Since 2007, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department Cold Case Unit has been poring over the almost 2,000 homicide cases the department handled -- both solved and unsolved -- from 1928 to 2000.

A few weeks ago, cold case investigators sent their first batch of DNA samples to the lab. There are a total of 31 DNA samples from those five cases. Sheriff's officials declined to say which cases the samples are from, for fear of tipping off the killers.

The samples are being sent to a private lab because the California Department of Justice is inundated with requests for DNA testing from law enforcement agencies. The turnaround time for cold cases can range from six months to two years, said Sgt. Scott Brown. Private labs, by comparison, can guarantee results within 30 days.

The Sheriff's Department received a $500,000 grant last year from the U.S. Department of Justice will that will cover the costs of DNA analysis and other expenses in cold case investigations.

It took some time for Riverside County to reach an agreement with Orchid Cellmark, the private lab that will test the samples, in part because the U.S. Department of Justice had to inspect and approve the lab, Brown said.

The Sheriff's Department has a $325,000, one-year agreement with Orchid Cellmark, which will cover 270 samples. Brown said one homicide case, for example, had 10 different samples.

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