Killers in the Family

by Robert L. Snow

  Ultimately, AFIS became the most important advance in law enforcement detection since the introduction of fingerprints into law enforcement in the early part of the twentieth century. It then became even more valuable when the FBI, in 1999, established IAFIS, its national link of state AFIS computers. What this meant was that, starting around the turn of the twenty-first century, a fingerprint recovered at a crime scene in California could now be matched to the fingerprints taken from a person who had been arrested in New York or Florida.

  Yet, while AFIS has been a huge boon to law enforcement, helping the police to identify thousands and thousands of criminals, it has also become extremely valuable for homicide cold case detectives. Now cold case detectives, when combing through homicides prior to the introduction of AFIS, have started looking for cases where unknown fingerprints had been recovered by the police but simply filed away because the detectives didn’t have a suspect. Homicide cold case detectives can now run these fingerprints through AFIS and very possibly turn up a suspect in a cold case murder, where before there had been none.

  AFIS has also been used by the police to identify murder victims in cases where the victims’ fingerprints were on file, and the system has continued to expand its capabilities to now include all joints of the finger and also palm prints. As might be expected, this improvement in AFIS has helped tremendously in solving both new and cold cases. “Under the new, advanced system, AFIS now has the ability to match prints from all areas of the finger and palm,” said King County prosecuting attorney Daniel T. Satterberg in an October 10, 2011, press release.

  Along with AFIS, the introduction of the personal computer, and with it the use of the Internet, has been of tremendous help to detectives. Cold case investigators can use the power of their computers to look for patterns, crunch numbers, or use software packages that can sort, collate, and display information into patterns the original detectives may not have seen. Also, software is now available that creates a 3-D rendering of a crime scene, allowing cold case detectives the chance to “see” an old crime scene. The Internet also allows detectives to now have instant access to records and information, including information unavailable at the time of the original investigation. Detectives can now also pull up records from other states, or find personal information on individuals involved in the case via various government websites, organizational websites, and even through social interaction websites such as Facebook.

  In addition to all of this, the Internet now also allows police agencies to share information like never before. The 9/11 tragedy brought about this new effort among police departments to share information, some of the effort voluntary and some of it mandated. However, along with regional sharing, information sharing about cold case homicide investigation can also now occur on a national level. As an example of this, the FBI manages a program called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP. This is the largest repository of facts about homicides in the United States. Police agencies from all across the nation can send information about a homicide to ViCAP, which then makes the information available to all police agencies nationwide. Homicide cold case detectives will often use ViCAP to see if any of the cases on file there match the case they are investigating.

  According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s The Victim’s Voice, “The information is accepted at ViCAP, checked for accuracy, and becomes part of an increasingly comprehensive data bank of homicides that will always be available for comparing and tracking serial offenders. The case information is then compared to other cases in the data bank for similarities in physical, informational, and behavioral characteristics.”

  Along with ViCAP, in 2003 the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) launched a program called the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LInX. Much like ViCAP, LInX lets law enforcement agencies exchange information about crimes and criminals. Members of LInX can search the computer database for information about crimes similar to the ones they are investigating.

  All of these technological advances, however, pale in comparison to the one that has assisted law enforcement in identifying more suspects, and homicide cold case detectives in solving more decades-old cases, than any other: the introduction of DNA analysis into law enforcement. DNA, of course, is the body’s blueprint, a copy of which is contained in almost every cell of the body, and which can be obtained from skin cells, saliva, blood, semen, and many other bodily fluids.

  What is so great about DNA analysis for homicide cold case investigations, besides being able to positively identify the owner of almost any bodily substance left behind at a crime scene, is that items properly stored at a police facility can now be tested for DNA even decades after a crime. DNA, it has been found, can remain intact and testable for many years. Crime lab technicians have been able to analyze these decades-old DNA samples and positively link them to a specific person, much as AFIS has with fingerprints.

  For example, on December 10, 2003, police officers in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, solved a 1958 rape and murder with the arrest of eighty-two-year-old John Watson. Homicide cold case detectives who decided to look into the rape and murder found the victim’s pajamas still stored away in their property room. Crime lab technicians managed to obtain DNA from semen still on the evidence after forty-five years. The suspect in the case, incidentally, was well known to the police, having been suspected in a number of cases that involved attacks on women.

  “It was kind of eerie to see all that,” homicide detective Lisa Hudson said in an article in the February 2004 issue of Evidence Technology Magazine. “I opened the box and there were her bloody pajamas and the bedding, preserved.”

  The use of DNA analysis has become so widespread and pervasive in law enforcement that states have set up DNA banks, in which DNA samples taken from criminals arrested in the state are kept, and which can be used when looking for a match to DNA recovered at a crime scene. All states now have laws requiring the collection of DNA from certain arrested individuals, which then goes into that state’s DNA bank. But the search can go even wider than just state boundaries. The FBI, in 1990, formed the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. At that time it was just a pilot project and had only twelve law enforcement agencies participating. Today, police agencies from every state send DNA samples to CODIS, so that a DNA sample taken from a crime scene in Denver can now be matched to a criminal who lives in Tampa.

  An example of this occurred in September 2012 in Redding, California. On August 10, 1991, Redding police found the body of fifty-three-year-old Despina Magioudis lying in a field. Someone had beaten, strangled, and raped her. Although the police thoroughly investigated this case, the body went to the morgue and the case went cold and stayed cold until homicide cold case detectives got a hit on DNA from the crime. Forty-five-year-old Brian Eric Norton had been convicted of raping a woman in Iowa in 2007. As a condition of his conviction, the state of Iowa took a DNA sample from Norton (usually done by running a cotton swab inside the cheek) and entered Norton’s DNA into CODIS. The police in Redding, using CODIS, were able to identify Norton as the killer of Despina Magioudis.

  The above case, along with showing the power of DNA, also shows the importance of homicide cold case detectives occasionally resubmitting fingerprints or DNA for comparison in cold cases. While the sample may not match anyone on the first submission, as it wouldn’t have done with Norton in 2006, new information and samples are constantly coming into these data banks.

  In a case similar to Dawn Marie Stuard’s, Indianapolis homicide Detective Sergeant Mike Crooke’s first unsolved case involved the rape and murder of fifteen-year-old Tracey Poindexter. On April 13, 1985, a caller notified the police of a body in a creek on the north side of Indianapolis, and Detective Sergeant Crooke responded to the scene. The victim, it appeared, had been raped before being murdered and dumped in the creek. Detective Sergeant Crooke thoroughly investigated the case, including collecting a sample of the semen recovered f
rom Tracey’s body during the autopsy, and finally sending the sample to the property room for storage when the case went cold. In 1985, the semen sample, without a known suspect, held little evidentiary value. And even if they had had a suspect in 1985, the most the crime lab could have said was whether he did or did not fall within a group of men that could have produced this semen; helpful but hardly definitive evidence. Since the case had involved such a young victim, though, it had stuck with Detective Sergeant Crooke. He could never forget it or ever give up hope of someday being able to solve it.

  In 2001, Detective Sergeant Crooke attended a conference where one of the speakers talked about CODIS, and about how DNA from things such as semen could now be positively matched to a specific individual. As soon as he got back to Indianapolis, Crooke got the semen sample out of the property room and sent it in for a DNA analysis. The sample matched a man named Sterling Riggs, who had just gotten out of prison after serving fifteen years for a kidnapping and rape very similar to the Tracey Poindexter case. In November 2001, a jury found Riggs guilty of Tracey Poindexter’s rape and murder, and soon afterward a judge sentenced Riggs to 130 years in prison.

  In a similar case, in September 2011, the police in Englewood, Colorado, finally closed the murder case of five-year-old Alie Berrelez. Over eighteen years earlier, on May 18, 1993, someone had kidnapped the little girl from the parking lot of the apartment complex where she lived. The police, using tracking dogs, found her body four days later. The murderer had stuffed her into a canvas bag and then dumped her near a creek fourteen miles from where she had been kidnapped. The police immediately suspected a neighbor by the name of Nick Stofer but could never obtain the evidence they needed to arrest him.

  The only real evidence the police had on Stofer in 1993 was the testimony of a witness to the kidnapping: Alie’s three-year-old brother. He pointed out Stofer’s apartment and told the officers that “the old man” who lived there had grabbed Alie. This, though, just wasn’t enough to arrest Stofer on. The police and prosecutor knew that a defense attorney would immediately attack the credibility of such a young witness. And so, the case went cold.

  “We wanted to put the cuffs on [Stofer] so bad, but we couldn’t because the evidence wasn’t there,” Englewood chief of police John Collins told ABC News on September 13, 2011.

  But cold case detectives didn’t give up. In 2011, the DNA technology that hadn’t been available in 1993 was able to test evidence from the victim’s underwear and prove that the DNA belonged to Nick Stofer.

  Scientists are also constantly making improvements in DNA technology. When DNA analysis first became available, technicians needed a sample about the size of a quarter in order to analyze it, but over the years the sample size needed for analysis has become smaller and smaller, leading to one of the most useful innovations to date in DNA technology, called “touch DNA.” Whenever a person touches something, he or she leaves skin cells behind. Scientists are now able to recover and use these microscopic skin cells to develop a DNA profile and identify the owner. Touch DNA samples can be taken from a telephone, a gun, a knife, a piece of fabric, and practically anything else touched by a suspect. Obviously, this has widened tremendously the scope of DNA analysis.

  Despite the remarkable advances that have occurred, however, fiction is always ahead of reality. It has become standard now that in cases that hinge on scientific evidence that prosecutors must first speak to the jury about the “CSI effect.” This is because due to the television series CSI and other similar programs and movies, many jurors believe that they already know how evidence is collected and analyzed in a criminal case, even though unfortunately, in many of these television programs and films, the information given is wrong or the equipment they use is not real, but simply dreamed up by the writers. Prosecutors have to explain to the jurors that many of the things depicted about crime detection in television and movies are, alas, not true. Several years ago in Indianapolis, for example, homicide detectives had what they felt was an excellent murder case against a suspect and were puzzled when the jury returned with a not guilty verdict. When detectives talked to the jury afterward, one of the jurors said, “Well we knew the police officer was wrong because that’s not the way they do it on NYPD Blue.”

  And finally, for homicide cold case detectives stuck on an investigation that they believe can be solved, but just aren’t sure how to do it, there are several organizations that can assist. Max Houck, a forensic anthropologist who worked for the FBI and helped in the identification of bodies at the 9/11 site in New York City, formed the nonprofit Institute for Cold Case Evaluation, or ICCE, soon after the 9/11 tragedy. The organization is made up of not just forensic anthropologists, but also chemists, pathologists, entomologists, evidence analysts, and many other forensic specialists. Their mission is to assist police agencies in the investigation of difficult homicide cold cases.

  “They’re not publicly known names,” Houck said in a September 2003 interview that appeared in the Burlington County Times about the personnel who worked for ICCE. “They spend more time in the lab than in front of the camera, but they are the people who really do the work.”

  Along with ICCE, the Vidocq Society is also available to assist homicide cold case detectives with particularly difficult investigations. The society, headquartered in Philadelphia and founded in 1990, is made up of forensic specialists, including former homicide detectives, prosecutors, scientists from a number of fields, and others who have worked in homicide investigation. They will look at a case and provide guidance to a homicide cold case detective. The society is very selective about the cases it takes but does not charge police departments or the victims’ families for its services.

  So why aren’t more than a handful of homicide cold cases solved every year? In addition to a simple lack of feasible evidence, the reason often comes down to money. Because of budget shortfalls, many police departments are understaffed, with homicide detectives barely able to handle the new homicides that come in. Cold cases are, understandably, low priority. Fortunately, Indianapolis had a very active homicide cold case squad, and also had a former detective like Roy West, who couldn’t forget the Dawn Marie Stuard case and had never given up hope of solving it.

  And so, following Linda Stuard’s and Detective Albert’s intervention, Detective Sergeant Roy West began looking once more at the Dawn Marie Stuard case. He strongly believed that new scientific techniques and innovations would allow the case to be prosecuted. There was still, he knew, evidence from the murder stored away that could likely benefit from what science could now do that it couldn’t do in 1986.

  THIRTEEN

  By the time that Marion County prosecutor Carl Brizzi charged Brian Reese with the robbery and murder of sixty-nine-year-old Clifford Haddix, Brian was already sitting in jail, having been arrested for the attempted murder of Police Officer Jason Fishburn on July 10, 2008.

  Brizzi also charged Brian’s father, Paul Reese Sr., with murder in the Clifford Haddix case, since the elder Reese had acted as a lookout in this incident. Paul Sr. would later tell the police that he had talked back and forth with Brian over a walkie-talkie while he was in the Haddix house on what Paul Sr. claimed was supposed to be just an ordinary burglary. He reportedly didn’t know about or agree with the Haddix murder. However, under Indiana’s felony murder law, even though Paul Sr. had stayed outside, he could still be found guilty of murder because he was a part of the criminal act.

  Paul Sr., of course, quickly realized that this meant he could spend the rest of his life in prison. And so, in a desperate attempt to avoid this, he began negotiating a plea deal with the prosecutor. He would plead guilty to burglary, receive a twenty-year sentence, and cooperate with the police in their investigation of his son. In Indiana, with its good time rule, which gives prisoners one day off of their sentence for every day of good behavior, the twenty-year sentence meant that Paul Sr. could be paroled and out of prison in ten years o
r less. (There are also other ways a prisoner can get time taken off of his or her sentence, such as by obtaining a college degree while in prison.) But along with this, in order for Paul Reese Sr. not to be charged with murder, he also had to agree to cooperate with the police in their other homicide investigation against his son, the Demetrius Allen and Crystal Joy Jenkins murders, which he did. Paul Sr. told the police that his son had shot both of them, one with a .38 caliber revolver and the other with a 25 mm. semiautomatic pistol. The bullets from the .38 caliber weapon used in the murders matched the bullets that had struck Officer Fishburn.

  Paul Reese Sr. fully cooperated with the police and then pleaded guilty to burglary in the Haddix case. Immediately after this, he began serving his twenty-year sentence at the Pendleton Correction Facility, a maximum security prison in Pendleton, Indiana, about thirty-five miles northeast of Indianapolis.

  Ted Stuard, who had revived his daughter’s case when the Reeses were all over the news, still waited for justice. In an interview in 2011 with WISH-TV, he said, “The first couple of years are terrible, [and] twenty-four to twenty-five years later it still hurts, you still mourn, you still look for justice.”

  By 2011, however, justice finally did seem to be a possibility.

  As he’d told Detective Mark Albert, Detective Sergeant Roy West had never been able to get the Dawn Marie Stuard case out of his mind. Not only had it been his very first murder investigation, not only had it gone unsolved, but most importantly, it had involved a totally innocent victim. Every few years, West would pull the case file out and have a look at it, hoping that something would jump out at him, something he had overlooked. When DNA testing first began being used in criminal cases in the 1990s, he’d pulled the file only to discover that, in order to do the blood typing in 1986, the crime lab had used up all but a microscopic amount of the blood sample he had recovered from the basement of the Reese house. So West had put the case file back.