IAPE Evidence Blog

The Wash­ing­ton Post, washingtonpost.com
BYLINE: Dan Morse
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Mont­gomery County, MD

A Mont­gomery County police evi­dence tech­ni­cian is accused of steal­ing at least $28,000 in cash from a police safe and try­ing to cover his tracks with phony com­puter entries and late-night shuf­fles of money around the safe, accord­ing to arrest records filed against Suk “Brian” Ryong Yun.

Yun, a civil­ian employee at the depart­ment for a lit­tle more than a year, was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave as the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, police offi­cials said Tuesday.

“It’s always dis­ap­point­ing when we have to do a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion on a depart­ment employee,” Mont­gomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said. “I’m glad this was caught by a rou­tine audit before it got worse.”

Reached Tues­day evening, Yun, 38, of Rockville, said he was in the process of hir­ing a lawyer and declined to comment.

Arrest records in the case, filed in Mont­gomery Dis­trict Court, paint a pic­ture of Yun try­ing to cover his tracks dur­ing and after the audit.

Accord­ing to those records, signed by Mont­gomery Police Offi­cer Bruce Cole, the department’s Pol­icy and Plan­ning Divi­sion noti­fied the evi­dence man­ager of a pend­ing audit. On Sept. 26, the man­ager indi­cated to his staff, includ­ing Yun, that an audit was approaching.

Two days later, Cole and Offi­cer Maryann Mag­nelli went to the evi­dence unit, in Gaithers­burg, and asked Yun for a printed inven­tory of cash exhibits in the safe, accord­ing to court papers.(Police rou­tinely seize cash dur­ing drug and rob­bery investigations.)

But the two offi­cers, joined by Yun, couldn’t find bags of cash that should have been there, court papers say.The offi­cers told the evi­dence manager.

“Yun then offered to stay behind on his own, despite offers to assist him, and attempt to locate the miss­ing evi­dence bags with cur­rency in other loca­tions” of the evi­dence unit, accord­ing to the papers. That evening, he sent an e-mail say­ing he had found the miss­ing items and placed them back into the safe, the arrest records state.

That led to a more in-depth audit, includ­ing elec­tronic inven­tory transactions.

In all, accord­ing to the arrest doc­u­ments, Yun was charged with steal­ing $28,630.32.

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

The Bal­ti­more Sun, baltimoresun.com
BYLINE: Peter Her­mann, The Bal­ti­more Sun, peter.hermann@baltsun.com
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Bal­ti­more, MD

Sus­pect was out on bail on bur­glary charge at the time

A cig­a­rette butt dis­carded out­side the front door of a mur­der victim’s North­east Bal­ti­more home led detec­tives to a sus­pect, who has now been charged with stab­bing a 91-year-old woman dur­ing a burglary.

“The way we closed this case was right out of a scene from ‘CSI,’” city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Fri­day, refer­ring to the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series that focuses on solv­ing crimes through high-tech foren­sic techniques.

“We’re very pleased,” said Irene Ushry, the daugh­ter of the vic­tim, Irene Logan, who lived on Moravia Road. “It hasn’t been easy. It gives us some peace of mind now that they’ve arrested someone.”

Police said DNA taken from the cig­a­rette matched the genetic fin­ger­print of Anthony Robin­son, a 45-year-old who also lived in North­east Bal­ti­more, near Lake Mon­te­bello. “That was our lucky break,” said Bal­ti­more police Col. Jesse Oden, who heads the Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion Division.

At the time of the killing, Robin­son was free on $25,000 bail, await­ing trial on charges that he bur­glar­ized a house on Frank­ford Avenue in North­east Bal­ti­more. In that case, police respond­ing to an alarm con­fronted the sus­pect, who was hid­ing in the attic, and arrested him after the ceil­ing col­lapsed and he fell into front bed­room, accord­ing to the report from the July incident.

Police said Robinson’s DNA, which was used to com­pare to the DNA found at the scene of the slay­ing, was col­lected after that arrest. His trial in the Frank­ford Avenue bur­glary is sched­uled for Oct. 25. A police report says a gold bracelet, a gold pin and a gold watch were taken.

A woman who answered the phone at Robinson’s house in the 1900 block of East 30th St. would not give her name and hung up.

Robin­son was charged early Fri­day with first-degree mur­der, two counts of assault, rob­bery and theft. He was ordered held with­out bail and could have a hear­ing on Mon­day. Police said he was arrested Fri­day at his girlfriend’s house in North­west Bal­ti­more, where they said they found two watches and a ring belong­ing to the victim.

At a news con­fer­ence Fri­day after­noon, attended by the lead homi­cide detec­tive, Gary Nie­der­meier, and sev­eral mem­bers of the com­mand staff, author­i­ties said that the motive for the killing was bur­glary and that the sus­pect has no con­nec­tion to the vic­tim. Police said they are look­ing at other bur­glar­ies in the area to see if there are any similarities.

Ushry had found her mother’s body on the after­noon of Aug. 3 on the floor of a small kitchen. She said a first-floor bed­room had been rum­maged through but saw no signs of a forced entry. The vic­tim had moved to Bal­ti­more as a small child. She and her hus­band, who died in 1999, had been mar­ried for 50 years. She loved church and dancing.

Logan’s son, Bill, is a com­mu­nity activist who knows Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and had worked to set up National Night Out Against Crime events in his Mid-Govans neigh­bor­hood just two days before the killing. The mayor had attended the event.

Police charg­ing doc­u­ments reveal new infor­ma­tion about the killing. Items that were taken included cos­tume jew­elry, watches, a portable CD player, a check­book and a Home Depot card. The doc­u­ments also say that Logan was stabbed, stran­gled and beaten so badly that her back was broken.

Police said detec­tives con­sid­ered the cig­a­rette butt at the crime scene unusual because no one in the house smoked. It’s unclear when it was dis­carded, and police did not dis­close how the intruder got inside the house or whether they found a weapon.

The Police Department’s Trace Analy­sis Unit obtained DNA from the cig­a­rette, and matched it to sam­ples recov­ered from under the victim’s fin­ger­nails, indi­cat­ing a pos­si­ble strug­gle. They also matched the DNA to sam­ples taken from other items inside the house and from the suspect.

Guglielmi, the city police spokesman, described Robin­son as a “career crim­i­nal” with mul­ti­ple arrests on drug and rob­bery charges. He has few con­vic­tions, though, includ­ing two for drug pos­ses­sion: in 2007, for which got a sus­pended one-year jail term; and in 2009, for which he spent one month in jail. He also was sen­tenced to four years in prison for auto theft in 2005.

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

Car­roll County Times, carrollcountytimes.com
BYLINE: Car­rie Ann Knauer, Times Staff Writer
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West­min­ster, MD

A strange sur­prise: About 20 stolen lawn orna­ments were placed in Rebecca Hale’s West­min­ster yard overnight Sat­ur­day. SUBMITTED PHOTO

Rebecca Hale wants her neigh­bors to know she didn’t steal their lawn orna­ments, even if they did end up in her yard Sun­day morning.

Hale, who lives in the 200 block of Jan­ice Way in West­min­ster, said she and her boyfriend Jonathan Chell left the house at 10 p.m. Sat­ur­day to go to a friend’s house and play cards. When they returned home at 5 a.m. Sun­day, she almost couldn’t believe that she had pulled up to the right house.

“My dri­ve­way was lined with about 20 stolen lawn orna­ments,” the 36-year-old said. “I thought to myself ‘It looks like some­body is about to have a yard sale.’”

There was a black wooden dog on a bench on her front porch, and a metal swan block­ing the door. At the bot­tom of her steps were a fam­ily of bun­nies to the right, she said, and to the left some angels and gar­den gnomes. One of the more sig­nif­i­cant pieces was a small cow statue that she esti­mated weighed more than 100 pounds.

“It was crazy,” she said. “I had a mil­lion thoughts going through my mind.”

Think­ing it was pos­si­ble that the lawn dis­play could have been a prank by a friend, she waited for some­one to speak up and take credit for it. When no one came for­ward, she called the West­min­ster police at 3 p.m. to report the dis­play, which she assumed was of stolen goods.

A police offi­cer came to check it out Sun­day, she said, and on Mon­day, they sent a city dump truck to col­lect the goods and take them to the police department.

West­min­ster police Lt. Dou­glas John­ston said it appears most of the lawn dec­o­ra­tions were stolen from the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood. Eight of the objects have already been reclaimed by the own­ers, who had reported them as stolen, he said.

John­ston said the items are all intact, and have been placed in the department’s prop­erty room. Some peo­ple may not have noticed that they were stolen yet, he said, or may have noticed and not thought about report­ing the theft.

Any­one in West­min­ster who had a lawn dec­o­ra­tion stolen this week­end should con­tact the West­min­ster police at 410 – 848-4646 and ask for the prop­erty clerk, he said.

“We don’t get this occur­ring that often,” John­ston said. “More than likely, it was juveniles.”

Hale said she took lots of pho­tos of the lawn dis­play with her cell­phone, and said she won’t soon for­get the episode.

“It would be cool if every­one got their stuff back,” she said.

Reach staff writer Car­rie Ann Knauer at 410 – 857-7874 or carrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.

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