IAPE Evidence Blog

Wash­ing­ton Exam­iner
BYLINE: Michael Neibauer, Exam­iner Staff Writer, mneibauer@washingtonexaminer.com
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Per­sh­ing Park, VA

An inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of miss­ing evi­dence tied to the Sep­tem­ber 2002 mass arrests at Per­sh­ing Park found that a detailed tally of D.C. police actions that day prob­a­bly did exist but was either pur­pose­fully purged or lost.

Retired U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Stan­ley Sporkin called “trou­bling” the “con­tra­dic­tory evi­dence that sur­faced” dur­ing his pro bono inquiry into the miss­ing police run­ning resume of the events of Sept. 27, 2002, and gaps in police radio recordings.

“The whole thing has been so ineptly han­dled and now we have pretty clear indi­ca­tions that some of it had to be inten­tional destruc­tion,” Ward 3 D.C. Coun­cil­woman Mary Cheh told The Exam­iner on Mon­day. “I don’t see how this can’t be a dis­as­ter for the District.”

D.C. police offi­cers arrested hun­dreds of anti-World Bank pro­test­ers and inno­cent bystanders in Per­sh­ing Park, hog-tied their left wrists to their right ankles and detained them for up to 36 hours in some cases.

“We are par­tic­u­larly dis­turbed by the fact that not only have we been unable to retrieve a hard copy of the Run­ning Resume but also that the elec­tronic copy was purged from the sys­tem,” Sporkin wrote in his report, dated Fri­day. “We have no way of know­ing whether this was an act of inten­tional mis­chief or reflects a benign action.”

That said, Sporkin found no evi­dence of any “overt attempt to deceive or mis­lead us.”

Both the run­ning resume and radio record­ings would be key tes­ti­mo­ni­als in a pair of law­suits filed against the Dis­trict alleg­ing wrong­ful arrests. The cases are cur­rently before U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Emmet Sul­li­van, who has admon­ished D.C. attor­neys for their court­room tac­tics and fail­ure to turn over crit­i­cal documents.

Only one per­son inter­viewed dur­ing Sporkin’s inves­ti­ga­tion recalled see­ing a copy of the run­ning resume — Rai How­ell, for­mer act­ing direc­tor of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Department’s qual­ity assur­ance divi­sion. But How­ell could remem­ber few other details.

Police Chief Charles Ram­sey told inves­ti­ga­tors he was “99 per­cent sure” he did not see the run­ning resume. George Craw­ford, a Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment com­puter spe­cial­ist, said it is “hard to believe” the doc­u­ment was “over­writ­ten” in the sys­tem or that every hard copy was all destroyed.

Ram­sey, who was alleged by a police detec­tive to have ordered the mass arrests, also said he “knows noth­ing about the radio tapes and gave no instruc­tions to edit or oth­er­wise alter them.” The tapes, Sporkin con­cluded, do have gaps but inves­ti­ga­tors were unable to dis­cern how they occurred. He rec­om­mended that the Dis­trict retain a foren­sic expert.

D.C. Attor­ney Gen­eral Peter Nick­les Mon­day praised the inves­ti­ga­tion, but said he has not yet decided whether to fol­low through on Sporkin’s suggestions.

“I just need to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing from [Sporkin] to under­stand how dif­fi­cult it will be,” Nick­les said. “I don’t know whether it’s fea­si­ble or how much it costs.”

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York County, VA

Reports say cru­cial evi­dence in Colo­nial Park­way mur­ders may have been destroyed

YORK COUNTY — After a week­long search for miss­ing evi­dence from the first Colo­nial Park­way killings, law-enforcement offi­cials located records show­ing the two small boxes were destroyed at the FBI’s sug­ges­tion in 1994. But it is the unusual eight-year path the evi­dence trav­eled before destruc­tion? pass­ing from the med­ical examiner’s office to a York County inves­ti­ga­tor who never asked for it? that’s sparked worry among fam­ily mem­bers. They fear other cru­cial mate­r­ial has been mis­han­dled or lost.

“Now we are just learn­ing that they’ve destroyed what could have been valu­able evi­dence after hang­ing onto it for eight years,” said Bill Thomas, brother of Cath­leen Thomas who was among the first cou­ple mur­dered. “There is no way to demon­strate the depths of my family’s frus­tra­tion with the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation.”

At the Oct., 1986, autop­sies of Cath­leen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski, a med­ical exam­iner col­lected swabs that would deter­mine if the women, found fully clothed, had been raped. Nei­ther were.

The women were dis­cov­ered in Thomas’ small Honda, shoved off a Colo­nial Park­way bluff. The killer slit their throats. They were the first in a series of slay­ings and dis­ap­pear­ances that became known as “The Park­way Mur­ders.” The killings stopped in 1989.

Nor­folk FBI spokes­woman Vanessa Tor­res said in a state­ment Fri­day because the women were not sex­u­ally assaulted, the Phys­i­cal Evi­dence Recov­ery Kits assem­bled by the med­ical exam­iner “did not con­tain evi­dence of value.” That’s why the FBI never took the kits.

Dr. Angela Williamson, direc­tor of foren­sic case­work for Bode Tech­nol­ogy, a pri­vate lab­o­ra­tory spe­cial­iz­ing in DNA sci­ence, said the FBI’s deci­sion “seems logical.”

How­ever, the strange way the kits ended up in a York County evi­dence room six years after col­lec­tion has caused con­cern for Bill Thomas. The FBI has promised advanced test­ing on the old evi­dence, but Bill Thomas says he can­not con­vince the agency to reveal what evi­dence still exists.

“After 23 long years, I would say we’re mildly hope­ful,” said Bill Thomas, speak­ing from Los Ange­les. “How­ever, all of this is pro­vided the FBI has prop­erly stored and hung onto this valu­able evidence.”

Recently, the Thomas fam­ily received from the state a full account­ing of evi­dence recov­ered at Cath­leen Thomas’ autopsy, includ­ing strands of hair found in Cath­leen Thomas’ hand; a small sec­tion of rope some­how left behind after the killer cut the cord from Thomas’ neck; and nail clip­pings that could con­tain the killer’s DNA if Thomas man­aged to touch or scratch her attacker.

Autopsy pho­tographs leaked by the FBI and later obtained by NewsChan­nel 3 show the two-inch rope frag­ment tan­gled in Cath­leen Thomas’ hair. The pho­tographs also show Cath­leen suf­fered a knife wound to her left thumb, pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing she strug­gled with the killer. Her brother, Bill Thomas, said the hair found in his sister’s hand must either be Dowski’s or the killer’s.

In an ear­lier tele­phone inter­view with NewsChan­nel 3, Chief Med­ical Exam­iner Dr. Leah Bush said evi­dence col­lected at the Colo­nial Park­way autop­sies more than two decades ago could yield leads when sub­jected to new DNA science.

Dr. Bush and her pre­de­ces­sor, Dr. Mar­cella Fierro, are review­ing all the autop­sies at the request of the fam­i­lies. That review sparked the search last week for the miss­ing evi­dence. Rich­mond records show the two Phys­i­cal Evi­dence Recorvery Kits, or PERKs, were given to a York County inves­ti­ga­tor in 1992, but York County offi­cials last week could not recall a rea­son to request that evidence.

How­ever, days later, Maj. Ron Mont­gomery of the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office said reviews of case files showed an inves­ti­ga­tor trav­eled to the med­ical examiner’s office in 1992 to retrieve skele­tal remains from a sep­a­rate case. The Colo­nial Park­way evi­dence kits were some­how included with the remains, Mont­gomery said. He doesn’t know how or why.

Accord­ing to Mont­gomery, when the inves­ti­ga­tor real­ized he had the kits, he put them in an evi­dence room and con­tacted the FBI. Mont­gomery said the inves­ti­ga­tor placed calls to agents over a two-year period until March, 1996, when an agent sug­gested the boxes be destroyed.

Vanessa Tor­res, a spokes­woman for the Nor­folk FBI, said agents did not retrieve the evi­dence because it was not help­ful to the case.

The PERKS “… did not con­tain evi­dence of value inas­much as nei­ther vic­tim was sex­u­ally assaulted. This find­ing was made by the state,” Tor­res wrote. “There­fore, the FBI did not take pos­ses­sion of the kits.”

Bill Thomas is press­ing the FBI to reveal whether the other evi­dence taken from his sister’s autopsy still exists, and if so, when it will be tested.

“I can­not get a straight­for­ward answer from them in terms of, do they still have this evi­dence, and when do they play to move for­ward with the advanced test­ing they promised us,” he said.

Tor­res would not dis­cuss any spe­cific pieces of evi­dence, say­ing only “all evi­dence of value col­lected by the FBI or turned over to the FBI regard­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion has been main­tained and remains stored.”

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
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Culpeper, VA

A for­mer Culpeper Police Depart­ment civil­ian employee was arrested Tues­day, accused of steal­ing money from a wal­let police were hold­ing as unclaimed prop­erty. RP, 41, of the 19000 block of York Road in Stevens­burg, is charged with felony money laun­der­ing and embez­zle­ment while serv­ing as a gov­ern­ment employee. He is accused of steal­ing $300, accord­ing to town spokesman Wally Bunker.

RP had been the department’s prop­erty and evi­dence cus­to­dian since April 2005 but resigned in May. His res­ig­na­tion was not con­nected to Tuesday’s charges, said Capt. Ricky Pinksaw.

The alleged crime came to light May 12, said Bunker, when another offi­cer was tem­porar­ily placed in charge of the prop­erty and evi­dence sec­tion until the depart­ment hired a new prop­erty cus­to­dian. Pink­saw said it is depart­ment pol­icy to con­duct an audit when the prop­erty and evi­dence custodian’s posi­tion is vacated.

While con­duct­ing an audit, Bunker said, the offi­cer noticed a wal­let in an unsealed bag on the desk in RP’ for­mer office. The office is not located in the secured room where evi­dence is stored.

“The result of the audit was that $300 was miss­ing from prop­erty,” Pink­saw said.

Bunker said records indi­cate the wal­let, which con­tained $304 in cash, a debit card, a West Vir­ginia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, and other items, was orig­i­nally reported stolen in Octo­ber 2006 by a 56-year-old Culpeper County woman.

In Decem­ber 2006, the wal­let, con­tain­ing the cash and other items, was found and turned in. Police said attempts to con­tact the owner have been unsuc­cess­ful. “This is an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent,” Pink­saw said. “How­ever, our mis­sion is to pro­tect and serve the cit­i­zens. When prop­erty comes into police cus­tody, it should remain here in cus­tody until it is turned over to the right­ful owner. Mr. RP was entrusted to do his duty as the prop­erty and evi­dence cus­to­dian, and he broke the pub­lic and department’s trust.

“The depart­ment dis­cov­ered the crime and thor­oughly inves­ti­gated it,” Pink­saw con­tin­ued. “The agency took a proac­tive stance to bring Mr. RP to jus­tice.” Capt. Chris Jenk­ins said RP is not sus­pected in any other wrong­do­ing and has coop­er­ated with inves­ti­ga­tors. RP is free on $3,000 bond and is sched­uled for arraign­ment in Gen­eral Dis­trict court on Aug. 6 at 8:30 a.m.

RP could not be reached for com­ment Tues­day after­noon. A phone num­ber listed for his res­i­dence was disconnected.

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