On Wednesday, February 10, Holli Jeffcoat,18, was found dead in her home near Idalou. The Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office said she was stabbed to death and that someone set a fire to try and cover up the crime.

Two weeks later, officials have not made any arrests and the Lubbock County Medical Examiner’s Office has not released any autopsy reports.

“Walking into the scene,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sridhar Natarajan said on Wednesday, “I was very sure that it was not going to be a simple case.”

Dr. Natarajan and his team responded early on the morning of the 10th to begin their investigation into the death and he said that they quickly realized this could be a lengthy process.

“There are some cases that require more patience than others and I believe this is one of those cases.” He said, “When I walked into the thing, I did not expect that in a matter of one or two days that we were going to figure it out.”

Natarajan said that there are some cases that can be solved rapidly, but others often require a lengthy process to verify their findings.

He referenced the case of Summer Baldwin for comparison. In 2005, the body of Summer Baldwin was found stuffed in a suitcase in a landfill.

Natarajan said that the initial call out in both cases were similar.

“The phone call you get is early in the morning.” He said. “Very similar in both. They say that there has been a discovery in a landfill of an individual…and she’s in a suitcase.”

According to Natarajan, both cases immediately had him asking lots of questions.

“It immediately raises a number of questions,” he said. “Body’s in a suitcase,  the individual is an adult female and is not clothed. On a case like that I decided I’m gonna go out there early, and similar to this case I spent quite a bit of the day out there.”

Natarajan said that it is easy to come into a scene and make assumptions, but that he and his staff have to make sure to work and get all available details.

“What I’ve learned, is that there’s a lot of things I just don’t know,” he said. “If you walk in without assumptions, it forces your mind to think. It makes you have to say ‘OK, I need to understand this – I need to understand what this is.’ If you walk in with an assumption, your mind gets lazy and if your mind gets lazy you start to miss things.”

Natarajan said he understands the importance of sharing information with the public and getting available information out quickly, but said this case could take multiple more weeks to finish – but added that he feels confident they will be able to solve Jeffcoat’s death.

“I don’t think that this is a cold case,” he said. “I would hope the public,  I know they’re very concerned over what’s taken place and the grief, the surprise and emotion that would be involved in a case like this. But if the public can be patient, there’s a lot being done on this case. Most of it is behind the scenes that we really don’t want to talk about because we don’t want something being released  that is either incorrect or may compromise the case.”

As of Wednesday no arrests had been made for Jeffcoat’s murder.  The Lubbock County Sheriff’s Department had served multiple search warrants and had questioned several people.