Britt Prawat

Well, I'm going to tell you two words that, when put together, are going to absolutely ruin your day. Gun library. And unfortunately, that's exactly what it sounds like. A location that has a large store of weapons that people can check out like books. Here's Chief Carl explaining how it works.

Meaning, this piece of evidence that seems like it should have led police straight to their suspects instead led them on a wild goose chase of trading hands and stash houses that didn't lead them anywhere. Since then, Javid's case has grown colder and colder. There was one seemingly promising tip that came in after Connecticut put out its first deck of cold case cards.

This tip wasn't about the prime suspects, Tyrone and Mike, who, again, were done talking to police. A man who was incarcerated, we're gonna call him Arthur, started calling detectives and prosecutors over and over, insisting that he was there when Javid was killed and knew who did it.

Hoping this could be a big break in the case, police sat down with Arthur and went through a photo lineup that included photos of Mike and Tyrone. And he didn't pick either of them out. In fact, he told detectives that he was positive it wasn't Mike or Tyrone, but another guy he swore he saw shoot Javid. Detective Roberts had some concerns about Arthur's credibility.

He was already working with prosecutors on another case, and those attorneys said he might not be trustworthy. But Arthur was persistent. He kept on calling police over the course of several years and swearing he knew who killed Javid. Investigators' last contact with Arthur was a couple years ago after Arthur was arrested again.

And Chief Carl says the department got on board. They even brought Arthur out to the scene of the one-stop shooting in the middle of the night to meet with detectives, cold case investigators, and prosecutors. And yet, nothing happened.

Chief Carl told us that this false lead wasn't the only one they had to wade through over the years. Javid's wife, Rafia, had tried to come up with any scrap of a theory that might help get justice for the man she loved. Some seemed plausible. For instance, she thought her ex-husband may have had something to do with it and described an encounter with him days before Javid was shot.

But her ex was cleared of any suspicion when detectives looked into this alleged threat and found that the run-in at the mosque never actually happened. Over the years, detectives say they fielded more and more calls from Rafia that they, of course, checked out, but that mostly just led them down more dead ends, things like theories about black magic.

So as more years have passed with no justice for Javid, Rafia's relationship with detectives has become strained, and they're really not in touch at all anymore. Our reporting team reached out to Rafia multiple times, along with her and Javid's now grown-up children and other members of their extended family. But we didn't hear back from any of them as of this recording.

Detective Roberts told our reporters that Mike and Tyrone have always been persons of interest in this case. But with no eyewitnesses able to ID the suspects who fled the one-stop that night, and these gun libraries throwing a cloud of confusion over the weapon that was used, there have always been just too many questions about their involvement to bring charges.

And to make things even harder, multiple agencies have handled this investigation over the last 17 years, leaving Detective Roberts with the task of sorting through boxes and boxes of documentation to see if there's anything he may have missed. But there are glimmers of hope, and he said that reviewing the case files for this episode has reinvigorated the investigation.

Remember how Detective Roberts said he hadn't seen cell tower records for Mike and Tyrone's phones in the case files? Well, as he kept digging through the files after our interview, he actually found pages and pages of printed records that list calls Mike, Tyrone, and a bunch of their associates were making the night Javid was shot.

There were more pages with cell tower and GPS data on them that could show where the men were that night. Unfortunately, he says these 2007-era records weren't formatted to be printer-friendly and information was cut off, so he isn't able to determine which calls and coordinates pair up with which phone.

He still hasn't found the digital copies of these records that he believes are on CD, but he's going to keep looking and will, of course, keep you posted. He also thinks police might now be able to make a fingerprint match to that latent print they pulled from the fence near the one-stop.

They believe it was left behind by someone who gripped the fence to jump over it while running away from the scene of the shooting that night. They've already compared the fingerprint to Arthur, their jailhouse informant, and the guy he pointed to. But no match.

Detective Roberts says he hasn't been able to confirm whether or not Mike and Tyrone's fingerprints were ever compared to the fingerprint on that fence, but he's trying to find out. He's now also looking into that third unnamed person connected to Mike and Tyrone. He says new technology may make that print even more valuable because there was trace DNA left behind.

He plans to send that evidence off for forensic testing, and we'll let you know if there's any news to share. In the meantime, Chief Carl says that he plans to keep following every lead until Javid's case is solved. In fact, Javid's case is one of the main reasons he wanted to work on cold cases. It stuck with him and he wants to see it through to an arrest.

And as is so often the case, Detective Roberts says justice for Javid may depend on someone finally being willing to do the right thing and come forward with information about what happened at the one stop that night.

Investigators are still looking to talk to anyone who has information about Javid's death. If that's you or someone you know of, please contact the Connecticut Cold Case Unit at 1-866-623-8058 or email cold.case at ct.gov. The deck will be off next week, but Ashley will return the following week at the start of the new year with a brand new episode.

The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?