IAPE Evidence Blog

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

The Bis­marck Tribune

Great Falls, MT

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — A rare and nearly com­plete dinosaur skele­ton stolen from pri­vate prop­erty in Mon­tana and stored in an evi­dence locker for more than two years has been turned over to researchers.

Sci­en­tists at the Black Hills Insti­tute of Geo­log­i­cal Research in South Dakota say the 70-million-year-old turkey-sized preda­tor could be a new species of raptor.

“It’s a mean and nasty lit­tle dinosaur,” said Peter Lar­son, pres­i­dent of the insti­tute. “Even though it’s not very big, you wouldn’t want to meet it in a dark alleyway.”

Researchers say it’s unusual to find the skele­ton of a meat-eating dinosaur, and espe­cially one that’s so small.

The com­mer­cial fos­sil hunter who dug up the dinosaur removed it with­out the knowl­edge or per­mis­sion of the prop­erty own­ers. Nathan Mur­phy was con­victed last year in state court of felony theft for tak­ing the rap­tor fos­sil from a ranch in north­ern Mon­tana and sen­tenced to 60 days in jail.

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