Scott Brewster

Kaitlyn Arquette

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On Monday, two families living hundreds of miles from each other, hundreds of miles from here, marked yet another anniversary without justice, without answers and without the son and daughter they lost to the horror of a July 16.

It was a sunny July 16 morning in 1998 when Scott Brewster's nude and bludgeoned body was found facedown in a drainage ditch running through Snow Park. He was 26.

It was a rainy July 16 night in 1989 when Kaitlyn Arquette was shot twice in the head as she drove east on Lomas Boulevard near Arno Street Northeast. She was 18.

She has been dead now as long as she had been alive.

All that time gone, and still no break in either case.

"Currently, the Brewster case is considered a cold case," says Detective Rich Lewis, one of two investigators with the Albuquerque police Cold Case Unit.

"As for Arquette, that case was completely reviewed within the last couple or three years."

And, nothing.

The cases are just two of about 400 in the unit's vault, he says. There's no time to spare when there's no new clue or confession.

Lewis is conciliatory.

"They are still absolutely open cases," Lewis says. "We know there is somebody out there who can break these cases. But we need them to come forward."

So do the families. And perhaps you can understand that after all these years, they have lost some faith in the Albuquerque police.

"I guess `out of sight, out of mind' is the rule in Albuquerque," C.J. Brewster, Scott's father, said in an e-mail from his home in Mississippi.

It hadn't started out that way. Both homicides received a generous amount of media attention, largely because both Arquette and Brewster were attractive, bright and seemingly not the usual murder victims.

Arquette's case, perhaps Albuquerque's most well-known unsolved homicide, was featured in numerous national crime shows and retold in a mass-marketed book written by her best-selling author mom, Lois Duncan.

The book, "Who Killed My Daughter?," proffered an intriguing speculation that Arquette was deliberately killed because she was about to reveal an insurance scam ring her former boyfriend had been heavily involved in.

It also suggested that Albuquerque police had botched the investigation, possibly purposely, and refused to accept any of the evidence she, Albuquerque private investigator Pat Caristo, psychics and tipsters had collected.

In an unpublished sequel titled "The Tally Keeper," Duncan details how hopes were further dashed when an Albuquerque police detective in 2004 reopened the case, then was abruptly "yanked" from the Cold Case Unit before he could complete his investigation.

Lewis says he believes the detective requested the transfer.

C.J. Brewster says he has also had his share of letdowns since Albuquerque police Detective Rick Foley, the original investigator on the case, retired two years after Scott's death.

"When Detective Foley left the force, we lost all contact with the Albuquerque force," he says. "Rick kept us informed all the time, even though nothing ever was found out."

So both families wait for that break in their respective cases. They wait for that someone out there to talk at last.

They wait for the pain to go away, knowing that it never can.

All that is left now are photos of their smiling, beautiful young people, bittersweet memories and thick Albuquerque police case files, gathering dust.