Sea's Life Sees Death

by Donna Pendergast

Lana Stempien had it all. Blonde and beautiful, the 35-year-old former model had realized her lifelong dream—to become a lawyer. The life of every party, she was employed by the City of Detroit Law Department and living the good life in the summer of 2005, along with her 34-year-old attorney boyfriend, Charles "Chuck" Rutherford (couple pictured below).

Lana was the pride of her family, the first to go through law school. Rutherford, a former Wayne County assistant prosecutor who'd recently begun his own practice, was the son of a wealthy, prominent attorney. Despite any differences, their relationship seemed perfect, on the surface, at least. They were young, attractive, and on the road to success. They shared a modest home in Grosse Pointe Farms Michigan, a chichi Detroit suburb, where affluence is the norm and violent crime is rare. Yet no one really knows what happens with any couple behind closed doors. Later, Lana and Chuck's pairing would appear to have been anything but perfect. And to this day, their fates remain shrouded in conjecture.

From the start, I had an exceptional interest in this case. A friend of mine lived next door to the couple and knew them on a casual but friendly basis. My previous employment with the Wayne County Prosecutor's office began shortly after Chuck Rutherford left that office, so many of my former colleagues knew and worked with him.

At the heart of the matter is the mystery of what happened to the couple three years ago today, on August 11, 2005.

The Beginning of the End

The previous day, August 10, Chuck and Lana left her parents' house in Belle River Canada, across the river from Detroit. Lana was at the helm of her 27-foot boat, Sea's Life.

They were headed to Mackinac Island, a vacation paradise located just east of the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan's lower and upper peninsulas. Although the journey to Mackinac was an ambitious undertaking, Lana's father, a former Coast Guard officer, was not overly concerned with the couple's plans. He knew his daughter to be an experienced and extremely safety-conscious boater.

The boat followed the eastern coast of the Michigan shoreline that first day, making its way up Lake Huron as far as Oscoda. That night, Lana and Chuck docked at a marina and shared dinner and cocktails with a couple they'd met. Afterward, they returned to the boat where they spent the night.

The next morning, Chuck and Lana put the boat in gear and left the marina. A little after noon, they stopped for gas at Presque Isle State Harbor, a few hours from their planned destination. Both Lana and Chuck were seen wearing sweatshirts to ward off the coolness of the day. Once they were back en route, at approximately 1:30 p.m., Lana spoke by cell phone to a favorite aunt. In her statement to police, Lana's aunt recalled that her niece gave no indication that anything might be amiss.

Cell phone records indicate that call was the last Lana ever made.

A Frightening Observation

The next morning when the couple didn't arrive as scheduled on Mackinac Island, Lana's parents reported them missing. A few hours later, nearly 24 hours after Lana and Chuck were last seen, a couple out boating discovered Sea's Life adrift in the turbulent Lake Huron waters. The boat was near Marquette Island, ten miles from Lana and Chuck's planned Mackinac Island destination.

When the Coast Guard arrived, they found the boat abandoned with the engine idling. The radio was tuned to a Christian station, not the missing couple's usual musical fare.

There were other unusual things that puzzled authorities. For instance, Lana's torn running shoe was discovered on the deck. Embedded in its sole, as if implanted with great force, was a knob from the boat's GPS system. And that wasn't all. The Coast Guard also found the boat's swim ladder in a pulled-up position, which seemed to contradict the likelihood that an impulsive swim had turned into a tragic accident. The previous day's cool air and water temperatures also made investigators question that theory.

Two other issues were of interest to police investigating the bizarre circumstances. First: the couple who notified authorities of the abandoned boat described blue bumpers, the sort used when boats hook together, floating on a line off the boat's back. The Sea's Life was not known to have had such equipment aboard, and when the Coast Guard arrived the bumpers were nowhere to be found. Second: it appeared that the boat's GPS system was activated around 1:20 a.m. on August 12, many hours after the couple was scheduled to arrive at Mackinac Island.

Where were Lana and Chuck?The first part of that question was answered two weeks after the couple disappeared, on August 23, 2005, when Lana's body washed ashore north of Hammond Bay, miles from where the boat was found. She was nude, wearing only a gold chain necklace and her treasured Omega watch. Close friends and family say that Lana never swam with the expensive watch, which was only water resistant, not waterproof.

An autopsy showed a negligible amount of alcohol in Lana's system. An unusual finding was an elevated level of carbon monoxide in her blood. The medical examiner's determination was that Lana's death had been caused by drowning.

Many Unanswered Questions

As the police investigation progressed, many questions remained unanswered. Where was Charles Rutherford? If Lana's body had washed up, why hadn't his? What was the significance of the blue bumpers? Had another boat hooked up to hers? If so, was that the source of the elevated level of carbon monoxide in Lana's blood?

The police had other questions as well. Why was the GPS knob embedded in Lana's shoe? Did her body enter the water nude or were her clothes washed away in the water? Did one person fall into the water accidentally and the other jump in to save the first? And why was the GPS turned on at 1:30 a.m. on August 12th? None of it made sense.

Meanwhile, relations between Lana's and Chuck's families became increasingly strained, as members of her family wondered if Chuck (pictured right) could be alive and responsible for their loved one's death. At the root were reports from friends who described the couple's relationship not at all as idyllic as it appeared from the outside. One even said Lana had once commented that if anything happened to her, Chuck should be the suspect.

After a news story aired on the couple's disappearance, more reports of trouble between Lana and Chuck surfaced when someone came forward saying he'd witnessed a physical altercation between Lana and Chuck outside of a Detroit bar. A segment about the case on Dateline further fueled speculation that Chuck could be alive and on the run.

Yet there were other indications that suggested such reasoning could be wrong. For instance, from the time of his disappearance, Chuck's credit cards and bank accounts remained unused. His parents filed a petition, and on August 3, 2006, a week short of the one-year anniversary of his disappearance, a Circuit Court Judge declared Charles Rutherford legally dead.

Only recently have discoveries washed up on the rocky Lake Huron shoreline that may finally end at least some of the speculation.

Secrets of the Deep

On May 28th of this year, human remains were found near Cheboygan, MI, roughly three miles from the location where Lana Stempien's body was found. DNA results are expected in late August. Only then will authorities know if the body belongs to Charles Rutherford. The Michigan State Police have cautioned that the torso could be unrelated to the Stempien/Rutherford case. Several persons are missing from that general area, including a man who jumped off the Mackinac Bridge. If DNA tests peg the corpse as Chuck's, they will put an end to rumors that he's alive and on the run.

If that torso belongs to another missing person, perhaps still another body part found less than two weeks ago will be identified as Chuck's—a foot that belongs to a man Rutherford's age.

Yet even DNA will not answer a number of other questions revolving around this case, including what happened to or between Rutherford and Lana Stempien on that fateful day three years ago today.

Those are secrets that Lake Huron may never reveal.

But Lana's family isn't giving up. "I'm gonna find out the truth," her father told Dateline. "And believe me, trust me—I'm gonna do it." For the past few years, the family's search has continued unabated, as has their faith that someday they will know what happened to their daughter. In the Detroit Free Press just yesterday, this memorial appeared:

Our Loving Daughter and Sister LANA ANN STEMPIEN September 22, 1969 - August 11, 2005 It's three years tomorrow Lana, we will forever keep praying and searching for the answer. Love, Mom, Dad and Lori

Statements made in this post are my own and not intended to reflect the views, opinions, or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

Tweet

American Killed at Beijing Olympics

by Kathryn Casey

My Friday post on the inability of any government, even the oppressive Chinese, to wipe out senseless crime unfortunately rang true today, the first day of Olympic competition. Just a short time after the spectacular $100 million opening ceremonies that mesmerized much of the world, the Associated Press reports that an apparently deranged man attacked an American couple, murdering the husband and injuring the wife. The killer then committed suicide by plunging to his own death.

This apparently random act of violence was aimed at Todd and Barbara Bachman of Lakeville, Minn., parents of 2004 volleyball Olympian Elisabeth "Wiz" Bachman (photo right) and in-laws of U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. It happened while the Bachmans were sight-seeing at the Drum Tower, an ancient structure where drummers once marked the passage of the hours. Todd Bachman, CEO of the family's Minneapolis home and garden center, died of knife wounds, and his wife suffered serious injuries. Wiz Bachman was with her parents but unhurt.

Meanwhile, Tang Yongming, 47, who has been identified as the assailant, reportedly jumped from a 130-foot balcony on the Drum Tower, located five miles from the main Olympics site. After the murder, the Tower was closed and paddle-locked by Chinese police (AP photo above).

"It's certainly a down day, certainly for the U.S. people," Jim Easton, an American IOC member, told The Associated Press. "Here it is supposed to be a great time of happiness and peace and all that. That's what we work hard for, then for one person to be able to put a dark cloud on that."

From all of us at WCI, our condolences to the Bachman family and friends.

Tweet

Women Behaving Deadly

by Robin Sax

The title is Dangerous Women: Why Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters Become Stalkers, Molesters, and Murderers, and this book couldn’t be more timely if author Larry Morris had planned it that way. In light of missing toddler Caylee Anthony, whose third birthday was today, people are scratching their heads wondering how mother Casey Anthony, if not guilty, could behave the way she does.

For those of you who can’t wrap your mind around women in the mold of Casey Anthony, Susan Smith, and Mercedes Murderess Clara Harris, this book gives valuable insight into the seldom-explored subject of dangerous women. The phenomenon is so uncharted, our own Diane Fanning's book on NASA Astronut (a Freudian typo I'll let stand) Lisa Nowak could not be more aptly titled: Out There.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Morris provides a framework to understand dangerous women and helps us understand how society should deal with them. Throughout this book, he offers a panoply of examples of women as perpetrators, dangerous to themselves and to society as a whole.

The media love to focus on crime, but pundits offer only a superficial look at femmes fatales and criminals who happen to be women on such shows as Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren. For more depth to these stories, we turn to Dangerous Women, where Larry Morris offers answers to the questions we all ask: How can a woman murder her own child? Why is a female teacher who has sex with her 13-year-old student simply the butt of jokes? Why would a woman hack off her husband’s penis? How could a woman drown not just one but five of her children? Or tie her husband to the bed and stab him nearly two hundred times? How does a little old lady become a serial killer?

What if we could understand behavior before a crime has occurred? What if we could find warning signs and use them to deter potential criminals? What if we could understand the women who might commit a dangerous act, or have already done so?

One of Dr. Morris’s objectives in writing this book is to help readers do exactly that—prevent a crime from occurring that might even include a reader’s family member or a loved one. He offers tips on potentially dangerous or antisocial behaviors that we might not ordinarily notice, such as depressions or irrational behavior, which can presage acts of dangerousness.

The author takes us through several fascinating examples of dangerous women, including Aileen Wournos (pictured far left), the serial killer played by supermodel Charlize Theron (on right). [Interesting sidebar: While Theron is widely recognized for her Oscar-winning portrayal of Wournos in MONSTER, less known is the sad fact that as a child, actress Theron witnessed her mother kill her father.] But back to the book that examines Wournos and others . . . at the end, where the women's dark tunnels converge and the reader needs to see a light, Dr. Morris concludes with the “Path to Prevention.” Not only does he examine why girls may become dangerous, he brings forward suggestions as to what we can do to prevent “bad behavior” from becoming criminal behavior.

And as a prosecutor, I couldn’t be more grateful for a book that concludes on a hopeful note. Perhaps, after all, some women—and their would-be victims—might be spared from the tragic consequences of becoming the next dangerous woman.

Tweet

Chinese Embarrassed Before Opening Ceremony?

by Kathryn Casey

I have to admit that I have the impression I’m safer in other countries than I am here at home. Sometimes I wonder if it’s true or a product of reading American news about crime here and often not much about troubles in the rest of the world.

Wondering, I recently googled “international crime rates” and discovered fallacy and truth in my assumption. According to world stats site NationMaster, the U.S. ranks 24th out of 63 nations in murders per capita, at .04 murders per 1,000. That sounds high, but we’re way better off than folks in country number one, Colombia, with .62 murders per 1,000. We’re also safer than folks in nations such as Thailand, Mexico, Zambia, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. That’s good, I guess, until you take a gander at the rest of the list. U.S. murder rates dwarf those in the United Kingdom and most of Europe. (I bet we could start a lively discussion about why that's true.)

The reason I started thinking about international crime is that the Beijing Olympics open tonight. Compared to we rowdy Westerners, Asian nations have historically had little crime. Maybe that’s partly the case in China, because authorities keep a tight lid on the populace. Getting ready for the games, for instance, the government not only attempted to restrict Internet access for journalists but advised citizens on what to wear. (Any more than three colors of clothing at one time was discouraged.)

According to our own government, China is low-crime, and travelers to Beijing should feel pretty safe. Still, there's always some danger. Last week reports surfaced of terrorist attacks in Kashgar, where 16 police were killed by grenades. Those responsible were identified as Muslim separatist groups. Although Kashgar is a western town, far from Beijing, there is concern that the attackers could attempt a strike at the Olympics. And while admittedly at lower than U.S. rates, China isn't immune to violent crime. In fact, with rampant industrial and cultural change, crime rates in the country are climbing, especially among rural teens.

It’s just such a crime that caught my attention and started all this musing: the July 6th murder of Diana O’Brien, a Canadian model working in Shanghai.

Striking with long brown hair and remarkable eyes, O’Brien had been in Shanghai for only two weeks, when her body was discovered crumpled and bleeding at the base of a stairwell. Police found her apartment ransacked and missing computer equipment, cameras, and jewelry. An autopsy determined that O’Brien, 22, had been stabbed seven times, including in the heart and liver.

At first, suspicion centered on a man who’d allegedly been stalking the striking young Canadian, someone she’d met at one of her jobs. She’d traveled to China believing she’d be modeling, but, as is often the case with these overseas "modeling agencies," O’Brien was disapp

ointed in the work, which turned out to include dancing on a podium at a nightclub to promote a brand of whisky. She was talking of returning to Canada early, friends say, at the time of the murder.

Despite the stalking lead, the murder, it now appears, was simply a botched robbery.

Late last month, Chinese authorities arrested Chen Jun, an 18-year-old migrant worker. At the time of his arrest, authorities say he had in his possession items from O’Brien’s apartment. On July 24th,

Jun’s confession was played for the nation on Chinese television. Showing no emotion, he said he'd gone into O’Brien’s apartment because he saw an open door. He’d lost his job in a tea room and needed money to return to his rural province. As he was grabbing her laptop, O’Brien entered and went after him, intent on reclaiming her property. He pulled out a folding knife, and stabbed her. When she screamed for help, he stabbed her again.

A neighbor heard O’Brien screaming but thought it was "just a domestic squabble" and didn’t call police.

Now that he’s in custody, Jun faces a trial and a possible death sentence, the usual fate for a Chinese national convicted of murdering a foreigner. The Chinese government is undoubtedly miffed that this brutal crime took place so close to the Olympics, when appearances are of such grave concern. Just goes to show you, even an oppressive government like China's can't wipe out crime.

I’m not sure why this case interests me other than that it illustrates the universality of senseless acts of violence, that every nation has members of that abhorrent subset of mankind for whom life is cheap.

Tweet

Buggers!

by Andrea Campbell

Forensic entomology, the study of bugs as related to death, is a relatively new science. In the past, investigators thought bugs were a nuisance, something to be washed away or disposed of as quickly as possible. But the relationship between dead bodies and maggots is nature’s way of recycling—the way a corpse becomes simple organic matter.

Death carries a universal scent that attracts hundreds of insects and other arthropods as they set about the body to feed and lay eggs (usually in the bloody areas first). The life cycles of the insects that take place on the deceased are fixed and precise. Those characteristics make it a good tool for investigators called forensic entomologists.

It’s funny then how a form of forensic entomology was practiced as early as the thirteenth century, yet took so long to come to fruition. Story has it that a murder in a Chinese village was the result of the victim being repeatedly slashed. Witness questioning was going nowhere. In frustration, the magistrate ordered all the village men to assemble, each bringing his own sickle. Standing in the hot summer sun, flies were attracted to just one sickle because of the blood residue and tissue fragments clinging to the blade and handle. Confronted with this evidence, the owner of the sickle confessed to the crime.

Insects have helped to solve many crimes. The unique activities of the insects, paired together with the arrival of different species and different forms of species, act as a predictable time-clock that can be traced backward for estimations. The order in which the insects arrive is called succession. Succession is the idea that as each organism or group of organisms feeds on a body, it changes the body and makes it attractive to the next group, and, so on. For example, within ten minutes after a body is dead in open air, flies arrive and lay thousands of eggs in the mouth, nose and eyes of the corpse. The eggs hatch into larvae, also known as maggots, in twelve hours up to three days and the maggots feed on tissues. Since maggots go through three phases on their way to becoming adult flies, the entomologist tracks their development and makes calculations backwards in order to determine the date and time the eggs were most likely deposited.

The Importance of Blow Flies

Blow fly eggs, collected from human remains and analyzed, can provide investigators with an accurate estimate of time between death and discovery and allow them to better target their investigative efforts.

Blow fly eggs are small (2 to 3 mm), whitish-yellow, and somewhat elongate. During warmer seasons they are easily visible to the naked eye found packed into natural body openings and wound sites in large numbers. During colder months, however, their numbers may be few and difficult to locate, buried within recessed locations. Blow fly eggs typically hatch within one to three days depending on species and environmental conditions. Dissection of egg samples and analysis of the stage of embryonic development may further depict the time since oviposition—creation—and, therefore, the time of the victim’s death.

Within 24 - 36 hours, beetles arrive and feast on the dry skin. After 48 hours, spiders, mites, millipedes, and wasps arrive to feed on the bugs that are already there. Entomologists today recognize six decomposition stages.

Bug behavior can also indicate whether the victim was killed indoors or out, during the day or night, in warm or cold weather, in shade or sun. Bugs scattered and laying dead near remains have also told the story of a women who died from a drug overdose. The cocaine chemicals within her body had been passed onto the bugs.

Case Story: Insect Trail

The body of a woman was found in a wooded area near the District of Columbia. There appeared to be no evidence of foul play but as part of police procedure, the scene was photographed. It was late summer and the dead woman was dressed in a tube top and slacks. Since her clothes were intact the possibility of a sexual assault was not taken into account.

Despite peaceful surroundings, her advanced stage of decomposition meant that the medical examiner would have a difficult task. The body had been lying out in the open for about ten to twelve days. Larvae were in the eyes, around the nose and mouth, in the chest area, and on the palms of both hands. The dead woman was identified immediately and because of the condition of the body, pressure was put on the authorities to release her corpse for a speedy burial. A limited autopsy indicated the cause of death was unknown and the body was turned over to the undertaker.

Typically, that would have ended the investigation, but one detective remained puzzled. The question about time of death bothered him. The victim had been reported missing a few days before her body was discovered on the trail, but the detective wondered, why was her body so badly decomposed? And because of the advanced decay, her autopsy had been less than exact. Finally, three years later, the detective contacted a forensic anthropologist, showed him the photographs and asked for a second opinion.

The anthropologist asked all the normal questions and studied the photographs. He told the detective that considering the time of year, the larval activity in the photographs was consistent with the medical examiner’s time of death estimate and asked if police had a suspect. The detective was dumbfounded. He explained that the lack of evidence for violence led them to rule out murder and they hadn’t bothered to look for suspicious persons.

“Of course there’s evidence,” the scientist said, pointing to the pictures, “You just showed it to me.” Because of his forensic training, he had immediately recognized the significance of the larval activity in the palms of the hands. In the pictures the surfaces on both arms were clearly free of maggots, but the flies had laid their eggs in the deep lesions across the width of her palms. This signifies the kind of injury that is associated with someone who is defending against a knife attack.

The detective was stunned. “But how can you be sure the hand injuries aren’t just something that happened when she fell?”

He pointed to the chest area in the top photo. The decomposition, he said, suggested something else. “Maggots don’t swarm like that unless they have something to feed on. . . . Look at the body, I think you’re going to find she was stabbed in the chest.”

After much persuading, the detective convinced other officials. Her body was exhumed by lantern light in the middle of a snowstorm. This time the examination was more complete. Soft tissue was simmered away gently for a clearer view. Unmistakable blade patterns were found in the bones of the hands and in the chest. A new death certificate was issued, and the manner of death reclassified to homicide. Homicides are one crime where there is no statute of limitations. As long as the case is unsolved, it is considered open to scrutiny and further investigation.

Excerpted from Detective Notebook: Crime Scene Science
graphic: Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Tweet

Circumstantial Evidence: Proof or Persecution

by Pat Brown

Today we are supposed to be getting the lowdown on the FBI's case against Dr. Bruce Ivins and I hope like heck they really have some solid evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax attacks. If it turns out they have nothing but an assortment of "interesting facts that might warrant further investigation," then claiming Ivins is the culprit is downright appalling.

Now anyone who knows me or has heard me give commentary on news shows may point out that I usually speak quite bluntly and say that someone looks mighty darn guilty, that I have little question that they committed a particular crime. I then list the various pieces of circumstantial evidence.

So why am I so upset when I see headlines about Ivins declaring "Homicidal Anthrax Maniac Plans Murder of Coworkers" or "Mad Scientist Obsessed with Sorority Near Anthrax Mailbox" or "Crazed Anthrax Killer Gets Porn at Secret Mailbox"? Because many of these facts are unsubstantiated, meaningless, taken out of context, and woven together as "proof" of unquestionable guilt that the FBI has found the anthrax culprit and the case is solved.

Sometimes circumstantial evidence is indeed strong enough to have little doubt of an individual's guilt. At other times, it is only good enough to encourage more investigation. With respect to fairness and a person's reputation, we ought not to confuse or manipulate the two different levels of quality of such evidence.

A couple of recent cases illustrate this point. The first one made major news last week when a police SWAT team raided the home of Cheye Calvo in a "no-knock" drug raid, blasting through the door, shooting down the family dogs, and terrorizing the residents of the home. The story has spread like wildfire across the Internet and the police action has received much condemnation.

Here are the basic facts of what went down: Drug dogs hit on a package containing 32 pounds of marijuana at a package facility in Arizona. The parcel was addressed to one Trinity Tomsic of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Law enforcement there set up a sting operation, allowing the package to continue on its way to be delivered by one of their own to the home of Cheye Calvo.

Calvo was working at the time of the delivery and his mother-in-law, who lived with Calvo and his wife Trinity, told the delivery man to leave the package on the porch. When Calvo arrived home from work, he noted the package and carried into the house, dropped it unopened onto a table and went to change his clothes.

Moments later, all hell broke loose. The SWAT team blasted into the house, shot Calvo's beloved black Labradors, and for the next three hours Calvo and his mother-in-law—handcuffed and kneeling on the floor—were interrogated. The dogs lay dead nearby in pools of blood. Nothing in the house was found and no arrests were made.

If this had happened in a ghetto, perhaps no one would have taken note. However, Cheye Calvo is not just an upstanding citizen but the mayor of Berwyn Heights, a small, peaceful suburban town just one mile from the University of Maryland. Both Calvo and Tomsic have jobs working with the government, do much charity work, and are pillars of the community. Most everyone in town is outraged and appalled by this horrific incident.

A rally was held in protest of the police action and in support of the Calvo family. Most think they are unwitting and innocent victims of some drug ring using their address as a drop and someone else was intending to intercept the package before the Calvos even saw it. Some think they were set up.

So, are they guilty or innocent? I personally don't know but I can "prove" Cheye Calvo is guilty the FBI "Bruce Ivins" way, by picking and choosing which circumstantial evidence I will focus on and developing my theory to prove Calvo committed the crime of purposefully receiving illegal drugs.

The police must have had excellent reason to believe the Calvos were planning to receive the package, knew what was in it, and were involved in some sort of shady dealings or they would not have taken the huge risk of public outrage by carrying out a "no-knock" raid on the well-respected mayor of a peaceful, middle-class town.

The idea that the Calvos were just used as a drug drop location with someone else planning to intercept the package does not hold water. The police were surveilling the house and no one else was seen waiting for the package. Surely the police investigated the possibility that the delivery man could be in on the drug operation and they cleared him of any involvement. This leaves Calvo or Tomsic as the intended recipient.

Cheye Calvo was in Arizona (pure hearsay) around the time the package was sent. By not sending it to himself, but putting his wife's name on it, he distances himself from the package if ever he is questioned about it. The package is not his and was not sent to him.

Calvo planned to receive the package and then remove the contents to a secure location without the knowledge of his wife or mother-in-law. The package was delivered on a day Trinity Tomsic worked into the evening, allowing Calvo to come home and deal with package before Trinity's arrival.

He likely told his mother-in-law that he was expecting a package and, because it contained items for the yard, to just leave it on the porch. He had to have given this instruction to his mother-in-law because the porch had no overhang and it is unlikely she would leave a package addressed to her daughter out in the elements (heavy afternoon thunderstorms) if she thought it could be damaged.

Calvo would not want the package in the house before he could take care of it because his two black Labradors might rip open the package and damage the contents. When Calvo arrived home and carried the box in, he placed it on a table out of reach of the dogs.

Motive would be a question in this case. Although Calvo claims he is vehemently anti-drugs, because he and his wife have no children they may feel less restraint concerning recreational use of marijuana. However, 32 pounds is a lot of marijuana and worth $60,000 to 100,000 on the street, so one would suspect a financial motive. The Calvos recently sold one house and bought another with a good number of months passing where they had both houses in their possession (double mortgage payments) and the huge housing slump may have caused the sale of the first house to plummet $50,000-$100,000. This could cause quite a financial crisis for the Calvos in spite of their reasonably secure employment with the government.

Why would Cheye Calvo risk that security and lifelong benefits associated with working for the government just to make a quick buck? He may have thought his job as mayor eliminated most of the risk of such an undertaking. Should the police show up at his door, he would simply deny, as he did, that he knew anything about the package or what was in it, and who would question him? He is the mayor and well-loved in the town.

The chances of the police finding out about the package were statistically low (and both Calvo and his wife deal in statistics in their work), so the chances were high that the package would get through and their financial problems would be solved.

Have I convinced you that Cheye Calvo is guilty? Are you ready to see him arrested? I sure hope not. I have taken the few facts that exist and I have added conjecture and theory to weave them into a guilty scenario. While the facts may be thought-provoking and warrant further investigation and even a search warrant, this is the limit of what can be determined at this point in time.

All I actually know is:

1. A package containing 32 pounds of marijuana was addressed to Trinity Tomsic at the proper address.

2. Tomsic's mother told the delivery man to leave the package outside.

3. There is no overhang on the front porch.

4. Calvo brought the package into the house and left it unopened on the table.

5. Trinity Tomsic was not at home at the time of the delivery.

I also know but left out or misconstrued:

1. Neither Calvo nor Tomsic has a criminal record.

2. They both have good jobs.

3. They both donate a lot of their time to public service and charitable work.

4. They both have good reputations.

5. The townspeople love and support them.

6. They do not live ostentatiously.

So far, Cheye Calvo and Trinity Tomsic have not had their characters assassinated like Bruce Ivins. Until and unless an investigation finds additional evidence to prove the Calvos are truly involved in drugs, I can see nothing in their behavior or characters to condemn them (even if there are some curious points that make one do the profiling thing and analyze the possible scenarios).

Casey Anthony, however, is the exact opposite. Casey looks guilty as heck and I don't mind saying this. First of all, she is a liar. This is a fact, not a guess or conjecture. She is also a pathological liar. Fact. She didn't report her daughter missing for 31 days. Unbelievable fact. She has a car with a trunk that smells like a dead body. Fact. She is seen partying and smiling after he daughter went missing. Fact. She is not cooperating with the police. Fact.

I cannot assassinate this woman's character by saying she likely killed her child because she has accomplished that without my help. I think there is ample circumstantial evidence that points to Casey killing Caylee. Not just one or two or three interesting possibilities but a dozen or so facts that build a pretty solid case for guilt.

Bruce Ivins may be guilty of the anthrax attacks, but it won't be because he supposedly had a thing for a particular sorority or because some bizarre social worker with a criminal history claims he is homicidal, or because someone says he got porn at a secret mailbox. First of all, I have no idea of the validity of any of these claims, and, secondly, they do not prove a link to the anthrax attacks. If they were all true, then, yes, certainly, these verified facts would make me want to look more carefully at the man. According the government, we will have answers today.

A fair amount of circumstantial evidence equals probable cause for further investigation. An excessive amount of circumstantial evidence or extremely strong circumstantial evidence may constitute proof of guilt if altogether the evidence is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt. A sketchy amount of circumstantial evidence twisted and magnified is nothing but persecution.

Tweet

Why Are Smart Women Carried Away by Fakes?

by Michele McPhee

Clark Rockefeller, the kidnapper captured in Baltimore this past Saturday—six days after he snatched his 7-year-old daughter from the ritzy Back Bay enclave during a supervised visit—had no driver’s license.

No Social Security card.

No work history.

No record of education.

No family members to speak of.

In 1994, he did marry a woman (after first falling in love with her identical twin) but he did not file for a marriage license. He spread stories of owning Lear Jets, built a bizarre moat around his New Hampshire home, led neighbors to believe he was a descendant of the Rockefellers—the famed industrialist clan—and he swore he graduated from Yale. All lies.

In the words of one Boston Police law enforcement source, “He’s a ghost.” A broke ghost that lived off of his wife’s lucrative income.

But that did not stop Harvard-educated, high-powered political consultant Sandra Boss from marrying Rockefeller. Or Clark Rock. Or Michael Brown. Or whatever Rockefeller’s real name is. She was married to the man for more than a decade, but, astonishingly, she would never know who her husband and father of their child (who has since reunited with her mother) really was. In fact, Rockefeller took a “substantial amount of money” to relinquish custody of his little girl (pictured above) and even signed off on paperwork to change her name from Reigh Rockefeller to Reigh Boss.

Sandra Boss is not the only smart woman to fall in love with an impostor. Two decades of crime reporting have shown me that women are often willing to clench their eyes shut to the possibility that the man they have fallen in love with is not who he said he was—like whistling in the dark to keep away ghosts. Recent murder trials have shown us that much.

Rachel Entwistle, the beloved teacher from the South Shore, who was shot dead alongside her nine-month-old daughter Lillian Rose, thought she had found a loving husband and doting dad in Neil Entwistle, who was pulling in $10,000 a month as a computer consultant for British intelligence. In fact, Rachel (pictured right) created a Web site to keep family members abreast of the Entwistles' perfect life and signed each message the same way, “Love, the happy family.” Neil Entwistle was in fact a broke, cowardly sex addict who pumped bullets into his baby’s belly and his wife’s head. He was convicted this summer.

Weeks later, in the same courthouse, another so-called loving husband, former WRKO radio talk-show host James Keown, was convicted of killing his wife Julie by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze. As she died slowly and painfully in their Waltham home, Julie Keown (pictured left) was still convinced her husband was a Harvard Business School student (he forged acceptance letters), a man who was heartbroken over the inexplicable sickness of his wife. In e-mails to friends, Julie wrote about her unending love for James, and even expressed fear that her illness would “mess up” his life.

When sentencing Keown, a judge remarked, "I am truly in the presence of an evil person." Why couldn't intelligent women, in intimate relations with these men, sense something shady beneath the façades? Why are smart women so ready to believe obvious lies? Have we become so focused on advancing our careers that we ignore our personal lives—failing to see the "ghosts," the evil, right before our eyes?

Tweet

Did Beautiful, Young Florida Mom Kill Her Baby Girl? Two Legendary Homicide Detectives Weigh In

Along with the rest of the nation, Women in Crime Ink has been following the mysterious case of Caylee Anthony, the missing toddler whose mother, Casey, has been jailed in connection with her child's disappearance. We asked two veteran Texas homicide legends, Detective Roger Wedgeworth (above left) and his partner Detective Harry Fikaris (right), to give us their seasoned take on the case. Specifically, did a beautiful, young Florida mom kill her baby girl?

Q: What do you think happened to Caylee Anthony?

A: The case is very bizarre. If we’ve learned anything over the years, it's that you can't look at people like Casey Anthony and compare her to a normal person. People who have kids and are from a semi-functional family cannot even comprehend how a toddler like Caylee can go missing for an hour, much less 31 days, without getting police involved. The mother’s nanny story is a complete lie because there is not one person or piece of evidence that can prove the "nanny" ever existed.

Homicide 101 says you have to clear the mother first and her lack of cooperation has made it impossible to eliminate her as a suspect. Every part of this unfolding story points to the mother having killed her daughter and disposed of the body. Make no mistake. This woman knows what has happened to her child. Her calm, matter-of-fact attitude, her lies to police, and her clubbing with friends after her daughter was allegedly kidnapped, all raise plenty of red flags.

There has been speculation that Casey sold her daughter. We believe if the girl had been sold, Casey would have already given that information up just to get out of jail. We can only believe the worst has happened.

Q: Do investigators have as little to go on as it appears?

A: Trust us when we tell you that investigators are not giving out all the information. That’s a strategy detectives use. Sometimes you withhold information so people will come forward with everything they know. People are often scared but if some evidence is withheld, especially in an emotional case like this, the burden will start weighing on the person who knows something.

Investigators are looking at every credit card receipt and every cell phone call Casey made after her daughter disappeared. Every time she made a call, there’s a record of her location based on cell phone towers. If she made calls or bought anything on her credit card from an odd remote place, then that gives investigators more clues to what happened.

Q: What does Casey Anthony's behavior suggest to you?

A: Casey Anthony’s completely cold, matter-of-way she discusses her missing baby girl is a disturbing clue not just to any homicide detective but to any normal person. In our experience, this can only mean two things. She is extremely mentally ill, which we do not believe is the case, or she is responsible for what happened to her daughter.

We’ve interviewed parents who killed their kids, and we’ve interviewed parents whose kids were actually kidnapped. There is a huge difference. The killer parents speak cold, calmly, matter-of-factly and are worried more about themselves more than their children. That fits Casey. The only time we've seen her cry is for herself at her bond hearing (shown right). If killer parents do appear upset, you can tell the emotions are not sincere, but in this case Casey isn’t even faking concern. Her hateful phone calls from jail with friends and family highlight her selfishness. She never once during the 13-minute phone call expresses concern for her Caylee—only anger that she had been arrested.

One of us worked with a special F.B.I. task force in June involving a Texas dad who killed his two children but had reported them missing. The dad, Randy Sylvester, waited six hours to report the kids’ “abduction” to police. As Sylvester discussed his missing children, he was calm and matter-of-fact. He led investigators on wild goose chases to ponds and lakes.

After a week of lies, investigators got a somewhat controversial community activist—"Quanell X"—involved. He was able to get the suspect to lead investigators to the bodies. Some people might criticize investigators for bringing in a controversial figure. But we believe you do what it takes to find missing kids and prosecute the killer. When no one else could establish rapport with this father, the activist could. In Florida, the police need someone to help them establish rapport with Casey unless evidence solves the case.

Q: The latest pictures show Casey Anthony clubbing with friends one week after her daughter was “kidnapped.” What does that tell you?

A: This shows us the child was a burden to her and interfered with her lifestyle. When you see suspects enjoying life so soon after a tragedy, especially with a child missing, it almost always means they are guilty.

We worked a case in the early '90s where a father and two sons were killed in an upper-middle class suburb of Houston. The night of the murders, the “grieving” woman who lost her husband and sons was acting weird. She was drinking and cutting up with neighbors. Her behavior was not appropriate for someone who just lost her three immediate family members. A year later, the mother married her tennis coach. All evidence pointed to a murder-for-hire. Unfortunately, we never got the evidence to prosecute her. The woman later died of alcoholism. We believe her guilty conscience killed her.

Q: What should detectives look for?

A: Mistakes, slip-ups, telling inconsistencies. Many murderers are so vain and narcissistic they think they are smarter than everyone else. Most often, they make a mistake through physical evidence or something they said. We believe the investigators in Florida are carefully getting Casey Anthony’s friends to recount every word she said to them in recent months.

What her friends say about how Casey was acting while she was conducting “her own investigation” will be a major clue. She may have told a friend that her life would be a lot easier if she didn’t have a daughter. That would be compelling evidence to a jury. It’s part of the puzzle.

Q: What do you make of the 911 calls?

A: Those initial 911 calls to police by the grandmother are instructive about the family. Is the grandmother that naive? Her daughter (Casey) had lied to her for a month about her grandbaby Caylee, but during the first call, Grandma wants Casey arrested for stealing her car and her money? . . . Then Grandma frantically calls back and tells the dispatcher "it smells like there’s been a dead body in the damn car."

As homicide detectives, we have smelled hundreds of dead bodies. We can tell you that the smell of a dead body is unmistakable. Once you’ve smelled it, you know it’s not a decaying animal or "rotten pizza." Death's smell is unique and unforgettable.

Last year, our homicide squad solved a murder where a man confessed to killing his girlfriend and then barbecuing her body. Neighbors described his “barbecue” as the most foul odor they’ve ever smelled. Detectives found plenty of evidence that Tynesha Stewart, an intelligent 19-year-old freshman engineering student, had been mutilated in the house, dismembered. After all, you can’t barbecue bones.

As for the trunk of the car in the Anthony case, the sheriff’s spokesperson said in his first statements that forensics found a blood stain, dirt, and hair in the trunk consistent with the child's hair. The investigators are playing their cards close to the vest, as they should, and not releasing much information.

Q: What if investigators never find Caylee?

A: It’s not impossible to prosecute a case without a body, but sometimes it takes patience. We’ve done it successfully. In the case of beautiful 24-year-old Tracy Jo Shine, we never found her body because the killer cut it into pieces and destroyed it in barrels of acid. It was 1987, and we didn’t have the advanced DNA testing we have now. We confiscated the refrigerator that we believed the suspect used in some way. We later determined he used it to move the body before he dismembered it.

A decade later we reopened the case. DNA testing confirmed the victim’s DNA was on the back part of the refrigerator on the wiring harness. Her DNA was not found anywhere else in that refrigerator because the boyfriend-killer had cleaned it thoroughly except for that wire. The killer is sitting in prison today.

Q: What's it going to take to crack this case?

A: We are confident the detectives in Orlando will solve this case and determine what happened to Casey. If we were questioning Casey Anthony, we would try to keep her talking about anything. She’s defensive. She has been watching the news and she knows the nation believes she is guilty. A strong-arm approach with her would shut her down and make her more defensive.

The public might not understand this but we would approach Casey in a friendly, "we want to help you" manner. It takes incredible patience with lying suspects like Casey. The first thing you need to do in an interview is establish rapport. Confrontational methods rarely work. The key reason we’ve successfully secured so many confessions is extreme patience.

Often we say “We know you did it, but we know it was a mistake. We just need to know why.” If they curse and deny it, we must stay calm and friendly. A great homicide detective exercises extreme discipline and never loses his or her cool with the suspect. We’ve often stayed up straight for twenty-four hours questioning suspects we knew were guilty of murder.

Q: If Casey is not "extremely mentally ill" . . . could she still be a sociopath?

A: We’ve dealt with sociopaths. They don’t have any feelings for other people. Casey seems to have no conscience in her daughter’s situation. If Casey’s story were true, she should be feeling very guilty for leaving her daughter with a babysitter who would kidnap the child. A normal mother would blame herself for even a kidnapping. The public hasn't seen a morsel of guilt or remorse for supposedly leaving her child with the “kidnapper.”

Sociopaths are known for having an abundance of charm and wit. Casey was a cheerleader in high school (pictured left)—a social, outgoing girl. The pictures of her in the bar show her outgoing nature. Yet the photos also reveal she has no moral conscience for the well-being of her child.

A homicide detective always does a background on the family. Casey’s mother’s behavior alone sets off big warning bells (pictured below smiling and running from media after visiting daughter in jail last week). She goes onto news programs and thinks she can use the public’s airwaves how she sees fit. She shows arrogance and refuses to answer questions about her own daughter’s involvement.

We believe Casey is not a real mother. There are evil people out there and they do evil things—things that are unimaginable to most normal people. We believe the investigators will prove Casey Anthony is a beautiful, sociopathic monster.

Read more about the careers of Legendary Detectives Fikaris and Wedgeworth below in our Mystery Man column promo. Make sure to click on their Biographical Video.

Tweet

MYSTERY "MEN" - ON CRACKING CASEY ANTHONY

????????????

Just who are these unmasked men? . . . No "mystery" in our Mystery Man feature this time. There's enough mystery surrounding the subject of this week's column: the disappearance of Florida tot Caylee Anthony. Detectives in the investigation are keeping mum, so we put our own team on the case. We just couldn't wait to run this piece on a story as timely as our guest contributors, two veteran homicide detectives, are timeless.

For our last Mystery Man, Women in Crime Ink was proud to feature a Houston homicide investigator. (You can still read that powerful piece here.) If Houston were at the center of the crime universe, the territory of tomorrow's guest contributors is the galaxy in which Space City resides: Harris County, the third largest county in the United States, and the nation's most deadly.

Detectives Roger Wedgeworth and Harry Fikaris are homicide legends with reputations for coaxing confessions and cracking cases together, as a team. In modern-day Texas, Wedgeworth and Fikaris are as inseparable and formidable at crime-solving as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were at settling injustices the Old West-way. In cold cases alone—the toughest crimes to solve—this duo put more than forty murderers and two serial killers behind bars. Those violent offenders had gone free until our Mystery Men took over each case and took the killers off the streets. WCI's Kelly Siegler wrote a story on one of their cases she prosecuted. Another murderer they caught was sadistic serial killer Danny Paul Bible, who killed three women and a baby and lived free for 20 long years—and roamed as many states—until Wedgeworth and Fikaris caught up with him in Louisiana and got him to admit to the slayings. Fellow detectives at the Harris County Sheriff's Office all agree that this pair can get almost anyone to confess.

Our guys have been profiled on A&E numerous times, Court TV, PEOPLE magazine, Texas Monthly, Discovery Channel, Biography Channel, Cold Case Files, and newspapers too numerous to name.

And our contributors are too legendary not to name, so we wasted no time in cluing you in on who we landed. Women in Crime Ink asked these major league homicide detectives to tell us what they think of jailed mom Casey Anthony. We hope you enjoy their insights into the Florida case that has gripped, baffled, and angered people across the nation. Watch our guys in action in the video clip below (narrated by WCI's Broadcast Journalist Cynthia Hunt!) and tomorrow read their thoughts on cracking Casey.

Video, picture, and Harris County Sheriff's Office Web site www.hcso.hctx.net courtesy of www.atgnat.com

Tweet