CLEARWATER, Fla. — On the night of Feb. 7, 2002, a Clearwater father was murdered.
Police are still asking anyone who might know who shot and killed Clarence Bolden to come forward.
Bolden was playing cards with friends when police say masked robbers broke into the house.
"I got the call that my husband was shot, get over there and he was dead," said his wife, Andrea Bolden.
Tyra Bolden was 7-years-old at the time. She remembers her dad asking whether he should wear a hat or not before he left to play cards. That was the last time she saw her father.
Bolden said she was with her mom when she identified her father's body.
"It was a scream I'll never get out of my head. She screamed so loud," said Tyra.
Clearwater police put new detectives on the case every few years and they're offering a $25,000 reward for tips that lead to an arrest. Andrea and Tyra Bolden are tired of waiting.
"I want my mom happy, that's what I want so if she wants closure, that's what I want," said Tyra.
Clearwater police has a portion of their website dedicated to unsolved homicides. The earliest was a double murder in 1968 and the most recent was another double murder in 2018.
How often are murders solved?
That answer is complicated and in many cases, it depends on where you live.
Project: Cold Case compiles data on unsolved homicides while also highlighting different cases in hopes of bringing closure to families. According to their data, overall, murders were more likely to be solved 50 to 60 years ago.
However, in the Tampa Bay area, it's a different picture.
Hillsborough County solved 68.78 percent of its murders in the last 57 years. When you look at just the last two decades, an even better rate of 70.77 percent of murders were solved.
In Pinellas County, the rate of homicides that were solved went from 74.5 percent from 1965-2019 to 78.7 percent from 2002-2019.
The data out of the two largest counties in the Tampa Bay area is not the norm. Murders are more likely to go unsolved nowadays.
That might surprise you given the technology, cameras, and resources we have today.
However, one of the representatives with Project: Cold Case says reasons for this include an increase in violence, an uptick in random crimes, and a more mobile society.