IAPE Evidence Blog

DETROIT FREE PRESS, freep.com
BYLINE: TRESA BALDAS, DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
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Detroit, MI

Evi­dence destroyed in unsolved ’72 slaying

Merry Wil­son, 50, of Detroit holds a photo of her sis­ter Laura Wil­son, 16, who was raped and mur­dered in 1972. / August photo by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free

It was Nov. 10, 1972. Laura Wil­son, a shy teenager from the Her­man Gar­dens hous­ing project on Detroit’s west side, walked to a nearby con­ve­nience store to buy a car­ton of Oleo and two bot­tles of Pepsi for her mother.

She had pleaded to go alone.

Nine days later, her body was found in some bushes just blocks away from home. She’d been raped and beaten. Her head was smashed in with a brick.

Nearly four decades later, her fam­ily still has no answers.

Short of a con­fes­sion, it’s likely they’ll never know who killed the 16-year-old because all of the evi­dence was destroyed or lost.

Her blood­stained cloth­ing was ordered destroyed in 1977; the Pepsi bot­tle fol­lowed in 1978. A brick and a chunk of con­crete marked with blood and hair strands were destroyed in 1984. The fin­ger­nail scrap­ings and rape evi­dence — swabs taken dur­ing the autopsy — are nowhere to be found.

Her story illus­trates what legal experts say is a per­va­sive prob­lem nation­wide — the mis­han­dling of crim­i­nal evi­dence largely because of a lack of uni­form stan­dards for retain­ing evidence.

Law enforce­ment doesn’t track how often evi­dence gets lost or destroyed, but experts con­cede it’s not uncommon.

“It hap­pens,” said Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, who helps over­see 18,000 police depart­ments nation­wide. “I track all the head­lines. Miss­ing guns, money and nar­cotics. If it’s your son or daugh­ter, it’s a huge deal.”

A con­fes­sion is family’s only hope in solv­ing a 1972 mur­der after evi­dence was destroyed

Merry Wil­son was just 11 years old when her sis­ter was mur­dered in Detroit in 1972 — one of more than 600 homi­cide vic­tims in the city that year.

It was 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1972, when 16-year-old Laura Wil­son left her home in the projects to walk to a nearby con­ve­nience store. She was wear­ing her flared, blue-and-brown-striped Wran­gler jeans, a tan coat with fur trim, pur­ple turtle­neck and white sneak­ers with her name writ­ten in the soles.

She had 63 cents in food stamps with her.

She never returned.

Her case is among more than 19,000 unsolved homi­cides in the city, dat­ing to 1917. In the past decade, the city’s homi­cide clear­ance rate has aver­aged from 35% to 45%, but climbed to 54% in 2010.

Short of a con­fes­sion, the Wilsons will likely never find Laura’s killer because the evi­dence was ordered destroyed and some remains missing.

Experts say that’s a com­mon prob­lem, espe­cially among big city depart­ments han­dling large vol­umes of evi­dence. They say no national stan­dards exist, leav­ing it up to police depart­ments to decide how to store key items that could make the dif­fer­ence in solv­ing a case.

A nee­dle in a haystack

Legal experts say no laws exist that man­date evi­dence in unsolved mur­ders be pre­served indef­i­nitely. A fed­eral law requires bio­log­i­cal evi­dence be pre­served in a mur­der case where there’s been a con­vic­tion, should the defen­dant wish to pur­sue an appeal. And 33 states, includ­ing Michi­gan, have sim­i­lar laws.

But when it comes to pre­serv­ing evi­dence in unsolved cases, that’s up to police departments.

“Stan­dards are hit and miss from depart­ment to depart­ment,” said Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan law pro­fes­sor Dave Moran, who runs an inno­cence clinic. “We’re often look­ing for old evi­dence, and it’s very hard to find.”

Detroit police offi­cials would not talk about their evi­dence reten­tion poli­cies. Offi­cials directed the Free Press to file a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, which is pending.

Over the last decade, crime lab scan­dals involv­ing lost, destroyed or tainted evi­dence have sur­faced in cities nation­wide, includ­ing Hous­ton, Den­ver, Boston, Bal­ti­more, New Orleans and New York.

The scan­dals can prove costly.

In New York City, for exam­ple, a Bronx man last year won an $18.5-million jury award after a rape kit in his case finally sur­faced in a ware­house — 10 years after he asked for it. The man had served two decades in prison, but DNA evi­dence ana­lyzed from the rape kit exon­er­ated him.

Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, who has helped train Detroit police on evidence-handling meth­ods, said it’s not unusual for large police depart­ments to be clut­tered and unor­ga­nized, mak­ing find­ing items extremely difficult.

“Think of Costco. They’re that size,” he said of evi­dence rooms. “And if you’re look­ing for some­thing that’s the size of an iPhone or the tag came off or it’s under­neath some­thing … the stuff could be there.”

Evi­dence but no solid leads

Nine days after she dis­ap­peared, Laura’s par­tially nude body was found in some bushes at 8426 Met­te­tal St. on the city’s far west side. She had been raped, and her head was smashed with a brick, almost beyond recog­ni­tion. Her body was found by a group of boys play­ing football.

“It didn’t look real,” recalled Low­ell Mur­doch, who was 15 when he, his brother and a friend found Laura’s body. “It was shock­ing. At first we were scared. Luck­ily, we knew the guy who lived next door, and he got help.”

Police col­lected evi­dence: a brick and a chunk of con­crete that had blood stains and hair strands on it; a prayer book that was found near Laura’s body, also stained with blood, and her cloth­ing. They also recov­ered the items she got at the store — mar­garine, a bot­tle of pop and the receipt.

They had numer­ous tips, includ­ing sev­eral reports that Laura got into a red car. And police had suspects.

Accord­ing to a 183-page police file on Laura’s case, which the Free Press obtained from the fam­ily, one man was arrested fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop, but was released when his alibi was confirmed.

Laura’s boyfriend also came under sus­pi­cion, but police never ques­tioned him. Accord­ing to police records, the boyfriend, who drove a maroon car, was arrested on the morn­ing that Laura went miss­ing for dri­ving with­out a license. He was jailed overnight.

“This would kind of negate him as the assailant,” police wrote in their report. “How­ever, our inter­est was in the maroon car (could have let a friend use it while he was incarcerated).”

Police ulti­mately went to the boyfriend’s apart­ment. They found it had been vacated. They inter­viewed his fam­ily mem­bers and ruled him out.

The case went cold.

For years, Merry Wil­son and Linda Pat­ter­son, the eldest of the Wil­son sis­ters, called police to check on their sister’s case. Each time, they got the same response: no new leads.

Since Laura’s death, at least two of the offi­cers who inves­ti­gated the case have died. So have her parents.

One of the detec­tives told the Free Press he couldn’t recall the case, but that’s not so for retired Police Offi­cer Ronald Atkin­son, who nearly 40 years later still remem­bers the details. “It star­tled me,” Atkin­son, now 68, recalled. “I’m kind of a softie, and it may have shook me up a lit­tle bit dis­cov­er­ing that it was a young person.”

Atkin­skon, who was among the first on the scene, said he never knew that the evi­dence was destroyed.

“I’m sorry the chain of evi­dence is bro­ken, and my con­do­lences prob­a­bly have lit­tle mean­ing for the fam­ily,” he said, unable to offer an expla­na­tion. “It’s a shame that this happened.”

He added: “I don’t think this would hap­pen nowadays.”

Still search­ing for answers

Merry Wil­son has tried for years to put her sister’s death behind her.

But every time she learns of a cold case get­ting solved or hears about crime lab scan­dals and evi­dence get­ting lost, she gets fired up again and asks questions.

“I get con­sumed in it,” she said of her sister’s death. “It doesn’t let me go.”

In 2006, she started ask­ing about the evi­dence after wak­ing up from a dream in the mid­dle of the night. She had seen Laura, just star­ing at her and say­ing nothing.

“It just froze me,” she said. “I thought, ‘I gotta do something.’ ”

Wil­son learned in 2006 that much of the evi­dence was destroyed in the late 1970s. On Oct. 22, 2008, Wil­son received a let­ter from Wayne County Exec­u­tive Robert Ficano’s office stat­ing: “After a com­plete search of all files, it has been deter­mined that no slides or tis­sue sam­ples exist. I offer my most sin­cere con­do­lences for your loss.”

Detroit police would not dis­cuss Wilson’s case and would say only that they are review­ing the matter.

Pat­ter­son, who had to iden­tify her sister’s body when she was 22, is baf­fled and outraged.

“I always assumed that if it’s an open mur­der case, you can­not destroy the evi­dence,” said Pat­ter­son, who now lives in Tennessee.

The Wil­son fam­ily is plead­ing for a more thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion. They don’t blame the Police Depart­ment for past mis­takes, but they say they deserve a more thor­ough review of the case — and an apology.

“I want them to explain why this stuff was destroyed. Some­body has to answer for that,” said Merry Wil­son, who still lives in the city.

“Some­where along the line this shouldn’t have to hap­pen to any­one else.”

Pat­ter­son said she won’t stop look­ing for her sister’s killer.

“I loved her so much that I want peo­ple to know that she was loved and cared about,” Pat­ter­son said. “I’ll never give up because there is always some­body out there who knows something.”

Merry Wil­son, 50, of Detroit holds a photo of her sis­ter Laura Wil­son, who was raped and mur­dered in 1972. Laura was 16 years old. The case has never been solved, and Wil­son learned in 2006 that much of the evi­dence in the case was ordered destroyed by police in the late 1970s. August pho­tos by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wil­son sits at home look­ing over doc­u­ments about her sister’s mur­der that she has col­lected from Detroit Police through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. The Police Depart­ment would not dis­cuss Wilson’s case. pho­tos by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free
 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Chicago Tri­bune, chicagotribune.com
BYLINE: Steve Schmadeke, Tri­bune reporter
Link to Article

Will County, IL

Miss­ing drugs could hurt pros­e­cu­tions, experts say 

A large amount of heroin has been stolen from a ship­ping con­tainer that Will County sheriff’s police were using to store evi­dence, police sources say, poten­tially deal­ing a set­back to pros­e­cu­tions, along with the county’s efforts to stem surg­ing heroin use.

One source said four indi­vid­u­ally wrapped kilos of heroin, poten­tially worth $500,000 or more, were stolen from the con­tainer, which was left out­side a sheriff’s sub­sta­tion and secured with a pad­lock. Other sources could not con­firm the amount.

Mar­i­juana and some small items, includ­ing a saw and a bow-and-arrow set, were also stolen.

The con­tainer was stored on a fenced lot near Lar­away Road in unin­cor­po­rated Joliet, where police keep impounded vehicles.

The thefts are another black eye for the department’s evidence-handling pro­ce­dures. Last year details emerged about shoes belong­ing to Scott Eby, who pleaded guilty in Novem­ber to the 2004 slay­ing of 3-year-old Riley Fox, found near the Wilm­ing­ton creek where her body was dumped. The prison-issued shoes had his name writ­ten inside them, but the evi­dence was over­looked for years.

Experts said valu­able evi­dence like nar­cotics, cash or jew­elry is typ­i­cally stored in a much more secure area, some­times in a locked space inside a dead-bolted evi­dence room.

Will County sheriff’s police do have an evi­dence stor­age area at the sub­sta­tion, sources said, so it’s unclear why the con­tainer was used and why such valu­able items were stored out­side. Sheriff’s spokesman Ken Kau­pas did not return calls seek­ing comment.

Who­ever broke in appar­ently slipped through a gap in the fence and cut the lock off, said depart­ment spokes­woman Kathy Hoffmeyer, cit­ing a police report. The report only lists a con­crete saw and a bow-and-arrow set as miss­ing, said Hoffmeyer, not­ing that an inven­tory was being taken.

Hoffmeyer said she was unaware of the drug thefts when con­tacted by the Tribune.

The break-in was dis­cov­ered Oct. 14, she said. It’s unclear when the con­tainer was last entered by police. There is a video cam­era at the site.

A spokesman for the Will County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment.

County author­i­ties are work­ing to con­tain what they’ve described as a heroin epi­demic, with the num­ber of heroin over­dose deaths in Will County ris­ing from to 26 last year from five in 2000. So far this year there have been 22 fatal heroin over­doses, accord­ing to the county coroner’s office.

Legal experts said the thefts could tor­pedo any nar­cotics cases based on the stolen drugs, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of drug con­spir­acy or solic­i­ta­tion charges, even if the miss­ing evi­dence had already been tested by the state crime lab.

“In cases where these drugs were the basis for the charge, boy I think the state’s out of luck,” said Loy­ola Uni­ver­sity law pro­fes­sor Jamie Carey, who has writ­ten a book on court­room evi­dence. “If they don’t have the con­tra­band itself, I feel that they’re not going to be able to proceed.”

Ronald Smith, a John Mar­shall Law School pro­fes­sor, agreed, say­ing defen­dants have a right to do their own test­ing of any alleged narcotics.

“Unless pros­e­cu­tors can bring that stuff into the court­room, they don’t have a case,” he said.

sschmadeke@tribune.com

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Horvitz News­pa­pers, Penin­sula Daily News,peninsuladailynews.com
BYLINE: Arwyn Rice
Link to Article

Clal­lam County, WA

Staci Alli­son, left, sits in Clal­lam County Supe­rior Court on Tues­day. – Photo by Chris Tucker/Peninsula Daily News

PORT ANGELES — The trial of a woman accused of theft from the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Office evi­dence room began Tues­day with sug­ges­tions from com­pet­ing attor­neys of greed, office infight­ing, a lack of super­vi­sory over­sight and sup­port — and a clut­tered, con­fus­ing evi­dence room.

Staci L. Alli­son, a for­mer evi­dence tech­ni­cian who now lives in Mon­te­sano, was charged with first-degree theft and money laun­der­ing in the dis­ap­pear­ance of more than $9,500, accord­ing to Assis­tant State Attor­ney Gen­eral Scott Mar­low dur­ing his open­ing state­ment Tuesday.

“The theme here, unfor­tu­nately, is one of greed, rec­og­niz­ing a weak­ness and tak­ing advan­tage of that weak­ness,” Mar­low said in his open­ing statement.

Pre­vi­ous reports said Alli­son was accused of steal­ing $8,644 from the sheriff’s evi­dence room.

As much as $51,251 in cash was found miss­ing from the evi­dence room in Novem­ber 2006.

Alli­son was charged with the lesser amount because that’s what pros­e­cu­tors believed they could prove she took.

Today’s tes­ti­mony from pros­e­cu­tion wit­nesses will begin at 9 a.m. in Supe­rior Court at the Clal­lam County Courthouse.

Alli­son was the evi­dence offi­cer for the Sheriff’s Office from 2003 through 2006 and was in charge of log­ging in, main­tain­ing and return­ing or destroy­ing evi­dence col­lected in crim­i­nal cases by sheriff’s deputies and detectives.

Novem­ber snowstorm

The case began in Nov. 27, 2006, when a snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home, and her super­vi­sor dis­cov­ered a bin full of empty or par­tially emp­tied cash evi­dence envelopes near Allison’s desk, Mar­low said.

The dis­cov­ery trig­gered an inves­ti­ga­tion by the State Police and led to Alli­son, who was one of only three peo­ple who had both a key and the secu­rity code to the evi­dence room, he said.

The focus of the pros­e­cu­tion will be on Allison’s actions in delet­ing com­puter records the day before a state audit of the evi­dence room, bank records that show unex­plained cash deposits and pay­day loan records, Mar­low told the jury.

The defense told a dif­fer­ent story.

Man­age­ment ‘a mess’

“The whole man­age­ment [of the sheriff’s depart­ment] was a mess,” in 2006, though it was improved from an ear­lier admin­is­tra­tion, said defense attor­ney Ralph W. Ander­son of Port Angeles.

“There were rival­ries. Sides were picked,” Ander­son said.

Allison’s super­vi­sor even kept a detailed list of Allison’s fail­ings, Ander­son said.

“She did her job, though there were those who were out to get her,” he said.

Ander­son told the jury that Allison’s big gap in pay­day loans came dur­ing a time when Alli­son couldn’t get new loans because of unpaid loans.

As for the com­puter sys­tem, it didn’t work right, and Alli­son was try­ing to delete and re-enter data in an attempt to get it to work, Ander­son said.

For­mer Sher­iff Joe Mar­tin lost his re-election bid to the present sher­iff, Bill Bene­dict, in Novem­ber 2006.

Three wit­nesses, each a mem­ber of the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Depart­ment, took the stand Tuesday.

Direct super­vi­sor

Office Admin­is­tra­tive Coor­di­na­tor Chris James was Allison’s direct super­vi­sor in 2006.

James tes­ti­fied that she had been work­ing with Alli­son to resolve prob­lems with evi­dence room orga­ni­za­tion for six months, try­ing to clear up severe clut­ter that blocked the office’s safe.

Ander­son asked James if it would have been sim­pler to just go in and clean the room.

“I didn’t want to micro-manage,” James said.

James said she pre­ferred to help Alli­son resolve the prob­lem her­self, but Nov. 27, when the snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home and James in the office, she took the time to clear Allison’s per­sonal items from evi­dence shelves, to be replaced with evi­dence on the floor in front of the safe.

“The evi­dence room is for evi­dence,” she said.

The order for per­sonal items to be removed from the room came from Chief Admin­is­tra­tive Deputy Alice Hoffman.

Blue bin

Dur­ing the process, James found a blue Rub­ber­maid bin full of cash evi­dence envelopes, she said.

She imme­di­ately informed Hoff­man, who told her to find out why the cash evi­dence was not in the safe, she said.

Ander­son asked if she had noticed the bin earlier.

James said no, she had not noticed it before that day.

Ander­son also ques­tioned James about a long, detailed list of Allison’s “short­com­ings,” includ­ing the report of a per­sonal phone call while on duty.

That list was never entered into Allison’s per­son­nel file, which meant she had shown improve­ment on those items, James said.

List com­mon practice

Hoff­man tes­ti­fied that the list was com­mon prac­tice, that super­vi­sors were expected to doc­u­ment prob­lems for weekly meetings.

Hoff­man said no one could have entered the evi­dence room with­out the key and a code.

Chief Crim­i­nal Deputy Ron Cameron tes­ti­fied on the state of the evi­dence room that morn­ing and how it was dis­cov­ered that money was missing.

He said he had gone to the evi­dence room to get a key, but it was not where it belonged.

After a search in which James became “ani­mated” over the con­di­tion of the evi­dence room, James pulled out a blue bin and showed him the con­tents, Cameron said.

When James pulled an enve­lope out of the bin, some change fell out, which should be impos­si­ble for a sealed piece of evi­dence, Cameron testified.

Oth­ers were found to be opened, and the area was declared a crime scene, Cameron said.

Cameron took the keys of the two key­hold­ers in the office, had the elec­tronic alarm code changed and began the inves­ti­ga­tion, he said.

On cross-examination by Ander­son, Cameron said that in the past six months, he had been in the evi­dence room a few times and had not seen the blue bin before that day.

“So you can’t say how long those envelopes had been that way,” Ander­son asked.

“No,” Cameron replied.

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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360 – 417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org