The team that used to exist only inside a major crimes unit.

Inside a major crimes unit, a difficult case gets a bench. A detective who has run hundreds of homicides. Someone who reads DNA results for a living. Someone who can look at where a crime happened and narrow where to search. People who know how to run an outdoor evidence search without destroying what's in the ground.

Outside that unit, most people get a single investigator working alone — and when a case needs forensic science, behavioral analysis, or a real search operation, it stalls there.

IRIS was founded in October 2024 by Kathy Decker, who spent 34 years with the King County Sheriff's Office and most of them in Major Crimes. When she retired in 2020, the unresolved cases didn't retire with her. She assembled the bench instead: ten specialists across law enforcement, forensic science, academia, and the private sector, with more than 300 combined years of experience — available to families, to attorneys, and to agencies that don't have this capacity in-house. IRIS works cases throughout the United States and Canada.