San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Badass detective’: How one California officer solved eight cold cases — in his spare time

The trash truck rumbled through the gated community in Southern California one afternoon earlier this year. Riding shotgun was Detective Matt Hutchison, an officer in the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.

Hutchison wore the trash company’s jumpsuit, cap and reflective vest, and he sported a few days of beard stubble. He was collecting trash hoping to find something valuable: the DNA of a person who might prove to be a suspect in the sexual assault and murder of an 18-year-old security guard in Sunnyvale in 1969.

It was a cold case, and this was an expensive long shot. But his bosses in Sunnyvale and at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office have learned that when Hutchison has a plan, you listen. In the seven years since he moved into robbery-homicide, the 38-year-old detective has solved eight cold cases — six homicides and two sexual assaults.

In his spare time.