IAPE Evidence Blog

The Billings Gazette — Billings, MT — billingsgazette.com
Link to Arti­cle
BYLINE: KAHRIN DEINES Of The Gazette Staff

Mus­selshell County, MT

Mus­selshell County Sher­iff Woody Weitzeil, shown in July 2009, is accused of mis­us­ing prop­erty from the county’s evi­dence room.
Photo by DAVID GRUBBS/Gazette Staff

The state Depart­ment of Jus­tice is con­sid­er­ing whether Mus­selshell County Sher­iff Woody Weitzeil improp­erly used prop­erty from his evi­dence room.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tion has been com­pleted, and the case has been for­warded to the state’s Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vices Bureau to deter­mine whether charges should be filed, said Judy Beck, spokes­woman for Attor­ney Gen­eral Steve Bullock.

“Noth­ing will become pub­lic until if and when there are charges filed,” Beck said.

Weitzeil said he took an old, rusty action that had sat unused for about 15 to 20 years from the evi­dence room.

Over a period of sev­eral months, Weitzeil said, he cleaned the old J. Stevens Marks­man single-shot, break-open action and pur­chased parts to retro­fit it into a .22-caliber that could be kept in his patrol vehi­cle to kill wildlife, such as injured deer found on county road­ways and skunks.

“It was a piece of scrap iron,” Weitzeil said. “That’s all it was.”

Mus­selshell County Attor­ney Kent Sipe said that he referred the mat­ter to the state’s Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tions in mid — to early April after Weitzeil told him about tak­ing an item from the evi­dence room that was described as a firearm with a sawed-off bar­rel and welded-on pis­tol grip.

“The admis­sion was that he’d taken it for his per­sonal use and wasn’t he enti­tled to it. … That was the state­ment that was made to me was wasn’t he enti­tled to a lit­tle piece of metal after 25 years,” Sipe said.

Weitzeil has been with the Mus­selshell County Sheriff’s Office since 1986. He became the sher­iff in 2004 after vot­ers recalled for­mer Sher­iff Mar­tin Mal­one, who was accused of mis­us­ing a county credit card and cell phone.

On Tues­day, Weitzeil, a Repub­li­can, faces chal­lenges from two other Repub­li­cans in a pri­mary elec­tion for the sheriff’s post. He is run­ning against Repub­li­cans Lyle Beauchamp and John White, along with Bert Holmes, an Inde­pen­dent candidate.

Weitzeil said he thinks the tim­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion is suspicious.

“I find it very inter­est­ing that the county attor­ney would do this just before an elec­tion,” Weitzeil said.

Sipe said he relayed all infor­ma­tion about the issue to the state’s inves­ti­ga­tion bureau and did not con­tact the media about the mat­ter. He said he was con­tacted by DCI late Fri­day after the agency received a request for infor­ma­tion about the inves­ti­ga­tion from Billings tele­vi­sion sta­tion KTVQ.

“I made my refer­ral,” Sipe said. “It was an admis­sion that was made to me and that I was not com­fort­able with.”

State law requires that a peti­tion be filed with a court to destroy or appro­pri­ate phys­i­cal evi­dence from crim­i­nal cases or con­tra­band items seized from indi­vid­u­als. A court may then issue an order autho­riz­ing the item’s destruc­tion or use for law enforce­ment purposes.

Weitzeil said that, in this case, the action was never tagged as evi­dence. He said it had a short, sawed-off bar­rel attached to it and most likely was once used as a “druggie’s gun.”

“It was either going to get thrown in the garbage or just left there for­ever, so why not just turn it into some­thing the depart­ment can use?” Weitzeil asked.

Sipe said he was told by the sher­iff that the weapon was seized from an indi­vid­ual as an unlaw­ful firearm many years ago.

Con­tact Kahrin Deines at kdeines@billingsgazette.com or 657‑1392.

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

Great Falls Tri­bune (Mon­tana)
BYLINE: Tri­bune Staff

Roo­sevelt County, MT

A 20-year-old Wolf Point man pleaded guilty in fed­eral court Tues­day on drug charges after he was found to be steal­ing drug evi­dence from the Roo­sevelt County Sheriff’s Office while employed as a jail offi­cer about a year ago.

Jared Albert Weeks-Combs will be sen­tenced on Aug. 26 in Great Falls for pos­ses­sion with the intent to dis­trib­ute metham­phet­a­mine. He faces a pos­si­ble 20-year prison sen­tence and/or a $1 mil­lion fine.

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Roo­sevelt County’s under­sh­er­iff dis­cov­ered drug evi­dence miss­ing from the office’s evi­dence room on April 20, 2009.

A recently retired cus­to­dian was asked to inven­tory the evi­dence room and dis­cov­ered that 22 items of drug evi­dence were miss­ing: approx­i­mately 12 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and 12 ounces of mar­i­juana were among the miss­ing items, as was $400 cash.

The same day the inven­tory was con­ducted, the sheriff’s office received a call from a cit­i­zen who accused Weeks-Combs of steal­ing the drugs from the evi­dence room and sell­ing them to pay his rent.

Secu­rity cam­eras were reviewed and wit­nesses were inter­viewed. Weeks-Combs was inter­viewed and admit­ted to gain­ing access to the evi­dence room eight to 15 times between Feb­ru­ary and April 23, 2009. He told inves­ti­ga­tors that he stole 21 to 22 envelopes con­tain­ing meth or mar­i­juana. He also admit­ted to tak­ing a wal­let con­tain­ing $400 cash.

Weeks-Combs told inves­ti­ga­tors that he used most of the stolen drugs, though he did pro­vide some of them to friends. The inves­ti­ga­tion was a coop­er­a­tive effort between the Roo­sevelt County Sheriff’s Office and the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation.

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

States News Ser­vice
BYLINE: States News Service

Roo­sevelt County, MT

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion was released by the FBI:

The United States Attor­neys Office announced that dur­ing a fed­eral court ses­sion in Great Falls on May 25, 2010, before U.S. Dis­trict Judge Sam E. Had­don, JARED ALBERT WEEKS-COMBS, a 20-year-old res­i­dent of Wolf Point, pled guilty to pos­ses­sion with the intent to dis­trib­ute metham­phet­a­mine. Sen­tenc­ing has been set for August 26, 2010. He is cur­rently detained.

In an Offer of Proof filed by Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Rebekah J. French, the gov­ern­ment stated it would have proved at trial the following:

On April 20, 2009, the Under­sh­er­iff dis­cov­ered that drug evi­dence was miss­ing from the Roo­sevelt County Sher­iffs Offices (RCSO) evi­dence room. The Under­sh­er­iff asked the recently retired RCSO Evi­dence Cus­to­dian to inven­tory all drug evi­dence stored in the evi­dence room. The Evi­dence Cus­to­dian con­cluded that there were 22 items of drug evi­dence miss­ing. He was able to quan­tify the fol­low­ing miss­ing drug amounts: approx­i­mately 12 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and 12 ounces of mar­i­juana. He also noted that $400 cash was missing.

The Evi­dence Cus­to­dian also found nine evi­dence envelopes torn open which had con­tained an unknown amount of marijuana.

The same day he dis­cov­ered the miss­ing drug evi­dence, the Under­sh­er­iff received infor­ma­tion from a Roo­sevelt County Com­mis­sioner that a pri­vate cit­i­zen had reported to the County Com­mis­sion­ers that Roo­sevelt County Jailer WEEKS-COMBS had been tak­ing drugs from the RCSO and sell­ing the drugs to pay his rent.

The Under­sh­er­iff asked two mem­bers of his staff to review secu­rity cam­era footage of the jail and evi­dence room.

This review was lim­ited because the tape did not show the door into the evi­dence room and they could only review tapes for six days prior to the date they started the review. The review showed WEEKS-COMBS car­ry­ing a brown paper bag with what looked like red evi­dence tape from the area of the evi­dence room to the jails kitchen area. Dur­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion, a Roo­sevelt County Reserve Deputy also learned that WEEKS-COMBS had turned off the secu­rity cam­eras for a period of time dur­ing one of his shifts.

The Under­sh­er­iff inter­viewed an inmate being held in the Roo­sevelt County Deten­tion Cen­ter. The inmate admit­ted that WEEKS-COMBS had pro­vided him with a syringe filled with metham­phet­a­mine and a mar­i­juana cig­a­rette while the inmate was being held in the Deten­tion Cen­ter. Accord­ing to the inmate, WEEKS-COMBS stole an evi­dence bag con­tain­ing drug evi­dence (3.5 grams of metham­phet­a­mine) from the evi­dence stor­age area and replaced it with a new evi­dence bag con­tain­ing sugar. Exam­i­na­tion of the evi­dence bag revealed that some­one had copied the infor­ma­tion from the orig­i­nal sealed bag onto a sec­ond sealed bag. The Under­sh­er­iff con­firmed that the sub­stance in the sec­ond bag was not methamphetamine.

The Under­sh­er­iff also inter­viewed WEEKS-COMBS who admit­ted remov­ing five FedEx envelopes of drugs from the evi­dence room in March of 2009. He also admit­ted tak­ing a sack of mar­i­juana from the evi­dence room and replac­ing it with a box of rub­ber gloves. He admit­ted replac­ing the metham­phet­a­mine in one evi­dence bag with salt, but claimed he had flushed the metham­phet­a­mine down the toi­let. WEEKS-COMBS denied giv­ing an inmate a syringe con­tain­ing metham­phet­a­mine, claim­ing that he filled the syringe with water.

An FBI agent also inter­viewed WEEKS-COMBS. Dur­ing that inter­view, WEEKS-COMBS admit­ted that he pro­vided an inmate with a syringe filled with metham­phet­a­mine, in addi­tion to the water-filled syringe that he had tricked the inmate into think­ing was metham­phet­a­mine on an ear­lier date. WEEKS-COMBS admit­ted that he gained access to the evi­dence room eight to fif­teen times between Feb­ru­ary 2009 and April 23, 2009, and that he stole 21 to 22 evi­dence envelopes marked as con­tain­ing metham­phet­a­mine or mar­i­juana. He esti­mated that he had taken approx­i­mately 7.7 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and 2.5 pounds of mar­i­juana. He also admit­ted hav­ing taken a wal­let con­tain­ing $400 in cash. WEEKS-COMBS claimed that he used most of the stolen drugs him­self, but admit­ted pro­vid­ing some to friends.

WEEKS-COMBS faces pos­si­ble penal­ties of 20 years in prison, a $1,000,000 fine and at least three years super­vised release.

The inves­ti­ga­tion was a coop­er­a­tive effort between the Roo­sevelt County Sher­iffs Office and the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation.

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