Ralph Ames

Ralph Ames is an attorney and the organizer behind The Last Chance, a privately funded cold-case initiative created by Hedda Brinker. He first enters Brandon Walker’s life not as a conventional employer but as a recruiter: he persuades the wary investigator to join a group that can finance the work and expertise a neglected case requires. Later, when Brandon reopens the Roseanne Orozco investigation, Ames helps him navigate the practical questions of DNA testing and mobilizes research support when the case becomes dangerous. His role is that of a facilitator who connects private resources, investigators, and new methods to cases that established authorities have left behind.

Attorney and Brinker family connection

Ames identifies himself as an attorney at law, with offices listed in Seattle and Scottsdale. His connection to the Brinker family began through his father, who had represented Hedda Brinker and Toby Brinker. When his father retired, the clients transferred their legal relationship to Ames. After Toby’s death, Hedda continued to speak with Ames; she and Toby had no living heirs, and the unresolved murder of their daughter, Ursula Brinker, remained a persistent concern.

According to Hedda, Toby had never recovered from Ursula’s death. He believed the person responsible was better connected than the family and that a cover-up explained why the killer had not been caught. He had hired several private investigators, but they found neither a viable suspect nor evidence of a cover-up. Ames does not present Toby’s suspicion as established fact. Instead, he recounts what the family believed and what earlier inquiries had failed to establish, keeping the distinction between a haunting theory and evidence intact.

Hedda had tried to interest the Vidocq Society in Ursula’s case after seeing a television program about the organization. The group declined to take it on. She then asked Ames whether she had enough money to create a similar organization on the West Coast. He advised that she lacked the resources for so large an undertaking. Her subsequent Powerball win changed what was possible, and Ames became central to turning the idea into an operating organization.

Building The Last Chance

Hedda arranged for the lottery proceeds to be paid into a 501 C nonprofit called The Last Chance. Ames describes it as invitation-only, seeking mainly retired police investigators and forensic experts who would be motivated by the prospect of addressing cases regarded as unsolvable. Participants volunteer their expertise; the organization pays expenses, laboratory costs, and analyses, and provides clerical and other support.

The organization’s work is structured around regular meetings, held mostly in Phoenix and sometimes in Denver. Family members commonly present cases when local law enforcement is unwilling or unable to commit further resources to an investigation it considers a dead end. The group may assign a case to a small number of members or decide to approach it collectively. Ames’s account makes clear that The Last Chance is not simply a forum for discussing old crimes: it supplies the practical infrastructure that allows investigators to pursue them.

G. T. Farrell, a founding member, had stayed in contact with Hedda and Toby over the years. When Farrell wanted Brandon Walker considered for the organization, Ames carried the invitation to him. Brandon initially approached the meeting suspiciously, wondering whether Ames was a salesman. At the Arizona Inn, Ames handed him a business card and began by asking whether he played Powerball; the conversation eventually disclosed the source of Hedda’s funding and the purpose of The Last Chance. Ames offered to buy Brandon’s time over lunch, but the substantive offer was a place in the group and an opportunity to work again.

Brandon accepted before Ames could say more. Ames told him he could speak to Farrell himself and explained that the next meeting would be in two weeks at the Westin in Denver. He also arranged for The Last Chance’s travel agent to contact Brandon about flights. For Brandon, the invitation carried personal weight: after feeling discarded and unsure whether his experience still mattered, he saw Ames’s offer as a chance to be useful. Brandon later questioned whether he had accepted too eagerly, but Ames had provided more than encouragement; he had connected him to a funded investigative network.

Support for the Orozco investigation

Ames’s role became concrete when Brandon worked on the long-unsolved Roseanne Orozco case. The original investigation had centered on the possibility that Roseanne’s father, Henry Orozco, had fathered her unborn child and was responsible for her death. A blood test excluded Henry as the father, but no other suspect emerged and the case went cold. Decades later, Brandon located the grave of Roseanne’s fetus and learned that Emma Orozco, Roseanne’s mother, was willing to permit an exhumation. He called Ames before proceeding, seeking confirmation that DNA testing was authorized.

Ames confirmed that testing was authorized and that Hedda’s policy was to spare no expense. He asked how far along the fetus had been; Brandon estimated about four months. Ames acknowledged that a match was uncertain but possible, and asked where the grave was located. He also recognized the importance of choosing an appropriate laboratory: the remains would be tiny, the DNA badly degraded after more than thirty years, and different laboratories might be better suited to the task. He said he would find out where samples should be sent so the investigation could use the right facility from the outset. His response paired financial backing with attention to the limits of the evidence, rather than treating DNA testing as a guaranteed solution.

The investigation’s uncertainties were not confined to biological evidence. Emma reported that a hospital employee could find no admission record for Roseanne, although Emma’s own file recorded three hospital stays, including Roseanne’s birth. Emma rejected the explanation that the record had simply been lost and believed someone at the hospital had been involved in Roseanne’s disappearance. Her daughter Andrea Tashquinth had also tried to tell investigators that Roseanne might have been harmed at the hospital, but, as a sixteen-year-old, she had not been listened to. Ames’s willingness to fund further investigation provided a means of following leads that had been discounted or left unresolved, though the evidence does not make him the source of those leads.

A practical ally under pressure

Ames’s support was not limited to the Orozco case’s laboratory needs. After Brandon confronted Larry Stryker and realized that the man knew him, his family, and where they lived, Brandon called Ames to report that he might have found Roseanne’s killer and needed backup. Ames moved into problem-solving mode and asked for the man’s name so The Last Chance’s reference librarians could investigate him. Brandon’s appeal shows the trust established between the two: he sought help not only with funding and procedure but also when his own actions seemed to have placed his family at risk.

Ames’s importance lies in the practical bridge he creates between a family’s demand for answers and the resources required to pursue them. The Last Chance cannot guarantee that an old case will be solved, and Ames does not claim that it can. Its contribution is to make further work possible: investigators can volunteer their skills, expenses and testing can be paid, and evidence can be assessed with tools unavailable to the original inquiry. In Brandon’s trajectory, Ames’s invitation restores a professional purpose; in the Orozco investigation, his measured backing helps turn a family’s permission and a newly located grave into a testable line of inquiry.