IAPE Evidence Blog

Chattanoogan.com, chattanoogan.com
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McMinn County, TN

The Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion today arrested a for­mer McMinn County Sheriff’s Office deputy for one count of offi­cial oppres­sion after he was indicted by the McMinn County grand jury ear­lier this week.

Justin Hes­ter, 28, of 263 County Road 587, Engle­wood, Tn. was charged as a result of a TBI inves­ti­ga­tion that began in Novem­ber 2011. While work­ing as a McMinn County deputy, Hes­ter made numer­ous traf­fic stops between the sum­mer of 2011 and Novem­ber 2011 which were not doc­u­mented with the county’s dispatch.

The inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Hes­ter removed pre­scrip­tion nar­cotics, such as oxy­codone, from the indi­vid­u­als and the vehi­cles he stopped and searched. He did not arrest or charge the indi­vid­u­als nor did he turn the pills into the evi­dence room at the sheriff’s office, keep­ing them for himself.

Many of the indi­vid­u­als did not real­ize Hes­ter took the pills until after the traf­fic stop was concluded.

Hes­ter resigned from the McMinn County Sheriff’s Office in Decem­ber 2011.

Hes­ter was booked into the McMinn County Jail and booked on a $5,000 bond.

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

Gray Tele­vi­sion, Inc., KKTV 11 News, kktv.com
BYLINE: Asso­ci­ated Press, KKTV / AP
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Pueblo County, CO

Tara Adame Admits To Tak­ing Money

Guilty. That is the plea entered in by a for­mer Sheriff’s Office employee who was accused of steal­ing evidence.

Tara Adame will now need to serve pro­ba­tion and pay resti­tu­tion after plead­ing guilty to steal­ing from the evi­dence room. A judge may also decide to sen­tence Adame to spend time in jail.

11 News spoke exclu­sively with Sher­iff Kirk Tay­lor, who tells us he thinks the plea deal is fair.

Tay­lor says this case has taken its toll on his employ­ees and the com­mu­nity alike, and hopes now to move forward.

Adame is the for­mer head of the evi­dence and prop­erty depart­ment at the PCSO. The 36-year-old was arrested for steal­ing thou­sands of dol­lars and dozens of pre­scrip­tion drugs from the evi­dence room.

Adame plead guilty to felony theft and first degree offi­cial mis­con­duct. Charges of drug theft and evi­dence tam­per­ing were dropped as part of the deal. She is sched­uled for sen­tenc­ing on April 24.

Tay­lor says the hard­est part about this case was that her actions vio­lated the public’s trust, some­thing he hopes to gain back.

“We work very, very hard with our inter­nal poli­cies to make sure that this doesn’t hap­pen. But ulti­mately this is a human busi­ness, and you are deal­ing with 330-plus employ­ees. So unfor­tu­nately it does hap­pen. It’s how you deal with it and how you address it that I think is impor­tant for the pub­lic,” said Taylor.

As part of the deal, Tay­lor asked that Adame con­fess her crimes on paper and in open court to show the pub­lic that she acted alone.

He says a num­ber of his employ­ees in the same depart­ment under­went unde­served scrutiny as part of the out­side inves­ti­ga­tion con­ducted by the Col­orado Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, because of Adame’s actions.

Attached to the plea agree­ment is a list that details how she altered records to steal the funds, total­ing $12,880.75. Those dol­lars were taken from 13 dif­fer­ent cases.

“I took things that didn’t belong to me, and abused my posi­tion,” Adame said when she for­mally accepted the plea deal in court Friday.

When asked how she did that, she responded: “by stealing.”

“I think it was very impor­tant that she take respon­si­bil­ity for it and I think ulti­mately it will help in the end not only for her own heal­ing process, but the heal­ing process of the agency as well,” said Taylor.

Tay­lor tells 11 News that their agency was the one that dis­cov­ered the thefts, and quickly took action. In order to give the inves­ti­ga­tion cred­i­bil­ity, they had the CBI do an out­side inves­ti­ga­tion after find­ing evi­dence of the theft in their inter­nal investigation.

Tay­lor hopes the thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tions and this guilty plea will help gain back the public’s trust and restore cred­i­bil­ity to the agency.

“No mat­ter how much tech­nol­ogy or how many checks and bal­ances you have in place, you are still deal­ing with human beings who make mis­takes and ulti­mately com­mit crimes. But I’m very happy that we were able to find it and effec­tively address it and move for­ward,” said Taylor.

11 News was ini­tially told stolen evi­dence was tied to at least 15 cases, some dat­ing back to 2008. The dis­trict attorney’s office now tells 11 News that it didn’t inhibit those cases, includ­ing a mur­der case.

Pre­vi­ous court doc­u­ments 11 News obtained showed that inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered more than $10,500 and 200 var­i­ous pain pills were miss­ing from at least 15 cases. Adame plead guilty to steal­ing over $12,000 from 13 cases.

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Tay­lor requested that the CBI assist regard­ing an alleged theft from their evi­dence vault on Sep­tem­ber 7.

Only two peo­ple had access into the evi­dence stor­age area. Evi­dence Cus­to­dian Brenda Vigil was cleared of sus­pi­cion after tak­ing a poly­graph. She said that Adame would not pro­vide her any access to the drugs or money. Adame was the main care­taker of guns and drugs in the evi­dence room.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say a review of the com­puter track­ing sys­tem revealed that Adame made sus­pi­cious record changes. The affi­davit stated that Adame rela­beled over $6,500 to “mis­cel­la­neous” sta­tus, so the money recently con­fis­cated in a drug case could be destroyed. She made the changes in the com­puter sys­tem on July 18, 2011, the day before evi­dence was sched­uled to be destroyed.

The loca­tion of the evi­dence was also changed to the “drug room,” some­thing offi­cials con­firmed should never hap­pen, say­ing that money would never be stored in a drug room and would never be destroyed.

Time sheets showed that Adame was the only one work­ing in the evi­dence room that day.

Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that Adame could have deposited stolen money into her account in order to pay off her debts.

Dur­ing an inter­view with the CBI, Adame stated that she “under­stood why she would be sus­pect as evi­dence cus­to­dian, but her finan­cial sit­u­a­tion doesn’t make her a criminal.”

Adame resigned from her posi­tion as Evi­dence Cus­to­dian on Sep­tem­ber 8, the day after she was put on admin­is­tra­tive leave for mis­use of her pur­chas­ing card.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say she was steal­ing evi­dence for more than a year, from June 2010, to June 2011. Adame also allegedly had a track record of using a county-issued credit card for per­sonal use.

Accord­ing to an affi­davit, she admit­ted to it, but thought it was okay if she reim­bursed them. But when she tried, her check bounced.

“I would like to thank CBI for their invalu­able assis­tance in bring­ing an end to this probe,” Tay­lor said. He also wants to thank the dis­trict attorney’s office for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion on the case.

Adame will be sen­tenced April 24.

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

The Day­tona Beach News-Journal, news-journalonline.com/
BYLINE: FRANK FERNANDEZ, Staff writer, frank.fernandez@news-jrnl.com
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Bun­nell, FL

BUNNELL — For­mer Bun­nell police Lt. John Mur­ray denied he took some mar­i­juana plants police had seized and also said he didn’t know how a “cookie” of cocaine ended up in the back of his police vehicle.

Mur­ray, 48, tes­ti­fied Wednes­day dur­ing his trial on two counts of unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, two counts of tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal evi­dence and one count each of offi­cial mis­con­duct and pos­ses­sion of mar­i­juana. Each is a third-degree felony pun­ish­able by up to five years in prison.

Mur­ray was fired in June 2010 from the Bun­nell Police Depart­ment. His wife, Lisa Mur­ray, was fired, too, and charged with offi­cial mis­con­duct. Lisa Murray’s trial is sched­uled to fol­low right after her husband’s. John Murray’s trial is sched­uled to con­tinue Fri­day. Cir­cuit Judge Raul Zam­brano is pre­sid­ing over both at the Kim C. Ham­mond Jus­tice Center.

The trial has focused in part on some mar­i­juana plants found behind a vacant house at 201 Stone St. in April 2009.

Ear­lier in the trial, Bun­nell Police Offi­cer Chris Wolfle tes­ti­fied he was told by John Mur­ray to load some pot plants, which were from about 3 feet to 6 feet tall, into Murray’s police SUV. Wolfle also tes­ti­fied that Mur­ray said he would fill out a report on the plants and Wolfle need not worry about it.

But under ques­tion­ing by defense attor­ney Michael Lam­bert, Mur­ray denied telling Wolfle to load the plants into the SUV. And Mur­ray told Lam­bert it was Wolfle’s respon­si­bil­ity to write the report and deal with the plants.

Pros­e­cu­tor Jason Lewis ques­tioned Mur­ray, who was the evi­dence cus­to­dian at the time, about whether he fol­lowed up on what hap­pened to the plants.

“Did it cause you any great con­cern when you went to work the next day and you didn’t find any mar­i­juana plants there,” Lewis asked.

“No, because I have so many bags in the evi­dence room,” Mur­ray said. “It’s in the envelope.”

“Sir, these were big evi­dence bags — BIG BAGS — and you were just the day before at a scene where mar­i­juana was found and the next day when you go to the evi­dence room and it’s not there, and you as lieu­tenant evi­dence cus­to­dian don’t get con­cerned about that?” Lewis said.

But Mur­ray described the plants as very small, so small that they would have fit into a legal-sized envelope.

Under ques­tion­ing by Lam­bert, Mur­ray tes­ti­fied that prior to the inci­dent with the plants he had writ­ten Wolfle up for say­ing he was on patrol when he was actu­ally parked and talk­ing with another officer.

Mur­ray also said he did not know how the disc of cocaine ended up in the back of his Ford Explorer Police SUV. It was found dur­ing a search after Mur­ray was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The cocaine was wrapped in a latex glove.

John Murray’s for­mer girl­friend, Dawn Davis, tes­ti­fied ear­lier in the day that Mur­ray would bring her drugs wrapped in pur­ple, green or blue latex gloves. Mur­ray would get the drugs from crime scenes, she said.

But Mur­ray tes­ti­fied it was actu­ally Davis who stole his painkillers, which had been pre­scribed to him for a med­ical prob­lem. He said when he saw she had taken the painkillers he broke up with her and kicked her out of the house they shared in Palm Coast.

Lewis asked Mur­ray whether he reported the theft of his painkillers. Mur­ray said no.

“So you as a law enforce­ment offi­cer know some­one took drugs from you and you didn’t feel it impor­tant or pru­dent to report that to any police agency?” Lewis said.

“At that time, I was in so much pain and ill that in my mind I just wanted her out of the house,” Mur­ray said.

“So I assume when you were feel­ing bet­ter about a week later, you reported it to police?” Lewis said.

“No” Mur­ray said.

John Mur­ray
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lisa Mur­ray
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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