A former Guam Police Department detective who tracked down her daughter’s alleged killer after six years on the run is now leading a national push to solve what she calls the country’s cold case crisis.  Josephine Wentzel is using her personal tragedy to help grieving families and demand federal action through her nonprofit, Angels of Justice.

She tracked down her daughter’s alleged killer after six years on the run and made national headlines as a determined mother unwilling to let the trail go cold. "‘He messed with the wrong mother,’ says the DA," she said.

Now, Wentzel is channeling that same drive into helping other families still waiting for justice. Wentzel’s daughter, 30-year-old Krystal Jaye Mitchell, was found strangled to death in a San Diego apartment in 2016.  The man accused of killing her, former US Marine Raymond McLeod, fled the US and remained at large for years– a fugitive on the US Marshall’s Most Wanted List. 

"They didn’t get involved until months after he was missing when I started making a lot of noise," she said.

But Wentzel didn’t give up. She followed leads, coordinated with authorities, and ultimately helped track him down in El Salvador, where he was arrested in 2022.  She said, "I was a very strong advocate for my daughter's case, as you can imagine. I did not let these people get away with anything."

Last week, Wentzel returned to Guam to speak at the Regional Forensic Science Symposium at the Guam Community College, where she shared her story…and her growing mission.

She founded angels of justice, a nonprofit organization created to support families of homicide victims. "I recognized a deep disconnect between law enforcement agencies and the families of murdered and missing loved ones," she said.

"Angels of Justice was created to bridge that gap, offer support, advocacy, and guidance to grieving families."

But Angels of Justice is doing more than helping individual families. It’s now pushing for national reform. The group has launched a petition calling on the president and the "Make America Safe Again" initiative to declare cold case homicides a national emergency. 

"There are 300,000 unsolved murders reported in the United States today," she said.

Their demands include a national cold case task force, expansion of forensic labs and DNA testing, oversight of cold case investigations, federal partnerships to track fugitives and funding for state and local cold case units.  Through Angels of Justice and their national petition, Wentzel hopes to ensure no family faces a cold trail alone.

"Even Guam," she said. "Your cases should have the same attention and the same rights to getting those things solved to getting the help you need as any citizen of the United States of America. Because all the CHamoru people that have died and the people that have died violently, they deserve justice. And just because you live in Guam and you have limited resources and stuff, that should not deter you from getting justice."

As of 2021, Guam had 103 cold cases, to include 81 unsolved homicides, with each one a family waiting for justice.