Lt. Joe Kenda Reveals New Series After Final Season of ‘Homicide Hunter’ (Exclusive)

As Homicide Hunter prepares to close its final case, there’s no need for fans of Lieutenant Joe Kenda to start bidding their farewells just yet. Amid the ninth and final season of Investigation Discovery’s hit show, the 23-year veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department turned true crime icon revealed to PopCulture.com that he’ll be back for a whole new series in 2020.

Although Kenda can’t dish on any of the details of his new series just yet, he’s sure to bring his signature way of shooting from the hip when it comes to talking the darker parts of humanity.

“One of the reasons [Homicide Hunter] has been so successful that I have no script,” he opined to PopCulture. “I say what I want … I speak from the heart. I’m not an actor, I’m a policeman.”

It’s this candor, plus the horrifying stories from his years investigating homicide, that Kenda thinks has drawn people to him from the start.

“I think people have grown tired of the fictional stories, because there’s only so many ways to tell a fictional story, and it gets old,” the police force veteran said. “I think you’d rather listen to someone who allowed their emotion to overcome their judgement and see their photo put up on the screen. … [Viewers] are trying to decide or say to themselves, ‘I would never do those things.’”

Ending Homicide Hunters after the show’s instant success wasn’t an easy decision, but one Kenda felt he had to make as the cases in his repertoire dwindled to those “too simple or too gruesome” to show on television, such as crimes involving children or babies.

“I didn’t want to be the singer who stayed on stage after he lost his voice or the athlete who played one season too long,” he told PopCulture, adding that reliving the moments that have swirled in his head for years has been incredibly “therapeutic.”

“I feel better now than I did nine years ago,” Kenda admitted. “I’ve said more to that camera than I have to my wife about things I’ve seen and done.”

Even with his rock solid relationship with wife Kathy, his high school sweetheart whom he married in 1967, Kenda explained there’s only so much someone in his line of work can unload at the end of every day.

“I always would internalize, because you come home from work and your wife says, ‘How was your day?’ What are you going to say? ‘I saw a baby murdered this morning; I saw three people dead.’ You’re not going to say that,” he admitted. “You don’t want to burden them with what you’ve seen and done.”

Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Investigation Discovery.

Photo credit: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images