By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — The Police Department has formed a new Cold Case Squad that will take another look at the mysterious disappearance of Katrina McVeigh in 1992 and the unsolved stabbing death of Meagan Paul in 1994.

The police will make a formal announcement about the initiative at headquarters this morning, said Lt. Detective Eugene Jalette, spokesman for the police department.
Jalette said police are hoping the publicity will encourage anyone with information about the cases to come forward or contact the police department’s anonymous tipline at 769-4444.
Jalette, Detective Sgt. Matt Ryan and Detective Roland Bousquet are the founding members of the new squad, which might be expanded if police tap into some promising leads.
The Cold Case Squad was formed about a month ago and members have been “reviewing these cases to familiarizing themselves with the facts, establishing any viable leads and locating gaps of information” in the cases, according to Jalette. They’ve also been taking a fresh look at the forensic evidence to see whether any of it can be reprocessed using modern forensic technology.
Members of the Cold Case Squad have also reached out to prior investigators for information. Buffeted by a wave of retirements, the police department has lost some veteran investigators of late, Jalette said, and new members of the detective division want to make sure there are no blind spots in the department’s collective memory about unsolved crimes.
“We’ve had a lot of new detectives come into the division,” said Jalette. “We want to make sure we are on top of all these cases and that they’re fresh in our minds.”
McVeigh, 27, whose last known address was 295 Second Ave., vanished on June 17, 1992, according to Jalette. Family members, including a brother, Todd Thibeault, who is a police chief in Lake, Miss., have never heard from her again.
“We’ve never found her remains,” Jalette said.
Paul was 28 years old when police found her body in her apartment at 233 North Main St. on March 17, 1994. She had been repeatedly stabbed. A number of detectives have been assigned to the case over the years, yet the identity of Paul’s killer remains a mystery.
Jalette said there are other unsolved crimes in the annals of recent police history, but the police think they stand a better chance of solving those of McVeigh and Paul than most of the others.
‘When we look at cold cases we look at the most viable targets and the highest solvability factor,” said Jalette. “After reviewing the cases these two kind of shot out at us as having information we could work with.”
The murders of two young men, Brandon Smith, 18,  and Robert Jones, 23, in unrelated incidents that happened within the last year are still the subject of active police investigations, Jalette said. Smith was shot outside his Robinson Street home last June. The police have never identified his killer.
One man is awaiting trial in the shooting death of Jones in his Diamond Hill Road apartment last October, but police are still seeking two others they believe had a hand in the killing.