WEST WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Katie Kane’s memories of her mother Cynthia are blurry.
“She was a good person but she had a hard life,” Kane said.
But she knows what happened the morning of Nov. 9, 2002.
“I remember walking into the house and I was looking for her and I couldn’t find her,” Kane recalled. “Then I went to go to walk into the room to the left of the couch and then I bumped into her foot. I pulled the covers off and all I remember is yelling.”
Her mom was dead. Shot dead inside her own home.
“She was found in the morning with a single gunshot wound to the head,” West Warwick Detective Sgt. Thomas Nye said.
Cynthia was likely asleep on the couch when she was shot, according to Nye.
“It was out of the blue,” he added. “She didn’t really have too many big problems with anybody.”
As police worked to find the killer, the community rallied around her children, setting up a bank account to try and help them.
Katie Kane has a son now herself.
“I wasn’t taught how to be a mom because I didn’t have a mom,” she said. “My aunt was like a mom figure but she wasn’t my mom.”
Kane says she used to think about the nameless killer a lot.
“Rot in hell,” she said. “I don’t wish good things for them.”
Kane hopes to answer those questions by getting help from someone out there, saying anything that might help.
“It could be the next step to something else,” she said. “I know my mom was a good person and she didn’t deserve this.”
To bring in new leads, detectives added the investigation to a deck of cold case playing cards. Each card highlights an unsolved murder or missing persons case in Rhode Island.
Cynthia Kane is the 6 of hearts.
“Why would you hurt a good person?” Katie asked. “Why would you take a good person away from her family, you know, knowing she had two young kids—one of them being in the house at the time?”
Anyone with information is asked to call 1-877-RI-SOLVE.
