San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department

The whole San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California received the honor in 2016 for solving a 25-year-old cold case murder. In 1991, a dead corpse was discovered in a hotel room in the city of Victorville, and the sheriff's office was called. The man, who was eventually identified as John Miller, had been towel-strangled and dumped beneath the bed.

The Chevy pickup that his killer then took was found a few days later. Investigators were having trouble locating any useful clues that the murderer may have left behind, despite the fact that the crime was brutal. On the end, they only found one latent print in the driver-side mirror of the automobile, which the offender probably adjusted out of habit and neglected to clean. Even yet, the authorities were unable to identify the person from that one print, and the investigation was abandoned.

A cold case unit made up of two homicide detectives and a deputy district attorney was established by the sheriff's office in 2008, decades after the original incident. When news of John Miller's unsolved murder reached their desks in 2010, they decided to run the print once more. State databases proved fruitless, however the FBI's IAFIS found a match to a Michael Arrowood who was presently residing in Tennessee.

When questioned by police, Arrowood eventually admitted to the crime but said that his brother Chris was the one who had killed Miller. He claimed that after returning to Miller's motel room for pizza and drink, the brothers made the decision to rob and kill him when they saw that he had $1,000 in cash on him. Chris Arrowood strangled John Miller, and trace DNA evidence found on the towel proved it. Both brothers were then detained, accused of the crime, and found guilty.

• Year: 2016