Chair Bill Parker: Fill & Download for Free

I had a homicide case that was won on the brilliant ploy of an evidence technician. It is necessary to tell a lot of the basic story to show how my evidence tech’s court performance won the case. I’ll call the victim’s husband “Mr. G.” There was little question that the husband killed his wife, as he confessed while sitting at the kitchen table before I could even ask him a question. However, his story didn’t ring true. His story: Mr. G said that he and his wife, a semi truck driving team, had gotten into an argument at a truck stop in Arkansas with some other truckers. There were threats exchanged and pistols brandished at each other, and the manager told them all to hit the road. The manager wasn’t a kind that called the cops, the husband said. One of the other drivers followed Mr. G and his wife up toward Indiana, as the G’s were deadheading home. There was some road rage, but the other driver eventually turned another way. Mr. G and his wife argued, the wife upset that Mr. G had gotten into it the original argument and jeopardized their safety. Mr. G said they both agreed though that the other driver turning off may have been a ruse. After they got home they continued arguing, while Mr. G got out his 9mm pistol, an “M-10” style which is meant to be used with one hand on the slide and one hand on the grip and trigger, and loaded it while his Mrs. G went to use the bathroom, leaving the door open so as to continue their argument. Mr. G said he was loading the pistol while standing in the bedroom just across the hall from the bathroom, and accidently discharged the weapon, and the round went into the bathroom and hit his wife in the head, killing her.Sure enough, I found Mrs. G dead, having fallen off the toilet and into the tub. I sent G along to the station with another detective to try to probe his story and lock it in. Meanwhile I got an evidence tech there and we began working on the scene. In those days our techs were cops who were selected as such and received the necessary training, then were assigned as techs. This tech was an experienced cop and he saw a problem in G’s story as did I. The bullet wound was what we call a “through and through,” that is, after striking the victim, it goes on through the body part struck and exits. The bullet had struck Mrs. G in the left temple, but the exit wound was in her left lower jaw. The bullet had then travelled to the very bottom of the far side of the tub; the tub was only 12″ from the toilet. The bullet then continued through the wall and came out the baseboard, skittering around on the floor at the feet of the man who lived on the other side of the wall in the duplex. He had been seated at his table, reading a newspaper. He told us he heard a loud bang then something was bouncing and rolling around right at his feet. He looked down to see that it was a bullet. Yes he had also called us at the same time as Mr. G. The tech and I noticed that the angle of the bullet’s path seemed to not line up with Mr. G’s story. The tech got out some rigid small diameter rods that he kept for probing and illustrating bullet paths. When we put one of the longer rods, 3 feet long, into the hole at the bottom of the tub, it made a sharp angle, the rod pointing up…pretty much right where Mrs. G’s head had been when she was shot while seated. OK, but did that mean the bullet had been deflected by her skull or jawbone to take a downward path? After all, we thought, when before sending Mr. G off we had him show us where he was standing and how he was holding the pistol, down at his waist level, when it discharged, the pistol was pretty much even with Mrs. G’s head as she sat (she had left the bathroom door open as she continued to berate Mr. G, he told us.) That answer would have to wait for the autopsy. Meanwhile, my technician cop rigged up the rod with string, and brought in a ladder to be able to move the string to the apparent path of the bullet if it flew perfectly straight and was not deflected, with some geometry calculations helping out, and took his video record, photos, and measurements, made his diagram, etc.Fast forwarding, while preparing for trial, I got a volunteer cop of the exact same height as Mrs. G to sit in an office chair adjusted to the exact height as the toilet seat. I got a gun just like the one used by Mr. G. I got Mr. G out of the jail and brought him down to the police department (with a couple of corrections officers trailing along of course. My agency was the bottom floor of the building, the courts and prosecutor’s offices on the next floor up, and the jail and sheriff’s offices on the top two floors.) I handed him the unloaded gun and asked him to show us how far away he was from Mrs. G and how he was holding the gun when it fired. He obliged. It was completely obvious that he couldn’t have been where he claimed, and holding the gun how he claimed, when the shot was fired. We had the autopsy result which showed that the bullet entered Mrs. G’s head from a high angle, and was not deflected at all when it exited lower down. The technician took photos of all this. I then had Mr. G stand much closer to the seated cop, still holding the gun the same way. Perfect matchup with the angles, as Mr. G is a tall guy and stood with the gun at his waist, but higher than the seated cop’s head. Again, the technician took copious photos.At trial, I didn’t have much else to testify about: Mr. G’s statement, which he stuck to through thick and thin. And the photos which the evidence tech had blown up to several feet, along with a set of giant transparencies which the tech had made with diagrams showing all the angles and measurements of the bullet trajectory. As he testified he got each of these items admitted, then lined them all up showing that Mr. G had to have been standing right beside Mrs. G when he shot her. Guilty.

I’ve given the following anecdote several times in other answers, but it is germane to this question also.In my district there was a 90-something year old widow that lived at the end of the little spur road, in the last house, a 1 bedroom old bungalow. She got her physical social security check (in the days before mandatory direct deposit) on the same day every month. Every day that she got her check, every month, her no good, alcoholic, idiot older grandson (at the time of this incident, about 50 years old) arrived at some point and insisted that she endorse the check over to him. He then cashed it and that’s what he lived on until she got another check.Now the problem was, she absolutely would not swear out a statement against him, insisting that it was her free will to do this. That’s even though she always called us as soon as he left to report him. But as we found out quickly, she would not say anything, in or outside of a written statement, that incriminated him. This was also before the days of Elder Protective Services, so there just wasn’t anything we could do specifically about the check and his intimidation of her.So one day, knowing she would be getting her check that day, and also knowing her son always was drunk, and always drove drunk, I made sure to hang around in the area as much as I could between other calls. To shorten the story, I got another call and as soon as I cleared it the call came out…she was reporting that he was leaving with her social security check. I intercepted him at an intersection near her house.As always happened, he pretended cooperation in every police encounter, until he realized that he was in fact going to be arrested (for drunk driving in this case.) Then, the fight was always on. When he passed away a few years later (age 58) his arrest records showed nearly 200 separate arrest cases, usually including resisting charges. As soon as he realized I was taking him in for a breath test, he bolted for his car and tried to drive away. Foolishly (all cops know not to try to physically stop someone trying to drive away, and many cops have violated that rule) I dove into the open driver’s side window and was able to get the column shift lever back into park and get the key shut off, before we fought our way out and onto the ground. Backup arrived about then and we got him into cuffs.At the police station, some idiot way before I was hired decided it would be a good idea to put the breathalyzer (a real “name brand” Breathalyzer, as invented by Dr. Robert Borkenstein!) down in the basement. So of course we had to fight our way down two flights of stairs. Another officer fired up the tripod-mounted video camera, which was plugged into a VHS recorder on a nearby table. (Did I mention this was in the early 80’s?)As I went through the legal procedures and prepared to take a breath sample, the suspect said, “Fuck this, I’m outa here!” and got up and started walking out of the room behind me. I simply reached out, put my hand on his belly, and shoved as hard as I could. He flew backwards into the subject chair, went over backwards in it, and I jumped over his legs and onto him, tryling to wrestle both him and the chair back up and into place while asking over and over….”you had enough Chuckie?” That was his real first name.With this scumbag stealing from his own mother over and over, plus that day’s encounter, I’d completely lost it. The other officer jumped over and pulled me off before I could do any damage and made me leave the room. He got other officers to help make sure Chuckie didn’t try to flee, and got an ambulance there to check him out. He declined ambulance service. He went meekly to jail, in the building next door, with no further resistence…a miracle in itself and very rare for him.This lengthy story leads into the story about a judge laughing his ass off. Chuckie pled guilty and served some time on the State Penal Farm, then was right back at his usual antics. But the video of this whole incident was recycled, as we always did after all criminal procedings were exhausted and no suit was filed within the time requirements. It so happened that, as luck would have it, I myself was the next cop to reuse that same tape for another drunk driving suspect.That new suspect pled not guilty and we went to a bench trial. At the appropriate point during the trial, the prosecution played the tape of the breath test proceedings against the new defendent.Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t used nearly as much of the tape footage for this new case, in which the suspect was calm and cooperative. The proceeding with this new defendent ended, and of course the footage of Chuckie’s case came on, right where I jumped over the chair and onto him and started berating him. I could only hang my head, but heard laughter. The judge was nearly falling out of his chair behind the high bench he was laughing so hard.This judge had been the judge in many of Chuckie’s cases to that point, and had sentenced him, or not, many times. When he got himself together, he just told me that I would be wise to make sure a tape is fullly erased before reusing it.

When I was a teenager, I answered the door of my parents house to a late-20s lady standing there. She introduced herself as my cousin. I had no idea who she was, but that was just the way my mother was - very secretive, cut off from various parts of the family, and always hiding things. Fortunately as I became an adult, I found all my extended family, and made up for lost time.But I got an even bigger shock around 6 years ago.Short story: My friend died. His wife & 2 kids did it tough. We helped out and were very close. They were taken away in witness protection. Over a decade later one of the kids is on my doorstep, all grown up.Long story: I had a good friend in the 1990s. At the time they had just started a family. and his 2 sons were 1 & 3 years old. One night he had a fight with his wife about picking him up from a pub (bar). He didn’t want to drive home because he was blind drunk. He was only supposed to stop in there for a beer with his brother on the way home after work, some 8 hours earlier, and one beer led to another. She understandably didn’t want to get the kids out of bed at 1am on a Saturday morning…..and that’s how the fight started.So he called me, and I did what any friend would do - crawled out of bed, picked him up, and dropped him home. As we got close to his house, the drunken banter and hero stories turned to a very serious note. I can’t remember exactly what was said before it, but the important words were “if anything ever happens to me, can you make sure my kids are OK and looked after.”2–3 weeks later he died in his sleep from a brain aneurysm. He was only 31.He had his own business, and it was doing well enough that she didn’t have to work. But now suddenly that all changed. The business was sold, and that money kept her going for a while, but was eventually going to run out. She started doing courses to become a teacher’s aid, with a view to becoming a school teacher - perfect for a single mother when the boys hit school age, eliminating before & after school car issues. But she eventually had to sell the house, and invest the equity to give her an income stream. She couldn’t afford to rent in a good area, but they made do. I was never comfortable parking my car there to visit, and the neigbourhood kids were not real nice. Not having kids of our own, we used to take the boys pretty much every 2nd weekend to give her some time to study, and have a rest from being a 24/7 mum and a mature-aged student. We’d often go away with the boys to the beach, or up the mountains for 1–2 nights. The boys looked forward to these adventures, and saw us as a 2nd set of parents. They got to do so much more and explore areas that were not possible for a single mother to afford to do. Plus we also enjoyed it - and would do similar trips anyway, with or without the boys.She moved several times over the next 4 years - trying to get one step better each time, but was still struggling to protect herself & the boys from the rough neigbourhoods that were all she could afford. We weren’t in a position to help, and being an orphan herself, she had no family to lean on either - just friends like us, but they had their own families & bills.She had just qualified as a teacher, and was doing her placements (like an internship) and things were looking up. We had planned to go away with the boys over the Easter break, and went around to her place on the Friday to pick the boys up as planned. No answer at the door. No car. No plastic chairs on the porch. I looked in through a window and the place was empty. I rang her mobile, and got the “disconnected” message. It’s like they’d vanished. The various neighbours who were outside all glared at me, and made me feel very uncomfortable. Not unusual, but worse this time. All sorts of things went through my head. Where would they be? She wouldn’t move without telling us? I even went past the school pick-up line to look for her car - a car that I had bought & fixed up for them - it was a regular fixture as she was placed at that school, but no sign of the car.About 6 months later I got a call from her. She was at a Police station, and had begged to contact us. She explained that they were basically in witness protection, and had been relocated interstate (couldn’t tell me which state). Without going into too much detail, there was a very violent crime committed near where she lived, involving a crime group connected to well-known people in high positions, and she became a key witness. One of the boys endured a failed kidnap attempt at the school, and that was the final straw.I wasn’t allowed to know where she’d been moved to, nor get any contact details until after the case was over. I didn’t even know what state they went to. It dragged on for years, and even made the newspapers. We completely lost contact with them, because they weren’t allowed to contact anyone from their past.In that time I’d also moved house, and we didn’t have listed numbers, so the chances of her finding us again were also slim. We still thought about them a lot, and spoke occasionally about the good memories. Imagine my surprise when an 18 year old version of my old friend knocked on the door one day - it was the younger of the 2 boys, all grown up.He’d actually gone to my old house, and the people living there told him my current address (10 years since we’d moved!) I couldn’t believe it. He managed to find us that easily! The whole story came out - where they were moved to, what went on etc. Apparently they had to wait until the “head” of the crime group passed away (from natural causes, ironically), and various key figures were jailed, before they could return to the area.And now they were back, and looking at houses to rent, so they could move back and he could go to uni. We were able to reconnect, and it’s been great being a part of their life again over the last 6-7 years. It’s sad that we missed a good 12 or so years of their life, but they have spent plenty of time filling us in on all the years we missed. The boys still remember some of the adventures we took them on, and have fond memories of our weekends away. I never realised at the time how important those adventures would be to them.Both are now very successful in their studies and careers, which is all my mate ever wanted for his boys. I’m glad we had the opportunity spend time with them and do stuff that has been fondly remembered, and has stayed in their memory for life. I figure I kept up my promise, within my capacity. One of the boys is getting married soon, and has asked us to be there as family, alongside his mum. His brother is going to be the best man. I reckon I’ll have to come up with a few “dad jokes” for the speech, in honour of my mate, their dad. Sometimes I think back to that night when he was drunk, and wonder if he knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer for his sons.