On Saturday afternoon at Tom Bass Regional Park, families gathered for a potluck picnic-kids running between tables, adults trading stories, and portraits of lost loved ones watching from banners nearby.

The event was one more reminder of what Houston's Unsolved Homicides (H.U. H) has become: a place where people living with the same kind of unanswered pain can find each other, and where a private tragedy is turned outward into public purpose.

Founded in 2018, the Houston-based nonprofit began with John Marsden's search for justice after the death of his son, Fabian O'Neal Smith, who was killed on Dec. 29, 2017, and whose case, the founder says, remains unsolved.