Attorney General Mark Bennett said Maui and Kaua'i counties have signed onto the project and "we are currently in discussions with the Big Island."

As for HPD, Bennett said: "I'm confident we will be able to form a cooperative effort in the months ahead."

Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said, "We commend the Attorney General's efforts, but we've decided not to participate because we have our own cold case efforts under way."

Bennett said the cold case unit will be funded by a grant of up to $200,000 from the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance program in the U.S. Justice Department. The state must contribute matching funds of $66,000 per year.

Personnel from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and from the Army's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which brings an expertise in the analysis and identification of human remains, will participate.

There are nearly 400 unsolved homicide cases in Hawai'i dating back as far as 1975, Bennett said.

At least three retired Honolulu Police Department homicide detectives now working as investigators with Bennett's office, Allan Castro, Harold "Hal" Fitchett and Anderson "Bucky" Hee, will participate in the cold case unit. They will work with homicide detectives and prosecutors to identify specific cases and present newly developed evidence for possible prosecution.

Scientific advances in the analysis of evidence from unsolved homicide cases, particularly DNA analysis developed from tiny amounts of blood and other bodily fluids, has led to the solving of old murder cases, some of them decades-old, on the Mainland.

Much of the success in "cold case" investigations depends on the quality of the evidence preserved by police departments and the sophistication and training of crime laboratories analyzing the evidence.

The only crime laboratory in the state of Hawai'i is operated by HPD and it has yet to contribute DNA analysis evidence to a nationwide DNA database called "CODIS," which is operated by the FBI, according to the CODIS Web site.

HPD's DNA analysis does not meet FBI standards required for submission to CODIS.

A bill authorizing $1.25 million in bond financing to upgrade the HPD crime lab was stalled at the Legislature this year.

Bennett said the new cold case unit has money budgeted for laboratory analysis. "Costs have dropped dramatically in recent years and there are a lot of options available out there — the California Attorney General's office may help us, we may have access to federal labs, and private labs are competing for the work," he said.

DNA evidence played a central role in HPD's investigation three years ago of a 26-year-old unsolved homicide case. Indiana resident Delmar Edmonds was arrested July 17, 2001, in Indianapolis and charged with the March 14, 1975, murder of Dawn "Dede" Bustamante and attempted murder of Cherie Verdugo-McCoy who were both 13 years old at the time.

But the case against Edmonds unraveled after a New Orleans laboratory said Edmonds' DNA did not match DNA evidence recovered from the body of Bustamante, who was sexually assaulted before she was shot and killed.