Archaeological Protection Gone Wild: The Lynch Case

     In 1979, Congress passed the Archaeological Resource Protection Act (ARPA) which makes it a federal crime to excavate, removed, damage, alter, and/or deface (without a government permit) archaeological resources from federal and Indian lands. Under ARPA, an "archaeological resource" is an item of past human existence, or archaeological interest, more than a hundred years old. First time ARPA offenders, in cases where the value of the artifacts and the cost of restoration and repair of the damaged archaeological site is less than $500, can be fined no more than $10,000 or imprisoned for more than one year. However, if the value or restoration costs exceed $500, the offender can be fined up to $20,000, and imprisoned for two years on each count. Under ARPA, federal authorities can pursue violators civilly or in criminal court, imposing fines and confiscating vehicles and equipment used in the commission of the prohibited activity.

The Ian Martin Lynch Case

     Although he didn't know it at the time, 23-year-old Ian Martin Lynch made the mistake of his life when he picked up a human skull lying among hillside rocks on an uninhabited island off the shores of southeastern Alaska. In July 1997, Lynch and two of his friends were deer hunting on public land in an area called the Warm Chuck Village and Burial Site. They had no knowledge of this place, were unaware it had once been the home of Native Americans, and were not looking for prehistoric artifacts. There were no indications, other than the skull, that the men had stumbled upon an ancient grave site.

      While exploring the area as his friends were breaking camp, Lynch scraped the dirt away from the back of the skull, and picked it up for a closer look. He guessed the skull, and the bones scattered around it, had been there for some time because of the absence of clothing. He had no way, however, of knowing that the remains he had stumbled upon were archaeological resources.

     Shortly after taking the skull home, Lynch decided to turn it over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Office in Anchorage. He described how he had come in possession of the skull to a government employee, and revealed the circumstances surrounding its discovery. A short time later, an agent with the Forest Service asked him to come to the federal building for an interview.

     When the Forest Service agent asked Lynch if he knew the skull was old, the interviewee said, "So, I mean, it's definitely been there for awhile. Oh, man, it's definitely old. There's not a stitch of clothing or nothing with it." (To make a federal case against Mr. Lynch, the Forest Service agents would have to establish that he knew, or should have known, that he was taking away a skull more than a hundred years old.)

     The Forest Service archaeologist for the region examined the evidence, but was unable to  determine the age of the skull. This prompted the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) to call in a physical anthropologist to determine, through visual analysis, the age of the head. This expert also declined to scientifically declare the skull an archaeological resource. The AUSA, determined to establish a crime under ARPA, sent the skull out for carbon dating. This analysis revealed that it was at least 1,400 years old. This opened the door for a federal prosecution.

     In 1998, a federal grand jury sitting in Anchorage returned an indictment charging Ian Martin Lynch with one felony ARPA offense. If convicted, he would face up to a year in prison, and a $10,000 fine. Lynch's attorney filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground the government had not met its burden of proving that Lynch, in taking the skull, had sufficient knowledge to establish the requisite criminal intent to violate this law. Specifically, the prosecution had not proven that Lynch knew the skull was an archaeological resource.

     The U.S. District Judge, reasoning that Lynch's picking up the skull was "a wrong in itself," ruled that the prosecution did not have to prove that Lynch had specifically intended to commit the crime. Based on this legal rationale, the judge denied the defense's motion to dismiss the indictment. In response to this ruling, Lynch pleaded guilty to the single ARPA count while retaining his right to appeal the judge's decision. In 1999, the judge sentenced Lynch to six months in prison, and fined him $7,000 to cover the costs of the burial site restoration. (Lynch had picked up a bone, what restoration?) At his sentencing, Lynch told the judge he had not intended to offend Native Americans. He remained free on bail pending the results of his appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

     In 2000, the federal court of appeals overturned the ARPA conviction. Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, one of the three jurists on the panel, wrote: "...the Government must prove that a defendant knows or had reason to know he was removing an 'archaeological resource' before that defendant can be found guilty of an ARPA offense."

     The reversal of Lynch's conviction makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why the U.S. Forest Service, and the federal prosecutor in Alaska, went after Mr. Lynch in the first place. Congress, in passing ARPA, intended to punish and deter the for-profit looting of archaeological sites. Mr. Lynch was not even an artifact collector. It's hard to believe that federal law enforcement officers would waste taxpayers' money by pursing such a questionable case. And finally, what kind of judge would sentence a harmless defendant like Mr. Lynch to six months in prison?







   

      

Crime Geography: Being Where Criminals Aren't

     In a perfect world, there would be no crime. That will never happen. (This is good news for cops, security practitioners, lawyers, parole agents, and prison guards.) In a better world, 90 percent of the criminal population would be in prison, victimizing each other instead of us. In the real world, however, only a tiny fraction of them are behind bars. Given that reality, it's helpful to know where at least most of the dangerous criminals are. (Crime can't be prevented, it can just be moved from one place to another.) If you can figure out where most of the dangerous people are likely to be, you can reduce the risk of becoming a victim by avoiding these places. This, of course, doesn't apply to people forced to live or work in high crime areas, and certain types of criminals such as pedophiles, who are everywhere. Elementary kids can't force their parents to home school them. But many of us can avoid places where we are more likely to be mugged, raped, assaulted, and murdered.

Dangerous Cities

     Every year, the FBI announces the five most dangerous cities in the United States. By dangerous, they mean municipalities with the highest per capita crime rates. (Even in these places, over the past ten years, rates of violent crime have declined.) If I were to list, off the top of my head, the five most dangerous cities, they'd be: Miami, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New Orleans, and Newark, New Jersey. In the small town category, I'd lead off with Youngstown, Ohio. As it turns out, none of these places are on the FBI's list. According to the bureau, the most dangerous cities are: Flint, Detroit, St. Louis, New Haven, and Memphis. I had no idea things were so bad in New Haven and Memphis.

     So, in terms of avoiding criminals, what does the most dangerous city list mean? Not much. Almost all cities and towns have relatively safe neighborhoods as well as high-crime districts. A person who lives in a good neighborhood in Flint is probably safer than someone who lives in a bad section in say, Erie, Pennsylvania. Moreover, people who live and work in the safer parts of town increase their chances of victimization if they enter crime-hot sections of the city for drugs or prostitutes. Lifestyle, as much as place of residence, determines one's vulnerability to crime. And, there is always bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. People are mugged in broad daylight in Walmart parking lots.

     Perhaps the FBI should publish a list of 5 things (other than shopping) people do that turns them into victims of crime. This is my list of dangerous behaviors: aggressive driving, public intoxication, buying dope, picking up street walkers, and looking wealthy in the wrong places. And, for good measure, I'll add: cutting in line at McDonalds.

Indian Reservations

     According to figures recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the rates of crime on the nation's 310 Indian reservations are more than two and a half times higher than the national average. The rates of violent criminal offenses--murder, assault, rape, and robbery--are as high or higher than the corresponding crime rates in America's most dangerous cities. Women who live on reservations are ten times more likely to be murdered than their counterparts who live elsewhere. They are sexually assaulted at a rate four times the national average.

     Indian reservations are plagued by poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, broken families, and higher than average school drop-out rates, problems also found in America's inner cities. Under federal law, tribal courts have the authority to prosecute tribal members for crimes committed on Indian land, but cannot sentence defendants to more than three years in prison. As a result, tribes rely on federal authorities to investigate and prosecute serious offenses.

      Because Indian reservations are located in remote areas of the country, there are not enough FBI agents to handle the investigative caseloads. For this reason, only half, and in some cases less than half, of serious reservation crimes result in criminal prosecution. In 2010, only 35 percent of reported rapes led to federal prosecution. Regarding child sexual abuse, 39 percent of these cases find their way into federal court. By comparison, nationwide, 80 percent of federal drug related crimes are prosecuted. (Cops love drug cases, that's where all the law enforcement money is spent--gadgets, cool weapons, overtime, etc.--and drug users and sellers are easy to catch and prosecute. The other crimes require time and investigative know-how.)

     For women and children, an Indian reservation is a dangerous place.

           

The Red Sash Murder Case

     In September 1995, the daughter-in-law of Josephine Galbraith, found the 76-year-old dead in the guest bedroom of her Palo Alto, California home. The dead woman's husband, 79-year-old Nelson Galbraith, a retired music school owner and insurance salesman, said he was watching TV in another room when she passed away. A detective from the Palo Alto Police Department and an investigator from the Santa Clara Coroner's Office arrived at the scene to find Josephine lying face-up on the bed with three superficial cuts on her left wrist, and a red bathrobe sash tied around her neck. Next to her body, investigators found a bloody eight-inch knife, a razor blade with some blood on it, and a white, 5-gallon bucket containing a small quantity of blood.

     The bathrobe sash, 62 inches in length, had been tightly wrapped around Josephine Galbraith's neck three times. After each wrap, the sash had been tied with a double-knot. The three cuts on her wrist, referred to as "hesitation marks," were typical of the half-hearted attempt of a suicidal person who couldn't bring herself to make the deeper, more painful slashes necessary to cause death by bleeding. There was no suicide note. The coroner's investigator, a man who had been on the job 28 years, recognized the scene as a suicide. The Palo Alto detective, based on the evidence at the scene, agreed with this assessment.

     The investigators figured that if Josephine Galbraith had been murdered, the killer would not have made the hesitation cuts. Moreover, the pattern of blood spatter did not suggest a struggle. And the presence of the bucket intended to make the scene less messy, was not consistent with a murder scene. Both investigators also knew that while people cannot manually strangle themselves (they pass out before they die), people can strangle themselves to death by ligature--the use of a rope, electrical wire, necktie, or other length of cloth such as a bathrobe sash. They also knew that Josephine Galbraith's death would have been slow enough to allow her to wrap and tie the sash three times. Given the nature of the people involved, and the physical evidence at the scene, the investigators had no doubt that this woman had taken her own life.

     Two days after the death, Dr. Angelo Ozoa, the Santa Clara County Coroner, performed the autopsy, a procedure that took him only 45 minutes. Dr. Ozoa found the cause of death to be "asphyxiation by ligature." This did not surprise anyone. What did shock a lot of people, including the investigators, was his manner of death ruling: "strangled by assailant." Dr. Ozoa had based this finding on two assumptions: Josephine Galbraith was too old and frail to have tied the three knots so tightly; and even if she did have the strength, she wouldn't have remained conscious long enough to complete the task. Since Nelson Galbraith was the only other person in the house at the time of his wife's death, if she had been murdered, he must have been the assailant.

     Just days before her death Josephine Galbraith had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, an illness that five years earlier had caused the slow and painful death of her sister. Even before the diagnosis, she had told friends and relatives that she wanted to kill herself. She had informed one of her sons that she would like to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, and asked another son, a physician, to provide her with the drugs to end her life. He had refused.

     Nelson Galbraith, the man implicitly incriminated by Dr. Ozoa's manner of death ruling, had severe arthritis of the hands, which would have made it difficult, in not impossible, for him to have tied the knots around his wife's neck. Moreover, there was nothing in Galbraith's background, or in his relationship with his wife, that made him a likely murderer. Investigators, urged on by the county prosecutor's office, nevertheless pushed forward with the case against him, albeit at a snail's pace. In the meantime, Mr. Galbraith's life became a living hell. He complained to a journalist about being referred to in the media as the "Red Sash Murderer," and was spending thousands of dollars on his defense. (Ultimately, his defense costs would reach more than $300,000.)

     Palo Alto Police, guns drawn, stormed Mr. Galbraith's house in January 1997, and hauled the 81-year-old suspect away on the charge of first degree murder. In August 1998, almost three years after his wife's death, Nelson Galbraith, who had been allowed to make bail, went on trial for murder. The prosecution's key witness, Dr. Ozoa, told the jury that in all his years as a forensic pathologist, he had never heard of a woman killing herself by ligature. Suicide by ligature, however, is a well-recognized method of death that is well documented in textbooks and scientific journals.

     The defense called to the stand forensic pathologists who disagreed with Dr. Ozoa, and argued that the defendant could not have physically committed the crime. Following two and a half weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for one day and returned a verdict of not guilty. Following the acquittal, the prosecutor's office sought the opinion of a forensic pathologist in the Santa Clara County Coroner's Office regarding the manner of Josephine Galbraith's death. The pathologist agreed with the defense experts: the poor woman had killed herself.

     Nelson Galbraith, convinced he had been maliciously prosecuted, sued Dr. Ozoa for $10 million. To bolster his case, Mr Galbraith spent $10,000 to have his wife's body exhumed and sent to Salt Lake City to be examined by Dr. Todd Grey, the medical examiner for the state of Utah. According to Dr. Grey, Dr. Ozoa's incorrect finding of homicide was predicated on an incomplete autopsy. Ozoa had, among other things, neglected to dissect the dead woman's neck, a procedure that could have helped determine how long it had taken her to die. He had also failed to interpret the swelling in her brain, and the broken blood vessels in her face and eyes, as evidence of a slow death. Dr. Ozoa, when confronted with Dr Grey's opinion of his work in the Galbraith case, insisted he had performed a complete autopsy, and that the woman had been murdered.

     In 2002, almost seven years after Dr. Ozoa's autopsy in the Galbraith case, the Medical Board of California, citing Dr Ozoa's work in that case, voted to suspend the 77-year-old's license to practice medicine in the state. Two months later, Nelson Galbraith died. Two of his sons kept the civil case alive, and in 2008, Santa Clara County settled the matter for $400,000. 

The Man They Couldn't Shock

     In the McGuinness Book of World Records there seems to be a record for just about everything. But there is no mention, I'm sure, of the man who was tasered 71 times within a span of thirty minutes. This has to be a world record, at least in the category of repeatedly tased people who didn't die from it. The man who holds this unofficial record has not been identified by the police, so I'll refer to him as Bob.

     Bob, a 25-year-old veteran of the Afghanistan War who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, after being allegedly disowned by his family in Phoenix, moved in with a relative in Flagstaff, Arizona. One evening in July 2010, after taking PCP and bath salts, Bob entered a Cheveron gas station and store on Highway 89 in Doney Park just north of Flagstaff. Barefoot, Bob wandered about the place leaving muddy footprints, then approached the cashier and asked to be reported to the police.

     When Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Officer Brian Barnes arrived at the Cheveron station, he encountered Bob in the parking lot in front of the store. As the officer approached the suspect, Bob ran toward the entrance of the station with the officer in close pursuit. When Bob slammed into the closed door, he bounced back into the officer, and they both fell to the ground. Bob jumped up, this time opened the door, and ran inside. After shooting Bob with his taser gun, Officer Barnes and a bystander managed to handcuff the out-of-control man. His hands, however, were not restrained behind his back.

     Bob settled down a bit, but the moment Coronino County Deputy Sheriff Don Bartlett arrived, Bob started acting up. To hold him down, the 260 pound deputy sat on his legs, but when that didn't stop the violent thrashing and kicking, Deputy Barnes gave Bob a taste of his taser. When that didn't help, he zapped him two more times.

     As the DPS Officer and the deputy struggled with the drug-crazed man in the Cheveron station, EMT and firefighters arrived at the scene, followed by Sheriff's Office Sergeant Gerrit Boeck. During the next thirty minutes, Deputy Bartlett tased Bob 20 more times with Officer Barnes electronically chipping in. While they were shocking the hell out of this guy, he kept resisting, shocking the hell out of them.

     Finally, the three police officers, with the help of several firefighters, strapped the handcuffed madman onto a gurney, but as they were sliding him into the ambulance, Bob managed to grab Deputy Bartlett's belt. Sergeant Boeck, thinking that Bob was trying to get ahold of the deputy's gun, started punching him in the arm. It took several people to pry Bob's fingers from the Deputy's belt.

     Once they got Bob into the ambulance, a paramedic shot him full of sedatives--one of the doses being ketamine--a tranquilizer they use to control animals. The drugs kicked in, and Bob settled down.

     At the Flagstaff Medical Center, Bob was diagnosed as being in a state of excited delirium which had given him superhuman strength, and rendered him impervious to pain. (See: "Excited Delirium Syndrome: Cause of Death or Police Cover-Up?" February 6, 2012.) After a few days in the hospital, Bob was released. The authorities decided not to charge him with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, or disorderly conduct. (The county prosecutor was probably concerned with the taser overuse, and decided to let a sleeping dog lie.)

     Regarding the issue of excessive force, the DPS referred the case to the county attorney's office for investigation. That Bob survived all that electricity, especially when in a state of excited delirium, is miraculous. Had he died, the medical examiner would probably have listed the cause of his death, excited delirium syndrome.

     These officers were presented with an extremely difficult situation, and when their taser guns didn't work, ran out of good options. Sometimes the police encounter situations they are not equipped to handle. When it became obvious that their tasters weren't working, the officers should have stopped using them. If Bob had died, these officers and their employers might have been sued for wrongful death. In this case, the officers were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. 

Murder Will Out: Thanks to DNA

     A man kills a woman, does not get caught, and moves on with his life. Then one day, 32 years later, cops knock on his door, put him in handcuffs, and haul the stunned suspect off to jail on the charge of murder. Before 1995, a story like this was the stuff of fiction. The advent of DNA technology, however, has made scenarios like this one not only possible, but fairly common.

     In the old days (in the context of DNA science), when a murder investigation petered out, and the trail grew cold, detectives shelved the case, and, except for the victim's family, it was forgotten. Maybe the detective who had tried but failed to solve the murder thought about it every so often. But with dead witnesses, failed memories, lost documents, and no leads, the old murder remained as dead as the victim. With the passage of enough time, even the killer might forget the killing, or pretend it never happened. It used to be said that murder will out, but that was a lie.

     Thanks to the developing science of DNA fingerprinting, old murder cases involving biological evidence such as hair follicles, saliva traces, bloodstains, and semen residue, can now come back to life and haunt killers who thought they had escaped detection. Yes, it's justice delayed, but it's a lot better than no justice at all.

The Catherine Walsh Murder Case

     At noon, on September 1, 1979, Peter J. Caltury, Sr. entered the duplex in Monaca, Pennsylvania where his 26-year-old daughter, Catherine Walsh, lived by herself. He found her dead, lying face-down on her bed with her hands tied behind her back with a bathrobe cord. Dressed in a nightgown, and partially covered by the bed sheet, the victim had a blue scarf wrapped around her neck. Mr. Caltury called the Monaca Police Department. Officer Andrew Gall, 25, responded to the scene. (Gall is currently the Assistant Chief County Detective in the Beaver County District Attorney's Office.)

     It became apparent that robbery hadn't been the motive for this murder. Also, the doors to the house had been locked when the victim's father checked in on his daughter. And there were no signs of a struggle. The victim had known her killer.

     Murder was (and is) rare in Monaca, a Beaver County town on the eastern bank of the Ohio River 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The fact Catherine Walsh had been sexually assaulted and murdered in her own bedroom shocked the residents of this tiny community. Catherine, in August 1976, a year out of Monaca High School, had married Scott E. Walsh. In December 1978, he filed for divorce on the grounds she had "violated her marriage vows." Catherine had moved into the duplex after they had separated, but at the time of her death, she was still married.

     The Beaver County coroner determined that Catherine Walsh had been strangled to death, and ruled the case a homicide. Detectives questioned, as the obvious suspect, Scott Walsh, the estranged husband. The cops also interviewed a man named Gregory Scott Hopkins from the nearby borough of Bridgewater. Hopkins admitted he had had a sexual relationship with the married victim, but said it had ended a month before her death.

     Although they worked hard on this murder case, and had a few suspects, the police didn't acquire the evidence they needed to arrest anyone. Years passed, and the case went dormant. The detectives worked on other crimes, and the suspects went on with their lives. Gregory Hopkins became a successful building contractor, and in November 2010, was elected to the Bridgewater Borough Council. He had married his first wife in 1967, and divorced her in 1980. He married again in 1983, divorcing this wife in 1999. In 2001, he married Karen L. Fisher, his current wife.

     In 2010, the Pennsylvania State Police, working off a federal grant, re-opened several old homicide cases that featured biological evidence that could be linked to murder suspects through DNA analysis. One of these cold-case investigations included the September 1979 murder of Catherine Walsh. In December 2011, a state forensic scientist took DNA samples from several people, including Gregory Hopkins. After comparing biological trace evidence from the victim's nightgown, the bathrobe cord, and the crime scene bed sheet to Gregory Hopkins' DNA sample, the scientist declared a match.

     On January 29, 2012, detectives arrested Hopkins at his home for the murder of Catherine Walsh. They took the Bridgewater Councilman to the Beaver County Jail where he would await his bail hearing. Six days later, James Ross, Hopkins' attorney, was in court asking the judge to grant his client bail. The judge, ruling that Catherine Walsh's murder was a non-bailable crime, denied the defendant's request.

     Hopkins' attorney, promising a "vigorous" defense, told reporters that "Mr. Hopkins is a very reputable man in the community, has been in business for 40 years, served on the borough council and I think the arrest comes as a shock to many people." (I'm sure the arrest came as a shock to Mr. Hopkins. He may have been a reputable man before his arrest, but a DNA match in a murder case can suddenly erode a man's respectability.)

     

Gabe Watson and The Honeymoon Murder Case

     On October 11, 2003, 26-year-0ld David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson married Tina Thomas, the human resources manager for a small, southern department store chain. The couple had met while students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Shortly before getting married, Tina, in anticipation of her honeymoon, took beginning scuba diving lessons that included 11 dives in a flooded Alabama quarry. Gabe, a more experienced diver, had taken advanced courses, and had a total of 55 dives, 40 of which had been in the quarry. In 1999, he had been certified as a rescue diver.

     Ten days after the wedding, Gabe and his 26-year-old wife began their Australian honeymoon. In Sydney, they visited the Taronga Zoo and attended a Shakespeare play at the Sydney Opera House. On October 22, 2003, the honeymooners began a 7-day dive expedition on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. Day one of the adventure involved being taken, on the Townsville Dive Company's vessel "Spoilsport," to the historic Yolonga shipwreck, 48 nautical miles southeast of Townsville, in Queensland, Australia. Gabe and Tina were accompanied by rescue divers Dr. Doug Milsap, and Dr. Stanley Stutz, an emergency room physician from Chicago.

     Shortly into the dive, Dr. Stutz saw Watson swim to his wife and embrace her. When they separated, Gabe began swimming to the surface as she sank to the sea bed where she drowned. Rescuers recovered Tina Watson's body not far from the shipwreck.

     When asked to explain what happened to his wife, Gabe said he and Tina, shortly after going into the sea, had encountered strong currents. She panicked, and as he approached to help, she knocked off his mask and air regulator. He couldn't hold her, and she floated away and began to sink. Because of an ear problem, Gabe said he was unable to go after her. As she drifted to the bottom of the ocean, he swam to the surface to summon help.

     On October 27, 2003, 5 days after the drowning, detectives with the Townsville Police Department questioned Gabe Watson. He told them that during the struggle, he had tried but failed to activate his wife's buoyancy control vest. "I remember," he said, "shouting through my regulator, 'Tina, Tina, Tina.' In the back of my mind I was thinking these people [the other divers] could see us, or at least think something odd was going on. I pretty much lost it."

     Members of the Australian State Dive Squad assisted in the investigation of the drowning by conducting reenactments of Tina's dive. Several members of the investigation team had problems with Gabe Watson's explanation of the drowning, and suspected foul play. In the meantime, the tabloid press in Australia, England, and the United States called Tina's death "The Honeymoon Murder," and by implication, portrayed Gabe Watson as a cold-blooded killer after his wife's life insurance.

     Four years passed with nothing happening in the case. Then, on November 13, 2007, the story jumped back in the news when the authorities in Australia held an inquest into Tina Watson's death. (I'm not sure why, after four years, the authorities decided to re-open the case. Perhaps it was pressure from Tina Watson's family.) Back in the U.S., on August 15, 2008, Gabe Watson married a woman named Kim Lewis. Three months after his second marriage, an Australian grand jury indicted him for murdering his first wife in October 2003.

     Watson, in May 2009, returned to Australia on his own to face the murder charge. A month later, in the Queensland Supreme Court in Brisbane, he pleaded guilty to the crime of manslaughter. While he had not intentionally killed his wife, Watson was admitting that he had been criminally negligent in not saving her. The Australian judge, believing that the defendant had not murdered his wife, that he had loved her, and felt guilty that he hadn't saved her, sentenced Watson to one year in prison. The judge criticized the media which he felt had journalistically convicted Watson of murdering his wife.

     The one-year prison stretch infuriated Tina Watson's family, and prompted the Australian prosecutor to appeal the sentence to the Queensland Court of Appeals. In September 2009, the three-judge appeals panel hardened Watson's punishment to 18 months behind bars.

     If Gabe Watson thought the matter of his first wife's 2003 death was behind him, he was wrong. In October 2010, a grand jury sitting in Birmingham, Alabama indicted him on charges of murder for pecuniary (monetary) gain, and kidnapping by deception--allegedly luring her to Australia so he could drown her. (Talk about indicting a ham sandwich.) A month after the Alabama indictment, Watson, having served his 18 months in the Australian prison, was free. Sort of.

     On November 25, 2010, the Australian authorities deported Watson back to America. Before they did this, however, the U.S. Attorney General had given assurances that if convicted, Watson would not be given the death penalty. As soon as he got off he plane, Watson was taken into custody. The prosecutor in Alabama asked the judge to deny Watson bail, but in December a judge set his bond at $100,000. Watson made bail, and helped his attorneys prepare for his trial.

     Watson's defense team lost two key legal arguments. First, that the United States did not have jurisdiction in a death that occurred in Australia; and second, that trying him twice for the same drowning amounted to double jeopardy. The prosecutor in Alabama argued, successfully, that he had jurisdiction because, according to his theory of the case, Watson had planned to kill his wife in Alabama for the travel and life insurance benefits. (As it turned out, Watson was not the beneficiary of his wife's life insurance policy, her father was.) Double jeopardy didn't apply in this case because Watson's first conviction was in another country.

     Gabe Watson's attorneys were prepared to argue that Tina Watson's death had been a tragic accident caused by her inexperience as a diver, and a previously diagnosed heart problem. On the other side, the prosecutor hoped to convince the Alabama jury that Watson had switched off his wife's air supply, held her in a bear hug until she died, turned her air back on, then let her sink to the ocean floor.

     Colin McKenzie, a diving expert involved in the original Australian investigation, had concluded that "a diver with Watson's training should have been able to bring Tina up." But after reviewing Tina's and Gabe's diver logs certificates, and her medical history, McKenzie changed his mind. Based on this new information, the expert concluded that Gabe Watson should not have been allowed in the sea with a woman with no open water scuba diving experience.

     The Watson murder trial got underway on February 13, 2012 in the Jefferson County Court House in Birmingham, Alabama. Once the jury of 8 women and 4 men had been selected, the prosecutor, Don Valeska, and defense attorney Joe Basgier, made their opening statements. On February 21, after Valeska had presented the bulk of his case, the trial took a bad turn for the prosecution. Valeska had funeral director Sam Shelton on the stand, and was directing his testimony toward how, at Tina Watson's funeral, the defendant had asked about retrieving his wife's engagement ring from the casket. The purpose of this line of questioning was intended to establish the monetary motive behind the killing. Judge Tommy Nail, from neighboring Montgomery County, did not like what he was hearing. Interrupting the prosecutor's direct examination, the judge said, "I took my grandmother's engagement ring when she was buried. I think it's quite common." Turning to the witness, Judge Nail asked, "Is it common?" In response to the judge's question, the funeral director answered, "It's quite common."

     Still fuming, Judge Nail excused the jury, then spoke to prosecutor Valeska: "You mean to tell me that [Gabe Watson] bought the engagement ring, married her, he and his family paid for a wedding, he planned and paid for a honeymoon half way around the world, all so he could kill her to get an engagement ring he had bought for her in the first place?"

     Although the jurors didn't hear Judge Nail rip the heart out of the prosecutor's circumstantial case, it became clear where he stood on the issue of the defendant's guilt. Suddenly, a conviction, already a risky proposition, looked like a long shot.

     Judge Tommy Nail, on Thursday, February 23, directed a verdict of not guilty after the prosecutor rested his case. In the judge's opinion, viewed in a light most favorable to the state, there was not enough evidence of guilt to make a prima facie case against Gabe Watson. As a result, there was no need for a defense. The trial was over.

     Only Gabe Watson knows if he killed his wife. In my view, the Alabama prosecutor should have left well enough alone after Watson's 2009 guilty plea, and his 18 months in the Australian prison. There was simply no hard evidence in this case of a premeditated murder. This case cost the state of Alabama a lot of money. Several of the prosecution's witness had been flown over from Australia. Sometimes prosecutors, attracted by the limelight, and the chance of convicting a big-fish defendant, go too far. Both of the judges in this case--the one in Australia, and Judge Nail--did not believe Gabe Watson had murdered his wife. The prosecutor knew this, but went ahead with the case anyway.

     Although Gabe Watson has avoided a murder conviction, he is still not out of the woods in this case. I wouldn't be surprised if Tina Watson's family sues him for wrongful death in civil court. And prosecutor Valeska might decide to appeal the directed verdict. I hope he doesn't. And I have never liked wrongful death suits against people found not guilty of homicide. As much as I loath O.J. Simpson, I didn't approve of it in his case. 

The Criminally Accused Cop: Remain on duty?

     Let's say two women, in separate cases, accuse a police officer of sexual misconduct. Should that cop, while these allegations are being investigated, remain on duty, or be placed on administrative leave? According to Ocean City (Maryland) Police Chief Bernadette Di Pino, a member of the executive committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), there are no national guidelines or policies dealing with this question. In Maryland, an uncharged officer can be taken off the street if the allegations seem credible. In most jurisdictions, however, accused officers stay on the job until they are charged with a crime. That's how cases like this are handled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Officer Adam Skweres

     Adam Skweres, after graduating from Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, joined the U.S. Army Reserves and served a tour of duty in Iraq. In 2005, after taking a few college courses, the 29-year-old applied for a job with the Pittsburgh Police Department. As part of the hiring process, city psychologist Dr. Irvin P. R. Guyett, in determining if Skweres was psychologically fit for police duty, reviewed the results of the candidate's background investigation. Based on polygraph test results, what neighbors and others said about the applicant, his financial history, and the psychologist's interview of the candidate, Dr. Guyett concluded that Skweres was "not psychologically fit for police work." (Dr. Guyett has been evaluating police candidates for 20 years.)

     Unwilling to take no for an answer, Skweres appealed Dr. Guyett's findings, and the rejection of his application, to the civil service commission. In 2006, the city appointed another psychologist, Dr. Alexander Levy, to re-evaluate the candidate. Dr. Levy, after presumably looking at the same data available to Dr. Guyett, found Skweres "psychologically suited for police work." Based on this second expert opinion, the city allowed Skweres to join the next available police academy class. Upon graduation from the police academy, the new officer was assigned to the Zone 3 station on Pittsburgh's south side.

     In June 2008, a woman filed a sexual misconduct complaint against Officer Skweres. After this woman had testified as a victim in one of his cases, Skweres, as he escorted her out of the courtroom, asked to speak to her privately. Skweres said he knew that this woman and her husband were dealing with the county office of Children, Youth and Families (CYF). If she agreed to give him oral sex, Skweres would write the CYF a positive letter on their behalf. If she refused, he would write the agency a negative letter. He allegedly said that he just needed 30 minutes of her time. The woman refused, and filed a complaint with the Pittsburgh Police Department.

     Two weeks later, Officer Skweres told a woman who had been in a minor traffic accident that he was writing her up, but the ticket would disappear if she gave him oral sex. According to this woman's complaint, Skweres looked at his sidearm and told her that if she told anyone about his proposal, he'd make sure she never spoke to anyone again.

     Although presented with two credible citizen complaints of coercion and sexual misconduct against one of its officers, supervisors at the Pittsburgh Police Department, because they didn't have sufficient cause, did not remove Officer Skweres from active duty. Pursuant to regulations enforced by the local Fraternal Order of the Police, this officer, until charged with a crime, would stay on the job.

     In December 2011, Officer Skweres entered a home in the Belthoover section of the city where the girlfriend of a man he had recently arrested lived. After asking her how much she loved the arrestee, Skweres allegedly offered to help the boyfriend if she stripped and performed oral sex on him. In making the proposal, which was more of a demand, he unclipped his holster to intimidate her. This woman filed a complaint with the Pittsburgh Police Department. Officer Skweres remained on duty.

     Officer Skweres, on February 11, 2012, showed up at the home of a girlfriend of another man he had arrested. Indicating that he knew he was being surveilled, and didn't want to be recorded, Skweres communicated with the woman by writing messages on a notepad. He instructed her not to talk, and told her to lift her skirt to show she wasn't wearing a wire. (He was not being watched.) When Skweres did speak, he did so in the kitchen where he had water running in the sink to cover his voice.

     After offering to help this woman's incarcerated boyfriend, Skweres allegedly forced the victim to give him oral sex. He cleaned himself off with a towel, put it into his pocket, and left the house. This victim reported the crime to the FBI.

     Five days later, at 5:15 P.M., officers with the Pittsburgh Police Department arrested Officer Skweres at him home. Charged with official oppression, indecent assault, rape, and criminal coercion, Skweres was placed into the Allegheny County Jail where, for his protection, he was isolated from the other inmates. A judge set his bond at $300,000. The department suspended Skweres without pay.

     On February 21, 2012, detectives searching Officer Adam Skweres's house and SUV, found marijuana and crack cocaine. His lawyer told reporters that his client would be pleading not guilty to the sexual misconduct and criminal coercion charges.

     In defending the police department's decision not to remove Officer Skweres from active duty after the 2008 complaints, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl told a reporter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that it wasn't until the fourth alleged victim filed her complaint with the FBI that the department had the "hard evidence" they needed to make the arrest, and take this officer off the street. The head of the police union told the same reporter that officers can't be taken off duty simply because a civilian makes a complaint. "If we remove someone every time an accusation was thrown at an officer, we wouldn't have any officers on the street who are hardworking and aggressive." (Really? Are there that many citizen complaints?)

     Samuel Walker, a professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska who is a nationally known author and scholar on the subject of policing, said the following to a reporter with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Common sense would say if you have suspicions about this person's conduct, you take [him] off the street, period. If there were two [complaints] back in 2008, that raises the significance of it even further. There should have been something done."

     

Random Acts of Crime: Snapshots 5

February 2012
Hope Mills, North Carolina

     Evangeline Lucca was either in a hurry or having a serious BigMac Attack when she drove directly up the the McDonald's pick-up window ahead of a line of vehicles in the drive-thru lane. (Cutting off people waiting for McDonald's goodies is like snatching food from the jaws of a starving dog. Not recommended.) With her 3-year-old daughter in the car, the 37-year-old woman wouldn't budge after McDonald employees refused to serve her. Someone, perhaps envisioning a riot, or a McMurder, called the police.

     When confronted by deputies with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, Lucca, apparently unwilling to let a couple of cops move her to the back of the line, wouldn't budge for them either. But unlike McDonalds employees, these guys carry taser guns. A deputy administered the voltage, and the hungry, impatient suspect found herself in another line. One that led directly to the county jail. A child protection officer took the little girl into custody as well. Although charged with second degree trespass, Lucca should have been charged with first degree stupid.

February 2012
Chicago, Illinois

     Burglars broke into a Lincoln Park jewelry store by cutting through a wall shared by a sushi restaurant next door. The thieves cut the hole right behind the safe in a small area not covered by security cameras and the motion detecting intrusion alarm. Using a powerful saw, the burglars cut into the safe and removed the gems. To cool the saw blade as it cut into the money chest, the intruders used a bucket of ice-cold beer. Based on the M.O. of this heist, the thieves were operating with inside information. If I were on the case, I'd be checking out former employees, and asking current ones to take polygraph tests.

February 2012
Armada, Michigan

     In March 2011, 25-year-old Mallorie Wilson-Strat waited in a car parked in front of a house in Armada where two men she had hired were supposedly murdering Wilson-Stat's boyfriend's estranged wife. The killing of the 32-year-old murder for hire target didn't happen because the hit men got cold feet and fled the scene. An earlier attempt to murder this woman, orchestrated by Wilson-Stat, had also failed. On her third try, the mastermind hired an undercover cop to do the job.

     In February 2012, following a three-day trial at the County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens, Michigan, the jury found Wilson-Stat guilty of conspiracy to commit first degree murder, solicitation of murder, and aiding and abetting a home invasion. The would-be victim's estranged husband, Kevin Sears, testified that he had not put his girlfriend up to the murder of his estranged wife.

     At her upcoming sentence hearing in March, the convicted woman's attorney will argue that his client was a puppet being manipulated by her boyfriend, Kevin Spears (who has not been charged.) According to the lawyer, she did it--tried to kill a woman three times--for love. The minimum sentence in Michigan for the crimes Wilson-Stat committed is 15 years in prison. The maximum is life. I'm pulling for that one.

February 2012
Lancaster, Pennsylvania

     In November 2010, district judge Kelly Ballentine received a pair of parking tickets and a summons regarding the expired registration on her BMW. The fines totaled $268.50. Rather than pay up like the rest of us, Judge Ballentine accessed the online magisterial district judicial system and fixed her own tickets. The 43-year-old judge had been elected to the bench in 2006. (In Pennsylvania, anyone can be a district judge, all you have to do is run for the office and get enough votes.) Charged with conflict of interest, public records tampering, and obstruction of justice, Ballentine is free on $25,000 bail. (I'd like to hack into the system and raise that to $1 million.) If convicted on all counts, she could be sentenced up to seven years in prison. (That won't happen. I'd be surprised if she gets any prison time.) On paid administrative leave, Judge Ballentine could face disciplinary action imposed by the state supreme court. (Not long ago, a pair of central Pennsylvania judges were convicted of taking kick-backs from a private prison for every kid they sentenced to the facility.)

February 2012
Los Angeles, California

     In Los Angeles, people who are physically disabled can be issued blue placards that allow them to park free all day. The problem is, hundreds of motorists are using cards issued to other people, depriving the city of angels needed revenue. This month, undercover officers with the Los Angeles Department of transportation, ran a sting operation that revealed how badly the system is being abused. Illegal parkers caught in the crackdown were fined between $250 and $1,000. A few could end up in jail for up to six months. (One nice thing about jail--parking is not a problem.) When caught, most of the fraudulent parking card users were not ashamed or remorseful. They were furious.

February 2012
Pasadena, California

     On Sunday night, February 12, Pasadena police were called to the apartment Marston Hefner shared with his girlfriend, Claire Sinclair. Officers took the 21-year-old Hefner into custody when they discovered that his girlfriend had been injured. On Monday, after being charged with domestic assault, Hefner was released on $20,000 bail. Sinclair, that day, acquired an emergency restraining order against Mr. Hefner.

     None of this would have been an event worthy of media attention had the suspect not been the son of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Adding icing to this celebrity journalism cake, the 20-year-old alleged victim was 2011's Playmate of the year. (I predict, for Claire Sinclair, a spot on next year's "Celebrity Apprentice.") Two days after Hefner's release from jail (From young Hef we might see a prison memoir based on his hellish incarceration.), Sinclair told reporters she would not press charges if Marston admitted that he had hit her more than once, and sought psychiatric help. (Too many stories like this one and I'll be looking for a shrink myself.)

February 2012
Ozark, Missouri

     Edward Maher, a 36-year-old armored car driver, on January 22, 1993, drove his money truck to a remote spot near Felixstowe on England's east coast, loaded $1.5 million (U.S.) in bills and coins into his car, and disappeared. "Fast Eddie," as he became known in England, fled to America with his 3-year-old son Lee, his wife Deborah, and the money. After living in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Edward, using the name Michael King, moved his family, in 2006, to Ozark, Missouri, a town of 18,000 in the southwest corner of the state.

     In 2010, the broadband technician with a cable company called Suddelink, was $35,000 in debt, driving an old car, and living with his wife and son in a drab housing complex. That year, he filed for personnel bankruptcy. In 201l, things got better for Michael King when he won $100,000 from a scratch lottery ticket. That year, Michael's 23-year-old son Lee, married an Ozark girl named Jessica. That's when life took a wrong turn for England's "Fast Eddie."

     Lee King, who liked to tell people he had been a decorated military officer, also told his friends that his father had been an infamous English armor car thief who had been on the lamb for twenty years. This story sounded so fantastic, nobody believed him. But when Lee told his new wife the story, Jessica went online to check it out, and sure enough, it was true. When Edward Maher, AKA Michael King, learned that his son had spilled the beans to his new wife, he threatened to kill her if she went to the police. Fearing for her life, that's exactly what she did.

     In February, FBI agents arrested Maher at his home in Ozark. He is currently in federal custody for, as an illegal immigrant, possessing a firearm. He will eventually be extradited back to England where he can still be prosecuted for the armored car heist. Because they are not U.S. citizens, his wife and son will be going back with him. (I find it interesting that in America, an illegal immigrant can file for bankruptcy, get a driver's license, and possess a social security card. I'd also like to know how Maher converted all that money to U.S. currency, then made it to America.) 

Officer James Peters: Scottsdale's Dirty Harry

     American law enforcement has become more militaristic, and zero-tolerant. Last year the police shot just under 1,200 people, killing slightly more than half of them. (In 2009, the police shot and killed 406 citizens.) Still, 90 percent of police officers, during the course of their entire careers, don't shoot anyone. Most don't even discharge their weapons outside of the firing range. In 2011, of the police officers who did shoot someone, 15 had used this form of deadly force before. One of the officers had a rather provocative history of three previous police involved shootings.

     So, what would you say about a police officer, who, in a span of nine years, shot and killed, in separate shooting incidences, six people? Last year, the entire police forces of Delaware, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, and Alaska, combined, shot less than six people.

     During the period November 2002 through February 2012, Scottsdale, Arizona police officer James Peters shot at seven people, killing six of them. From this, one might conclude that Scottsdale, the Phoenix area suburb of 220,000, is the site of daily shootouts between the police and a large population of violent criminals. But this isn't the case. In 2011, the Scottsdale Police only shot one person, and it wasn't fatal. By comparison, the police in Phoenix that year shot 16, killing 9.

     How could one member of a police department made up of 435 sworn officers, shoot so many people in a relatively low crime city? After say, the third shooting incident, why wasn't this man psychologically evaluated, and at the very least, put behind a desk? Moreover, didn't the officer himself ask himself why he was the only guy on the force doing all of the killing?

     On November 3, 2002, roughly two years after joining the police department, Peters, as a member of the SWAT team, responded to a domestic violence call at the home of a man named Albert Redford. Following a 4-hour standoff, Peters and two other SWAT officers fired seven shots at the suspect, hitting him three times. Mr. Redford died a few hours later in the emergency room. As it turned out, none of the fatal bullets had been fired from Peter's rifle. An investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office cleared all three officers of wrongdoing

     Officer Peters, on March 25, 2003, responded to a call regarding shotgun blasts coming from the home of a distraught, disbarred attorney named Brent Bradshaw. Three hours later, Peters and his follow officers encountered the 47-year-old suspect wandering along the Arizona Canal carrying a shotgun. When Mr. Bradshaw refused to drop his weapon, Peters dropped him with a shot to the head. This shooting was declared justified.

     On October 10, 2005, Officer Peters shot and killed Mark Wesley Smith. High on methamphetamine, Smith was smashing car windows with a pipe outside an auto-body shop.  
In justifying his use of deadly force in this case, Peters said the subject had threatened a fellow officer with the pipe.

     Brian Daniel Brown, 28, took a Safeway grocery store employee hostage on April 23, 2006 after he had hijacked a Krispy Kreme delivery truck. After killing this hostage taker, the department awarded Officer Peters a medal of valor.

     Peters and Scottsdale officer Tom Myers were in Mesa, Arizona on August 30, 2006 hoping to question Kevin Hutchings, a suspect in an assault committed earlier that evening in Scottsdale. After Mr. Hutchings fired a shot from inside his house, the officers had the power cut to the dwelling. When the armed man came out of his house to investigate the power outage, Peters shot him to death. The city, in this case, ended up paying the Hutchings family an out of court settlement of $75,000. Even so, the department declared this shooting justified, and Officer Peters kept his assignment as a street cop even though he had killed two people in one year.

     On February 17, 2010, Officer Peters and Detective Scott Gailbraith confronted 46-year-old Jimmy Hammack, a suspect in five Phoenix and Scottsdale bank robberies. When Hammack drove his pickup truck toward the detective, Peters shot him. A few days later, Hammack died in the hospital. This shooting, on the ground the subject was using his vehicle as a deadly weapon, went into the books as justified.

The Killing of John Loxas

     John Loxas, 50, lived alone in a trash-littered house near Vista De Camino Park in Scottsdale. In 2010 police arrested him for displaying a handgun in public. On February 14, 2012, Officer Peters and five other cops responded to a 911 call concerning Loxas who reportedly was threatening his neighbors with a firearm. To complicate matters, Loxas, who regularly babysat his 9-month-old grandson, had the child in his arms while intimidating the neighbors.

     When Peters and the other officers arrived at the scene, Mr. Loxas and the baby were back inside the house. When ordered to exit the dwelling, Loxas, still holding the child, appeared in the doorway. As the subject turned to reenter the house, and lowered the baby exposing his upper torso and head, Peters, thinking he saw a black object in Loxas' hand, shot him in the head from 18 feet. The subject, killed instantly by the bullet from Peter's rifle, collapsed to the ground still holding the baby. Fortunately, and perhaps miraculously, the infant was not injured.

     As it turned out, at the time Officer Peters killed Mr. Loxas, the subject was not armed, or within reach of a weapon. Police did find, in the dead man's living room, a loaded handgun hidden between the arm and cushion of a stuffed chair. Farther into the dwelling, searchers discovered a shotgun, several "Airsoft"-type rifles and pistols, and a "functional improvised explosive device."

     In explaining why he had shot Mr. Loxas, Officer Peters said he had been concerned for the safety of the baby. Peters is currently on paid administrative leave pending yet another police involved shooting investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Critics of the shooting, including some of Loxas' neighbors, were planning to protest the incident. A few days later, 75 protestors held a demonstration outside the police department.

     Except for the Safeway hostage case in April 2006, most police officers, faced with the choices presented to Officer Peters, probably would not have exercised deadly force. This doesn't mean Peters committed criminal acts, or that his shootings were even  administratively unjustified. It's just that most officers wouldn't have been so quick on the trigger. If it were otherwise, every year thousands, not hundreds, of people would die at the hands of the police.

     Because Mr. Loxas had been armed shortly before the police arrived at the scene, and Officer Peters thought the subject was holding a handgun when he shot him, this case will probably be ruled a justifiable homicide. Whether or not, under the circumstances, the killing of Mr. Loxas was the right thing to do, is another question altogether.

UPDATE

     Officer Peters was cleared of the Loxas shooting.    

     On June 22, 2012, the Scottsdale police board for the Public Safety Retirement System approved Officer Peters' application for early retirement based on some unnamed disability. He will receive a pension of $4,500 a month for life. Not bad for 12 years of work. No wonder the country is going broke, and people in the private sector resent the government. 

Raymond Chandler on Writing

     Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), the British born author of bestselling hard boiled private eye novels The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, transformed the mystery genre into literature. Chandler lived many years in southern California, and wrote for the movies. The following passages are from The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane:

...I have never had any great respect for the ability of editors, publishers, play and picture producers to guess what the public will like. The record is all against them.

American [writing style] has no cadence. Without cadence a style has no harmonics. It is like a flute playing solo, an incomplete thing, very dextrous or very stupid as the case may be, but still an incomplete thing.

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of the story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

I have a peculiar idea about titles. They should never be obviously provocative, nor say anything about murder. They should be rather indirect and neutral, but the form of words should be a little unusual.

The people whom God or nature intended to be writers find their own answers, and those who have to ask are impossible to help. They are merely people who want to be writers.

...you never quite know where your story is until you have written the first draft of it. So I always regard the first draft as raw material.

I write when I can and don't write when I can't; always in the morning or the early part of the day. You get very gaudy ideas at night but they don't stand up.

The detective story is not and never will be a "novel about a detective." The detective enters it only as a catalyst. And he leaves it exactly the same as he was before. [As opposed to "straight" novels where the protagonist, by the end of the book, has to have undergone some kind of change.]

A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.

Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives. It took a certain amount of effort to go to the movies. Somebody had to stay with the kids. You had to get the car out of the garage. That was hard work. And you had to drive and park. Sometimes you had to walk as far as a half a block to get to the theater. Then people with fat heads would sit in front of you.

...not-quite writers are very tragic people and the more intelligent they are, the more tragic, because the step they can't take seems to them such a very small step, which in fact it is. And every successful or fairly successful writer knows, or should know, by what a narrow margin he himself was able to take that step. But if you can't take it, you can't. That's all there is to it.

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. The things which happen to him might still happen as a result of a peculiar set of chances. By making him a private detective you skip the necessity for justifying his adventures.

Talking of [literary] agents, when I opened the morning paper one morning last week I saw that it finally happened: somebody shot one. It was probably for the wrong reasons, but a least it was a step in the right direction.

The only private eye I have met personally was brought to the house one night by a lawyer friend of mine....Most of his work consists of digging up information for lawyers, finding witnesses etc. He struck me as a bombastic and not too scrupulous individual. The private eye of fiction is pure fantasy and is meant to be.

Back on the Job: The Cop That Wouldn't Stay Fired

     Police unions, civil service, law enforcement solidarity, and the right of arbitration, makes firing a cop twice as difficult as evicting a freeloading relative. Once a police officer is on the job, short of being convicted of a felony, he stays on the force. Poor job performance, behavior unbecoming a law enforcement officer (a concept that has lost its meaning), and general unfitness for the work, are not grounds for dismissal. (In the private sector, it's another story altogether.)

     While it's easier to get your hands on top-secret CIA files than a police officer's personnel jacket, there are thousands of cops on the job with fat employment histories laden with citizen complaints, and disciplinary actions. A brutal, dishonest, lazy, and/or incompetent police officer can stick around until retirement. Many get out early by fabricating  phony medical disability claims, then take up water sports in Miami. And there is very little police chiefs can do about it. In law enforcement, the higher you go, the less power you have. I'm sorry, but it's true. 

Not One of New Castle's Finest

     New Castle, Pennsylvania, the seat of Lawrence County 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, has seen better days. At one time, the town of 24,000 had been a thriving, fast-growing mill town. It's currently a shell of its former self, and struggling to come back. If any place needs a good police force, it's this town. 

     On the night of December 23, 2010, an off-duty New Castle police officer named James L. Paglia was a passenger in a pick-up truck. His wife Terri was driving. They were arguing, and he was intoxicated. Officer Paglia got so angry, he allegedly hit his wife in the back of the head with his 9-millimeter handgun, then shoved the barrel of the loaded firearm into the side of her face. Forced out of the truck, the terrified woman came upon another police officer who had been following them. (I don't know if this was by design, or just happenstance. I'm thinking it was by design.)

     With his wife out of the vehicle, Paglia slid behind the wheel, and drove off. He didn't get far. Pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk, he failed a field sobriety test, and was taken into custody. 

     Following a criminal complaint filed by his wife, the Lawrence County district attorney charged Paglia with two counts of simple assault, reckless endangerment, terroristic threats, harassment, and DUI. The police department placed Paglia on unpaid administrative leave, and opened an internal investigation that resulted in the finding that this officer had violated departmental rules and regulations pertaining to officer conduct. 

     In March 2011, members of the New Castle City Council voted unanimously to remove officer Paglia from the police force. Later in the year, Paglia's wife withdrew her criminal complaint. (Not an uncommon event in wife abuse cases.) Without a prosecuting witness, the district attorney had no choice but to drop the serious charges against Paglia. The DUI count remained, but Paglia, as a first offender, was allowed to plead guilty, and enter the accelerated rehabilitative disposition program. Upon completion of this sentence, his DUI conviction would be expunged from the public record. 

     Pursuant to the city's collective bargaining agreement with the local Fraternal Order of the Police, Paglia could appeal his job dismissal to an independent arbitrator. And that's what he did. (With the wife abuse charges dismissed, he was now just an off-duty cop who had gotten behind the wheel of his truck with too much to drink.) In October 2011, the arbitrator held that the New Castle Police Department had to re-hire Mr. Paglia. He would not, however, recover lost wages or benefits, and the department, as a condition of re-employment, could require a drug and alcohol evaluation. 

     So, it looks like New Castle will have a police officer pulling over drunk drivers who himself was a drunk driver. Moreover, this officer will be responding to scenes of domestic violence where the boyfriend or husband is drunk and abusive. In the latter cases, just how sympathetic can this cop be to the abused woman? 

     In dealing with the public, police officers do not tolerate even a trace of disrespect. They have become extremely thin-skinned. For us civilians, the police have set the behavior bar very high. However, when dealing with their own, the behavior bar is extremely low. 

     One would think that the citizens of New Castle, Pennsylvania would be outraged by officer Paglia's reinstatement. But, as far as I can tell, they are not. Given the history of public corruption in this town, I guess they have become numb to stories like this.   

Walmartology: Crimes in Consumerland 7

January 2012
Houston, Texas

     The Houston Police arrested three shoplifters, a man and two women, who had walked out of three Houston Walmarts with $20,000 worth of merchandise. The thieves swiped small, high-dollar items such as electric razors and nonprescription drugs and merchandise in the pharmaceutical section of the store such as Prilosec, Rogaine, Whitestrips, and Claritin. The suspects smuggled the loot out through the home-and-garden centers where they passed the items though a hole in the fence to an accomplice. If it hadn't been for the surveillance cameras they may not have been caught. The fact they managed to leave the stores so easily with so much merchandise makes one wonder how many Walmart shoplifters are not apprehended. These were not sophisticated heists.

January 2012
Union Township, Pennsylvania

     In western Pennsylvania not far from the Ohio line, police arrested three shoplifters who had stolen thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from Walmart and two other box stores in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Like the thieves in Houston, they loaded up shopping carts with small, high-priced items, and wheeled the stuff to the closed lawn and garden departments where they passed the loot to an accomplice through broken fences.

       You don't have to be a retail security practitioner to realize these stores have weak loss prevention programs. Customers who take merchandise through the cash out counter instead of holes in fences, end up paying for the shoplifted stuff. As long as stores can pass the cost along to paying customers, there is no incentive to spend money on retail security.

February 2012
Bremen, Georgia

     A security camera in this west Georgia Walmart caught a homicide parolee attempting to kidnap a 7-year-old girl browsing in the toy section of the store. The would-be victim, Brittney Baxter, kicked herself from the grasp of 25-year-old Thomas A. Woods of Austell, Georgia. After the girl broke free, Woods ran out of the store. (He got out of prison in October 2011 after serving time for killing is uncle in 2004.)

     Arrested shortly after the failed abduction (and who knows what), and charged with attempted kidnapping, Woods insisted that he had not committed any crime. While Mr. Woods is presumed innocent under the law, if he is the man in the security video, he is guilty as hell. In his case, parole was not a good idea.

January 2012
Cheswold, Delaware

     On New Year's Day, around 11:15 P.M., two men and a woman entered the Walmart store and removed assorted items of jewelry from a display case. Three days later, the trio returned to the store at two in the morning, and stole more jewelry from the display case. In all, the thieves walked off with $3,000 in merchandise. Again, where was the retail security? Aren't display cases supposed to be locked? Don't they have to be opened from the employee side of the case? Where were the clerks (or whatever they are called at Walmart)? I'm thinking these thieves may have had a little inside help.

January 2012
Portage Township, Ohio

     At 4:50 A.M. on Wednesday, January 18, police and firefighters rolled onto the Walmart parking lot to find an Audi sedan fully engulfed in flames. After extinguishing the blaze, firefighters discovered, on the driver's side, the body of a fatally burned man. The driver's side front door was open, and the victim lay partially outside of the vehicle. While the body was burned beyond recognition, the car registration and other identification indicators suggested that the victim was an employee who was scheduled to start work that morning at 5 A.M.

     Following a fire scene investigation by a state fire marshal, the sheriff of Ottawa County told reporters that the authorities did not suspect foul play. While the Lucas County Coroner had not determined the cause of death, the sheriff referred to the event as a "tragic accident."

     Having taught arson investigation, I know that when a vehicle sitting in a parking lot bursts into flames so suddenly the driver has no time to exit the car, it is a highly unusual fire, one that demands a detailed explanation. Most automobile fires that are sudden and intense, and all consuming, are incendiary blazes aided by an accelerant. Accidental car fires not caused by traffic accidents are usually slow burning, smoldering affairs. In my opinion, immediately ruling out any form of foul play in this case was premature.

January 2012
South Jordan, Utah

     In another strange Walmart parking lot blaze, four 13-year-old boys came upon a woman on the ground next to her car with her foot on fire. One of the boys used his coat to smother the flames. Police, responding to the 911 call, rushed the woman to the University of Utah Hospital's burn unit. She had serious burns on her foot and leg.

     This fire victim, a heavy smoker, had been wearing jeans over a pair of nylons. Once the ash from her cigarette burned through her jeans to the flammable nylons, they ignited and produced a suddenly intense fire.

February 2012
West Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania

     On Wednesday, February 15, a 6-foot-4-inch, 300 pound man from Downingtown named Verdon Lamont Taylor, parked his car in the Walmart lot, climbed out of his vehicle, took off all of his clothing, and entered the store. Customers gave the 32-year-old man wide birth as he casually walked up to a counter and put on a pair of stolen socks.

     Police arrived to take the big, naked man (except for the socks) into custody. When Mr. Taylor refused to go along with the program, and spit on one of the officers, they let him have it with a stun gun. The device did its job, and the big man was led out of the store in handcuffs. (The spitting suggests schizophrenia.)

     Mr. Taylor has been charged with indecent exposure (if there were a felony version of this offense it would be appropriate here), aggravated assault, simple assault (spitting on a cop), retail theft (the socks), and disorderly conduct (shopping while nude). The suspect, who did not post his $50,000 bail, is incarcerated in the Chester County Jail.       

Dueling Experts: The Phil Spector Murder Case

     In the morning of February 3, 2003, Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies responded to a call from the Alhambra mansion owned by Phil Spector, the 67-year-old music producer who became famous in the 1960s for his "wall of sound." In the foyer, the deputies found 40-year-old actress Lana Clarkson slumped in a chair. She had been shot once in the mouth by the .38-caliber Cobra revolver lying on the floor under her right hand. When the fatal shot had been fired, Clarkson and Spector were the only people in the house.

     Spector's chauffeur told the police that at five in the morning, he heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot. Shortly after that, he said Spector came out of the mansion carrying a handgun. According to the driver, Spector had said, "I think I killed somebody."

     The music producer had met the victim the previous night at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip where the struggling actress worked as a hostess for $9 per hour. When the nightclub closed for the night, she had accompanied Spector back to his house for a drink. According to Spector's account of the death, Lana Clarkson had committed suicide.

     The crime scene investigation and the analysis of the physical evidence featured forensic pathology, the location of the gunshot residue, and the interpretation of the blood spatter patterns. Los Angeles Deputy Coroner Dr. Louis Pena visited the scene, and conducted the autopsy. The forensic pathologist found bruises on the victim's right arm and wrist that suggested a struggle. A missing fingernail on Clarkson's right hand also indicated some kind of violence just prior to the shooting. Her bruised tongue led Dr. Pena to conclude that the gun had been forced into the victim's mouth. Its recoil had shattered her front teeth. Clarkson's purse was found slung over her right shoulder. Since she was right-handed, and would have used that hand tho hold the gun, the deputy coroner questioned suicide as the manner of death. Based on his crime scene examination and autopsy, Dr. Pena ruled Lana Clarkson's death a criminal homicide. The police arrested Spector who retained his freedom by posting the $1 million bail.

     Blood spatter analysts from the sheriff's office concluded that after the shooting, Spector had pressed the victim's right hand around the gun handle, placed the revolver temporarily into his pants pocket, later wiped it clean of his fingerprints, then laid it near her body. From the bloodstains on his jacket, the government experts concluded he had been standing within two feet of the victim when the gun went off. The absence of her blood spray on a nearby wall led the spatter analysts to believe that Spector had been standing between the victim and the unstained surface when he fired the bullet into her mouth. Gunshot residue experts found traces of gunpowder on Spector's hands.

     The forensic work performed by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office and the sheriff's department had not been flawless. A dental evidence technician had lost one of the victim's teeth; a criminalist had used lift-off tape to retrieve trace evidence from the victim's dress which had interfered with the serology analysis; and the corpse had been moved at the scene, causing unnatural, postmortem blood flow from her mouth which compromised that aspect of the blood spatter analysis

     The Phil Spector murder trial got underway in May 2007. On June 26, the government rested its case. The defense led off with Dr. Vincent Di Maio, the former chief medical examiner of Bexar County, Texas. Dr. Di Maio, considered one of the leading experts on the subject of gunshot wounds, testified that he disagreed with the prosecution's experts who had asserted that blood spatter can travel only three feet from a person struck by a bullet. Dr. Di Maio said blood can travel more than six feet if a gun is fired into a person's mouth, the pressure from the muzzle gas that is trapped in the oral cavity creates a violent explosion. "The gas," he said, "is like a whirlwind, it ejects out of the mouth, out of the nose." (If the defendant had been standing six feet from the victim when the gun went off, he couldn't have placed the gun into her mouth.) Because 99 percent of intra-oral gunshot deaths are suicides, Dr. Di Maio opined that Lana Clarkson had killed herself. In the witness' 35 years as a medical examiner, he had seen only "three homicides that were intra-oral."

     In an aggressive cross-examination by the deputy district attorney, Dr. Di Maio was asked how much he had been paid for his work on the case. The former medical examiner said that his bill was $46,000, which did not include his trial testimony. Courtroom spectators laughed when Dr. Di Maio told his cross-examiner that the longer he kept him on the stand, the more it would cost the defendant.

     On September 18, 2007, the Spector jury, following a week of deliberation, announced they were deadlocked seven to five. Two days later, the judge sent them back to the jury room with a new set of instructions on how to determine reasonable doubt. In the Spector trial, the celebrity experts for the defense (including Dr. Henry Lee) did more than just muddy the water by pointing out mistakes and erroneous conclusions by the government's experts. They had offered a conflicting scenario backed by their interpretations of the physical evidence. In circumstantial cases like this, deadlocked juries are to be expected. The hung jury is what Phil Spector paid for, and it's what he got. The jury remained split, and the judge had to declare a mistrial.

     The second trial, this one not televised, got underway on October 20, 2008. The case went to the jury on March 26, 2009, and 19 days later, the jury found the defendant guilty of first degree murder. Two months later, the judge sentenced Phil Spector to 19 years to life. In May 2011, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. The California Supreme Court, when it declined to review the case, guaranteed that Mr. Spector will die in prison. Because so many high-profile forensic scientists disagreed on the interpretation of the physical evidence in this case, it will not be a positive landmark in the history of forensic science.

     

Amish Nightmare: Shaken Baby Misdiagnosis

     On December 23, 1999, Liz Glick, the 4-month-old daughter of Samuel and Liz Glick, Amish dairy farmers in Dornsife, Pennsylvania, died in the hospital two days after her parents had found her unconscious in her crib. The baby had been ill with a fever and had been vomiting. At the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, pediatricians experienced in treating Amish babies determined that the infant had died of vitamin K deficiency, a genetic and sometimes dietary condition associated with babies born at home and breastfed who have not been given the vitamin through precautionary shots or formula. The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency include bleeding in the brain and eyes as well as the presence of bruises caused by normal handling and movement.

     Dr. Michael Kenny, a pathologist at Geisinger, performed the autopsy and, as Kate Rush would later report in "Genomics in Amish Country," concluded that the baby had died of a "closed-head injury" (as opposed to a "penetrating head injury" caused by a bullet, stabbing instrument, or a blunt object.) Since Dr. Kenny was not the medical examiner, and it was not his job to make an official manner of death ruling, that decision fell to the county coroner, an elected official without a medical degree. Instead of conferring with pediatricians familiar with Amish patients, the coroner took the unusual step of convening an inquest, a jury-empannelled hearing to determine if the death was suspicious enough to warrant a full-scale criminal investigation. The coroner's inquest, as a first step in the criminal justice process, while still available in most states, is an antiquated way of determining manner of death.

     Dr. Kenny's "closed-head injury" finding, combined with the bruises, and the brain and eye bleeding, led the coroner's jury to rule that Liz Glick may have been the victim of a shaken baby syndrome (SBS) homicide.

     The Glick case became national news when a child protection agency speculated that the other seven Glick children, in the wake of the coroner's jury decision, were in danger. For their own protection, the children were placed in foster homes until the Pennsylvania State Police, and perhaps a jury at a murder trial, determined if their parents had committed criminal homicide. The Glick children were split up and sent to non-Amish (English) foster parents, an action that stunned and terrified the residents of this traditional central Pennsylvania community.

     The plight of the Glick family caught the attention of Dr. Holmes Morton, a Harvard trained pediatrician who in the 1980's had treated Amish patients at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Morton had moved to Strasburg, Pennsylvania, where in 1989, he had founded a nonprofit clinic in the heart of Amish country called the Clinic for Special Children, specializing in the treatment and study of illnesses and disorders affecting the Amish. Supported by donations and fund-raising events, the clinic incorporated a state-of-the-art laboratory for the diagnosis and study of biochemical genetic disorders. Dr. Morton should have been one of the first experts consulted by the authorities in the Glick case. He was well-known, had expertise pertinent to the case, and was local. No one, however, sought his opinion on the cause of the Glick baby's death.

     Without being asked, Dr. Morton conducted his own inquiry into the Glick baby's medical history. A few days later, he announced that the infant had been born with a genetic liver condition that rendered her body incapable of breaking down vitamin K. The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency--the bleed in the brain and eyes, and the severe bruising--could easily be mistaken for signs of SBS. In Dr. Morton's opinion, the Glick child had not been killed by shaking. There had been a terrible mistake; this baby's death had been of a natural cause.

     But criminal investigations are like freight trains--once they get rolling they are hard to stop. Even though Dr. Morton had thrown his body across the tracks, the train kept coming. Weeks passed. Finally, in February 2000, the case went before a state medical advisory board of physicians. The doctors heard testimony from several pediatricians who agreed with Dr. Morton's diagnosis. The panel of physicians voted to recommend that the manner of death in the Glick case be changed to natural.

     The local coroner, in light of the physicians' recommendation, changed his cause of death ruling, and shortly thereafter, the child protection agency gave the Glick children back to their parents. A month later, the district attorney announced that Samuel and Liz Glick were no longer the targets of a homicide investigation. One can only guess how far down the criminal justice track the prosecution train would have rolled had it not been for Dr. Morton's intervention. One or both of these parents could have been sent to prison. 

Showdown Semester: Advice From a Writing Professor

     Martin Russ' classic 1980 memoir, Showdown Semester: Advice From a Writing Professor, is an entertaining and practical instruction manual for anyone interested in the art and craft of creative writing, or in the difficult job of teaching students how to write for publication. Almost everything in this book is quotable, but here are a few passages that stood out for me:

The brute fact is, the instructor in a fiction workshop earns his pay by telling students what's wrong with their stories. The students themselves are convinced they need encouragement more than anything, and of course you'll encourage them as much as you can; but what they need most of all is discouragement, so that they'll come to realize how appallingly low their standards are and break the terrible habits they've learned.

As I believe in passive sadism in childrearing, so I advocate the same stance in dealing with the obstreperous student. Kill him with kindness or at least benevolent inattention. Not only must you never let yourself be drawn into any sort of emotional escalation, you must avoid acknowledging his attitude.

Make sure you have something to say before you write it down. One of the most difficult things undergrads have to learn is they have as yet little to say.

Many nonfiction teachers make the dumb mistake of providing subjects or topics. Let the student choose them himself, and make damn sure he says something about the subject--rather than merely turning in a description or summary or noncommittal analysis of it.

For some cockeyed reason it is assumed that if you have the required degree you can therefore do an adequate job of teaching.

Often a classroom of students will unconsciously follow a peer leader--a sarcastic put-down artist, for instance, who by dint of personality and precocious verbal skills will turn your course into a living nightmare unless you step in and blandly damp him off.

It's quite true that fiction can't be taught; but you can pass along a few shortcuts and get them interested in the craft of it. I don't think any student wastes his time in a good fiction workshop, not even the talentless ones.

Undergrads tend to use more words than they need to, and much of your work involves showing them that a certain word or phrase or sentence or paragraph can be deleted without loss.

The most prevalent problem in student fiction writing is lack of plot or suspense, or drama.

Undergrad fiction writers are intensely interested in the possibilities of metaphor, simile, alliteration, allusion, parallelism, symbolism, and all the other literary devices. Which is fine. The problem is that they're more interested in the devices themselves than in using them effectively.

For student writers one of the most difficult problems is "creating character"--and it's a damned hard thing to teach.

Fiction-writing students would much rather describe than narrate. Would rather tell than show. Would rather summarize than dramatize. Would rather explain than demonstrate. Would rather obscure than clarify. I don't know why...but students seem to want to do everything wrong.

The amateur's attitude: It is I who am doing this thing, and I'm more important than the thing I am doing. The professional's attitude: This thing I'm doing is more important than me. (In other words, just because you wrote it doesn't make it good, or even interesting.)

Albert Hamilton: One of America's First Experts from Hell

     In 1908, Albert Hamilton self-published a brochure about himself called, That Man From Auburn.  In this piece of self-advertisement, the druggist from Auburn, New York presented himself as an expert in chemistry, microscopy, handwriting identification, ink analysis, photography, fingerprints, and forensic toxicology. He also claimed expertise in the fields of gunshot wounds, bullet identification, blood stain analysis, cause of death determination, anatomy, embalming, and toxicology. To match his impressive qualifications, he awarded himself a medical degree, and from then on was known as Dr. Hamilton.

     Hamilton came into prominence in 1915 when he testified for the prosecution as a firearms identification expert in a rural New York murder case. The defendant, Charlie Stielow, an illiterate farmhand who stood accused of shooting to death the elderly couple who owned the farm where he worked, was facing the death sentence. The jury found Stielow guilty of first degree murder on the strength of a coerced confession, and the testimony of Albert Hamilton who identified a defect inside the barrel of the defendant's .22-caliber revolver as having left its individualistic mark on one of the fatal bullets. Having earned $50 a day for his work on the case, Hamilton impressed the jury with his enlarged photographs of the murder bullet. It all looked quite scientific.

     In reality, Hamilton's testimony was pure hokum. The science of firearms identification, as it came to be practiced in the mid-30s, did not exist in 1915. The comparison microscope, an instrument essential to the comparison and analysis of firearms evidence, was invented in 1926. Nevertheless, Hamilton assured the jurors that the fatal bullet had been fired from the defendant's handgun. His findings went unchallenged by the defense, and no one seemed to notice that he hadn't even test-fired the so-called murder weapon. The judge sentenced Steilow to death.

    Two years later, a pair of felons confessed to the murder, and the governor of New York formed a commission to review the case. The governor appointed Charles Waite, an investigator in the New York State Attorney General's office, to lead the inquiry. Waite took Stielow's revolver to a New York City police detective who knew about guns. An examination of the weapon convinced the officer that the revolver had not been fired in at least four years. Moreover, a naked eye examination of the bullets the New York police officer test-fired from the .22-caliber revolver, showed vastly different barrel marks than those on the murder slugs.

     As a result of these and other post-conviction findings, the governor granted Charlie Stielow, and another defendant in the case, full pardons. Charles Waite, having been introduced to the possibilities of forensic firearms identification, went on to become a prominent practitioner in the field. In 1922, he formed the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New New York City. The bureau, the first of its kind, was taken over in 1926 by Dr. Calvin Goddard, an Army surgeon and ordinance officer from Baltimore who became the most important and qualified firearms identification expert in the world.

     In 1923, two Italian-American anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolemo Vanzetti, were convicted of shooting a factory paymaster and his bodyguard to death in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The defendants' attorneys were seeking grounds for a new trial, and called upon the services of Albert Hamilton. Since the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been grabbing headlines for months, Hamilton eagerly got involved in the case.

     Nicola Sacco's conviction was based chiefly on the testimony of three firearms identification witnesses who said the bullet that killed the guard had been fired from his Colt .32-caliber handgun. The experts also believed that the gun the police found on Vanzetti had belonged to the slain guard.

     After examining the firearms evidence, Hamilton reported that the fatal bullet had not been fired from Sacco's gun, and the weapon that had been in Vanzetti's possession was not the weapon that had once belonged to the bodyguard. Relying on Albert Hamilton's report, the Sacco-Vanzetti defense team filed a motion for a new trial. To counter the motion, the prosecution acquired the services of two experts who had not testified at the trial.

     In November 1933, during the hearing on the motion for the new trial, Hamilton conducted an in-court demonstration involving two new Colt revolvers, and Sacco's handgun. The two Colt .32-caliber demonstration revolvers belonged to Hamilton. In front of the judge, and lawyers for both sides, Hamilton disassembled all three revolvers and placed their parts in three piles on the defense table. He then explained the functions of each part, and demonstrated how they were interchangeable. After reassembling the handguns, Hamilton placed the two new weapons back into his pocket, and handed Sacco's Colt to the court clerk. Before he left the courtroom, the judge asked Hamilton to leave his two guns behind.

     Several months later, when the judge asked one of the prosecution firearms experts to reinspect Sacco's revolver, the expert discovered that the barrel to Sacco's gun was brand new. Following an inquiry, Albert Hamilton admitted that the new barrel on Sacco's Colt had come from one of his revolvers. Although it was obvious to everyone that Hamilton had made the switch, presumably with a mistrial in mind, he denied any wrongdoing. Hamilton continued his association with the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, but he no longer played an important role in the case. He had destroyed his credibility as a firearms expert and witness.

     The Sacco-Vanzetti motion for a new trial was denied, and in 1927, the two men died in the electric chair. Prior to their deaths, Dr. Calvin Goddard, the most qualified firearms identification expert in the world, stated that Sacco's gun had in fact been the murder weapon. (Several modern firearms identification experts have examined the ballistics evidence in the case, and agree with Dr. Goddard's findings.)

     The barrel-switching incident in the Sacco-Vanzetti case apparently had little effect on Hamilton's phony career as a forensic scientist. Eight years after the Sacco-Vanzetti debacle, he testified for the defense in a New York murder case. In 1932, Stephen Witherell murdered his father, Charles. The defendant admitted shooting his father at point blank range with a Remington rifle he had stolen from his cousin. An expert with the New York City Police Department identified this rifle as the murder weapon.

     By the time the trial rolled around, Stephen Witherell had recanted his confession. He took the stand on his on behalf and denied shooting anyone. In fact, he denied the body in question was even his father's. (Decomposition and the massive gunshot wound to the victim's head had made the corpse unrecognizable.) Albert Hamilton took the stand, and testified that there were two gunshot wounds on the body: the head wound caused by a rifle, and a wound on the victim's hand, made by a handgun. Actually, there was no hand wound at all, the victim had lost two fingers in an industrial accident. Once again, Hamilton had proven that he was incompetent, and a charlatan.

     In 1934, Hamilton tried to insert himself in the Lindbergh kidnapping case by identifying a man named Manny Strewl as the writer of the ransom letters. Hamilton was not a qualified questioned document expert, and the writer of the extortion notes turned out to be Bruno Richard Hauptmann. The carpenter from the Bronx, an illegal alien from Germany with a criminal history in his home country, was executed in 1936 for the murder of the Lindbergh baby.

     Albert Hamilton continued to disgrace himself as an expert witness in several forensic fields for another ten years, making him one of the most notorious forensic charlatans in American history. If there is anything to learn from this man's career, it is that the woods are full of phony experts, and if judges let down their guards, we will have charlatans in our court rooms, and baloney in our verdicts.