Investigating cold cases – Sgt. Tressi Mizell

Welcome to Tulsa Talks presented by Tulsa Regional Chamber. I’m your host Tim Landes. 

Back in November, I started working on a feature about the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Task Force that is now available in our July issue and online at TulsaPeople.com.  

The task force was created in 2016 after Vic Regalado was elected sheriff. He turned to his old boss Mike Huff, a retired Tulsa PD homicide detective turned PI, to help him get the property room in order. Huff saw opportunities to solve cases, so he told the Sheriff he’d form a team of volunteers and get to work. All they needed was a supervisor. That would be Sgt. Tressi Mizell, who is my guest on this episode of Tulsa Talks.  

I spent a lot of time talking to Tressi. Whether it was at their downtown office or at the site of past murders, so by the time we sat down to talk last week, it felt like a conversation with someone I knew well. Turns out there was still stuff for me to learn, like how she decorates her home with bones and pictures of crime scenes.  

This conversation is an expansion of the article, so if you haven’t read it, I’d suggest maybe pausing this and reading it first, but you don’t have to. 

A brief primer before we get this going: Tressi was raised in South Tulsa in the 70s. In 2004, she joined the Sheriff’s Office. Three weeks into the job, Tressi’s sister, Amber Rogers, was a bank teller who was murdered during a bank robbery. She discusses how that impacted her work in the story and expands on it in this conversation. 

The first part of our talk is about what drove Tressi to become a homicide investigator and more on the early days of the task force. Following a sponsor message, she and I discuss what it takes to investigate cold cases dating back decades and the numerous challenges she and the team faces. 

The Cold Case Task Force investigates murders that occur in Tulsa County outside of Tulsa city limits. So far the team has closed a handful of cases and recently made their first arrest. Tressi discusses those successes and how they’re working to do the same for the 26 other investigations. 

Mike Huff said about Tressi leading the task force, “You can teach people how to investigate a case, but you can’t teach people how to care. They either do or they don’t. Caring is such a big part of what we do, she’s perfect for it.” 

I couldn’t agree more, and you’ll hear in this conversation what Huff was talking about. I really enjoyed another opportunity to talk with Tressi about her work. 

Following that discussion, music writer Kyra Bruce pops in to share a single from Ramona and the Phantoms. It’s great stuff. More on that later. 

Let’s get this going. 

This is Tulsa Talks.