Photo By Graham Lienhart

Like dozens of other family members of the victims of unsolved Cincinnati homicides, Lucy Logan is still waiting to know who killed her son. But she's done something about it.

On the oddly warm winter day we meet, Lucy Logan is laid back, natural and straightforward. She wears no makeup. Behind her glasses, dark eyes leak a complex light, a great depth and an undertone of sadness.

Sometimes she appears slightly intimidating. Other moments, her voice drops humbly, a bit tired. She lifts her cat easily, as if he's made of paper.

She is a woman with large hands.

Logan shows me a picture of her son, Nolan Moi. It could be any school picture -- a rambunctious teenager with thick, wickedly curly hair. A writer and musician, Moi graduated from the School for the Creative and Performing Arts and played bass for local bands The Spitz and Running for Daylight. He delivered for Mio's Pizza. He liked his weed. His look is an earthy kid forever frozen in a crooked grin.

But this photo also contains a headline that says: "Nolan Moi, Killed March 11 in His Erie Ave. Apt. in Madisonville."

It happened that day in 2002 between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m. At 19, Moi was shot twice in the back of the head with a 9 mm gun. Although his body fell down a steep flight of stairs, no one reported hearing any noise -- no shots, no fall. At the time of his death, nine people were in the house.

'There was a massacre'
Logan owned real estate in Madisonville. Moi stayed in one of these apartments tucked inside a four-family house.

The morning of the shooting, Logan was at work. Others in Moi's building went to work, business as usual. Due to separate entrances, no one saw Moi until his best friend came down the main stairwell, finding Moi's body at the bottom; his head was on the second step and his feet in the hallway. The friend assumed he'd simply fallen; and when the friend's girlfriend called 911, she reported this.

When Logan reached the scene, a news van was already parked outside. She rushed to see her son but couldn't break through the detectives. Confused, Logan scanned the crowded foyer, studying the others.

"They looked like they were paralyzed," she says.

It wasn't until the detectives started asking about guns that Logan realized her son had been shot.

Moi had been robbed at gunpoint nine months earlier. A friend ripped off his pot; it'd happened during the day, and the robber knew where everything was.

Afterward, Logan says, Moi stopped selling drugs. But he continued to use them, buying from a new dealer in Hyde Park.

At the crime scene, detectives found nothing missing. There were no drugs in the apartment, no signs of a struggle, no clear motives or witnesses. The computer was still on, and it appeared that he'd been playing a game.

It happened on a particularly cold Sunday night. It wasn't likely that many people would be out. Detectives found few leads; there'd been heavy partying in the building that night.

Detectives were overloaded with cases that year.

"There was a massacre in 2002, marking the second year of year-breaking homicides in Cincinnati," Logan says.

"You have to follow up fast," says Sgt. Gary Conner, supervisor of the homicide unit. "But you may have to stop what you're doing to go to trial for another case. There are a lot of situations that people forget about. All of that factors into it. We do more than investigate homicides. Last year, we had 80 suicides. We also handle suspicious deaths and kidnappings."

'Nose dives'
In June 2002, overcome with frustration, Logan asked the detectives for a list of unsolved homicides. Driven by the need to make contact with those who would understand her loss, she called other parents who'd been through similar tragedies, forming the organization Who Killed Our Kids (WKOK).

Logan pressed on, fighting her own case.

"I realized if there's not a hot lead, nobody does anything," she says.

Logan was aggressive. Starting with seven core people, WKOK held meetings, taking immediate, vigorous action. Extremely vocal, they met with city council, marched, handed out fliers and announced the alarming growth in Cincinnati's homicide rate.

They created disturbingly realistic displays at the downtown library. Cooperating with WKRC (Channel 12), WKOK made a graphic video reenacting homicides, showing scenes to Justice Center inmates, hoping witnesses would come forward. They held vigils, offered rewards and pushed for witness protection programs.

It's not like TV's Cold Case.

"Our cold case squad consists of two people and a supervisor," Conner says. "They were working on current cases at first, but they have a couple of reactivated cold cases right now."

Since 2000 there have been 490 homicides in Cincinnati, according to the Cincinnati Police Department's public information office. Unsolved homicides number 202, an amount that has tripled in the past five years.

But there is hope in persistence. Twenty-seven of the cases that have contacted WKOK have seen arrests. The group is sponsoring rewards and cooperating with a new police department program involving area universities.

Supervised by Conner, this program entails selecting three or four criminal-justice students to assist detectives with cold cases. The police department will do a complete background check, then recruit volunteers to help sort through case files.

"We have a number of cold cases we'd like to investigate," Conner says. "The problem is that we have too many current cases. Through this program, we'll solicit volunteers, and their scope of services will be limited to office duties. We'll have them inventory original files, basically reassembling case files. It may not sound like a lot, but when you have 20-30 witnesses you have to track them down. That'll be a tremendous help. Investigators will take it from there and do the more technical end, out in the field."

Today WKOK has 90 active members.

"I feel like I found my voice," Logan says. "For three years it affected me so much that I can't even comprehend how much I was dealing with. Now I've learned to work with detectives. It's not the people on the street who will solve them. It's gonna be homicide (detectives)."

"These guys take it personally," Conner says. "But you have to have community involvement. We have people shot in broad daylight, and no one wants to get involved."

Logan gets through the pain by focusing on other families.

"I've seen people take fucking nose dives with anger and pain," she says. "They have heart problems, all kinds of problems, and it's going to kill them. When your child's been murdered, you have this unfinished thing, and your motive is to finish it.

I can't, and I shouldn't. It's not my job. I try to help other people get their cases solved."