IAPE Evidence Blog

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Bun­nell, FL

The case pits ex-cops Lisa and John Mur­rays against Bun­nell Police Chief Arthur Jones, center.

Shoddy and inex­plic­a­ble police work, a run­ning theme through a recent inves­ti­ga­tion of the Bun­nell Police Depart­ment and its after­shocks, is catch­ing up to the depart­ment – to the ben­e­fit of two of its for­mer police offi­cers fac­ing felony charges.

Last June, John and Lisa Mur­ray, a mar­ried cou­ple and for­mer cops at the Bun­nell Police Depart­ment, were arrested and charged with offi­cial mis­con­duct, tam­per­ing or fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence, and cocaine pos­ses­sion (for John) and two counts of offi­cial mis­con­duct (for Lisa). They’d both been sus­pended in April. Sub­se­quently, John Mur­ray also faced a grand theft charge when money was found to be miss­ing from the evi­dence room. Mur­ray was the evi­dence room’s custodian.

On Tues­day, the Mur­rays appeared before Cir­cuit Judge Raul Zam­brano, with their attor­ney – Michael Lam­bert, who is being paid through the Police Benev­o­lent Asso­ci­a­tion – to fight off a few charges. They had lim­ited suc­cess. One charge of offi­cial mis­con­duct against Lisa Mur­ray was dropped. So was the grand theft charge against her hus­band. But John Mur­ray is fac­ing a new offi­cial mis­con­duct charge tied to mar­i­juana plans.

Both Mur­rays, accord­ing to an inter­view they gave the News-Journal, blamed other cops at the police depart­ment for their trou­bles, and claimed inno­cence. “We were set up by other offi­cers,” Lisa Mur­ray said. “That’s why we are here today.”

The charge against Lisa Mur­ray was dropped when a piece of evi­dence it was tied to – a mar­i­juana pipe allegedly seized from a sus­pect and lost – mys­te­ri­ously and reap­peared last Octo­ber, even though, accord­ing to a follow-up State Attorney’s inves­tiga­tive report, there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion of “how the evi­dence was sub­mit­ted or placed in evi­dence.” Such doc­u­men­ta­tion is nec­es­sary to pre­vent tam­per­ing, or made-up evidence.

A sim­i­lar series of inex­plic­a­ble events helped to lead to the dis­missal of the grand theft charge against John Mur­ray. The charge was tied to miss­ing money from an evi­dence enve­lope, which was found to have coun­ter­feit money instead. The miss­ing money was dis­cov­ered by then-Sgt. Frank Gamarra. In August, after Gamarra him­self was fired, a coun­ter­feit $20 was found in a jacket he’d worn, in a depart­ment vehi­cle he’d dri­ven, and an inves­ti­ga­tion was launched against Gamarra.

Gamarra had been one of the prin­ci­pal indi­vid­u­als in the Bun­nell Police Depart­ment to coop­er­ate with the State Attor­ney in the inves­ti­ga­tion that uncov­ered irreg­u­lar­i­ties at the depart­ment, and favoritism by cops, includ­ing the Mur­rays, and city offi­cials, toward then-city com­mis­sioner Jimmy Flynt, who owns a wrecker ser­vice and was get­ting extra wrecker calls. Gamarra’s fir­ing fol­lowed on the heels of the pub­li­ca­tion of the inves­tiga­tive report, as did the alle­ga­tion against him stem­ming from that $20 coun­ter­feit bill. But Gamarra was cleared of that alle­ga­tion when, as in pre­vi­ous instances, it was found that the dis­cov­ery of the coun­ter­feit bill was not prop­erly doc­u­mented on Bun­nell Police Depart­ment evi­dence sheets, the bill was never pho­tographed or processed, and the vehi­cle Gamar­rra had used was also used by other cops.

Still, the con­nec­tion between Gamarra and John Mur­ray proved sub­stan­tial enough to lead pros­e­cu­tors to drop the grand theft charge against Murray.

Mur­ray wanted the cocaine pos­ses­sion charge against him dropped as well, since it was based on an illog­i­cal time­line. But the State Attorney’s office sub­se­quently changed the time­line, and the judge on Tues­day refused to drop that charge.

In Decem­ber, the Mur­rays suc­cess­fully argued that should their case go to trial, they should be tried for each count they face separately.

In a video­taped inter­view by the State Attor­ney, Bun­nell Police Chief Arthur Jones stressed that Mur­ray would have been fully – and alone – respon­si­ble for evi­dence tam­per­ing: “You know,” Jones told the inves­ti­ga­tor in repeated state­ments that deflected respon­si­bil­ity from him­self and onto Mur­ray, “there’s no way he could not have known, that amount of evi­dence, and the con­di­tion of the evi­dence in that office, and nobody else could have been in that office with that type of evi­dence being already tam­pered with in some instances, or just lay­ing around in his office in other instances, that he could not have known about, so yes, and if he knew about it, and he know as an admin­is­tra­tor [sic.] what his next step should have been, but I can’t see nobody else going in his office doing that so he had to be the one.”

The Mur­rays’ case is fur­ther tainted by the Bun­nell city government’s own shady role in what amounted to eight years of offi­cially sanc­tioned extor­tion on Bunnell’s streets: the city had passed an ordi­nance allow­ing the police to charge a $350 “admin­is­tra­tive fee” every time a vehi­cle was seized, whether legit­i­mately or not. That fee was in addi­tion to fees charged by wreck­ers. The State Attor­ney inves­ti­ga­tion forced the city to drop the fee and set up a reim­burse­ment pro­ce­dure for any­one who’d paid it, though the bur­den was on claimants to get their money back.

Flynt is no longer a com­mis­sioner. He was defeated in last month’s elec­tion. But after being removed from the sheriff’s office’s rota­tion of three wrecker ser­vices, sub­se­quent to the State Attorney’s inves­ti­ga­tion, Flynt was rein­stated, since no charges have been filed against him. 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
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