Kelly Siegler, a former Harris County District Attorney who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for DA in 2008, will be investigating unsolved murder cases on TV.
TNT announced on Jan. 9 that it has ordered eight episodes of an unscripted procedural drama starring Siegler, a prosecutor for 21 years, and Yolanda McClary, who worked more than 7,000 cases in 26 years with the Las Vegas Police Department.
The unscripted show has a working title of “Cold Justice.” According to TNT, the show is executive produced by Dick Wolf, whose shows include “Law & Order,” Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, whose shows include “Top Chef,” and Tom Thayer, whose recent productions include 2012’s “Hitchcock.”
TNT writes that Siegler and McClary will put their “vast knowledge and experience to work helping local law enforcement officers and families of violent-crime victims get to the truth.”
“Taking on a different unsolved crime each week, they will carefully re-examine evidence, question suspects and witnesses, and chase down leads in order to solve cases that would have otherwise remained cold indefinitely,” TNT writes in the release.
Siegler says she’s anxious to start investigating some cases.
“We just heard the news yesterday. Obviously, I’m all excited,” she says.
Siegler says they will start filming once she and the producers identify some unsolved crimes to investigate. She says that when she worked in special crimes at the DA’s office and she was working on cold cases, she frequently got calls from police officers in little towns across Texas or from sheriff’s deputies who didn’t have the manpower to solve some tough cases, so she knows many cases are out there.
“That’s when I first realized how much of a need there was,” she says, noting that the show will be “Texas-heavy” at least at the start because of her contacts around the state.
While she and McClary will do a lot of the investigating, the plan is to have a “good homicide cop” helping them. She’s lined up Johnny Bonds, a retired investigator with the DA’s office. “He’s worked on thousands of murder cases. He’s the best cop I’ve ever worked with in over 21 years,” she says.
Bonds says he’s looking forward to working again with Siegler because she’s such a good prosecutor. Although he retired in 2008, Bonds says getting back into investigations will be “like riding a bicycle.”
Bonds says an investigation into a long-unsolved case is often successful. “The theory was the longer it went unsolved the longer it took to solve them, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes 10 years later, people who were afraid to talk will talk,” he says.
Since she left the DA’s office in 2008, Siegler says she’s worked as a special prosecutor and did some civil law.
--By Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
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