Failure to Test is a Failure of Justice

by Diane Dimond

The evidence had been there all along. It had been sitting on a shelf inside a cold storage facility at the Houston Police Department for 12 years. After a determined detective tracked it down and sent it off to the lab for testing the state of Texas realized it had a found a serial rapist. The criminal’s name is Roland Ali Westbrooks and his story highlights why every state in the union should make testing of backlogged rape kits a top priority.

For more than two decades law enforcement has had the ability to take even the tiniest specks of evidence from a rape victim – bodily fluids, stray hairs, fingernail scrapings – and match the DNA findings to information stored in a national data base called CODIS. Every time a rape kit is processed the DNA print is supposed to be entered into CODIS. And the reason for this is simple: Rapists rape repeatedly. They hardly ever have just one victim.

One study on serial offenders puts the average number of a rapist’s victims at seven while another study puts it at 11. To put this in perspective, realize that if we get just one of these perps off the street we’ve prevented several future crimes. Every year in America there are roughly 200 thousand reported rapes and it is not just women who are attacked. 10% of all rape victims are men.

The first time we know Roland Ali Westbrooks struck was in August 1995. It was a nighttime home invasion and his victim was a complete stranger, a teenager girl alone in her bedroom. Houston police say as he put a pillow over the 16 year olds face he threatened to kill her if she screamed. The girl reported the attack immediately and submitted to a complete rape examination.

Like tens of thousands of other rape kits nationwide her evidence package was never processed and no one was ever arrested for her brutal assault. After a cold case detective re-opened the teen’s case earlier this year and ordered the DNA in her kit to finally be processed, her rapist was identified as Ronald Westbrooks. The good news was that he was already in jail! The bad news was that Westbrooks was in prison because he had been convicted of another rape – a crime that occurred in 1997 – two years after the attack on the teenager. That attack might never have taken place if the 16 year olds rape kit had been tested in a timely fashion. Police suspect Westbrooks left more victims and are investigating that now.

To be sure states have made some progress in winnowing down their backlog of rape kits. When I first wrote about this topic in 2008 there were 400,000 bundles of untested evidence. Today, the best estimates put the national number at about 180 thousand. But that’s still way too many.

Sometimes lab work isn’t necessary as police have already gotten a confession or the victim withdraws the complaint. But in too many other cases it becomes a matter of indifference, inconvenience or finances. Each test costs about $1,500.

In most jurisdictions it is still up to the discretion of the investigating detective whether to order up a full lab analysis of a rape kit. Usually the victim is never told whether her evidence has been processed or relegated to some shelf to gather dust I can think of no other crime where police have definitive evidence of a crime and fail to process it. I think it is unconscionable.

Information from these kits, entered into CODIS, would likely mean numerous outstanding sex crimes could be solved. The perpetrator could be identified, taken off the streets or slapped with a longer prison sentence if they are already behind bars like Roland Westbrooks. More importantly, victims could finally feel a sense of justice.

It’s already happening in Texas. The popular Texas-based blog Grits for Breakfast reports that when “Tarrant County tested their entire backlog they identified five serial rapists by matching the results to CODIS.” Imagine – five dangerous criminals were scooped up just by testing evidence that was already there!

May I be so blunt as to ask, “What the heck are we waiting for?” And don’t tell me it’s a matter of money. The money spent on processing these kits would be far less than what we would have to pay out to investigate and prosecute these rapists’ future crimes.

I call for a nationwide initiative to examine every relevant kit. Let’s get every state to dedicate one group of lab technicians to examine the most recent kits so as to stop currently active rapists. A second group should examine the oldest kits with an eye on the ones that might come up against a statute of limitations problem. Let’s get that information into CODIS and see how many more perps we can get off the streets.

The perfect tool is already sitting there if we would just use it! Anybody with me?

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Daycare Terror

by Katherine Scardino

Last month, a tragic event occurred in my hometown of Houston, Texas. On February 25, 2011, four children were killed, and three children were injured, in a daycare fire.  The fire erupted at a residence that also served as a child-care facility called Jackie’s Child Care.

The owner of the home, Jessica Tata, lived in the home and also owned and operated the daycare center. The fire broke out at about 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon. When firefighters arrived, they found two injured children outside the home and learned there were five more children trapped inside the burning house. Firefighters were able to rescue the children who were trapped inside and took all seven to the hospital. Three of the children died the following day in the hospital, and a fourth child died in the hospital a day later. The victims of this horrific accident ranged in age from 18 months to three years old.

So, what happened? Where was owner and supposed responsible adult Jessica Rene Tata when the fire broke out? JTata, age 22, was seen on local television walking around the scene during the rescue of the children. A neighbor reported that Tata was not at home when the fire broke out, and several neighbors reported seeing Jessica arriving home with bags of groceries  after the fire started. Neighbors' accounts, later corroborated with in-store video footage, proves that Tata had left the children alone during nap time to go grocery shopping at Target.

Alone? What was she smoking? Who in their right mind would leave a house full of young, sleeping children alone to go shopping? No one seems to know exactly how long she was gone, but store security cameras show she was inside Target for at least 13 minutes.  Apparently, it was long enough for a pan of oil left on a hot burner on the stove to catch fire.  By the time Tata returned home, smoke had engulfed her home and was billowing out of the windows.

After the fire was extinguished, Tata refused to talk to the police, referring them to her attorney. Shortly after, Tata fled Houston. She got on an airplane for Nigeria before the district attorney’s office could file charges against her. Some were very upset that the district attorney's office was slow in getting her charged, arrested and into police custody. 

Jessica Tata remained in Nigeria until yesterday, March 22. Apparently, some family members who live there and other people in Houston helped the U.S. Marshals Service, Interpol, and Nigerian officials track her down and bring her back to Texas to face the 14n state criminal charges that have been filed against her. The charges include manslaughter, six charges of reckless injury to a child, three charges of abandoning a child under age 15, and a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. She has a lot of defending to do, that’s for sure.

Jackie's Child Care Center was a registered daycare home with the Texas Department of Family Protective Services. A registered daycare is the least regulated type of facility. Generally, home daycare facilities are less expensive than larger, more popular facilities, and, therefore, cater more toward families who cannot afford $900-plus per month in child-care costs. But you would think parents would at least look at the home daycare facility, ask questions about training, listen to the classroom for interaction, count the number of children versus caregivers, and be informed by checking licensing information. This is just basic stuff. 

Jackie’s Child Care was been inspected twice over the past three years by the Texas Department of Family Protective Services. Two violations were found last year: The facility was missing required carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers. Reports show that these issues were fixed immediately after being reported. However, faulty equipment was not to blame in this tragedy. Had a responsible adult been present at the home when the fire started, it is more likely than not that all of the children could have been saved before the fire got out of control.

Unfortunately, Texas laws do not help the parents very much. For instance, to run a  registered child care center, you must have a GED or a high school education, be CPR certified, pass a background check, and attend 20 hours of training to be in charge of a classroom of children. To have someone paint my fingernails, they have to have 600 hours of training. For someone to cut my hair, they must have 1,200 hours of training. Yet, to take care of our precious children requires only 20 hours. 

Minimum standards set forth by the Texas Department of Family Protective Services say that Jackie's Child Care was authorized to have up to six children in her facility full time, with the allowance of six additional children for after-school care only. These same regulation standards maintain that registered child-care facilities are only inspected once every two years, unless reports of neglect or abuse are made. Who would leave their babies with a 22-year-old woman who could legally watch up to 12 children at one time? Not to mention that this fire started during school hours, meaning that Tata should have had  only six children in her care to be in compliance with state regulations.

As a result of this disaster and tragedy, the Houston City Council is working to pass a new city ordinance requiring all home-based daycare operators to register with the city and submit to a safety inspection every year. If this ordinance is passed, home-based daycare operators would be required to pay $100 plus a $25 administration fee for the annual inspection which would be performed by the Houston Fire Marshals office. The state license held by Jessica Tata cost $37.

Although this change is small, at least it’s a start. Despite the obvious need for better regulation of home child care facilities, I know that most of these facilities take very good care  of their children, and that events like this are rare. The best way to prevent a tragedy like this is to be completely informed about the people to whom we entrust our children, and that is ultimately the job of parents. No amount of state regulation will do more than parents being actively involved in their children's daycare by visiting often, popping in unannounced, and maintaining constant communication with daycare providers. Pay attention. Ask questions. Ignorance is not bliss when your child's health, safety, and well-being are concerned.

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Getting Away with Murder

by Kathryn Casey

We like to think that the bad guys get caught, and that when a murder takes place, the person responsible is held accountable and punished. Unfortunately, that often doesn't happen. One of the most disturbing headlines I've seen ran in the Houston Chronicle on a recent Sunday: People Are Getting Away with Murder.

Reading the piece, I learned that the national clearance rate on homicides is a dismal 64 percent. As the cause, the article cites a lack of money, manpower, too many murders and not enough folks in law enforcement investigating. It points out that in a city like Houston, with six million folks, there's more crime than cops to go around. In all, 120 Texas communities didn't even reach the national threshold, with clearance rates of 63 percent or lower. Take Galveston, for instance, where of the 32 murders committed in 2004, only seventeen were solved. That means that fifteen families are still waiting for justice. San Antonio is even worse, with a clearance rate of only 39 percent. The trend isn't new. One study showed that from 1980 to 1996, the national clearance rate dropped by 7 percent, and since then it's continued to slide.

Why? Multiple reasons. The above study noted an increase in stranger-on-stranger killings, which are harder to solve than crimes of passion. While another study, one from 2001, agreed that the main issue may be manpower, both stressed that quality police work is also an issue, especially the actions of the first officers on the scene. Was homicide notified quickly? Was the CSI unit called? Were witnesses identified and statements taken?

Yet, one of the cases in the Chronicle article was particularly disturbing, because three years after Bridgette Gearen's murder, the 28-year-old's family is still waiting for the lab results to come in that could point to her killer.

From its first moments, the Gearen case has been both perplexing and terrifying. This young mom disappeared one night simply by walking out a door.

It was July 2007, and Gearen was staying at a beach house with friends, enjoying a bit of R&R, needed time off from the stress of work, watching over an elderly grandparent and caring for her toddler, Kyra. The group planned to take a drive on the beach at midnight, and Bridgette was the first one out the door. She walked down the stairs, and they heard the gate close behind her. Minutes later, her friends followed, but by then, Bridgette was gone.

Beachcombers discovered her body near the shoreline the next morning. The autopsy said Bridgette had been strangled, battered and raped.

Some witnesses have come forward to say that they heard screams and others that they may have seen Gearen get into a dark-colored SUV, although they couldn't tell if she did so voluntarily. Many wonder why Bridgette was the first one out the door, since she had a fear of going out at night and rarely would alone. Did she see someone she knew? Or was there a stranger waiting in the shadows?

Perhaps some or all of these questions could be answered by the lab results. But the forensic evidence analysis in the Gearen murder is still bogged down at the apparently overwhelmed Texas Department of Public Safety's crime lab.

"It's horrible that a case like this takes so long," Detective Tommy Hansen of the Galveston County Sheriff's Office told the Chronicle. "You can have the suspects committing more crimes, but we can't do anything until we get the results back."

So Gearen's family and friends wait. The community waits. And, at least for now, one or more murderers remain free, with nothing to prevent them from taking other lives. In this age of strained resources, Bridgette Gearen's case is far from an anomaly. I talked with a homicide detective a few weeks ago who told me he literally had dozens of murder investigations assigned to him, some recent but others cold and growing colder. And every day when he walked into his cubicle, there were more case files on his desk crying for his attention.

Bridgette's daughter, Kyra, was 2 when her mother disappeared. She's 5 now. At some point, she'll grow up and begin asking questions. Let's hope that by then law enforcement will have answers for Kyra, and, looking at the bigger picture, that this disturbing trend will be reversed. Resources are tight, it's true, but is that sufficient reason to allow killers to get away with murder?

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The Trophy Exchange

by Diane Fanning

Spending dozens of hours talking with a serial killer has a permanent impact. The experience often pops up in your mind at predictable, as well as, quite unlikely and inappropriate times.

So, of course, when I sat down to write my first police procedural, I just had to put a serial killer in it. Nonetheless, that is not the character in the book that fascinates me the most.

Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce, Homicide Detective, is my real focus. Life's been rough for her lately. She lost an eye and disfigured her face responding to a domestic violence call. She accidentally killed a small child in the middle of a shoot-out with his father.

Now she's up against a serial killer and her main suspect is a highly respected doctor known for his international relief work.

It's a good thing Lucinda doesn't mind bending the rules.

In a starred review, Kirkus wrote: "Fanning has produced an exciting, emotionally intense story with a complex heroine whose future adventures will be widely anticipated."

Library Journal "highly recommended" THE TROPHY EXCHANGE calling it a "near-perfect police procedural." And Booklist chimed in, too: "Fanning's true-crime experience gives the story added verisimilitude and she has made great strides in tightening her storytelling. She is one to watch." Verisimilitude? Now, that's a word you don't see in a sentence too often.

The first chapter is posted on my website so that you can sample the book.

I have a signing in Houston at Murder By the Book on Thursday, August 7 at 6:30pm. Check the calendar on my website for other signings in San Antonio, Austin and Round Rock.

So hurry up and read it. The next Lucinda book is already at the publisher. PUNISH THE DEED is scheduled for release in the UK in December and in the US in March 2009.

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