Orange County authorities still working to solve death case

It's an investigation a Vidor family feels has been left to run cold just weeks after a their father was found dead in his home.  But tonight, lead investigators in Orange County insist they are on top of the case and working hard to solve it.

"We didn't have a father to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving with and it's been hard."

But Wendell Poplin and his wife Margie say losing her father just days before the holidays began... has turned out to be the easier part of their struggle these past few weeks.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office says 58-year-old Joseph Bertrand was found dead in his Vidor home on November 18th, with several injuries. A preliminary autopsy showed Bertrand died of blunt force trauma to the head. The state issued death certificate lists Bertrand's death as a homicide. But the Poplins say not only has the Sheriff's Office not taken any new action on their father's case... detectives are still considering the whole situation just a death investigation.

"It doesn't seem like anything is being done," said Poplin, "There was no question in anybody's mind that he was definitely bludgeoned to death,"  That it was not an accident? "That it was not, there was no way it was an accident."

Orange County Sheriff's Office Captain Tommy Smith said, "We wanna make sure all those t's are cross and all those i's are dotted because we don't want a guilty man to go free and we don't want an innocent man to be incarcerated for something he didn't do."

Smith says there 'is' a person of interest in the case. He says his detectives have put dozens of hours into interviews, lab work and fact gathering while working to close Bertrand's case. But Smith says the death investigation status won't change until the case is in the D.A.'s hands.

"We looked into... was it an accident, was it a manslaughter, was it a homicide and right now, we have gathered all the information we can, both forensics, witness statements and autopsy reports that we have," he said, "And we plan to sit down with the Orange County District Attorney, who we work well with and discuss the options of where we're going on the prosecution of this case."

Bertrand's family says they don't care how it's done, they just want justice served.

Poplin said, "He deserves better and he deserves for somebody to stand up for him."