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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupansky for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime
Speaker 5: History and the authors that have written about them. In
Speaker 5: May twenty twelve, suspected serial killer Angel gurdy Gabrel was
Speaker 5: extradited from the Dominican Republic for the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 5: murder of his girlfriend, alte Gracia Valdez twenty four after
Speaker 5: new DNA technology linked him to the crime. Baldez was
Speaker 5: found on the living room floor of her apartment, her
Speaker 5: baby's son unharmed nearby. She was stabbed in the neck
Speaker 5: and shoulder and appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Gurdy
Speaker 5: Cabrel fought his extradition from the Dominican Republic for nearly
Speaker 5: two years. Police also spect him in a half dozen
Speaker 5: other crimes in the Bronx Manhattan and Queens, including rapes
Speaker 5: and murders, but he could only be charged with the
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety three murder due to a clause in the
Speaker 5: extradition deal. He was a detective supervisor for nineteen years
Speaker 5: and commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Homicide Squad,
Speaker 5: personally working on hundreds of murder and missing person cases.
Speaker 5: In his career, he has written The Criminal Investigative Function,
Speaker 5: a guide for a guide for new investigators, a real
Speaker 5: world look into criminal investigations from the crime scene all
Speaker 5: the way to the courtroom, all the actual legalities that
Speaker 5: impact investigations the most. The book we're featuring this evening
Speaker 5: is Bronx Cold Case Homicide, The Investigative Pardon me, The
Speaker 5: Investigative Function, with my special guest, Joseph L. Jack Coloney.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, Joseph, and thank you for ingreeing
Speaker 5: to this interview.
Speaker 6: Hi Dan, how are you?
Speaker 5: Oh fine? Thank you? I screwed up on the I
Speaker 5: had what I call this program was Bronx Cold Case Homicide.
Speaker 5: And before we go any further, I'll just explain to
Speaker 5: the audience we're going to be talking about is your
Speaker 5: experiences as commander of Bronx Cold Case Homicide. We're going
Speaker 5: to talk about some cases like the Angel Gabriel case
Speaker 5: that I mentioned in the introduction, but also The Criminal
Speaker 5: Investigative Function, a guide for new investigators, which is required reading,
Speaker 5: and we'll talk all about that, and just welcome to
Speaker 5: the program. And let's first talk about what you why
Speaker 5: you were in a position to want to write The
Speaker 5: Criminal Investigative Function.
Speaker 6: What was it?
Speaker 5: What was your position and what was the reason why
Speaker 5: you were convinced that you needed to write this book,
Speaker 5: The Criminal Investigative Function.
Speaker 6: Okay, well it's actually a twofold issue. When I started
Speaker 6: as an adjunct professor at John Jay College number of
Speaker 6: years agot to gain Mike seventh year. Now, I was
Speaker 6: teaching the criminal investigation classes and you know, most of
Speaker 6: it just you know, kids eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old,
Speaker 6: and you know, you know, you get these textbooks from
Speaker 6: some of these big companies and you get these huge
Speaker 6: textbooks that it's a great it's like a Dick Sary
Speaker 6: more or an encyclopedia. Let's look at that, you know,
Speaker 6: most of the criminal investigation textbooks that I found were
Speaker 6: more likely you know, Encyclopedia Britannica, and they just everything
Speaker 6: is an overview. Everything is you know, this is what
Speaker 6: this is, this with this, you know that with that is.
Speaker 6: And it's kind of one of those things where they
Speaker 6: they end up dealing with more what the uniform officer
Speaker 6: does than the actual detective. So I said, if I
Speaker 6: want to teach these kids, or teach even law enforcement
Speaker 6: on how to you know, conduct an actual investigation, I
Speaker 6: need to write a more of a practical guide. Then
Speaker 6: let's just say, you know, a descriptive guide or you know,
Speaker 6: a descriptive text that you find out there. And I
Speaker 6: wanted to do it too. Then respect that I wanted
Speaker 6: it easier to be understood. I wanted to run in
Speaker 6: investigative order. So they designed the book so that the
Speaker 6: student get you know, picks the case up from crime
Speaker 6: scene actually the notification of the crime, to the crime
Speaker 6: scene to the courtroom and everything in between. And I
Speaker 6: wanted to lay it out that way so that the
Speaker 6: student would be able to absorb everything that he or
Speaker 6: she had have to do in all those steps, so
Speaker 6: you don't miss them, and I throw in a lot
Speaker 6: of things, a lot of errors that I made, you know,
Speaker 6: as a supervisor and even as a mistigator way back
Speaker 6: when that to make sure you don't you know, you
Speaker 6: can avoid these things so that you know, we can
Speaker 6: move on from that. And the second reason that I
Speaker 6: wrote this book is that we have a big problem
Speaker 6: in the country where we're starting to see clearance rates,
Speaker 6: especially in murder, dropping in many major cities. And it
Speaker 6: has to do with a lot of the experience to
Speaker 6: investigators have retired or they've been transferred from investigations back
Speaker 6: to patrol work because of this whole downturn in the economy.
Speaker 6: So there was a real experience gap that I wanted
Speaker 6: to try to fill.
Speaker 5: Now, let us tell our audience what was your route personally?
Speaker 5: You talk about in very early in the book about
Speaker 5: what it takes to be actually become an investigator, and
Speaker 5: you say, this is the most one of the most
Speaker 5: asked questions in the classroom everywhere.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. Now, it's usually the students
Speaker 6: that this is what they want to come right out
Speaker 6: of the police academy and go right into the detective bureau.
Speaker 5: You know, sure, well, tell us to tell our audience
Speaker 5: how it actually works. What is the entire process, and
Speaker 5: and take it from your experience. What was the process
Speaker 5: that you had to go through. And I'm sure you
Speaker 5: didn't do anything that no one else couldn't have possibly done,
Speaker 5: but you do say that this is an exceptional if
Speaker 5: you're going to get to be an investigator. This is
Speaker 5: not for everybody that enters into the into the police department.
Speaker 5: So tell us how exactly you did and got to
Speaker 5: this position, and take us through the entire process what
Speaker 5: you had to do to be able to be classified
Speaker 5: and to be qualified for this investigator rule.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, what usually happens. There's police departments vary from
Speaker 6: different ways, but most of them I wouldn't put a
Speaker 6: percentage on them, but I would say most of them
Speaker 6: have what they refer to as a system where you
Speaker 6: have to starting out of the uniform officer and work
Speaker 6: your way up through the investigative ranks. And I'll explain
Speaker 6: what that is. And there are actually some police departments,
Speaker 6: such as Philadelphia that actually has a written exam to
Speaker 6: become a detective. So you know, most of I said,
Speaker 6: most of it is the you know, you kind of
Speaker 6: earn it kind of thing, and there are actually two
Speaker 6: routes within the earn it kind of thing, and I'll
Speaker 6: explain that. What happens is after you come out of
Speaker 6: the academy, everyone gets assigned to a precinct. So I'm
Speaker 6: just gonna talk like in general terms of New York
Speaker 6: City because I'm not really so familiar with every police
Speaker 6: department's way of how they do this, but this is
Speaker 6: generally how most departments follow it. Out of the police academy,
Speaker 6: you get assigned to a patrol precinct or a district
Speaker 6: or you know where they have lots of different names
Speaker 6: for them. And what happens is you try to, you know,
Speaker 6: you try to get recognized by the amount of arrests
Speaker 6: that you do make and what they look for. They
Speaker 6: look for quality arrests, such as, you know, gun callers
Speaker 6: and you know where you're finding people out on the
Speaker 6: street with guns, and you're looking at areas where you know,
Speaker 6: you burglary collars, major felony collars, and some of them.
Speaker 6: They want to see if you what they call referred
Speaker 6: to as a pickup arrest, which is you didn't get
Speaker 6: it off the radio, like you didn't get a call
Speaker 6: that there's a robbery going on the street corner, you
Speaker 6: pulled up in your car and you interested the guy
Speaker 6: still there, So they want you to you know, they
Speaker 6: look for those individuals that will you know, observe it
Speaker 6: some of these things. Now, one of the incidents I
Speaker 6: was actually involved in an on duty shooting that involved
Speaker 6: they actually walked into a I'm just a regular call
Speaker 6: for disturbance and we ended up walking into a robbery
Speaker 6: in progress. So I kind of fell into the you know,
Speaker 6: I went into the warrants do any investigations right after
Speaker 6: for this incident. And what happens is after a certain
Speaker 6: number of arrests, what happens is most of the police
Speaker 6: officers they go into what they call the anti clime unit,
Speaker 6: which is the plane closed assignments where you're you know,
Speaker 6: driving around looking for guns and robberies and burglaries. That's
Speaker 6: basically what your role is, and it's you know, generally
Speaker 6: you work in knights and you're doing you know, you're
Speaker 6: really doing like that, beginning to build that investigative work.
Speaker 6: Once you're done with the anti crime section, you will
Speaker 6: then be chosen by the detective bureau. And what happens
Speaker 6: is in the city. What they have is the precinct
Speaker 6: patrol offices and the detective squad are in the same building,
Speaker 6: but they're run by two different bureaus. Each one has
Speaker 6: their own chief and each chief is the same rank,
Speaker 6: so it's really becomes like they're really separate, if that
Speaker 6: makes any sense. Yes, So what happens is and that's
Speaker 6: just so that you know, nobody, you know, sticks their
Speaker 6: nose into an area where they shouldn't. You know, where
Speaker 6: they shouldn't, so each one has the same level of
Speaker 6: rank so that you keep the peace. That way, everyone
Speaker 6: knows what their role they have to do. Between the
Speaker 6: detective Bureau and when I got promoted to I got
Speaker 6: promoted to sergeant pretty quick, and you know, it's for
Speaker 6: you know, basically for you know, exams for promotions and sergeants,
Speaker 6: and what they do is they scoop up people who
Speaker 6: have this type of experience or even don't into the
Speaker 6: Internal Affairs Bureau. And I ended up going into the
Speaker 6: Internal Affairs Bureau as an investigator as a sergeant and
Speaker 6: working there. They there's basically I mean, you can volunteer
Speaker 6: for but most people are there are forced to be there,
Speaker 6: and you learn how to do the internal investigations, which
Speaker 6: you know are easy and difficult all at the same time.
Speaker 6: And what happens is after you do your stint age,
Speaker 6: you're generally last a little over two years or two years.
Speaker 6: I ended up in the one to ten precinc squad,
Speaker 6: which was at a Corona which actually covers you know,
Speaker 6: Shay Stadium and well actually now a city field where
Speaker 6: the Mets play and you know, the tennis courts, and
Speaker 6: then you have you know, your your all the sections
Speaker 6: of Corona and Elmer's and all these other locations. And
Speaker 6: there I was responsible for We had about twenty at
Speaker 6: the time, twenty seven detectives, and we handled all the
Speaker 6: major crimes, murder, rape, robberies, you name it. You know,
Speaker 6: these guys and girls handle it. And part of my
Speaker 6: job was being able to manage these things and get them,
Speaker 6: you know, make sure that where these cases are going up,
Speaker 6: and you know, going out and making arrest with these
Speaker 6: with the teams and you know, finding doing search warrants
Speaker 6: and those kind of things. And that's and that's basically
Speaker 6: how how that that what that aspect of my career went.
Speaker 6: And then I was going to school. I finished up
Speaker 6: my mass degree while I was trying to do all
Speaker 6: this stuff. Believe it or not. I was married, no kids,
Speaker 6: so it was a little easy to go to work
Speaker 6: and work all day and overtime in school. But then
Speaker 6: you had to get your teachers to, you know, try
Speaker 6: to help you out and try to explain to them like, hey, listen,
Speaker 6: sometimes something might happen. I might not get the class.
Speaker 6: So you know, most of the teachers were you becx understanding,
Speaker 6: but probably not. Didn't miss too many too many classes
Speaker 6: because of that. And what I did then was after
Speaker 6: I got my master's degree and the chief had reached
Speaker 6: out to me and wanted me to put together the
Speaker 6: training unit for the detectives. So this is how I
Speaker 6: started getting into the training aspect and you know, really
Speaker 6: trying to impart some of the knowledge that I've had
Speaker 6: and then bringing other experts in who can teach the
Speaker 6: detectives how to do things. And my responsibility there for
Speaker 6: a couple of years was that I ran what we
Speaker 6: referred to as like the the NYPD Homicide School, which.
Speaker 5: I was gonna ask you about that because that's very interesting.
Speaker 5: You were the director of New York Police Department Homicide School, right.
Speaker 6: I ran six accredited homicide courses with college credits where
Speaker 6: the detectives actually, upon successful completion of the class, they
Speaker 6: have to take an exam and they would get three
Speaker 6: college credits. So it was more of, you know, a
Speaker 6: learning experience for the detectives to get all this information
Speaker 6: about how do you investigate a homicide? Because when you
Speaker 6: look at homicide, and I know from your you know,
Speaker 6: reading about you and your site and your books, one
Speaker 6: of the things that you learn is that a homicide
Speaker 6: is what we refer to as the exemplar, the example
Speaker 6: for every type of investigation. Every thing that you can
Speaker 6: learn how to investigate in a homicide, you would use
Speaker 6: for the much lesser crimes. You know, your obberies and
Speaker 6: your births, you use the same things that you would
Speaker 6: for the homicide. It's just that and the homicide you
Speaker 6: pull out all the stops. So if you teach the
Speaker 6: detectives how to handle the homicides, those skills that you
Speaker 6: teach them how to handle homicides will filter it down
Speaker 6: into the lesser crimes. And you know, and like in
Speaker 6: my experience, I always found that rape wasn't a lesser
Speaker 6: crime per se, even though it is in the penal law.
Speaker 6: You know, what I found is that, you know, if
Speaker 6: you kill somebody dead, you know, the family had to suffer.
Speaker 6: But unfortunately, with rape victims, I found that they suffer
Speaker 6: their whole lived, their relationships and everything else. So you know,
Speaker 6: to me, rape was always a crime that was more
Speaker 6: devastating than even murder.
Speaker 5: Now you'd say in your book early on as well
Speaker 5: that and you'll have to be specific about this because
Speaker 5: it's you know, maybe it sounds like we're watching TV
Speaker 5: a little bit where, but anyway, you talk about that
Speaker 5: the victim advocate, and that's your role as an investigator,
Speaker 5: and tell us, you know how long you did do this,
Speaker 5: but you were the victim advocate, and you said this
Speaker 5: was the most rewarding and satisfying. I just think it
Speaker 5: might be frustrating. So tell us why specifically was rewarding
Speaker 5: and not frustrating as I might have imagined initially.
Speaker 6: Well, well, one of the things as the investigator and
Speaker 6: as the supervisor, and the eventually from my dealings with
Speaker 6: the homicide school and all that other stuff, I was
Speaker 6: chosen by then Chief of Detectives at the time to
Speaker 6: head up the Bronx cold case squad as pretty much
Speaker 6: as like an reward of you know, getting this thing together,
Speaker 6: and because I actually got the class of credited to
Speaker 6: through the state, so this was like a bonus for
Speaker 6: all the detectives and so kind of my reward, and
Speaker 6: I wanted to get back out there and do what
Speaker 6: I referred to as real police work, even though you
Speaker 6: know you're helping out all these other aspects. I always
Speaker 6: felt that I wanted to get out there. But even
Speaker 6: from the detective squad or even when I was in
Speaker 6: the cold case squad, the victims advocate is a big
Speaker 6: part because many individuals in the public think that the police,
Speaker 6: you know, just don't care, or you know, this is
Speaker 6: not an important case, or you know, it's something that
Speaker 6: all that you know, the case is cold, or the
Speaker 6: case has to be reopened. And I always just explained that,
Speaker 6: you know, homicides are never closed. They're always open. They
Speaker 6: just have to be re examined from time to time.
Speaker 6: But when you reach out to the family members, either
Speaker 6: with good news or bad news, you know, and you
Speaker 6: try to make contact.
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Speaker 6: Of course, you know as part of the investigation and
Speaker 6: is the victimization part. And no matter if you're doing
Speaker 6: a crime that just happened five minutes ago or a
Speaker 6: crime that happened five ten years ago, the victimization part
Speaker 6: is becoming is the most important part of your investigation
Speaker 6: because you've got to get to know who your you,
Speaker 6: your victim, is why they became a victim of a crime,
Speaker 6: what led up to this event. And the issue comes
Speaker 6: down to is what we're victimized by. You know, somebody
Speaker 6: we know more times than not. So when you get
Speaker 6: to know your victim, you might end up identifying suspects
Speaker 6: in the case.
Speaker 5: So you say, this makes good police sense anyway, just
Speaker 5: to find out as much about this person as a
Speaker 5: human being as possible anyway, Yes.
Speaker 6: And to get to the family members, you know, and
Speaker 6: then you know he's trying to show you're you know,
Speaker 6: in the cold case part of it, in the in
Speaker 6: the liaison part, you have, you know, this thing where
Speaker 6: you call up somebody that they haven't heard from the
Speaker 6: police probably in ten or fifteen years, and you know,
Speaker 6: it kind of makes the you know, the public, the
Speaker 6: general public, the families, you know, confident in the way
Speaker 6: that the police work and that there are people out
Speaker 6: there that still care that we still try to carry on.
Speaker 6: You know, you're the last there's a cold case person.
Speaker 6: You are the last liaison between the police department and
Speaker 6: the public, and you know, and that's your role as
Speaker 6: the advocate to keep that relationship going. And you have
Speaker 6: to be very careful when you're dealing with that also
Speaker 6: because you don't want to get somebody's hopes up high.
Speaker 6: So you know, when if you're contacting a family, you
Speaker 6: have something you know, either as a DNA hit or
Speaker 6: some other type of you know, information maybe from you know,
Speaker 6: that was developed through an arrest of somebody, and I
Speaker 6: wanted to make a deal, I mean, you know as
Speaker 6: well as I do. There are you know, a dozen things.
Speaker 6: Why cases that were so old that all of a
Speaker 6: sudden now come to light because new evidence comes out.
Speaker 5: Sure you know that, well you must have seen. DNA
Speaker 5: has been probably the thing that people hear about most
Speaker 5: because that's the thing that can well it's not the
Speaker 5: only thing, but that's what people hear about most, is
Speaker 5: new DNA discoveries because DNA technology advanced and for example,
Speaker 5: you could use a smaller sample to be able to
Speaker 5: do yeah, or detail tests as time went on. So
Speaker 5: and some police departments before even the advent of DNA
Speaker 5: had the good sense or forethought to package everything.
Speaker 6: Up and so well, yeah, that's a problem though because
Speaker 6: at the time, most the least departments, even the one
Speaker 6: I worked for at the time, we didn't understand those
Speaker 6: whole stuff about DNA, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago,
Speaker 6: and you know, most of the stuff that was package
Speaker 6: was packaged improperly and put in plastic. And one of
Speaker 6: the things that you learn about DNA is that it's
Speaker 6: in the plastic, it degrades very quickly because of the
Speaker 6: moisture that gets built up inside the plastic. So even
Speaker 6: if you have a DNA sample, if it was put
Speaker 6: in plastic, there might be a possibility that the evidence
Speaker 6: was destroyed. Things could be It can't be reversed. But
Speaker 6: for instance, if you find something in plastic ahead of
Speaker 6: time and you try to and you freeze it, you know,
Speaker 6: if there's something that you can save, but you know,
Speaker 6: then you're okay. But like even when you were talking
Speaker 6: before about the size of a sample, I mean you
Speaker 6: needed the size of about a half a dollar, and
Speaker 6: now you need about eight cells, so that you you know,
Speaker 6: we can't even see unless you have a microscope and
Speaker 6: the the wave, the forensics and the DNA are moving
Speaker 6: at lightning speed. You know, with the introduction of touch
Speaker 6: DNA or familial DNA, these are the things that can
Speaker 6: really help out, especially in cold cases where you might
Speaker 6: not have had anything before, and now this new technology
Speaker 6: all of a sudden afford you a suspect or a
Speaker 6: couple of suspects.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, let's let's use that as a sort of
Speaker 5: a segue. We can get we can get back to
Speaker 5: this the criminal investigative process. But let's use this sort
Speaker 5: of a real world example here with the case that
Speaker 5: we were we should discuss as this angel Gerty Cabrel
Speaker 5: and so tell us when you became involved in how
Speaker 5: you became involved, and tell us a little bit more
Speaker 5: how DNA was involved in this case specifically.
Speaker 6: Okay, this case is still you know, he's he's under rest,
Speaker 6: he hasn't got a trial yet, so I have to
Speaker 6: be careful about, you know, saying certain things, so I'll
Speaker 6: dance around certain issues. And but what happened was when
Speaker 6: I first came into the cold case squad, this case
Speaker 6: had received a DNA hit. And what happened was way
Speaker 6: back in the late nineties, a couple of detectives had
Speaker 6: suspected this individual angel as being involved in the potential
Speaker 6: murders and they had gotten permission to get a DNA
Speaker 6: sample from them. He had given them permission. There's three
Speaker 6: ways that you can lawfully get a DNA sample, and
Speaker 6: I used to call it the three c's, consent, court order,
Speaker 6: or covertly. Right, So consent is the easy one if
Speaker 6: the person says yes, and you can get it without
Speaker 6: a warrant. The covertly you have to get it secretively,
Speaker 6: and the court order, you know, it's just what it
Speaker 6: sounds like. You go get an affidavit and you probably cause.
Speaker 6: So what happened was they had he had they had
Speaker 6: taken a swab from him through a consent, and I
Speaker 6: guess he realized at the time that this DNA was
Speaker 6: eventually going to come back to a crime scene Hitt
Speaker 6: and cotis. Now, you know, there are two different databases
Speaker 6: and codis. You have the crime scene database that they
Speaker 6: referred to as the forensic database, which is your unknown
Speaker 6: and then you have your known database or you're convicted database,
Speaker 6: which is anybody that's you know, certain states different rules,
Speaker 6: but some of them have now arrests, some of them
Speaker 6: have conviction and they take a DNA sample of you know,
Speaker 6: they had the person's name and all the information and
Speaker 6: they have it in the system. Well lo and behold.
Speaker 6: At the time, you know, DNA took a long time
Speaker 6: in order to get stuff back. By the time the
Speaker 6: DNA hit had come back, he had fled the country
Speaker 6: and you were kind of like the at square one.
Speaker 6: And what happens was back at the time when the
Speaker 6: Dominican Republic and the United States really didn't have any
Speaker 6: extradition rules, anybody who went back to the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 6: you were basically not getting them out of the country.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean that's basically where it was. It
Speaker 6: was an old administration. I forgot who the president was
Speaker 6: at the time, but it changed. It changed a number
Speaker 6: of years ago when the new new administration had come
Speaker 6: in and one of the friendly as posture with the
Speaker 6: United States, and well, what happened was the detectives and
Speaker 6: we started working on these cases and we started to
Speaker 6: realize some similarities between some of the other crimes that
Speaker 6: had happened in different you know, within the Bronx in
Speaker 6: different burroughs. And the detectives put this together and they
Speaker 6: ended up finding several cases that you know, could have
Speaker 6: could match this stuff. So what we did was we
Speaker 6: went and you found all these cases, you dug up
Speaker 6: all the evidence, had DNA tested, had low behold, you
Speaker 6: get hits on you know, different cases. So yeah, so
Speaker 6: and it's like, you know, it's amazing though, you know
Speaker 6: when you sit there and and you know, we had
Speaker 6: gone and we had spoken to you know, family members
Speaker 6: and different things to try to find out what exactly
Speaker 6: was going on, try to find out the connections. You know,
Speaker 6: there's there's one thing that you're you know, you're looking for,
Speaker 6: and we have developing a list of suspects and I
Speaker 6: put it in the book. I always say you have
Speaker 6: to look for mom the means, opportunity, and motives. Those
Speaker 6: are your three elements that you have to satisfy it
Speaker 6: before you have a suspect. Because if you can't get
Speaker 6: one of those elements, you don't have a suspect. So
Speaker 6: you always look at, you know, the means of the
Speaker 6: person able to do this, whether you know, the opportunity,
Speaker 6: where they actually available to do it, where they were
Speaker 6: they even in the state where you know, one of
Speaker 6: the things that you find out when you like somebody
Speaker 6: and then you're you know, you run them in the database.
Speaker 6: You find out that the guy's in jail, you know,
Speaker 6: so you find it out, God, he doesn't even have
Speaker 6: the opportunity anymore. So there goes that idea, you know,
Speaker 6: and then the motive of course, and you know what
Speaker 6: motives run the gavit. I mean, most people are killed
Speaker 6: for love, money, and drugs. So you can, you know,
Speaker 6: pick any one of those three and and you know,
Speaker 6: run just about any case with it. You know, this
Speaker 6: just one just happened to be, you know, acts of
Speaker 6: random violence at some points, so you know, not even
Speaker 6: you know, love money or drugs, just one of those things.
Speaker 5: What is, without compromising the upcoming trial is what was
Speaker 5: it about those cases? What was the shared characteristic or
Speaker 5: one of the shared characteristics that sort of pointed in
Speaker 5: the direction that they could be this one offender.
Speaker 6: We would call it behavioral crime scene analysis. So yeah,
Speaker 6: things that happened in the crime scene that you would
Speaker 6: actually that happened in different burrows, so there would be
Speaker 6: no way that these things wouldn't be connected. So you know,
Speaker 6: I know I'm up a little vague, but I think
Speaker 6: you can understand what I'm referring to, Like, so something
Speaker 6: happened in the specific crime scene that normally doesn't happen.
Speaker 6: I mean, you look at the behavioral evidence a lot
Speaker 6: where it's the you know, not so much the the
Speaker 6: modus operenda, the moo, but the signature.
Speaker 5: If you want to call it, right exactly, So he left.
Speaker 6: A specific signature at one burrow, and then he did
Speaker 6: another crime similar and another one and left the same signature.
Speaker 6: So you were able to then tie the two crime
Speaker 6: scenes together without even before DNA evidence, because they were
Speaker 6: so similar that you would you know, it was it
Speaker 6: would be pretty simple to do it, but you had
Speaker 6: to look for you know, this wasn't one of those
Speaker 6: things where oh, by the way, you know, you just
Speaker 6: pushed the magic button on CSM Miami and you find
Speaker 6: out all this information.
Speaker 5: Now, how how much was this information reviewed? Like, was
Speaker 5: this a sort of old geez that case? Well, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, I think that case reminds me of this
Speaker 5: other case. How much of a review did you guys
Speaker 5: have to do to then see those similarities between the
Speaker 5: shared signature of those crimes. Was it something that some
Speaker 5: of your detectives had worked on before, or it you
Speaker 5: had to refresh yourself. Tell us exactly how that process was.
Speaker 6: This was a long, painstaking process where you just read
Speaker 6: about every open homicide that was out there, and at
Speaker 6: the time there was just there were four thousand open
Speaker 6: homicides in the Bronx alone that we had to deal with,
Speaker 6: and that didn't include New York County, King's County, which
Speaker 6: is Brooklyn, Queens at An Island, which is known as
Speaker 6: Richmond County. So you were dealing with thousands and thousands
Speaker 6: of homicides. And the records that they had kept back
Speaker 6: then were all in books, so they were in the
Speaker 6: process or they're in the you know, they've probably finished
Speaker 6: by now the process of getting all this information into
Speaker 6: an electronic database. Now you say, well, you know, how
Speaker 6: do you not have all this information? I mean when
Speaker 6: you have volumes of you know, books, you know, it
Speaker 6: doesn't it takes a long time to get that stuff
Speaker 6: entered into the system. So eventually it'll be you know,
Speaker 6: they had a lot of it in there, but you know,
Speaker 6: some of this stuff you still had to look through books.
Speaker 6: But what you would do is you would do your searches,
Speaker 6: so you would pick you know, female victims, you know,
Speaker 6: you know, stabbing, shooting, whatever, you know, you choose whatever
Speaker 6: cause of death that you think that you would be
Speaker 6: you know, looking at or let's say, if you had
Speaker 6: cases where you thought where there was like prostitutes were
Speaker 6: being used and that wasn't in this case, but you know,
Speaker 6: you would check off, you know, prostitution you know as
Speaker 6: a possible you know reason why that the victim and
Speaker 6: the perpetrator actually together. So you know, there's different things
Speaker 6: with computers now and the analysis that these these things
Speaker 6: can do they are amazing. But most of the stuff
Speaker 6: we had to do is through looking through books and
Speaker 6: then pulling the cases and finding the cases, which always
Speaker 6: becomes a mystery ol in itself. You know, these companies
Speaker 6: cases twenty years old, fifteen years old, and you you know,
Speaker 6: have to go dig through the archives. And like I said,
Speaker 6: sometimes that's that's part of the mystery itself, trying to
Speaker 6: find these cases and then find the detectives. And you
Speaker 6: think nothing of reaching out to a detective that looked
Speaker 6: that investigated the case twenty years ago. I mean the
Speaker 6: guy's retired now, you know, ten fifteen, twenty years Sometimes
Speaker 6: and you call them up at the house. You know,
Speaker 6: you'd have to call the union, you get the phone number,
Speaker 6: you get thing, and you reach out to these guys.
Speaker 6: And never once did I have somebody tell me they
Speaker 6: didn't want to talk about it. Sure, you know, people,
Speaker 6: you know, have to understand that when they choose murderers.
Speaker 6: There I say this quite often that when people choose
Speaker 6: murder as their answer to get out of their problems,
Speaker 6: you know, they don't realize the wheels that they put
Speaker 6: in motion. I mean, there are people like myself and
Speaker 6: many of the other members of police departments all across
Speaker 6: the country. You know, they this is what they do.
Speaker 6: They don't you know, they don't give up. You're like
Speaker 6: a pitbull. You just you know, grab onto something and
Speaker 6: you keep on and you know, pulling at it. And
Speaker 6: really what everything comes down to, and no matter what
Speaker 6: investigation you're looking at, everything comes down to your interviewing skills,
Speaker 6: getting information from people, asking the right question, you know.
Speaker 6: And that's why we always do or are interviews in person.
Speaker 6: So sometimes these detectives would travel all over the country
Speaker 6: just to talk to people. You could do things over
Speaker 6: the phone, but you don't get the same thing. Like so,
Speaker 6: for instance, if you were I were sitting in a
Speaker 6: studio right now, conversation to be different because you could
Speaker 6: watch body language and cues, and you know, you could
Speaker 6: ask a question and then I might think of something
Speaker 6: else and you could see the eyes light up, you know,
Speaker 6: so we know that you're on the right trail on
Speaker 6: something if you know what I'm talking about. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 6: absolutely so, I mean, these are some of the things
Speaker 6: that you as an investigator do. And I always try
Speaker 6: to preach to every investigator I speak to now even
Speaker 6: after I'm retired, that always do your interviews in person
Speaker 6: because you see the face, you watch the non viable
Speaker 6: body language, you see if they're comfortable with certain questions
Speaker 6: and not.
Speaker 5: Well as certain that you hope to sometimes intimidate a witness,
Speaker 5: and it must be a little bit easier in person
Speaker 5: than over a telephone.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, I'd say, I don't like to use the
Speaker 6: word intimidate, but it's, you know, like everything else, if
Speaker 6: you have a police officer standing at your car window
Speaker 6: asking for your license, registration, insurance cards, it's a lot
Speaker 6: more unnerving than it would be too, you know, if
Speaker 6: you just see her sitting on the side of the road,
Speaker 6: it's not really so bad. But yes, I mean it's
Speaker 6: it's your mere presence alone, is is what they actually
Speaker 6: have on the continuum use of force, you know, on
Speaker 6: police use of forces, the first part of force, police
Speaker 6: force is your actual presence, wherever it may be foreboding
Speaker 6: as it may be. The uniform, the suit and tie
Speaker 6: and your you know, your pin. You know, it's just
Speaker 6: one of those things where your personal appearance plays a
Speaker 6: big role in that. You know, so detectors always had
Speaker 6: to look the part, you know, shirt and tie and suit,
Speaker 6: and you know, that's what people expect to see.
Speaker 5: No, A big part of investigation is the interview, and
Speaker 5: and so tell us that you taught homicide school and
Speaker 5: you were commander of this cold case squad. Tell us
Speaker 5: about interviews. I mean we kind of know from from television,
Speaker 5: but tell us the real skinny on what is your
Speaker 5: real philosophy behind interviewing and and if you can impart
Speaker 5: some of you know, a particular interview yourself that you
Speaker 5: were involved with. But tell us about the interview.
Speaker 6: Okay. One of the things about well, there's two different
Speaker 6: aspects of this, right, we have interview and then you
Speaker 6: have interrogation. So the interview is the is the you know,
Speaker 6: knocking on the door and asking for information. And I
Speaker 6: remember we went to this house on an old case
Speaker 6: and we knocked on the door and this little old
Speaker 6: lady answered the door and we told them we were
Speaker 6: from the cold case squad and then she's like, you know, like,
Speaker 6: oh from television, you know, And we just laughed and
Speaker 6: we said yes, and then we said we're it is Ryan.
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Speaker 6: Investigating this case, and she stopped and she looked at
Speaker 6: us and says, you guys are still investigating this thing,
Speaker 6: you know, And we're saying, yeah, we're just laughing whatever.
Speaker 6: So we we were talking to her, and what happened
Speaker 6: was her husband was an ear witness to the case.
Speaker 6: He had heard this gunshot that had happened, and he
Speaker 6: had ran to the window and he saw this car
Speaker 6: driving away from the scene. He saw the body laying there,
Speaker 6: and you know, so now it's like I can see
Speaker 6: how old this lady is and this happened. I think
Speaker 6: it was like eighteen years prior to that. So I'm
Speaker 6: like dancing around the issue now because I don't want
Speaker 6: to ask her rite out if her husband is still
Speaker 6: alive or not, you know, so you know, and it's
Speaker 6: kind of difficult. So I'm kind of like beating around
Speaker 6: the bush and she's just like, Okay, Sonny, you could
Speaker 6: just ask me. I'm like, is your husband's still around
Speaker 6: that I could talk to him. She's like, nah, he
Speaker 6: died a long time ago. She said, you should just
Speaker 6: come out and say it. You know, so she invites
Speaker 6: in the house. But really what it comes down to
Speaker 6: in an interview is that rapport building something that I
Speaker 6: did with this lady whatever that you know, kind of
Speaker 6: got her to like me to open up about certain things.
Speaker 6: So when you're dealing with the interview skills or the
Speaker 6: canvassing where you're knocking on the doors, that rapport building
Speaker 6: becomes a real big issue in respect that does this
Speaker 6: person like you? So sometimes you might have to try
Speaker 6: to find a common ground. You know, maybe you know
Speaker 6: you're enter the house or you're on the stoop and
Speaker 6: you know they're wearing a baseball cap and you might
Speaker 6: want to talk sports for a few minutes, right, get
Speaker 6: somebody off the topic of why you're really there, get
Speaker 6: them to get them comfortable. But in an interrogation, you know,
Speaker 6: it's no longer a friendly things. It's really it's confrontational.
Speaker 6: The person is there, they pretty much know why they're there.
Speaker 6: It's a psychological game where you have to have all
Speaker 6: your information. You got to have all your ducks in
Speaker 6: a row, so to speak. So, for instance, you have
Speaker 6: to know everything about the case, everything that happened, every
Speaker 6: interview that was done. And this makes it difficult because
Speaker 6: you're trying to and sometimes in a big case there
Speaker 6: were different detectives that would help out and you know,
Speaker 6: in an active case, and then write reports. So you
Speaker 6: have to make sure these reports you read them before
Speaker 6: you went into your interrogation room because you wouldn't want
Speaker 6: to miss out on a specific fact. And the idea
Speaker 6: behind behind knowing everything is pretty simple because how in
Speaker 6: the world would you know if this person was lying
Speaker 6: to you if you didn't know all the facts about
Speaker 6: the case. So that's the most important aspect for any investigator.
Speaker 6: Know everything you can about that case before you go
Speaker 6: in there. Ideally, interrogation is always the last step and
Speaker 6: when you go in there, and like I said, when
Speaker 6: we would I was doing this. I never asked the
Speaker 6: question that I didn't know the answer to already. So
Speaker 6: if I asked the question, I knew what the answer
Speaker 6: or what the real answer was, and then you would
Speaker 6: see what this person was not like TV where you have,
Speaker 6: you know, forty five minutes and three commercials, you know,
Speaker 6: to solve a case, you know, like co case, the
Speaker 6: case they'll them for thirty seven years, right, they close
Speaker 6: it in forty five minutes. Yeah, unlike the real world
Speaker 6: where you know, these things take you know years to develop.
Speaker 6: The issue that comes down to is that what you
Speaker 6: have is you know, either person's gonna lie to you,
Speaker 6: you keep on, you know, you just let them keep
Speaker 6: on lying. And you know, like the old proverbs says,
Speaker 6: you know, give you enough rope, you're gonna hang yourself,
Speaker 6: you know. And TV though, right, the first time they lie,
Speaker 6: they jump on it. And the other thing that TV
Speaker 6: does that's really not accurate is they do this tag
Speaker 6: team thing where you have the two investigators in the
Speaker 6: room and you know, and they're both asking questions. That's
Speaker 6: not the way it's done. There's only one person that
Speaker 6: ask the questions. The other person is there for taking notes.
Speaker 6: And I say that you know, they're like children, they're
Speaker 6: seen and not heard, you know, so they you know,
Speaker 6: you don't do the tag team thing because you confuse
Speaker 6: people and you could also set you could also set
Speaker 6: off the investigation or the interview and the interrogation excuse
Speaker 6: me in a you know, on a tangent by asking
Speaker 6: the wrong question or interrupting. You know, it's about you know,
Speaker 6: when you're interviewing somebody's per se, it's about that stream
Speaker 6: of consciousness trying to get people to remember. So if
Speaker 6: you're interviewing a witness to a crime or a victim,
Speaker 6: when you ask that open ended question, which is like
Speaker 6: to tell me a story question, you know, I try
Speaker 6: to get the detectives to selet just let the person
Speaker 6: do the talking, don't interrupt them, because when you interrupt
Speaker 6: people that you break that stream of consciousness. And I
Speaker 6: always give the analogy to when I'm teaching my classes,
Speaker 6: I say, you know, imagine that you know, you had
Speaker 6: that dream that everything goes right and the phone rings
Speaker 6: in the middle of the night. You can never get
Speaker 6: back to that dream, right, You just never get there.
Speaker 6: So it's you know, no matter how many times you
Speaker 6: fluff your pillow and find the you know, the spot
Speaker 6: without the spring, you never get back to that dream. So,
Speaker 6: you know, those are the most important skills that an
Speaker 6: investigator has to take into that room. Be patient till
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: Unlike law and Order, which I'm a big fan, and
Speaker 5: a lot of people I'm sure that read true crime
Speaker 5: sort of get the impression about law to a great
Speaker 5: degree from programs like Law and Order, which aren't They're fictional,
Speaker 5: but there is some truth behind it, staying with the
Speaker 5: interview itself, unlike the Law and Order version where they
Speaker 5: push for the person to crack and confess. Bring other
Speaker 5: people that are involved in the crime that just happen
Speaker 5: to be in the hallway. Of course that's not true.
Speaker 5: But tell us about the interview itself. You say that
Speaker 5: you get them to give them enough ropes so they
Speaker 5: can hang themselves, and once they've hung themselves, you're not
Speaker 5: confronting them per se. What do you do? And you
Speaker 5: say you can't solve these cases in forty five minutes.
Speaker 5: What's a typical interview in terms of length? And if
Speaker 5: there's some things that we've seen on television that are true,
Speaker 5: tell us and the things that are blatantly not, tell
Speaker 5: us about those.
Speaker 6: Okay, So, so, for instance, the first thing that you
Speaker 6: should like, you know, if you see them on Law
Speaker 6: and Order all the time, when they go into that
Speaker 6: a little interview room and they have this huge glass
Speaker 6: window and everybody's outside looking. That's that's not true. The
Speaker 6: windows very small. It's a two way mirror. But like
Speaker 6: everything else, in daylight or regular or you know, too
Speaker 6: much light at night, the person in that room could
Speaker 6: still see through the glass. That room is specifically just
Speaker 6: for witnesses and victims to use for lineup purposes and
Speaker 6: for another detective or another investigator to watch an interviewer
Speaker 6: and interrogation to try to learn from some of the people.
Speaker 6: And I always encourage some of the DETECTI especially some
Speaker 6: of the new ones, like you know what, you should
Speaker 6: stand outside and watch these two guys and how they
Speaker 6: talk and what they do and how they go about
Speaker 6: doing it. So it's it becomes like a learning tool
Speaker 6: for new investigators to sit and watch people who've done
Speaker 6: it for years, and some people are better at this.
Speaker 6: But the issue that comes down to is that as
Speaker 6: a supervisor, sometimes you have to pick the person that
Speaker 6: that you know to go into that interrogation room. Somebody
Speaker 6: maybe who had a who maybe locked this person up
Speaker 6: in the past and had had a better or somebody
Speaker 6: had a better rapport with them. And you know a
Speaker 6: lot of cops don't realize it that you know how
Speaker 6: this person gets treated out on the street by the
Speaker 6: uniform cops really set the tone about you know how
Speaker 6: much this person is going to dig their heels in
Speaker 6: once they get into that interrogation room. So you try
Speaker 6: to treat everybody, and you try to teach the cop
Speaker 6: and you treat everybody with respect. You treat them, you know,
Speaker 6: nice and and believe it or not, it makes the
Speaker 6: detective jobs a lot easier. So you know, you don't
Speaker 6: parade people through like that and let them see people
Speaker 6: on purpose. And you know, especially got for bid a
Speaker 6: witness or a victim. You know, that's the last thing
Speaker 6: you on earth you'd ever want to see. And and
Speaker 6: you know what they do is they they kind of
Speaker 6: show you, like when it's that co conspiraed a thing
Speaker 6: where they you know, they got the arrested their co defendant.
Speaker 6: Remember that the that the police as part of the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court can lie and they can use deceit and trickery,
Speaker 6: but they can't you know, in certain places you can't
Speaker 6: fabricate evidence. So for instance, I can tell you that
Speaker 6: DNA was found at the crime scene, but I can't
Speaker 6: show you a report and says this report from the
Speaker 6: lab says, this is you. You know, that becomes too
Speaker 6: suggestive and it becomes too much of an issue. But
Speaker 6: believe it or not, in certain states that's allowable, but
Speaker 6: in New York that's not allowable. So for instance, let's
Speaker 6: not give you a scenario. Let's just say you had
Speaker 6: a suspect in a rape case and there's DNA that's
Speaker 6: been recovered. You walk into a room, what do you
Speaker 6: think The first question that the you know what happens
Speaker 6: is you always look at it as are you a
Speaker 6: baseball fan? Dead a little bit? Okay, So I'm gonna
Speaker 6: use a baseball analogy. When the batter is way for
Speaker 6: that fastball, right, he's sitting on it. He's going to
Speaker 6: hit this thing out of the park. But if he's
Speaker 6: waiting for a fastball and that slow curveball comes, what
Speaker 6: happens to the batter? Right? He needs buckle, He doesn't
Speaker 6: know what to do, he can't swing, and he kind
Speaker 6: of looks foolish. Well, as the interrogator, that's how you
Speaker 6: have to be. You're the pitcher and the guy in
Speaker 6: that room is the batter, and you have to keep
Speaker 6: them more balanced. They already have their story in play,
Speaker 6: they've rehearsed it a dozen times, they kind of figure
Speaker 6: out what the first question is that you're going to
Speaker 6: ask them. And I always developed that curveball question where
Speaker 6: instead of showing a photo of the victim and say, hey,
Speaker 6: do you know what that's what he's waiting for, maybe
Speaker 6: my first question I might ask him is do you
Speaker 6: know what DNA is? And see his or her reaction
Speaker 6: from that, And now, what do you think he's thinking
Speaker 6: of the entire time as I'm going through the paperwork?
Speaker 6: Do they have my DNA?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: All the story that he came up with, he forgot,
Speaker 6: He's not even thinking about that right now. Always thinking
Speaker 6: of is oh my god, they got my DNA?
Speaker 1: So you know this?
Speaker 6: And you know, maybe down you know, maybe you know
Speaker 6: question ten or fifteen into it, I might show a
Speaker 6: photograph and say, do you know who this person is?
Speaker 6: I didn't have a saw before in a life. Okay,
Speaker 6: you sure you don't know what DNA is? Let me
Speaker 6: see that picture again? You know, Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 6: know her? You know that that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 6: you break down the denials and you break down the
Speaker 6: you know, the combativeness by you know, keeping somebody off
Speaker 6: off face. So what do you think the number one
Speaker 6: alibi is that most people have take a shot in
Speaker 6: the dog. What people say where they were or what
Speaker 6: they were doing at.
Speaker 5: The time they were home alone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they were home watching television, right, That's that's and
Speaker 6: I always I usually to say, okay, before I ask you,
Speaker 6: let me guess you were home watching television, right, And
Speaker 6: they kind of like, yeah, I was home watching television. Okay,
Speaker 6: So they think the next question is going to be
Speaker 6: you know, uh, you know, what was I watching? Because
Speaker 6: they looked at DV guy, they know exactly what was on.
Speaker 6: They knew what would the episode was. So I might
Speaker 6: ask them, hey, did you get any food? Did you
Speaker 6: order out? Yeah? Well I had pizza. Okay, I'm going
Speaker 6: to ask you twenty questions on the pizza. Did you
Speaker 6: have it delivered, did you pick it up, where'd you
Speaker 6: pick it up, what was the address, what did the
Speaker 6: person look like in a delivery? How much was the pizza?
Speaker 6: What kind of pizza did you get? Right? So I
Speaker 6: can ratle off twenty questions in a row about something
Speaker 6: that has nothing to do with anything but just what
Speaker 6: I used to refer to as killing the alibi persona,
Speaker 6: And those are the skills that you develop over a
Speaker 6: long period of time, and those are the things you know.
Speaker 6: Like even sometimes my wife hates when I ask for
Speaker 6: questions or do something because I always I might do
Speaker 6: something like that and drive it crazy. But psuter comes
Speaker 6: down to it's like, you know, he'd never forget how
Speaker 6: to do these things. And I tell people, don't bother
Speaker 6: lying to me, because I've heard every lie in the book,
Speaker 6: So just you know, be straight. I'd rather have you
Speaker 6: to tell me that you don't like me or whatever,
Speaker 6: then we'll move on. That's not a big deal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it can't be fun for the kids.
Speaker 6: Huh yeah, well, oh yeah, gosh. You know, the issue
Speaker 6: that comes down to is that it's it's a gift.
Speaker 6: It's a blessing in disguise, and sometimes it's a it's
Speaker 6: a real pain in the ass because even when you
Speaker 6: go to the store and you know, ask a good
Speaker 6: person a question and they you know, the way people
Speaker 6: say the words they use, like for instance, if you're
Speaker 6: not feeling well and somebody writes in the card, hope
Speaker 6: you feel better, right, and they leave out the eye,
Speaker 6: they really don't care. You know, that's that's you know,
Speaker 6: you lose the personal fact out of that. So when
Speaker 6: people say, you know, they leave out the eyes and
Speaker 6: the wheeze and the usses when they're talking, you have
Speaker 6: to really start looking at that. It's part of that
Speaker 6: statement analysis. But and you really get into what people
Speaker 6: say and how they say it, and then you can
Speaker 6: usually turn the words against them when they say so. Basically,
Speaker 6: then you have no idea then, right, you know, well, yes, okay,
Speaker 6: thank you. You know, so I could be a horror
Speaker 6: at the customers service line.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, Now this is a criminal investigative function. This
Speaker 5: book has become required reading. Tell us who it's required
Speaker 5: reading for and why they have adopted the obvious question,
Speaker 5: but why they've adopted this book as explain a little
Speaker 5: bit more about that.
Speaker 6: Okay, Actually what happened was I didn't find out right away.
Speaker 6: I was somebody had told me. They said, you know, Joe,
Speaker 6: your your book on Amazon is like it is like
Speaker 6: number two in all of law enforcement books. And I'm like, wow,
Speaker 6: So I went onto Amazon. It's not like I check
Speaker 6: these things every day. I go into Amazon. I say
Speaker 6: that it's number two in all of law enforcement books,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, what is going on? So and I
Speaker 6: said that maybe a couple of maybe two or three
Speaker 6: people bought it in the same day, who knows. And
Speaker 6: it wasn't. It wasn't during a school semester where you know,
Speaker 6: you and I I have a couple of colleges using
Speaker 6: it once and you see the book sales, you know, skyrocket.
Speaker 6: This was like in between time. So we started the
Speaker 6: publisher and I said, well, listen, you know the book
Speaker 6: for the last couple of days has been really selling
Speaker 6: a lot, and now it's sold out. What's going on?
Speaker 6: Oh we didn't tell you. I'm like, no, it happened.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah. The State of New Jersey had requested a
Speaker 6: review copy the Civil Service Commission and they decided to
Speaker 6: use it as an adoption for police promotional example. I
Speaker 6: almost fell up the chair when they told me this,
Speaker 6: just to you know, this was it started off with
Speaker 6: the sheriff's exam, which was something like, you know, twelve
Speaker 6: hundred sheriffs. So I was like, we kind of I
Speaker 6: was like proud of it because it kind of gave
Speaker 6: my work some validation about how easy it is to
Speaker 6: read and how any police officer or a detective can
Speaker 6: use this case used this book and it's actually led
Speaker 6: now to The second edition just became published a week ago,
Speaker 6: so thanks. Yeah, we completely revised it and expanded it.
Speaker 6: We added basically, we made the book larger on the size,
Speaker 6: had one hundred pages or so with illustrations and photos.
Speaker 6: So I'm trying to build a so called beachhead in
Speaker 6: the in the criminal investigation textbook realm. Because there are
Speaker 6: hundreds of criminal investigation textbooks. What separates mind from everybody
Speaker 6: else's is that it's a practical guide and what really
Speaker 6: So the Jersey picked it up was very exciting, but
Speaker 6: you know who other schools picked it up, like journalism schools,
Speaker 6: investigative journalism, people who want to know how the you
Speaker 6: know who are going to be working as journalists of
Speaker 6: future news reporters, and you know, they're using the textbook
Speaker 6: to teach the students about, you know, what the police
Speaker 6: procedures are and how they can go about doing and
Speaker 6: then learning how to write about. I never even anticipated
Speaker 6: that audience. And then it fled into crime writers and
Speaker 6: then you know, I got I got a number of
Speaker 6: talks like the Sisters in Crime had invited me to
Speaker 6: come out and speak to the groups about you know,
Speaker 6: because these are all the published authors whatever. Here I
Speaker 6: am amongst all these these ladies who've written, you know,
Speaker 6: dozens and volumes of books and and you know, I'm
Speaker 6: talking to them about police procedure and how to do
Speaker 6: these things. And they have great audience and and I
Speaker 6: get emails from different workshops and groups, and I've done
Speaker 6: it's it's really been a fun time. And I'm building
Speaker 6: what they so to speak, my platform. And I've been
Speaker 6: in the newspaper a lot lately. I was just in
Speaker 6: New York Times the other day. I post them on
Speaker 6: my I have an author website at Joji Wrights dot com,
Speaker 6: and I just post all the author interviews that I've done.
Speaker 6: So I'm kind of excited. I'm kind of proud of it.
Speaker 6: I'm working hard. I'm trying to shoot you know, you know,
Speaker 6: people like you that give me the opportunity to come
Speaker 6: on the you know, on their radio show. I mean,
Speaker 6: I greatly appreciate this stuff. And it's, you know, opportunities
Speaker 6: like this don't you know, don't come around often, so
Speaker 6: you jump on these things. You try to make everything work,
Speaker 6: try to keep everybody happy. And you know, I've been
Speaker 6: I've been very fortunate, so I really can't complain, well.
Speaker 5: It's it's testiment to the book itself, and you say
Speaker 5: how practical it is, but also that you know that
Speaker 5: it's a very engaging book and it's surprised. Like I
Speaker 5: was surprised too. I didn't even think of it myself,
Speaker 5: but yeah, fictional writers wanting to know what the police
Speaker 5: procedure really is rather than reading another fictional book with
Speaker 5: all the you know, inaccuracy. So yeah, it's very very interesting.
Speaker 5: But I think the most proud obviously would be that
Speaker 5: you're using it for promotions for police. That it's adopted
Speaker 5: by police departments itself. That's fantastic, and so you cannot
Speaker 5: ask for anything better than that, you know, really.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and actually, you know, like they have schools for
Speaker 6: the police promotional exams, you know, they have these things.
Speaker 6: And a couple of the owners of the schools reached
Speaker 6: out to me. They want to talk to me about
Speaker 6: certain aspects of the book, and you know, and one
Speaker 6: of the things, actually one of the guys that actually
Speaker 6: kind of gave me a compliment was but he goes,
Speaker 6: I read the book. I liked the book a lot,
Speaker 6: you know, and it is basically it reads like a novel.
Speaker 6: It's written like a novel where you know, you can
Speaker 6: almost see the steps being taken. And you know, if
Speaker 6: you just plug in a titious character from the beginning
Speaker 6: of the book and you work your way through, you
Speaker 6: can pretty much, you know, write your story. So you know,
Speaker 6: I never thought about these these things before. It is
Speaker 6: actually it always strangers that bring me things up to
Speaker 6: you that you just sit there and you scratch your head,
Speaker 6: you say, wow, never thought.
Speaker 5: Well. I think that's the thing that the true crime.
Speaker 5: I know that the audience that we have, I've done
Speaker 5: some you know, varied programs from I always talk about
Speaker 5: the perspective, so the authors come from different perspective by
Speaker 5: nature of who they are. Sometimes it's a journalist. Lots
Speaker 5: of lots of journalists team up with police officers for
Speaker 5: that invaluable connection and connection to police information. And also
Speaker 5: I think just to give them the nuts and bolts
Speaker 5: without having to try to concoct that themselves for the
Speaker 5: book itself. The other thing is that the the other
Speaker 5: we've had a perspective where we have judges, we have lawyers,
Speaker 5: we have victims and victims families and so all these
Speaker 5: different perspectives. But what I found interesting was the a
Speaker 5: Bronx cold case squad, homicide expert, somebody that's been in
Speaker 5: the field, and then takes us all the way through
Speaker 5: from the very very earliest stages right to the courtroom
Speaker 5: and to the conviction. So that's something that you just
Speaker 5: don't get. And I think that's what people appreciate, that
Speaker 5: you taking the reader through this experience as you did
Speaker 5: it yourself, and then using certain cases as example. So
Speaker 5: I think that's the perspective that even the true crime
Speaker 5: reader is looking for, just a different little perspective from
Speaker 5: because lots of true crime books are fairly formulaic. So
Speaker 5: it's interesting when somebody like a police officer writes a
Speaker 5: book because of his involvement and because of the incredible
Speaker 5: access that he has and from his perspective.
Speaker 6: So right, And one thing is like if I write book,
Speaker 6: I don't have to do all that research, which is great,
Speaker 6: you know. So you know, like I said, if I
Speaker 6: had to write a book on you know, I had
Speaker 6: to work a computer that I had to do like
Speaker 6: you know, month's worth of research. But you know, this
Speaker 6: is something where you know, I did it for so
Speaker 6: many years. It's kind of old hat. And like I said,
Speaker 6: my my real goal is to write a fiction book.
Speaker 6: That's my that's my real goal. But I'm actually currently
Speaker 6: writing two new books, also practical guys. I'm doing a
Speaker 6: police patrol book and actually a law enforcement it's like
Speaker 6: basically like the handbook for you or a guy to
Speaker 6: somebody's law enforcement career, which is basically for that eighteen
Speaker 6: nineteen twenty one year old crowd out there who want
Speaker 6: to get involved in policing. It's a great profession, it's
Speaker 6: a noble profession. And yeah, and it's right now is
Speaker 6: the time if you any of your listeners, anybody that
Speaker 6: follows you, I know you have thousands of people that
Speaker 6: follow you on this. This is great. You know, I
Speaker 6: always might tell my students, if this is what you
Speaker 6: want to do, you have to go out and do it.
Speaker 6: So you have to go out and actively pursue a
Speaker 6: test and take the test and do all these things.
Speaker 6: No one's gonna, you know, just hand you a police
Speaker 6: badge and a gun and say, hey, we heard you
Speaker 6: wanted to do this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think this will tell you whether you
Speaker 5: have what it takes as well, because this this is
Speaker 5: takes the fictional varnish off of the whole thing and
Speaker 5: tells you exactly how things are actually done. And you
Speaker 5: sort of warn people in the beginning of the book
Speaker 5: that you know, if you think this is going to
Speaker 5: be easy, maybe you should apply for something else.
Speaker 6: Yeah, on average, it takes about ten years to get
Speaker 6: to where you really want to go.
Speaker 5: And when would you talk about the you know, the
Speaker 5: young person, are you sort of you know, I for
Speaker 5: the audience that doesn't live in New York City, It
Speaker 5: lives in smaller centers. I'm in Canada, so I'm in
Speaker 5: a place that's maybe seven hundred thousand, but certainly you're
Speaker 5: in the biggest uh fish pity, one of the city's
Speaker 5: biggest cities in the world. And with that comes from
Speaker 5: very very very serious crime. And so murder is different
Speaker 5: and rapes are different, and and yes, like again you
Speaker 5: just mentioned a serial killer like it was nothing. Lots
Speaker 5: of people, you know, have read about serial killers.
Speaker 4: That's about it.
Speaker 5: You have you know, worked and been involved with serial killers, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, And you know.
Speaker 6: What's interesting about New York is that we don't have
Speaker 6: a lot of you know, people think are based on
Speaker 6: TV and stuff that we have all these serial killers
Speaker 6: run around believe it or not, New York. They're very rare.
Speaker 6: I mean I can name two or three or four
Speaker 6: of them on the top of my head. But we
Speaker 6: have a lot of what I refer to as acts
Speaker 6: of random violence right where somebody stepped on somebody sneaker
Speaker 6: in the subway and they got shot dead for it.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, it's amazing some of the things
Speaker 6: that you see, and you know, some of the things
Speaker 6: that are killing. But we're having a phenomenal year the
Speaker 6: last two years in murder. I mean, we had the
Speaker 6: lowest rate of murders is like the nineteen sixties, you.
Speaker 5: Know, and compet clearance straight what kind of solt rate
Speaker 5: you have to in terms of percentage for that.
Speaker 6: I don't know the actual number, but I know nationwide
Speaker 6: the numbers are around sixty five percent, so I'm assuming
Speaker 6: they would be around there. But we've seen places like
Speaker 6: Philadelphia and Chicago and New Orleans where some of their
Speaker 6: clearance rates are absolutely miserable. You know, we're talking in
Speaker 6: the thirties, in the twenties. I mean some of these
Speaker 6: things were and yeah, I mean Philadelphia, I think, off
Speaker 6: the top of my head was thirty thirty eight percent
Speaker 6: when I looked it up. I mean, that's that say
Speaker 6: you're telling me that sixty two percent of all murderers
Speaker 6: are still walking around Philadelphia or something. That's basically what
Speaker 6: you're looking at. That's yeah, no, no, And if you
Speaker 6: look at it, if you look at it, even at
Speaker 6: a sixty five or even a seventy percent clearance rate,
Speaker 6: we average about sixteen thousand homicides in the United States alone,
Speaker 6: so you're looking at you know, almost five thousand homicides
Speaker 6: a year go cold in the United States. So in
Speaker 6: ten years, that's fifty thousand cases. So I mean, these
Speaker 6: cases are you know, you know, you know, it's it's
Speaker 6: just one of those phenomenons that unfortunately we've seen cold
Speaker 6: case at the cold case gets shut down. You know,
Speaker 6: I think you just in Seattle, lady shut their down
Speaker 6: because of the time consuming and the money that's spent
Speaker 6: on these cases.
Speaker 2: R oh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's becoming an issue where you know, I refer
Speaker 6: to it as you know, cold case squads going by
Speaker 6: way the dinosaur. And you know, not that these cases
Speaker 6: will never be investigated, but they will be given to
Speaker 6: another detective who's you know, doing other cases, and this
Speaker 6: will be just another one of their jobs and you know,
Speaker 6: it may work, it might not work. I mean it
Speaker 6: takes extremely Listen, if these cases were so easy to solve,
Speaker 6: they'd have been solved the ready. You know. You know,
Speaker 6: there's always something you know and listen, most of the time,
Speaker 6: you know who did it. It's just that you don't
Speaker 6: have the evidence to prove it. That's that's really basically
Speaker 6: what you're looking at. You know, you develop your suspects
Speaker 6: and you pretty much know who it is, but you
Speaker 6: need this thing cold evidence, you know, and just because
Speaker 6: you know you think that doesn't mean anything. You know.
Speaker 6: So it's one of those issues where it can be
Speaker 6: very frustrating at times, and it gets frustrating dealing with
Speaker 6: district attorneys and stuff like that because even in the
Speaker 6: cold case, I don't know if people realize this that
Speaker 6: even though you develop probable cause to make the arrest,
Speaker 6: because the case is so old, you just don't go
Speaker 6: out and slap cups on somebody. You have to sit
Speaker 6: down with the district attorney who's going to prosecute this case.
Speaker 6: You know, they're looking for a winner. The prosecutor and
Speaker 6: the police department are in different you know, different in
Speaker 6: the United States here, different you know, planes. I mean,
Speaker 6: they want to have convictions and we just want to
Speaker 6: make arrest in close cases, so ones like kind of
Speaker 6: you know, they both personal perspective, you know, in regards
Speaker 6: to your personal performance. But district attorneys get get rated,
Speaker 6: you know, on how well they're conviction rates. So they
Speaker 6: you know, if they the case, they don't think they're
Speaker 6: gonna win the case. They you know, they want three
Speaker 6: nuns in the pope as a witness to think that's
Speaker 6: twenty years old.
Speaker 5: You know what was interested in just going back just
Speaker 5: a bit to what you said, because I think this
Speaker 5: is really profound, is that you said that the vast
Speaker 5: majority where you said most, you said most of the
Speaker 5: time you know who these people, who the killers were
Speaker 5: of these people, except you just don't have the evidence, right, you.
Speaker 6: Know, speculation and opinions don't establish probable course, it's the
Speaker 6: evidence that does. So you can think whatever you want.
Speaker 6: But the deal is, once you've identified somebody or you know,
Speaker 6: as you suspect, I mean, sometimes you get to a
Speaker 6: point where you talk to the district attorney and say, listen,
Speaker 6: I mean all signs point to this guy and let's
Speaker 6: tell you, well call him in for see if you
Speaker 6: come in for an interview and you know, maybe we
Speaker 6: can get a confession at him, you know, other than that,
Speaker 6: we got nothing. So you know, it could can get
Speaker 6: very frustrating at times when you're dealing with this because,
Speaker 6: like I said, you you might have all the circumstantial
Speaker 6: evidence in the world that that points to a specific
Speaker 6: person and guess what, you know, no evidence, no confession,
Speaker 6: you got nothing.
Speaker 5: How how taxing and frustrating was it for you? And
Speaker 5: what does it typically do to a guy that's a
Speaker 5: homicide cop for a few years. Is there a typical
Speaker 5: sort of burnout rate? Are you the exception to the
Speaker 5: rule where you seem to be well adjusted? We'll say,
Speaker 5: you know so, I guess.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not so much an exception to the rule.
Speaker 6: I'm probably more of the norm than the than the exception.
Speaker 6: You know, there are some people that will get burnt
Speaker 6: out by some of the stuff. But what the issue
Speaker 6: comes down to is you have to be persistent and
Speaker 6: you have to be determined. It's got to be that's
Speaker 6: got to be in your DNA. You know, you can't
Speaker 6: be one of these people that give up easy. You also, like,
Speaker 6: for instance, if you're thinking about this career, or you
Speaker 6: think you're already in this career and you want to
Speaker 6: go into cold case. And I always say, you know,
Speaker 6: I would interview detectives and ask them questions like, you know,
Speaker 6: do you like to do puzzles? You like to do
Speaker 6: cross you know, and then you look at you strange,
Speaker 6: because that's what this really comes down to. It's a
Speaker 6: big puzzle sometimes and you have to put all these
Speaker 6: pieces together, and sometimes it takes you, you know, hours
Speaker 6: to put a puzzle together. So if you're gonna get
Speaker 6: frustrated and walk away and just leave the outside of
Speaker 6: the puzzle, I'm not interested in you. You know. That's
Speaker 6: that's basically what you have to deal with.
Speaker 5: So and I guess all of the psychology, the the
Speaker 5: strong psychological background that you need to have is pretty
Speaker 5: well already determined before you get selected for this sort
Speaker 5: of well not sort of, but this elite squad.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, it's like everything else. You get picked
Speaker 6: because they, you know, they believe that you have the
Speaker 6: capabilities of carrying this thing out. And and part of
Speaker 6: it is you know, well you know, the people like you.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's that's the other thing is the detectives
Speaker 6: and everybody that you work with, they have to like you,
Speaker 6: and they got to be able to, you know, work
Speaker 6: with you and and and do these things. So personality
Speaker 6: comes into a big play. I mean, we I work
Speaker 6: with people that you know that no matter what they
Speaker 6: try to do, you know, people won't do anything for
Speaker 6: them just because they're just you know, not nice people.
Speaker 6: You know, and it's like everything else. You get more
Speaker 6: bees with honey than you do it vinegar. And you
Speaker 6: just go through these steps and you try to you know,
Speaker 6: you gotta remember you you're working for the victim at
Speaker 6: this point, and that's what needs and that's what you
Speaker 6: need to keep telling yourself when you're doing this stuff,
Speaker 6: because it comes down to justice. You're the sole person
Speaker 6: that's talking for this victim. More than more than likely
Speaker 6: any of the victims that we dealt with, we're no
Speaker 6: longer here. So you take on that role and you
Speaker 6: you take on that role, and you you stick through
Speaker 6: it and to the bitter end, either you're going to
Speaker 6: make an arrest or or it's not gonna happen, but
Speaker 6: you you give your best, You do everything you can
Speaker 6: do to get to that that place.
Speaker 5: Well that's great. Well I want to Thank you very
Speaker 5: much Joe for coming on the program and talking about
Speaker 5: your book, The Criminal Investigative Function, a guide for new investigators,
Speaker 5: and give us your website. And you're also operate a
Speaker 5: blog as well, so t so just that contact again.
Speaker 6: Thanks. Yeah, I have a blog it's just coldcsquad dot com.
Speaker 6: And I have an author page. It's Joe g as
Speaker 6: in George Writs. Then it's w R I T e
Speaker 6: s dot com. Because my last name is so difficult
Speaker 6: to spell, no one would ever get it right anyway,
Speaker 6: So unlike Zapansky right, which is very easy to spend.
Speaker 6: So you know, but it was one of those things
Speaker 6: that I'm on Twitter, I'm on cold Case. If you
Speaker 6: go to any of those the blog, especially coldksquad dot com,
Speaker 6: you can find all my contact information and you know,
Speaker 6: and like I said, I've had in the past where
Speaker 6: you know, a write will ask me a question. I'll
Speaker 6: gladly take those emails, just I just don't want to.
Speaker 6: I had somebody send me, like, you know, their entire
Speaker 6: book and ask me to critique it. I don't have
Speaker 6: that out of time. So you know, if you have
Speaker 6: that one or two questions you want to buy me
Speaker 6: in an email. That's great, but I can't read books.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you're available for the lectures and seminars or
Speaker 5: anything of that sort. For public speaking.
Speaker 6: I've been to I just came back. I was in November.
Speaker 6: I was in Jordan for a couple of weeks, the
Speaker 6: country of Jordan in the Middle East. We did some training.
Speaker 6: I've been all over and you know, I've been to
Speaker 6: different places and invited to do different talks, and I
Speaker 6: do training, and you know, so I do it all.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: That sounds great, and I would wish you some luck.
Speaker 5: But it seems like you're in the second edition of
Speaker 5: printing and so you're well on your way. And uh
Speaker 5: and you got the respect for the for this book,
Speaker 5: and the credibility obviously is there. So I'll applaud you
Speaker 5: for this and thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about your experience with.
Speaker 6: I'm glad we finally got a chance to hook up.
Speaker 6: This was great and maybe we could do it again
Speaker 6: in the future.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Jill, So thank you very much. You have a
Speaker 5: good evening.
Speaker 6: Thanks for your time, Dan, and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Good night.