberts again. He was kind. He was a person that if somebody was short on money trying to purchase something, he would just give them the item at whatever they had or just give them the item. And Chief Carl heard the same things.

The state police reported quite a bit of stories of where he was just a fabulous person. He gave me milk when I couldn't afford it for my kids. He did this, he did that. He was very, very, very well liked. People were, what I would describe as outraged. Chief Carl said that most folks in the police department knew Javid too. They'd stop into his store for a caffeine fix or a snack on their patrol shifts, and remembered him as a friendly, helpful part of their little community. Everyone they talked to described him the same way.

So who would want to hurt him? The few clues they had suggested a potential robbery because, even though most everyone loved Javid, there were a few people who weren't his biggest fans. Because Javid wasn't a big fan of shoplifters, and he'd caught a few. He'd also dealt with more serious confrontations. This particular location had been robbed a couple of times, even that year. Detective Roberts says investigators assumed at first that this shooting must have been another

robbery attempt gone wrong. The only issue with that theory? Javid wasn't robbed. There were two registers, neither registered was tampered with, no money was taken. Nothing else seemed to be tampered with. I believe there was a safe, and the safe was intact. And Javid even had over $400 in cash on him. So apparently whoever shot him didn't pat him down or check his pockets for money. And within arm's reach of the doorway at one stop were multiple things any wannabe robber likely would have reached out and snatched.

There were rolls of lotto tickets and cartons of cigarettes stacked up right by the registers. Chief Carl still thinks that whoever came to the one stop was probably planning to rob Javid, but he doesn't think they ever made it inside the store to carry out their plan. In fact, he thinks they were outside and for whatever reason, Javid went to them. ever made it inside the store to carry out their plan. In fact, he thinks they were outside,

and for whatever reason, Javid went to them. The chief's theory is that because Javid had been robbed before, he might have just been fed up and was not about to go through it again. Maybe he saw these guys headed for his door. Maybe he heard a commotion outside. Maybe he had a gut feeling, and for a split second, he knew he was going to be robbed and tried to stop it. The shot happened outside. I don't know if he was closing up, shutting the door. They tried to come in. Maybe he was pushing them away.

But clearly he resisted whatever was happening at the time when they shot him. Investigators wanted to see if anything in Javid's history at the store could be connected to the shooting. So they spoke to Raffia to see what she remembered. And pretty much right away, she pointed the finger at a repeat shoplifter who we'll call Leo. Leo lived nearby, and apparently Javid had had words with him in the past over his sticky fingers. Raffia was convinced that this guy must have been the one who pulled the trigger. But when police contacted Leo about the night Javid was shot,

he had a rock solid alibi. And when word got out that Javid was shot, he had a rock solid alibi. And when word got out that Javid wasn't robbed, the talk around town started shifting toward another possibility. Was this a hate crime? Javid and his family were Muslim, and at the time, police were seeing a trend

across Connecticut. Muslim store owners were being robbed, sometimes violently. Chief Carl said he remembered at least one store robbery in Connecticut that turned deadly for a Muslim store owner. So in the wake of Javid's shooting, many people spoke out about their fear that the crimes against Muslim store owners were hate crimes. But without knowing who killed Javid, police couldn't determine what the motive was. And as two, then three days ticked by,

Javid laid unconscious in the hospital. His family prayed he'd pull through, but day by day, his recovery seemed less and less likely. And despite his family trying to stay by his side every possible second, they still had a business to run. The store was their livelihood. So just a few days after the shooting, Javid's brother, Muhammad reopened.

But rather than handing out products to customers who kept the store so busy, he found himself on the receiving end. A steady tide of customers came to the shop offering him flowers and cards, lighting candles, and leaving gifts and teddy bears outside. Community members held fundraisers for the family, like bake sales and car washes,

and gathered one night for a crowded candlelight vigil, where they shared stories of just how kind Javid had been to them over the years, and reminded his wife and kids how much their neighborhood cared about him. It was cold comfort for his family, though, especially his wife, Raffia, who was distraught with grief and guilt. See, on any other night, R Rafia would probably have been at work with her husband. She often joined him at the store to help out, but she'd stayed home that night because she wasn't feeling well. Detectives learned that Javed and Rafia had gotten married in the late

90s after Javed had moved into the United States from Pakistan following Rafia, who'd come a few years earlier. They'd met through a family connection when Rafia was back home for a visit, and they'd fallen madly in love. Rafia met through a family connection when Rafi was back home for a visit, and they'd fallen madly in love. Rafi actually told a reporter for the Hartford Current that their romance was such a whirlwind that she was the one to propose to Javid. In the years since they'd settled in Connecticut,

Javid and Rafi had had twins, a boy and a girl who were about six at the time of the shooting. Javid owned the one-stop and worked there day in and day out, his young son often helping out. Rafia told The Current reporter that the two would read the Quran together between customers. Rafia also told The Current that even though she was wrangling two young kids at home and had been badly hurt in a car accident a few years earlier, she helped out at the store to spend time with her husband whenever she could. But that night, Javid had encouraged her to stay home and rest, and she'd taken his advice.

Rafi had told that reporter that she kept replaying that decision in her mind, wondering if she would have been able to protect her husband if she'd been there, or maybe she would have been able to do something, like at least been able to identify his attackers. Instead, she was left to rack her brain for anyone she could think of who would want to hurt her husband. The stress of it all impacted her so severely that at one point, she called investigators from the hospital, excitedly telling them that Javid had woken up and told her who shot him.

But when detectives arrived, they quickly determined that that was impossible. When I got to the hospital that day, he was unconscious. He was the same way as always. I contacted the on-duty doctor at the time, and he told me that none of that could have happened. He was still intubated. The two was there. That there was no ability. He was under their sedation.

Despite the family's desperate hopes that Javid would wake up and tell them who shot him, it wouldn't come to pass. Because on March 10th, 10 days after he was attacked, Javid succumbed to his injuries and died. The shooting investigation turned into a homicide, and with his death came a key piece of evidence. The bullet recovered from his body. Chief Carl said he was in the room

when the post-mortem examination was performed on Javid and watched medical examiners recover the bullet, which had been lodged near his heart. They hadn't tried to remove the bullet while Javid was alive because he wouldn't have survived that surgery. So when Javid did pass, they were able to take a look at the bullet that killed him and determined that it was a.38 caliber.

It wasn't a golden ticket right away. Police couldn't immediately link it to any particular firearm. But a month later, that would change. And the bullet would suddenly become the most solid lead for investigators in Javid's case. About 30 days after Javid died, police in New Britain, Connecticut got a call that a local department store had just been robbed. Their potential suspects had allegedly fled the scene in a car that New Britain police put out Ebola for.

Now, New Britain is about 30 miles from East Windsor, so detectives investigating Javid's murder didn't have this on their radar. Yet. But almost right away, police in the town of Newington, which is right next to New Britain, heard that bolo and saw the same car driving through their town. So they went lights and sirens on these guys and pulled them over. Inside the car was a group of men, including a guy we'll call Tyrone and a guy we'll call Mike. Now, quick side note here, we're using pseudonyms at law enforcement's request so that we don't compromise their investigation, which is heating up as we speak. So Mike, one of the guys in the car, had a gun on him, a Colt 38 revolver, and Mike had gotten

into some legal trouble before. He'd been arrested on some charges for criminal trespass and larceny, along with an arrest for the robbery of a pizza delivery worker. And he was on probation at this point, so he wasn't allowed to have a gun. In fact, he and Tyrone were both known to carry weapons legally and get in trouble with police. Detective Roberts told our reporters that Tyrone had a criminal history that involved illegally carrying guns and committing robberies. So after they were pulled over,

Mike was arrested for violating his probation, and that revolver he had was sent off to the state forensics lab, where they performed a test fire. They ran the results to see if the bullet from this gun hit to any other crimes, and bingo, two unrelated incidents were suddenly connected. That gun Mike had, it seemed, at least at first, that it was the literal smoking gun

for detectives over in East Windsor, because forensic testing showed that this was, without a doubt, the gun that was used in Javid's murder. So obviously, the detectives in East Windsor took a hard look at Mike. And it turned out that police in yet another town were looking at him too. Detectives in Manchester, Connecticut suspected Mike and his buddy Tyrone were involved in another robbery. This robbery was in Manchester on the evening of February 28th,

just two hours before Javid was killed and only 30 minutes away from Javid's store. Just before 8.30 that night, a man called police in Manchester to report that he'd been walking down the street with a friend when two young black men, one in a dark hoodie, one in a lighter colored jacket, came up to them and pulled out a revolver.

One of the robbers demanded that the man hand over his cell phone and ask if he had any cocaine. The man told the robber he didn't have any drugs and refused to just hand over his phone. That didn't go over well. The robber put the revolver up to the man's head and cocked the gun. Then he shoved the man to the ground and started going through his pockets, stealing his Motorola Razr flip phone, $7 in cash, and his hair pick. Both victims told police that the second robber seemed stressed when his friend cocked the gun and told him to cut it out,

and he used a nickname for his accomplice. Now, detectives didn't want to reveal what that nickname was, but they did say that it is pretty close, like just one letter off from a nickname that one of Tyrone's and Mike's friends is known to go by. The victims weren't able to describe the robbers in too much detail because they were both wearing ski masks, but they told police that they ran off and hopped into a dark colored SUV. So, these guys were wearing a dark hoodie and a light jacket, carrying a revolver and were taking off in a dark SUV.

Sound familiar? It turned out that stolen Razor cell phone provided another clue about who these guys might be. Manchester police pulled the records for the phone and saw that someone had made an outgoing call right after the robbery. A call the victim confirmed he didn't make. Someone had used his phone after it was stolen. And who had they called? Mike. Knowing that, detectives in East Windsor went on high alert. I mean, two guys who were at least in contact with Mike, with similar descriptions to the suspects in Javid's shooting, who were potentially out committing another robbery that same night not too far away, and now they somehow had the gun used in Javid's homicide?

These have got to be their guys, right? But before the East Windsor police could reach that conclusion with confidence, they needed to place Mike, Ty Tyrone and that unnamed friend in East Windsor that night, and more specifically, at the one stop. So they start tracking down people they hung out with. And guess where some of those people lived? That's right, Mill Pond Village. Here's what the chief told our reporter. We can connect them to Manchester and Mill Pond Village, and so they become our prime suspects.

We can put them in Mill Pond in the past. Okay, so you don't necessarily know that they were in Mill Pond that night, but they know people that live there? Right. So, it's not out of the question that they went from the robbery in Manchester right over to East Windsor, calling friends there while they were on their way. When our reporters asked Detective Roberts whether there was any cell tower data that they could have used to prove they were there, he said he didn't think police were pulling

that kind of data back in 2007. He hadn't seen any records in the case file and thought if those records existed and placed Mike or Tyrone at the scene of Javid's murder, there likely would have been an arrest by now. Detective Roberts did tell our reporters that police were able to ask Mike where he was the night Javid was shot. They talked to him a few times while he was trying to negotiate a deal on that gun charge. Detective Roberts didn't detail exactly what Mike said when they talked to him, but he said Mike definitely never admitted to being involved in Javid's murder, and he also didn't point the finger at anyone else.

Unfortunately, their talks with Mike end kind of abruptly when he was sentenced to another 40 months in prison for violating his probation by having that gun. Once that happened, he stopped cooperating, and Tyrone, on the other hand, refused to ever sit down with investigators. Now, if you're like me, you're probably thinking, how on earth was there not enough evidence to bring these guys in? I mean, they were literally caught red-handed with the gun that killed Javid. Well, I'm going to tell you two words that, when put together, are going to absolutely ruin your day. Gun. Library.

And unfortunately, that's exactly what it sounds like. A location that has a large store of weapons that people can check out like books. Here's Chief Carl explaining how it works. You know, you use a gun, you turn it in, you get another gun, you go back out. The reason for that is that if I do something bad with a gun and I turn it in and then somebody else does something bad with a gun and turns it in, whatever, then they trace that gun and it comes back to like six or seven bodies. The people that were caught with that gun at the time were always going to have different

alibis because it's not the same person. There was a couple of them that were prominent down in Hartford at the time. So when you hit a location you sometimes find 30 or 40 guns and those guns would all be used if they were run through ATF or whatever you could show that one gun was used in nine homicides. That gun was a gun library gun. So it just blows apart your whole alibi that one person would be responsible. Meaning this piece of evidence that seems like it should have led police straight to their suspects instead led them on a wild goose chase of trading hands and stash houses

that didn't lead them anywhere. Since then, Javid's case has grown colder and colder. There was one seemingly promising tip that came in after Connecticut put out its first deck of cold case cards. This tip wasn't about the prime suspects Tyrone and Mike, who, again, were done talking to police. A man who was incarcerated, we're going to call him Arthur, started calling detectives and prosecutors over and over, insisting that he was there when Javid was killed and knew

who did it. Hoping this could be a big break in the case, police sat down with Arthur and went through a photo lineup that included photos of Mike and Tyrone, and he didn't pick either of them out. In fact, he told detectives that he was positive it wasn't Mike or Tyrone, but another guy. He swore he saw shoot Javid. Detective Roberts had some concerns about Arthur's credibility.

He was already working with prosecutors on another case, and those attorneys said he might not be trustworthy. But Arthur was persistent. He kept on calling police over the course of several years and swearing he knew who killed Javid. Investigators' last contact with Arthur was a couple years ago after Arthur was arrested again. It was adamant that he needed to speak

with somebody in cold case, that he knew the details of what was going on in East Windsor's homicide, and that if somebody came down there, he would take us, show us the scene, and he would explain exactly what happened and who did it. And Chief Carl says the department got on board. They even brought Arthur out to the scene of the one-stop shooting in the middle of the night

to meet with detectives, cold case investigators, and prosecutors. And yet, nothing. He wouldn't even get out of the car because he was trying to work some deal, and then we were done with him. We were done. Chief Carl told us that this false lead wasn't the only one they had to wade through over the years. Javid's wife, Raffia, had tried to come up with any scrap of a theory that might help get justice for the man she loved.

Some seem plausible. For instance, she thought her ex-husband may have had something to do with it and described an encounter with him days before Javid was shot. She had been in a mosque that Sunday prior, the Medina Mosque in Windsor, and was told by the ex-husband, you should have married me or you marry me or I'll kill you. And she believed it was a revenge thing,

that he killed the husband. But her ex was cleared of any suspicion when detectives looked into this alleged threat and found that the run-in at the mosque never actually happened. Over the years, detectives say they fielded more and more calls from Rafia that they, of course, checked out, but that mostly just led them down more dead ends, things like theories about black magic. So as more years have passed with no justice for Javid, Rafia's relationship with

detectives has become strained and they're really not in touch at all anymore. Our reporting team reached out to Rafia multiple times, along with her and Javid's now grown-up children and other members of their extended family, but we didn't hear back from any of them as of this recording. Detective Roberts told our reporters that Mike and Tyrone have always been persons of interest in this case, but with no eyewitnesses able to ID the suspects who fled the one stop that night, and these gun libraries throwing a cloud of confusion over the weapon that was used, there have

always been just too many questions about their involvement to bring charges. And to make things even harder, multiple agencies have handled this investigation over the last 17 years, leaving Detective Roberts with the task of sorting through boxes and boxes of documentation to see if there's anything he may have missed. But there are glimmers of hope and he said that reviewing the case files for this episode has reinvigorated the investigation. Remember how Detective Roberts said he hadn't seen cell tower records for Mike and Tyrone's phones in the case files? Well, as he kept digging through the files after our interview, he actually found pages

and pages of printed records that list calls Mike, Tyrone, and a bunch of their associates were making the night Javid was shot. There were more pages with cell tower and GPS data on them that could show where the men were that night. Unfortunately, he says these 2007-era records weren't formatted to be printer-friendly and information was cut off, so he isn't able to determine which calls and coordinates pair up with which phone. He still hasn't found the digital copies of these records that he believes are on CD, but he's going to keep looking and will of course keep you posted.

He also thinks police might now be able to make a fingerprint match to that latent print they pulled from the fence near the one stop. They believe it was left behind by someone who gripped the fence to jump over it while running away from the scene of the shooting that night. They've already compared the fingerprint to Arthur, their jailhouse informant, and the guy he pointed to. But no match. Detective Roberts says he hasn't been able to confirm whether or not Mike and Tyrone's fingerprints

were ever compared to the fingerprint on that fence, but he's trying to find out. He's now also looking into that third unnamed person connected to Mike and Tyrone. He says new technology may make that print even more valuable because there was trace DNA left behind. He plans to send that evidence off for forensic testing, and we'll let you know if there's any news to share. In the meantime, Chief Carl says that he plans to keep following every lead until Javid's case is solved. In fact, Javid's case is one of the main reasons he wanted to work on cold cases. It's stuck with him and he wants to see it through to an arrest. He had young children and he had a younger wife.

You know, I don't work in a jurisdiction where we have a lot of homicides so I don't want to say I took take it personally, but it was one of the ones where you come into our community, you shoot people, you kill somebody for the community that we're in charge of protecting. Fiercely loyal to the officers that work with me and beside me and fiercely loyal to the citizens that we are tasked with protecting. I want to solve this. I want to stay with this. Even when I retire years from now, if somebody picks this up and they check in over here, I'll probably always be like, hey, whatever came

in that Javid case, I would love nothing more than to be able to find Raffia and or Javid someday and say we solved this crime. And as is so often the case, Detective Robert says justice for Javid may depend on someone finally being willing to do the right thing and come forward with information about what happened at the one stop that night. We've withheld enough detail so that if you were to come in here and tell us a story, we could tell very quickly whether you knew what you're talking about or not. The working theory and hope here is that those two suspects have told at least one person and then that one person maybe told another person and that kind of scattered through the years to the point where

maybe somebody's out there that wants to give us that one little bit of information that's going to help us across the finish line. Investigators are still looking to talk to anyone who has information about Javid's death. If that's you or someone you know of, please contact the Connecticut Cold Case Unit at 1-866-623-8058 or email cold.case at ct.gov. The deck will be off next week, but Ashley will return the following week at the start of the new year with a brand new episode. The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve? Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo