A Real Society of Super Sleuths Who Solve Unsolved Crimes

In September 1990, retired detectives and other criminal investigation professionals came together to have lunch and talk about unsolved crimes. Now the Vidocq Society, comprised of some of the best investigators in the world, meets once a month to take on the hardest, coldest cases in the US:

Vidocq Society meetings – billed on its website as 'Cuisine and Crime-Solving' – now take place in Philadelphia on the third Thursday of every month; members gather beneath the electric chandeliers of the wood-panelled Downtown Club to have lunch and, afterwards, to help find a solution to a cold-case homicide. With 82 full, and more than 100 associate, members – a mix of men and women who must be invited to join by a committee – the society is a voluntary brains trust of retired and working criminologists.

Over the years membership has been drawn from the entire spectrum of judicial and crime-fighting institutions: from the local district attorney's office to Interpol; from Philadelphia's medical examiner to renowned FBI profilers. The society boasts members from 17 US states and 11 other countries around the world.

The society only takes murder cases that have been unsolved for at least two years and in which the victim was not a known criminal. Their work has led the exoneration of wrongfully convicted prisoners and the conviction of murders who thought that they had gotten away cleanly. Link -via Super Punch | Official Website | Photo: Vidocq Society