The Last Place You'd Look

by Carole Moore

  “He played guitar and sang, though [he didn’t sing] very well,” Bill remembers.

  Chris, who was close to his brother, shared Matt’s enthusiasm for sports. A high school wrestler, Chris also started college but did not graduate. He saw his friends move on with their lives while he tried to find his own path to adulthood. Matt’s death hit Chris hard; he got a job in the mortgage industry that he liked and at which he excelled, but that was doomed when the industry collapsed. His job was downsized, and Chris was left with too much time to contemplate the loss of his brother and where he was in life.

  Both boys had good social lives—the usual girlfriends, buddies, and coworkers. But the most telling relationship they had was with one another. Two years apart, Matt had long been Chris’s shadow, as well as an individual in his own right. When people thought about Matt, their first thought was how kind and compassionate he was, how caring. And brother Chris, people said, was such a nice guy. Who didn’t love them both?

  Unemployed and down, Chris battled depression rooted in his self-perceived failure to go with his brother to pick up his car. He blamed himself for Matt’s death, and it continued to eat at him, growing worse when he lost his job and had nothing but time on his hands. Right or not, Chris, his father says, “took full responsibility” for what happened to Matt.

  On October 23, 2007, almost two years after Matt died, “Chris took his own life because he felt he let his brother and his family down,” according to Bill.

  Chris was twenty-seven and Bill’s only living child.

  R

  Having a loved one disappear brought Bill Kruziki full circle. He experienced a missing persons investigation from the viewpoint of both investigator and family member, and that mixture of professional and personal involvement did something else, too: it jolted him into recognizing the effect his cop approach to missing persons investigations had on the families of those who disappear.

  “You have no idea how devastating this is to a family. Law enforcement is the first line of help. [Family members] have no place else to go,” Bill says.

  By tradition, law enforcement is trained to share little information with those involved in a case. It is a good tactic in most investigations because there is little to be gained by disclosing leads, suspects, or other investigational information. Additionally, what investigators learn and record in their notes can often be misleading. Police play their cards close to their chests for several reasons:

  • Authorities don’t want the general public learning information that could harm, impede, or prejudice an investigation. Premature release of information can have drastic consequences, particularly if it makes its way into the media. Suspects can flee or destroy evidence, alibis can be established, and the memories of witnesses can be tainted. One famous example of a case bungled in many ways, including information leaks that sparked sensationalism and provided a springboard for rampant speculation, is the still-unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet, the six-year-old daughter of a prosperous Boulder, Colorado, couple, was found dead in the basement of the family home on December 26, 1997. The child had been bound with duct tape and strangled with a garrote. Other evidence discovered at the scene, including a ransom note, and information that the family was the focus of the investigation was leaked along with many other critical crime scene details. As a result of the leaks (as well as the poor handling of the investigation), intimate facts surrounding the case were made public. There is no doubt that release of this information has impeded the progress of the case.

  • Police want to avoid public speculation initiated by the news media. Press coverage played a significant role in guiding public opinion in the Ramsey case. Another example of viral press coverage took place in connection with the 2009 murder of Yale student Annie Le. In Le’s case, some media outlets ran with unsubstantiated reports that the Yale employee accused of killing her tried to conceal her body by breaking her bones in order to force it into a very small enclosure. Although investigators who were working on the Le disappearance and murder denied those stories, the situation proved painful for her family and friends. In an ultra-competitive atmosphere, media outlets race to zero in on the most titillating details. Many officers consider the feelings of family members and won’t relay those details to anyone—including the family.

  • Police want to protect the family from the needless heartache and pain that certain types of information can induce. Disappearances and the facts surrounding them can often lead police into some horrifying and very dark places. Stranger abductions of children routinely involve the investigation of known and possible pedophiles: information police hesitate to share with families because the details are often so terrible. Most cops err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing families to such heinous possibilities.

  • Police want to control the investigation. When sharing details, especially unsubstantiated leads, authorities run the risk of interested parties taking more active roles than perhaps they should. Police understand the frustrations of families wishing to see things happen in what can often seem like an agonizing process, but they also don’t want the investigation to grow out of control. There is always a chance information in the wrong hands could turn a bad situation into a tragedy.

  • Police want to hold back certain information. It is standard procedure for police to withhold from release some details concerning the crime in order to help identify the perpetrator. A suspect with knowledge of the aspects of a case that only the guilty party or someone associated with the guilty party could know is that much closer to being convicted in court.

  And that leads to this last point: police want to build a solid case in court. It is hard for families to understand that while officers are searching for their loved one, they must also control a case’s trial integrity. Police have hard-and-fast rules they must play by, and the courts are mostly unforgiving when those rules are broken. Police are also often vilified in the press when they have bungled an investigation, so they’re sensitive in most instances to the possibility of losing a case or key evidence. They have one chance to get it right. There are no do-overs in police work.

  R

  Bill Kruziki knows all of this and he knows it well because he has handled plenty of missing persons cases himself. In his more than thirty-three years in law enforcement, he has had much experience with the investigation and coordination of investigations of missing children and adults. “As a former line officer and . . . law enforcement CEO, I have had to deal with the emotional stress from the families who frantically wanted their loved ones found safe and soon,” Bill says. “As any experienced officer [who has been involved in] this kind of investigation, we have been trained to keep all information ‘close to the vest’ and share very little detail with the media and family. I followed this train of thought for many years until that early morning on Christmas Eve when Matt vanished.”

  Even though Bill understands that police still need to keep some details about the investigation to themselves, in the days since his son vanished and his disappearance turned to tragedy, Bill has become a passionate advocate for making as much information available to the families of the missing as is feasible. He says turning the tables changes the equation on every level.

  “Family members must know that the police are going to be responsive, have empathy, and most importantly . . . not keep information from the family that may help them more readily understand where the investigation is going and what the police are going to do to find their loved one,” he says.

  He wants law enforcement to update the family regarding information gleaned from interviews with persons of interest.

  “Even if the information is basic or of no use, the family needs to hear and know that the police are actively working to resolve this case,” he says.

  Bill points out that in most jurisdictions, missing persons cases receive low priority. An already-stretched-thin blue line must work homicides, robberies, rapes, assaults, and other
crimes that count toward their annual Unified Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics, which is a federal accountability program that measures the national and local crime rates. In addition to working criminal cases, police also deal with traffic issues and crime prevention, subjects that resonate with their constituents.

  Although the number of persons reported missing and entered into the system each year is staggering, most are found and the cases cleared. What changes that numbers game is the missing persons—adults and runaways for the most part—who are either not reported at all or for whom police refuse to take reports. No one knows how many people are missing and unaccounted for in an official capacity because no records are made or kept, but it is estimated that the numbers run into the thousands each year.

  While missing children always bring out the neighborhood, missing adults, without clear-cut evidence of foul play, remain a low and sometimes nonexistent priority for police agencies.

  “Unfortunately, many police are not trained properly or at all to deal with this type of incident,” says Bill.

  He calls on department heads—chiefs of police and sheriffs—to do some soul-searching and think about what time, resources, staff, and budget dollars they would expend if a family reported that their adult son or daughter had not been in contact with them for more than twenty-four hours.

  “My bet is that most of you, depending on the circumstances, would tell the family that he or she is an adult and is free to do what they please and there is no current law against it,” he says.

  Families, as he points out, do not care about budgets and personnel, because they don’t understand that point of view. They are about one thing: finding their lost loved one. And because of this, the former marshal says, “it is the duty of the department head to ensure that the family is aware of what level the agency is going to investigate this missing persons case.”

  Bill wants law enforcement agencies to take it personally. He says investigators owe it to families to be as forthcoming as possible with them, including sharing information whenever possible. “If searches are planned, no matter how small, the family should be notified and given the opportunity to be present. If media contact is going to be initiated by police, meet with the family first to discuss information that will be provided to them so [that the families] do not learn something new about the investigation by reading the paper or watching television,” he says.

  He touches on a sore subject among many families of the missing: it is not unusual for families to find out about the progress of an investigation—or even that a body has been found or an arrest made—through the media, either by hearing it on television or from a media inquiry. No parent wants to receive a telephone call that an adult child has been found deceased—but it becomes even worse when that call comes from some local news reporter trying to make a deadline.

  Bill reaches into his deep law enforcement background as well as his role as a bereaved father to recommend that law enforcement agencies implement a two-pronged approach to missing persons investigations. He says departments should first appoint an officer to act as the contact liaison with the agency, while families should do the same by designating a family contact person. That way, both news and questions can be passed along without duplication and with reduced confusion.

  Although the amount of time and manpower a department can dedicate to a missing persons investigation varies from agency to agency, Bill urges agency heads to keep families in the loop and make certain that liaisons stay in regular contact with them. If, for example, an agency decides to suspend its search for an individual or the investigation into his or her disappearance, Bill says the family has a right to know this.

  “Nothing is worse than thinking that the police are actively trying to investigate the incident and then learn . . . the case is dormant,” he says.

  He believes that although police must walk a fine line in deciding what to share and what not to share, it is important to make families feel they are part of the effort to find their loved one.

  “My son was found drowned in the Mississippi River almost three months after he went missing. As a family, we have some resolution to at least have him back. Think of the helpless and desperate people who are missing an adult family member [and] are still waiting for answers,” he says.

  The Kruziki family still has many questions about Matt’s death. They want to know why the individual who was with Matt on the night he died didn’t leave the bar with him. Why, Bill asks, did the East Dubuque police officer who stopped Matt at 1:10 in the morning on a freezing night not at least go into the bar and get Matt his coat? Why was Matt allowed to wander, intoxicated and alone without proper clothing, in a town where he knew no one and was staying in a hotel miles across the river?

  What happened to Matt? Bill believes Matt’s death was most likely an accident, but he would like to see what investigators turned up in his son’s case. The only way he can do that is to allow the case to be closed, and that would mean the investigation would stop.

  For Bill, it’s a double-edged sword: neither option will bring him peace.

  • 3 •

  The Police: A Report Card on

  Police and Missing Persons Cases

  Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it.—Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

  Time chips away at promising leads and makes important information seem less significant. When too much time passes, witnesses no longer recall facts with the same clarity or detail. Notes get shuffled, lost, or misfiled. Old handwriting fades, pictures grow fuzzy and less defined, and people move on with their lives. Cases that remain unsolved grow cold.

  Cold cases are difficult to work and even more difficult to crack. Resolving them requires skill, patience, and a big helping of luck. Some detectives don’t have what it takes to work cold cases; others find they’re good at digging up answers from the past.

  In Rutherford County, Tennessee, Lieutenant Bill Sharp of the Rutherford Sheriff’s Department Cold Case Squad and his partner, Sergeant Dan Goodwin, excel at cold case work. They thumb through the dusty, tattered files and boxes of evidence compiled in the twenty-odd cases assigned to their unit. Among those were the abductions of two small children: Bobby and Christi Baskin. The Baskin siblings were believed to have been taken by their grandparents, Marvin and Sandra Maple, when the kids were seven and eight years of age. Bobby and Christi disappeared on March 1, 1989, moments before a hearing ordered them returned to their natural parents.

  The siblings were removed from their parents’ home after the Maples accused them of sexually abusing the children. A subsequent investigation found the allegations to be false. Authorities say the Maples absconded with the two older kids, but left a third, younger child, Michael, behind with Mark and Debbie Baskin.

  “You’re saying they’re doing terrible things to the kids, but why wouldn’t you take the youngest kid, who was the most vulnerable? It makes no sense,” notes Sharp.

  Doctors and psychiatrists examined the children and found no signs of abuse. When the pair failed to show up in court, investigators launched an immediate search for them, but the trail withered and died. Soon the case was shelved for lack of viable leads.

  Criminal investigators at the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, like many law enforcement officers in rural areas, have impossible caseloads. It’s not uncommon for a detective to carry 150 cases ranging from vandalism to homicide. Once the Baskin matter grew cold, the abductions were moved back in priority. Still, detectives would pull the file every once in a while and look for new leads, drum up a little press, and touch base with Mark and Debbie, who held out hope they would see their children again.

  They had reason to hope. Occasional press coverage would yield a few tips, all of which were followed up by RCSO investigators. None brought home the gold, though.

  Then the Baskin case was assigned to Bill Sharp and Dan Goodwin. Sha
rp has worked for the sheriff’s office since 1993. With headquarters in the county seat of Murfreesboro, the RCSO is the fifth-largest jurisdiction in the Volunteer State. It lies southeast of Nashville.

  The lieutenant’s voice is soft and polite, laced with the distinctive twang of his home state. Sharp says he and Goodwin were transferred from criminal investigations and put into cold cases to work homicides, but his captain had investigated the Baskin abductions when they first occurred and asked them to take another look. They did.

  They worked the case like it had just happened, interviewing the original detectives and following up on telephone numbers and leads. When a tip from a woman who recognized the children from age-progressed photos hit their desk, Sharp and Goodwin chased it and found the Baskin children, now grown, in San Jose, California. Sharp was overjoyed to tell Mark and Debbie that after two decades, their missing kids had been located safe and alive.

  “They’re fantastic people. I don’t know that I could have handled the situation as well as they did,” says Sharp.

  But Bobby and Christi were no longer the same children raised by the Tennessee minister and his wife. They were grown-ups who called the Maples “mom” and “dad.” And they no longer answered to Bobby and Christi; instead they went by the names Jennifer and Jonathan Bunting.

  Debbie Baskin didn’t care. She did what any mother who has not seen her children for twenty years would have done and hopped onto a plane for California. But this tale of two little kids taken from their parents was not resolved as well as Sharp and Goodwin had hoped: the kids—now adults—were shocked by the story told by investigators and—at least so far—have decided they want nothing to do with their biological parents. It was a tough blow for both investigators, who wanted so much for this story to have a happy ending, and for the Baskins, who spent a large part of their lives searching for their children.