Investigation 101: Law Enforcement and Families Must Unite

By Tad DiBiase

As a former homicide prosecutor and now consultant on murder cases, I often hear complaints from victim's families about how they are treated by the police. The complaints repeatedly center on a number of issues.

• First, that the police aren't providing the family with enough information or that they fail to keep the family in the loop on where the investigation is. 
• Second, families complain that the police haven't followed up on the leads they've provided. 
• Third, families complain that the police don't want to accept help from outside parties, be they other law enforcement agencies such as the FBI or state investigative bureaus or retired detectives or consultants and third party search groups. 

It has always struck me that in going behind these complaints, that both the victims' families and the police are partially to blame for these complaints. But more importantly, the solution to these complaints is often straightforward. 

First, it is incumbent upon the police to keep the family informed. Whether the investigation is a day old, a year old or a decade old there should be regular communication between the lead investigator and a family member. The family should assign one member to handle the police communications so the police aren't bogged down by replying to several different family members. Having one member keeps the communication clear and enables the police to tell others who inquire about the investigation to contact that family member. 

Obviously the longer an investigation goes on, the more infrequent the communications but it's hard to imagine any investigation (this is a murder after all) that doesn't warrant a call to the family once every two to three months. 

Second, the complaint that the police aren't following up particular leads can have merit. Police do often fail to really listen to the family about who may be responsible for a loved ones death. Investigators need to constantly go back to the family and ask, "Is there anything we missed? What else or who else is out there?" Often leads come to family well after the victim's murder or disappearance when a guilty conscience finally gets to someone. On the other hand, families need to let the police do their job. They are paid and trained to investigate and even a rookie police detective has more training to do an investigation than virtually any regular citizen. Often investigative methods are so sensitive to reveal them even to a family member can jeopardize their success. 

Finally, yes the police are often reluctant to seek outside help. Whether it's true or not (and I suspect it's usually not) the FBI has a reputation for taking over a case and leaving the local law enforcement authorities behind. However, virtually any investigation, especially as leads grow cold, can benefit from fresh eyes and most small departments are ill equipped to handle complex, long term cold cases. 

Having faced skeptical police departments myself during my role as a consultant, it's obvious that many departments ask themselves about the motives of any volunteer. "You in this to help or to get your name in the paper?" Any non-law enforcement group should be viewed skeptically but there are groups that want to help without pay or glory. 

In the end, a fractured relationship between a family and the investigating authorities makes a challenging case even more difficult to solve. And in the end, both families and law enforcement want the same thing: justice. 

Tad DiBiase is a former US Attorney who has successfully prosecuted cases of murder without a body.  To learn more, visit Tad's website:  http://nobodycases.com

Letter From A Prisoner: Can It Be Trusted?

By Tad DiBiase

Recently I received a letter from a prisoner forwarded to me from an old address.  My two children, ages 10 and 13, were a little freaked out that a “criminal” had somehow found our (old) address and sent us a letter.


What if he finds out where we really live and comes after us?  How did he find our old address anyway and why is he writing to you?  As a former prosecutor and now an attorney for a police department, my children think of “prisoners” as bad people who have hurt others.


I suppose I’m partially to blame for that with my talk over the last 15 years of the various misdeeds (including horrific murders) committed by the people I’ve prosecuted or encountered over my years in law enforcement.  The letter was from someone who supposedly had information about a “no body” murder case, my area of so-called expertise.


I explained to my children that simply because he was a prisoner didn’t mean he was a bad person, someone out simply to harm others.  This is the same sort of lecture I tell them about people who smoke: they’re not bad people but simply have a bad habit.  I reminded them that sometimes people in jail are innocent and maybe this person was reaching out because he was wrongly convicted or knew of someone who was.While I tend not to believe most prisoner’s claims of innocence (because they’re not true) I hardly discount the actuality that there are innocent people who are in prison. 

Years ago I was part of a school tutoring program with fellow colleagues from the US Attorney’s Office.  We taught a class about criminal law to elementary school students and one day one of the students asked my colleague if he prosecuted “bad people.”  My colleague adroitly answered that he didn’t prosecute bad people, but people who did bad things. 

I’ve often thought of his response over the years and this conversation with my own children got me thinking about how we label people and how those labels can become defining: prisoner, defendant, criminal, victim.  Often we label someone and believe that we’re done.  “That person is a prisoner and therefore can’t be trusted.”  “That person is a victim so everything they do is acceptable.”  But we all know that’s not the case.  Sometimes prisoners do tell the truth, are worthy of redemption and, gasp, may be innocent.  Not all victims are flawless angels wronged by someone else’s criminality. 

Labeling is often lazy and can prevent us from seeing the full picture of a person.  Beyond the label “human” it’s often useless to try to label someone as anything more.  We need to work to look behind the labels we use and see the true person inside.

Tad DiBiase, "No Body" Guy

There's a Law Against That!

By Tad DiBiase

Recently, while on vacation, I picked up a copy of the USA Today. There was a fascinating article inside that made me say, as I often do, "Now why didn't I think of that?" 

The article, found HERE, discusses a trend at the state level to increase penalties against defendants who choke their victims. Studies showed that choking is often used by domestic abusers and can be a prelude to murder.

Indeed, a 2008 study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine notes that 43% of women who were murdered in domestic assaults and 45% of women who were victims of attempted murder had been choked in the past year by their male partners. 

In most states, choking would in all likelihood be prosecuted as a misdemeanor with the penalties being, at most, less than one year in jail. As noted in the article, in Delaware more than half of all choking cases in one county were prosecuted as misdemeanors over a four month period. Thus, a proverbial slap on the wrist for most domestic abusers. 

Thanks to the study in Delaware done by two state troopers, however, Delaware passed a new law increasing the penalty to five years for choking. (Getting judges to give out these sentences is a whole other story.) In my own experience as a domestic violence homicide prosecutor I often saw not only domestic abuse as a prelude to murder but specifically choking as well. 

As with many domestic murders, it's more about power and control than a murderous instinct. Choking is deeply personal since it requires the victim and the abuser to be so close together and typically a man can overpower his female partner. Moreover, choking does not usually lead to death making it the perfect tool to control the victim yet let her live another day. 

Often the only way to break the cycle of violence by abusers is if they get enough of a wakeup call before they kill that lets them know domestic abuse won't be tolerated. Having a state law that makes choking a felony is a good first step.

Tad DiBiase

Who Holds the Bargaining Chips?

By Tad DiBiase

Joran Van Der Sloot is back in the news. 

Long suspected of murdering Natalee Holloway and now arrested for the murder of Peruvian Stephany Flores, Van Der Sloot supposedly has told police he will tell them where Miss Holloway’s body is in exchange for transferring him from a Peruvian prison to one in Aruba.  http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/13/van-der-sloot-willing-to-tell-where-holloways-buried-in-exchange-for-transfer-to-aruba/  

Having studied no body murder cases for several years, I‘ve observed an increasingly disturbing trend: more and more defendants are using the body of their murdered victim as a bargaining chip.  Van Der Sloot is far from the first.  

Hans Reiser was convicted of murdering his wife in California in 2008.  She had disappeared in 2006 and Reiser denied the murder for years and fought the charge at trial.  After a five month trial, an Oakland jury convicted the Linux inventor of first degree murder.     After the conviction, however, in exchange for a reduced sentence, Reiser led the police to his wife’s body which he had buried less than half a mile from his house.  Instead of facing a sentence of 25 years to life, Reiser’ s charge was reduced to second degree murder which carried a term of only 15 years to life.    

In 2008, prosecutors in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (my old office) permitted Michael Dickerson to plead guilty to second degree murder and in exchange he agreed to lead police to where he buried the body of his girlfriend, Shaquita Bell.  Dickerson then led police and prosecutors on a futile two day search for Ms. Bell’s body which has never been found. Yet he was still sentenced to just 15 years in prison.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/11/AR2008111103085.html  

Just this past May in Tennessee, Douglas Whisnant was able to plea bargain into second degree murder charges by agreeing to show police where he buried his ex-wife’s body.  Whisnant was sentenced to 15 years.  Perhaps more galling, Whisnant is currently serving a 25 year federal firearms sentence and will get credit for his murder sentence, a state charge, will serving his federal time!  Thus, he does no additional time for the murder.  http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/may/17/details-net-reduced-sentence/  Also in May of this year, Lawrence Gaudenzi was permitted to plead guilty to second degree murder.  As part of the plea he was not required to reveal the whereabouts of his wife’s body. http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/052009/05072009/464607

Now there are clearly some good reasons to let a defendant take a plea in a no body murder case:  weak evidence, getting closure for the family and sometimes getting something is better than getting nothing.  But letting a defendant call the shots and use his victim’s body as a bargaining chip is particularly distasteful given that most of these murderers fit the classic profile of domestic abusers.

It’s all about control and they want to be the ones in control.  Letting murderers use their victim one last time to win themselves leniency is their final act of control and prosecutors ought to be loathe to let them do it.  

Winning a conviction in a no body murder case is difficult and dealing with a grieving and often angry family is equally difficult.  But letting a murderer run the show and determine what charges or sentence he faces is simply unacceptable.

Survivors of Crime Are Victims, Too

By Tad DiBiase

When I first began prosecuting homicides many years ago, I was never comfortable with the victim’s families.  I never knew what to say or how to act.  While many prosecutors rightly consider themselves advocates for the victims, victims aren’t “clients” and prosecutors don’t technically represent the victims.

 Sometimes I would handle cases where the homicide victim had no family who cared enough to ever come to court or follow the proceedings in any fashion. I admit that sometimes those cases were easier to deal with because there was no victim and no victim’s family.  (As an aside, I used to tell everyone that as a federal prosecutor for the United States I represented 380 million people which in reality meant I didn’t represent any of them!  I did enjoy coming home and telling my family that the “United States” was hungry or that the “United States” wanted a beer.) 

My discomfort with dealing with victims caused me to rely on the talented victim advocates in our office.  One advocate in particular, Marcy Rinker, became my “go to” advocate in all cases.  Marcy, who became a good friend of mine, was compassionate, listened well and had a can do spirit that always seemed to give the victim’s family the reassurance that we would win the case and that it was in good hands.  She was also an extremely skilled investigator in her own right to the extent that I dubbed her Detective Rinker.   I managed to ensure that Marcy became the advocate in all of my cases even when the system tried to thwart me.  The U.S. Attorney’s Office had a system where victim advocates rotated each day so that when a new case came in, the advocate on duty that day would handle the case.  By cleverly holding off on declaring when a new case came in, I was able to “bring in” a new case only on the days when Marcy was on duty. 

Over the years as I watched Marcy, I learned more about how to deal with the victim’s families: listen, offer support and advice if asked, and don’t overpromise.  As the years went on I became more comfortable dealing with the families myself and realized there are no magic words that can lessen their pain.  Ironically, in my role today as a consultant to the police, prosecutors and families, I almost never meet my families face to face.  I still feel their pain through their emails and telephone calls.  But I also feel their relief when their loved ones body is found and the suspect arrested.  Relief tinged with sorrow though at the realization that their loved on is never coming back.  Being a victim or the loved one of a victim is a horrible state to be in and we all need to learn better how to deal with victims and their families.