In this episode, we are introduced to "First Thursdays". On the first Thursday of every month, the cops from the squad go to a local bar to have a few drinks. Det. Jeffries says that the old cops don't take it well when women come to First Thursdays but Lilly goes anyway.
Cold Case was given a full-season order on October 28, 2003, two days after this episode aired.
This episode was loosely based on the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, for whom Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death in an infamously controversial trial. The New York Times has described Abu-Jamal as "perhaps the world's best-known death row inmate," for the debate and coverage his trials have caused. In 2001, his death sentence was overturned, but the murder conviction upheld, and he was later re-sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Joe Washington was murdered on July 20, 1973.