Murdered El Paso Special Agent Is FBI’s Only Unsolved Murder

The FBI office in El Paso is practically as old as the FBI itself and holds the dubious honor of having the only, unsolved "line of duty" death of an agent in FBI history.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), officially, says its birthday is July 26th, 1908. Although, no one seems to know exactly why.

About that same time, thanks to the Mexican Revolution being fought just across the Rio Grande, El Paso was being sized up for a field office.

In January of 1911, the first Special Agent In Charge for the El Paso office was appointed. Special Agent J. Herbert Cole, here investigating a Neutrality Act case, (related to the revolution), got the gig.

Despite the dangerous nature of their work here, agents were pretty much unarmed. Though the FBI set up in the early 1900's, it wasn't until 1934 that agents were given the power to arrest people and began carrying pistols.

5 years prior to that, in 1929, Special Agent Paul E. Reynolds from the El Paso office was murdered in Phoenix while looking for evidence in another Neutrality Act case.

On August 9, he left his hotel and never returned. His body was found three days later with a bullet wound in his heart. A thorough investigation failed to shed any light on his murder, and his loss remains the sole unsolved line of duty death in FBI history. - fbi.gov

Prior to getting their guns in '34, the The El Paso FBI office was shut down for minute from '32 to '34 to cut costs as the great depression wore on.

It took until 1934 for FBI agents to get arrest powers and firearms. As you can see in the video above, it then took until 2023 for them to get body cams.

The government just doesn't move too quick, do they?