ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, N.C. – Nearly twenty years after a Southside Virginia family was murdered, federal authorities are taking a fresh look at the cold case.

In 2002, Mike and Mary Short were shot to death in their home in Henry County. Their 9-year-old, daughter Jennifer, was missing until her body was found weeks later near a bridge in Rockingham County, North Carolina, 30 miles from her Virginia home. Investigators have yet to solve their murders.

The Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office will join the FBI and Henry County investigators in a new task force to start the investigation afresh.

Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page has followed the case for two decades and says “when a 9-year-old child is murdered… and the murderers are still out there, or the person involved is still out there, it concerns me very much.”

Besides the passage of time, there are other challenges in the investigation. The Short family home caught fire and burned to the ground in February of 2019. Fire investigators were unable to make a connection between the fire and the murders but Page hopes new technology will shed some light on that investigation and will finally bring a resolution to the unsolved murders.

More than $64,000 in reward money has been offered for information leading to an arrest in this case.

Anyone with information about this investigation is asked to call the FBI tip line at 1-800-225-5324 or Crimestoppers at 276-632-7463 or 336-349-9683.