SEATTLE -- The King County Sheriff's Office is betting that issuing decks of playing cards might help generate tips that could help solve 52 cold cases.

Each card features an unsolved homicide or missing person case.

King County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. John Urquhart says the cards will be distributed in Washington prisons and hopefully will jog somebody's memory about the cases.

One card features Mike Emert, a Bellevue real estate agent who was murdered while showing a house in Woodinville in 2001. He was fatally stabbed, his watch and wallet were stolen and his car was later recovered in a parking lot in Kirkland.

His widow, Mary Beth Emert, praised the Sheriff's Office for keeping his case alive.

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office released its own deck of cold case cards last year, and says the cards generated a lot of tips.