Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / NEW ORLEANS HOMICIDE DETECTIVE SLEUTHS: 'THE WORST OF THE WORST'
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
- 0:06Speaker 2: A New Orleans homicide detective the modern day at Q
- 0:11Speaker 2: Poirot slews the worst of the worst. Now hold on
- 0:15Speaker 2: right there, Number one, very high crime city, New Orleans,
- 0:21Speaker 2: the big easy. So are some murders worse than other murders?
- 0:27Speaker 1: How bad can it be? This guy has the answer
- 0:31Speaker 1: to that. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I
- 0:34Speaker 1: want to thank you for being with us.
- 0:36Speaker 3: Detective James Fife began his career with the New Orleans
- 0:39Speaker 3: Police Department as a patrol officer before advancing to detective
- 0:42Speaker 3: in the fall of twenty twenty one. Since his promotion,
- 0:46Speaker 3: he has successfully solved over twenty four consecutive cases, showcasing
- 0:51Speaker 3: his dedication and skilled.
- 0:54Speaker 1: It's not just dedication, it's not just hard hours.
- 0:59Speaker 2: To close twenty four consecutive homicides in a row that
- 1:04Speaker 2: takes serious slew thing.
- 1:08Speaker 1: Who is this guy? Listen?
- 1:10Speaker 4: James Fife leaves his Massachusetts security screening job to follow
- 1:14Speaker 4: his dreams of becoming a cop. New Orleans catches five's
- 1:17Speaker 4: eye actually circulating help wanted posters amid a hiring slump.
- 1:22Speaker 4: Fife begins as a patrol officer in Algiers and works
- 1:25Speaker 4: his way up the Fourth District Task Force into property crimes.
- 1:29Speaker 4: After time on the Violent Crime Abatement Investigation Team, Fife
- 1:32Speaker 4: finally gets a shot in the homicide division, just as
- 1:35Speaker 4: Nola sees a huge spike in violent crime.
- 1:38Speaker 1: And joining us.
- 1:39Speaker 2: Now homicide Detective James five. Detective five, thank you for
- 1:44Speaker 2: being with.
- 1:44Speaker 5: Us, Thanks for having me.
- 1:46Speaker 1: It's an honor, Detective five.
- 1:50Speaker 2: Twenty four consecutive homicides, that's extremely rare. Do you recall
- 1:58Speaker 2: the first homicide investigated with New Orleans?
- 2:03Speaker 5: Of course, yeah, case like that stays with you.
- 2:05Speaker 6: I mean each of them really, but your first case,
- 2:08Speaker 6: you know, you're you're analyzing every little step, and for
- 2:11Speaker 6: sure that's not something you forget. It was in September
- 2:14Speaker 6: of twenty twenty one. My first case was a shooting
- 2:19Speaker 6: of three individuals on two Lane Avenue outside of a
- 2:22Speaker 6: bar at the location, which was successfully cleared.
- 2:26Speaker 2: Detective five, what do you recall of that first homicide investigation?
- 2:33Speaker 6: Basically every little detail, you know, it's microanalyzing everything I
- 2:38Speaker 6: was doing under you know, management of more veteran officers,
- 2:43Speaker 6: making sure you don't take any missteps, because that the
- 2:45Speaker 6: mistakes are high and on your first case that pressure
- 2:48Speaker 6: really sinks in.
- 2:49Speaker 2: So that was a triple shooting outside of a bar,
- 2:53Speaker 2: I assume at night. I have found in my own
- 2:56Speaker 2: investigations it's really hard to pin down bar goers to
- 3:01Speaker 2: get a statement out of them.
- 3:04Speaker 1: How did you do it?
- 3:07Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, in this case, the witness testimony, you know,
- 3:09Speaker 6: provided some sequencing of events, but it was mostly video
- 3:12Speaker 6: footage and it sort of one thing led to another,
- 3:15Speaker 6: and it was one of those cases that unraveled really well,
- 3:17Speaker 6: got some momentum. But our shooter was masked at the time,
- 3:21Speaker 6: so it wasn't even as though we needed a witness
- 3:22Speaker 6: to point to an individual and say that's the guy.
- 3:25Speaker 1: It was a masked shooter.
- 3:29Speaker 6: Yes, sort of a I mean a hit you could
- 3:32Speaker 6: call it. But it seemed pretty pretty planned and partially
- 3:35Speaker 6: organized on the part of the perpetrator.
- 3:38Speaker 2: Now, when you say it seemed planned, how do you
- 3:41Speaker 2: know the difference between your routine bar shooting and a
- 3:46Speaker 2: planned hit.
- 3:47Speaker 1: See, that's just like you five.
- 3:50Speaker 2: You toss it off as your first homicide. When I
- 3:52Speaker 2: find out now it was a planned execution.
- 3:55Speaker 1: What happened?
- 3:56Speaker 7: Yeah?
- 3:56Speaker 6: And I don't mean to ever sound flipping about any
- 3:58Speaker 6: of the cases. I talk about I think one of
- 4:00Speaker 6: the side.
- 4:00Speaker 2: Effects that you're modest. I mean it in that way
- 4:04Speaker 2: you never take credit for all of your work. You
- 4:07Speaker 2: make it sound like I didn't have that much to
- 4:10Speaker 2: do with it. It solved itself.
- 4:11Speaker 1: But no, you solved it.
- 4:13Speaker 2: I didn't know the first case was a planned assassination
- 4:17Speaker 2: and execution.
- 4:18Speaker 1: What happened.
- 4:19Speaker 6: Yeah, And not to digress, but real quick, sometimes it
- 4:23Speaker 6: can feel a little like insensitive to sort of celebrate
- 4:25Speaker 6: any success in this field, because even when you've done
- 4:29Speaker 6: your job well, the worst has already happened and somebody
- 4:31Speaker 6: has died, So to take like a victory lap sometimes
- 4:34Speaker 6: feels a little tone deaf. But you do have to
- 4:36Speaker 6: allow yourself to appreciate the wins when you get them.
- 4:39Speaker 6: But getting to this incident, when you watch the video footage,
- 4:43Speaker 6: and again it's still in phases of trial, so I
- 4:46Speaker 6: can't really speak into too much detail, but the method
- 4:50Speaker 6: approach of the incident itself shows that this is not
- 4:52Speaker 6: a spontaneous thing. This is definitely, you know, just the
- 4:56Speaker 6: dawning of a mask in the use of like a
- 4:58Speaker 6: draco firearm, you know, sort of implies that this is
- 5:03Speaker 6: something with some level of organization beforehand.
- 5:05Speaker 2: To those that are not familiar with a Draco firearm,
- 5:08Speaker 2: could you explain.
- 5:10Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, it's so, it's it's it looks like an
- 5:14Speaker 6: assault rifle, but technically it's an automatic pistol. But it's
- 5:17Speaker 6: very much in favor. Or it's a chic weapon. I
- 5:21Speaker 6: guess at least it was a few years ago among
- 5:24Speaker 6: some of the youth. But it has like a wood grip.
- 5:26Speaker 6: It's a very distinctive looking.
- 5:27Speaker 1: Weapon, you know.
- 5:29Speaker 2: To me, it looks like a Draco looks like a
- 5:31Speaker 2: saw off shotgun with a fancy handle, because the butt's
- 5:38Speaker 2: not that long.
- 5:38Speaker 1: Is it?
- 5:40Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 5:40Speaker 6: I think you know, it could be argued that it's
- 5:42Speaker 6: favored because it's it's concealable for a big weapon. It's
- 5:46Speaker 6: still something you can kind of stuff into a jacket
- 5:48Speaker 6: or down your pants if need be. But yeah, it
- 5:50Speaker 6: could easily be mistaken for something else, like a saw
- 5:52Speaker 6: off shotgun or what.
- 5:54Speaker 2: I understand that you left Massachusetts security screening to follow
- 5:59Speaker 2: your dream of because make a homicide detective. When in
- 6:02Speaker 2: life did you decide I want to solve murders.
- 6:08Speaker 6: Oh that's a tough one. Not exactly sure, Like when
- 6:11Speaker 6: when that switch flipped. But for sure my parents were
- 6:15Speaker 6: teachers and social workers, so I've always had like a
- 6:17Speaker 6: public service drive. But I think maybe I needed a
- 6:21Speaker 6: little bit more excitement to what I chose to do.
- 6:25Speaker 6: So wanted policing from sort of since high school, you know,
- 6:29Speaker 6: much to my parents' dismay at the time.
- 6:31Speaker 5: But chase that down.
- 6:34Speaker 6: Those jobs back in you know, the early two thousands
- 6:37Speaker 6: a little harder to come by, especially.
- 6:38Speaker 5: In New England.
- 6:39Speaker 6: But if you do believe in, you know, that mission
- 6:42Speaker 6: driven work, I think you're you need to be willing
- 6:44Speaker 6: to move where you're needed.
- 6:48Speaker 1: At that time. Did you have a family, No not.
- 6:54Speaker 6: I was not married, no children at that time yet,
- 6:56Speaker 6: so it was a bit easier to pick up and
- 6:58Speaker 6: move across the country to to chase something like this.
- 7:02Speaker 1: What were you doing in your security screening job?
- 7:06Speaker 6: I worked for a federal contract company that was doing
- 7:09Speaker 6: background checks for people that needed security clearances like top
- 7:11Speaker 6: secret security clearance or.
- 7:13Speaker 5: What have you.
- 7:14Speaker 1: Guys, listen to this.
- 7:16Speaker 4: While many detectives only handle about five homicide cases a year,
- 7:20Speaker 4: Fife is assigned to nearly forty cases over three years
- 7:24Speaker 4: because he keeps clearing them. Since twenty twenty two, Fife
- 7:27Speaker 4: closes twenty four consecutive cases. He is assigned to his
- 7:31Speaker 4: coworkers keeping track on a whiteboard they've dubbed the Fifometer.
- 7:35Speaker 4: Fife's work helps the homicide division bring its clearance rate
- 7:39Speaker 4: from forty percent and twenty twenty two to above seventy
- 7:42Speaker 4: six percent today.
- 7:44Speaker 2: I know you're probably too humble to comment on the
- 7:47Speaker 2: Fife meter of tally that people keep within within your
- 7:52Speaker 2: office at Homicide. I never, never, while I was prosecuting
- 7:57Speaker 2: counton wins, if you can call them that, and I
- 8:01Speaker 2: think it's hard to get but you were alluding to
- 8:03Speaker 2: it earlier, Detective five, when you sawve a homicide, or
- 8:09Speaker 2: when I would prosecute a homicide and the jury would
- 8:11Speaker 2: return a guilty verdict, I didn't really feel any joy
- 8:16Speaker 2: or celebration. I didn't go out and have a night
- 8:19Speaker 2: on the town. I turn around, you know, feeling half
- 8:23Speaker 2: dead myself after weeks of trial, and there would be
- 8:26Speaker 2: the victim's family just completely rung out, just having endured
- 8:34Speaker 2: so much. And it's not like solving the homicide or
- 8:41Speaker 2: getting the guilty verdict fixes things. I think victims' families
- 8:45Speaker 2: think that's going to fix everything, and it doesn't, and
- 8:50Speaker 2: I never felt I didn't feel like doing it, But
- 8:54Speaker 2: in retrospect, I don't think it's.
- 8:56Speaker 1: Appropriate to go out and celebrate.
- 8:59Speaker 2: When when the victim's family just moves onto their next
- 9:03Speaker 2: step of grieving.
- 9:04Speaker 1: I agree with you.
- 9:07Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 9:08Speaker 6: You know, sometimes at its worst, this job just feels
- 9:11Speaker 6: like we're kind of mitigating the damage that's already been done,
- 9:15Speaker 6: trying to provide some sort of reliefs to the family.
- 9:17Speaker 6: But you're right, when it's all said and done, the
- 9:18Speaker 6: dust settles, you know that loved one's still gone and
- 9:22Speaker 6: there's nothing we can do to undo that. I guess
- 9:25Speaker 6: it's just about general public safety, making sure somebody who's
- 9:28Speaker 6: able and willing to do that can't do it again,
- 9:30Speaker 6: among other things.
- 9:32Speaker 2: You know, I think we've well, not we, not you
- 9:35Speaker 2: and I, but I think the world has seen too
- 9:39Speaker 2: many crime shows on TV because.
- 9:43Speaker 1: It's not like that at all.
- 9:46Speaker 2: You go to a murder saying I've seen a rookie
- 9:48Speaker 2: cop start vomiting from the smell of a dead body
- 9:53Speaker 2: hadn't even gone into the scene yet, because it really
- 9:56Speaker 2: is enough to make you throw up. But when you
- 9:59Speaker 2: get in there, it's a lot grimier and dirtier and
- 10:04Speaker 2: stickier than any TV show that I know of has.
- 10:10Speaker 1: Ever portrayed what it's really like.
- 10:15Speaker 2: And you know, on the movies, that's all fake blood,
- 10:17Speaker 2: it's all fake. And anybody that's been in the homicide
- 10:22Speaker 2: business knows what it's really like. And the celebrations they
- 10:28Speaker 2: have in movies and TV when a case is solved,
- 10:34Speaker 2: I don't get it. Could you explain what a homicide
- 10:37Speaker 2: scene is really like? I try, but I don't think
- 10:40Speaker 2: I convey it very well.
- 10:42Speaker 6: Yeah, of course, you know, just getting back to what
- 10:45Speaker 6: you said earlier, I should say there are moments of
- 10:49Speaker 6: like excitement and adrenaline rush in this job that are
- 10:53Speaker 6: truly fun, like cracking mysteries, right, But at its core,
- 10:56Speaker 6: homicide detective, the work we do is kind of profoundly
- 11:01Speaker 6: grim and sad at times, and it takes a good
- 11:04Speaker 6: deal of like emotional intelligence and endurance to sort of balance,
- 11:09Speaker 6: you know, handling these cases with the sensitivity and the
- 11:12Speaker 6: gravity that they deserve, but also not letting it haunt
- 11:15Speaker 6: your dreams every night. You know, because you do this
- 11:17Speaker 6: job long enough, there are a lot of unsolved cases
- 11:20Speaker 6: that continue to follow you. But that said, these cases
- 11:23Speaker 6: The crime scenes themselves are hugely varying in what they
- 11:27Speaker 6: look like and the issues that are opposed by each one.
- 11:31Speaker 6: But in addition to the actual active homicide scenes, we
- 11:34Speaker 6: respond to any unclassified death, so just a deceased person
- 11:38Speaker 6: and we don't really know what happened to them. We
- 11:40Speaker 6: go out and provide support to the district units on that,
- 11:43Speaker 6: and some of those, as well as some of our homicides,
- 11:46Speaker 6: can be pretty pretty grizzly, especially when it's you know,
- 11:49Speaker 6: something that hasn't been addressed for several days, someone's been
- 11:52Speaker 6: sitting in a spot, and you get pretty used to
- 11:55Speaker 6: so I guess encountering and stomaching the detective five.
- 11:59Speaker 1: You men.
- 12:02Speaker 2: These cases, Your case is creeping into your dreams, and
- 12:08Speaker 2: I remember that very well. You eat, drink, breathe, live
- 12:14Speaker 2: a case. And I don't know how other trial lawyers
- 12:17Speaker 2: do it. I couldn't go out to dinner. I couldn't
- 12:23Speaker 2: do anything during a trial or preparation for a trial,
- 12:29Speaker 2: because you have one shot, you have one swing that trial,
- 12:35Speaker 2: and if you don't do it all, try it all,
- 12:39Speaker 2: give it two hundred percent, you'll never get to do
- 12:42Speaker 2: it again. There's no do over for the state, And yeah,
- 12:47Speaker 2: I would dream about my cases a lot, and even now,
- 12:51Speaker 2: still all these years later, still dream about some of them.
- 12:55Speaker 1: Five.
- 12:57Speaker 5: Yeah, I can relate to that for sure. And again
- 13:00Speaker 5: I think it's a balance.
- 13:01Speaker 6: If you're going to do like what we do or
- 13:03Speaker 6: have done for a long and a period of time,
- 13:05Speaker 6: you need to strike that balance between compartmentalizing work and
- 13:10Speaker 6: your home life, but not getting so checked out or
- 13:13Speaker 6: cynical to the point where you know people can can
- 13:16Speaker 6: tell and they're like, oh, this detective doesn't care and
- 13:19Speaker 6: you're not as invested as you ought to be. But yeah,
- 13:23Speaker 6: especially early on, you know, I'm up at night thinking
- 13:26Speaker 6: about what I could have missed or just that case
- 13:29Speaker 6: that I haven't solved.
- 13:30Speaker 5: For sure.
- 13:31Speaker 2: When you say you're up at night thinking about what
- 13:34Speaker 2: you could have missed, you know, like a lot of people,
- 13:39Speaker 2: they leave the house and go, oh, did I turn
- 13:41Speaker 2: off the coffee pot or did I close the garage door?
- 13:46Speaker 1: What are the kind of things that go through your mind.
- 13:50Speaker 2: At not you know, like, oh, my stars, did I
- 13:54Speaker 2: fill in the blank?
- 13:58Speaker 5: Yeah? For sure?
- 13:59Speaker 6: Did I handle that interview the right way? Could it
- 14:01Speaker 6: have been this other thing? And when you find the
- 14:04Speaker 6: time a lot of it's sort of a juggling act.
- 14:06Speaker 6: But you do circle back to you know, your twenty
- 14:08Speaker 6: twenty one, twenty twenty two cases in my case and
- 14:12Speaker 6: you know, give give them another look, see if there's
- 14:14Speaker 6: anything else I could do. But when you do have
- 14:17Speaker 6: a city with you know, sort of ongoing case load,
- 14:21Speaker 6: it can be hard to sort of jump back and
- 14:23Speaker 6: find time to do that.
- 14:24Speaker 5: We also have a very effective cold case unit.
- 14:27Speaker 6: Here in NPD, which provides some support for that, but
- 14:30Speaker 6: there's nothing like the initial detective that handled the case
- 14:35Speaker 6: to know the ins and outs and what might have
- 14:37Speaker 6: slipped through the cracks. I think anybody who's been a
- 14:38Speaker 6: homicide detective knows that there is a degree of luck, right,
- 14:42Speaker 6: but followed up by hard work to be opportunistic about
- 14:45Speaker 6: the lucky breaks you are given.
- 14:47Speaker 4: Detective Fife has cleared twenty four cases in a row
- 14:50Speaker 4: stretching back to December twenty twenty two.
- 14:52Speaker 6: That's a lot in a row that have some kind
- 14:54Speaker 6: of at least short term resolution. You know, they'll have
- 14:57Speaker 6: to proceed through court. A clearance is you know, at
- 14:59Speaker 6: the detective level, what we're always trying to shoot for.
- 15:05Speaker 3: Throughout his time with the NOPD, and Detective Fife has
- 15:08Speaker 3: played a key role in reducing crime across New Orleans.
- 15:11Speaker 3: His efforts have directly contributed to a dramatic increase in
- 15:15Speaker 3: the city's homicide clearance rate, which has risen from forty
- 15:19Speaker 3: percent to an impressive seventy five percent.
- 15:24Speaker 2: Joining us is veteran homicide detective Detective Fife, who was
- 15:29Speaker 2: now racked up twenty four consecutive solves Detective five.
- 15:34Speaker 1: Have these cases gone to trial yet?
- 15:39Speaker 5: Many not?
- 15:39Speaker 6: And it's generous when you say veteran detective. I've been
- 15:42Speaker 6: doing homicide work for just four years now, so a
- 15:45Speaker 6: lot of those cases are still haven't been adjudicated. It
- 15:48Speaker 6: takes several years in many cases for these to actually
- 15:51Speaker 6: go through your child.
- 15:53Speaker 2: I would say that twenty four consecutive homicide investigations correct qualifies.
- 15:58Speaker 1: You as a veteran.
- 16:00Speaker 2: It's like saying I've only been in Vietnam for four years,
- 16:05Speaker 2: you're a veteran.
- 16:06Speaker 1: How did you pick New Orleans?
- 16:10Speaker 6: My girlfriend at the time now wife, had moved down
- 16:13Speaker 6: here and I followed just for a visit and saw
- 16:16Speaker 6: the hiring posters for NOPD and thought I'd just give
- 16:19Speaker 6: it a shot, and yeah, it worked.
- 16:21Speaker 5: Out pretty well for me.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Second Line shooting.
- 16:26Speaker 4: Listen, it seems almost all of New Orleans has turned
- 16:29Speaker 4: out for the nine times Social Aid and Pleasure Club's
- 16:32Speaker 4: annual Second Line, a parade featuring brass bands and dancers.
- 16:36Speaker 4: Dressed to the nines. Thousands of revelers scramble for safety
- 16:39Speaker 4: when gunfire rings out Injuring eight, Just forty five minutes later,
- 16:43Speaker 4: a mile down the parade route, another shooting, this time
- 16:47Speaker 4: killing two. The victims are identified as nephew Rashaan Carter
- 16:50Speaker 4: twenty one and uncle Malachi Jackson, nineteen.
- 16:54Speaker 7: You know, we can't say that because they were forty
- 16:57Speaker 7: five minutes apart, and different kind of approach of how
- 17:00Speaker 7: the shooting was, so we don't know could be, but
- 17:04Speaker 7: right now don't know that.
- 17:06Speaker 2: That is New Orleans PD Commissioner speaking. And that's where
- 17:09Speaker 2: my friends at WDSU the so called Second Line shooting.
- 17:14Speaker 2: What is the annual Second Line Parade?
- 17:17Speaker 1: Five?
- 17:19Speaker 6: Yeah, So New Orleans is a city, right is very
- 17:23Speaker 6: proud of and kind of protective of their very unique
- 17:25Speaker 6: cultural traditions, right, one of which our Second Line parades,
- 17:28Speaker 6: which are sort of these big on foot processionals where
- 17:32Speaker 6: people can jump in and just march to music and
- 17:35Speaker 6: just generally socialized a lot of fun. Highly recommends if
- 17:38Speaker 6: anybody's visiting you come check these out. But because this
- 17:41Speaker 6: shooting occurred well to actually two separate incidents, but because
- 17:45Speaker 6: my shooting, the homicide that you mentioned occurred during one
- 17:49Speaker 6: of these events, had a lot of extra scrutiny upon it.
- 17:53Speaker 6: Besides the fact that two individuals were deceased, which is terrible,
- 17:57Speaker 6: this also could have had way more victims when you
- 18:00Speaker 6: see that the crowd's present, and I think the public
- 18:03Speaker 6: had a very strong interest in making sure that this
- 18:06Speaker 6: was dealt with very quickly so that people could feel
- 18:09Speaker 6: safe at these second line events again, which again is
- 18:11Speaker 6: one of the things that make our city great and unique.
- 18:14Speaker 2: Another thing regarding a shooting in a large group like
- 18:20Speaker 2: at a festival or a parade, and has its own
- 18:23Speaker 2: set of difficulties in finding the shooter. How did you
- 18:29Speaker 2: find the shooter? Was there just one shooter or more?
- 18:33Speaker 6: Yeah, in my incident there was one shooter, And you're right,
- 18:36Speaker 6: hugely chaotic scenes generally, you know everybody is watching and
- 18:42Speaker 6: it's broad daylight. But because there's so many people involved,
- 18:45Speaker 6: it can be difficult for anyone to sequence exactly what
- 18:47Speaker 6: happened or who was responsible. So we had to get
- 18:51Speaker 6: at it a different way in this case. And again
- 18:53Speaker 6: this is one of those cases that's still in court,
- 18:55Speaker 6: so it's not something I can get too into the
- 18:57Speaker 6: nitty gritty, But it again got its own moment them
- 19:00Speaker 6: and one thing led to another and we were able
- 19:02Speaker 6: to make two arrests related to the homicide.
- 19:04Speaker 2: Part of Detective five is refusing to comment on the
- 19:08Speaker 2: facts of the case so as not to tank the investigation. I, however,
- 19:15Speaker 2: can comment on the facts.
- 19:17Speaker 1: Listen.
- 19:18Speaker 4: Investigators learn of an ongoing feud between Westwego and Marrero
- 19:23Speaker 4: where Shawn and Malachi's neighborhood. Surveillance footage and phone records
- 19:26Speaker 4: placed Curtis Gray on the Almanaster Bridge at the time
- 19:29Speaker 4: of the shootings, and recovered shell casings matchic gun registered
- 19:33Speaker 4: to his mother. There is enough evidence to charge Gray
- 19:36Speaker 4: with Rashawn and Malachi's murders, and his mother, Ashley Gray,
- 19:40Speaker 4: is charged as an accessory for trying to dispose of
- 19:42Speaker 4: the gun and fabricate an alibi for her son.
- 19:50Speaker 2: Crime stories with Nancy Gray.
- 19:56Speaker 1: You know, a Detective five.
- 19:57Speaker 2: It's sometimes for some people to blame a mother who
- 20:02Speaker 2: is trying to help her defendant son. So let's step
- 20:07Speaker 2: away from the exact case and talk about that bond
- 20:11Speaker 2: in general. Very often prosecutors and cops are attacked for
- 20:17Speaker 2: pursuing a mother or father.
- 20:20Speaker 1: Who's trying to protect their child.
- 20:22Speaker 2: But on the other side of the pendulum is the
- 20:26Speaker 2: victim and the victim's mother and father. So when you
- 20:30Speaker 2: get a mother, for instance, trying to get rid of
- 20:34Speaker 2: evidence to clear.
- 20:35Speaker 1: The son, you got to go after them.
- 20:38Speaker 2: And sometimes that's a hard thing to do, to go
- 20:40Speaker 2: after somebody's mother.
- 20:41Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, and understandably the motive for that is
- 20:46Speaker 6: something a lot of parents can relate to. But I
- 20:48Speaker 6: think you know, as a parent, we all have a
- 20:51Speaker 6: point at which you know, you need to draw a
- 20:54Speaker 6: line and say, no, I am not supporting my child
- 20:56Speaker 6: if xyz. And there needs to be community buy in
- 21:00Speaker 6: for a lot of these homicides. When you have you know,
- 21:03Speaker 6: whole groups or families sort of circling and protecting defendants
- 21:07Speaker 6: in some of these cases, it can be hugely problematic.
- 21:09Speaker 6: So you need community buy in and everyone to be
- 21:12Speaker 6: invested and concerned about the outcomes of these investigations.
- 21:15Speaker 1: I think.
- 21:15Speaker 6: Our District attorney Jason Williams addressed this issue very well
- 21:18Speaker 6: regarding this case specifically in a press conference where you
- 21:22Speaker 6: know enough is enough at some point, and if you
- 21:24Speaker 6: provide aid to shelter or seek to obfuscate an investigation,
- 21:29Speaker 6: even for a loved one, you are potentially culpable.
- 21:32Speaker 2: Detective five. Of course, as you know, the state, the
- 21:37Speaker 2: prosecution never has to prove motive. The state is not
- 21:43Speaker 2: expected to get into the mind of a murder defendant
- 21:46Speaker 2: and poke around like you're in Granny's attic and find
- 21:49Speaker 2: the motive. However, when you go to trial, very often
- 21:54Speaker 2: the jury will want a motive. Here's a good example
- 22:01Speaker 2: the Alexi Murdog double murder trial that went down in
- 22:04Speaker 2: South Carolina.
- 22:06Speaker 1: His wife and son were murdered.
- 22:09Speaker 2: And I'm sure that jurors may have wondered, well, why
- 22:12Speaker 2: would a dad murder the wife and the son. I mean,
- 22:15Speaker 2: we see domestic homicides all the time, or spouse kill spouse,
- 22:19Speaker 2: but the wife and the son. The state did not
- 22:22Speaker 2: have to prove the motive, but they did. An upcoming
- 22:26Speaker 2: divorce would have called for financial legal discovery, and Alexi
- 22:33Speaker 2: Murdog's multimillion dollar con on his clients, his family, his wife,
- 22:39Speaker 2: and many others. His law partners would have been found out.
- 22:43Speaker 2: So his answer, kill them both. Here's another example, Brian Coburger.
- 22:50Speaker 2: I'm sure you're familiar with the quadruple homicide in Idaho
- 22:54Speaker 2: where the defendant, Brian Coburger, had no ostensible connection, no
- 22:58Speaker 2: link to the victims.
- 23:01Speaker 1: So what would be the motive?
- 23:03Speaker 2: That would have been a hurdle for the state. The
- 23:06Speaker 2: defense could have argued, he doesn't even know these people,
- 23:08Speaker 2: why would you believe he came in in the middle
- 23:10Speaker 2: of the night and kill them slaughtered them. Well, as
- 23:14Speaker 2: it turned out, he was a criminology student and was
- 23:17Speaker 2: obsessed with murder and what it would feel like and
- 23:22Speaker 2: what would go through the mind of the killer.
- 23:24Speaker 1: He wanted to feel it, and he did.
- 23:27Speaker 2: And I'm very interested in your second line homicide case
- 23:32Speaker 2: because no one knew that there was a feud going on,
- 23:37Speaker 2: and the defense could have argued, hey, they pulled my
- 23:40Speaker 2: guy off a bridge, and now they're trying to pin
- 23:43Speaker 2: this on him. You would never have known what was
- 23:48Speaker 2: behind it. You had to get to the feud, the motive.
- 23:53Speaker 2: How difficult is it for you to ferret out a
- 23:56Speaker 2: motive in your cases, Detective Fife.
- 24:00Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a good question, and for sure you were
- 24:02Speaker 6: right to characterize motive not always being available to us.
- 24:07Speaker 6: It can be seen sometimes as like a bonus and
- 24:09Speaker 6: our investigations. But if the facts of the incident speak
- 24:12Speaker 6: for themselves, and if it's clear that this person did it,
- 24:15Speaker 6: then a lot of times we don't need to know
- 24:16Speaker 6: what was going on in their heads, as you said,
- 24:19Speaker 6: but sometimes you get clues to it conversations the person's
- 24:22Speaker 6: had with other people. We get a lot of help
- 24:24Speaker 6: from social media, sometimes phone record history and such. And
- 24:29Speaker 6: in this case, the second Line incident, there was some
- 24:33Speaker 6: contextual stuff that we unraveled digitally that sort of did
- 24:37Speaker 6: back up what we have been hearing on the street,
- 24:39Speaker 6: as it were.
- 24:40Speaker 2: And again, if I don't want to push you on
- 24:41Speaker 2: any facts sensitive to the case, because that case is penning,
- 24:46Speaker 2: and if you were to comment on it any of
- 24:48Speaker 2: those facts, that could be a problem, and I don't
- 24:51Speaker 2: want you to have a problem. Let's move on to
- 24:54Speaker 2: another case, but one of your cases. But before that,
- 24:57Speaker 2: I want to go back to the five meter, the
- 25:01Speaker 2: tally that is on big whiteboard that other people with
- 25:05Speaker 2: a homicide unit are keeping on your cases. You're not
- 25:09Speaker 2: worried that, Mike, Jinx. You let me guess you're not superstitious.
- 25:14Speaker 6: Well so, just as a point of clarification, that whiteboard
- 25:17Speaker 6: exists in our public affairs office and not in homicide
- 25:22Speaker 6: per se. But yeah, there's a lot of superstition in
- 25:27Speaker 6: the field policing in general, but in homicide in particular.
- 25:31Speaker 6: We talk a lot about the homicide gods and what
- 25:33Speaker 6: you've done to anger them and which resulted in this
- 25:36Speaker 6: terrible case you've.
- 25:37Speaker 5: Been given sometimes.
- 25:39Speaker 6: But yeah, again I need to take the opportunity to
- 25:42Speaker 6: praise my homicide unit.
- 25:44Speaker 5: In general.
- 25:45Speaker 6: We have I think an eighty percent clearance rate this year,
- 25:48Speaker 6: which is very high as I understand it nationally. But
- 25:52Speaker 6: we're looking for any source of like enthusiasm or motivation
- 25:57Speaker 6: a lot of the times, very supportive of one another
- 26:00Speaker 6: successes and reaching out to try and provide help whenever
- 26:03Speaker 6: somebody seems to be faltering and you know, keeping track
- 26:07Speaker 6: of a clearance streak. Yeah, that that might be seen
- 26:11Speaker 6: as a potential jinx. But again I guess it can
- 26:13Speaker 6: be something that you know, provides some enthusiasm and motivation.
- 26:17Speaker 1: You know, I have found that like baseball players.
- 26:22Speaker 2: I was extremely superstitious during every trial, and I would
- 26:28Speaker 2: stick to certain behavior, stick to certain rituals before I
- 26:34Speaker 2: would go to trial every single trial. Now, I don't
- 26:40Speaker 2: know if it's too personal, but do you have superstitions
- 26:45Speaker 2: that you follow in your investigations?
- 26:49Speaker 6: I don't. I guess some kind of boring in that regard.
- 26:51Speaker 6: I'm not a very superstitious person.
- 26:53Speaker 5: I do.
- 26:55Speaker 6: I find that the best cure for any anxiety about
- 26:59Speaker 6: a case to just can't like dive into the material itself.
- 27:02Speaker 6: If you spend hours going over something before you have
- 27:05Speaker 6: to appear in court, that can kind of calm me down.
- 27:08Speaker 6: Nothing's worse than just going into something feeling unprepared. But
- 27:13Speaker 6: beyond that, you know, no, there's no there's.
- 27:14Speaker 1: No real worst feeling unprepared.
- 27:17Speaker 2: Oh two never, never have you ever watched someone work
- 27:23Speaker 2: that's unprepared.
- 27:24Speaker 1: It's the worst you just see. It's like a slow
- 27:26Speaker 1: motion train wreck.
- 27:28Speaker 6: Yeah, you need to be master of your your own case,
- 27:32Speaker 6: to sort of be be the single best source of
- 27:36Speaker 6: that narrative and everything that was done, have an answer
- 27:38Speaker 6: for everything. For sure, we all get caught off guard.
- 27:41Speaker 6: But I guess you want to try and you know,
- 27:42Speaker 6: mitigate that and just be the guy who knows everything
- 27:45Speaker 6: about this incident that can be done.
- 27:47Speaker 1: Which leads me to the thon view case. Well I
- 27:52Speaker 1: shall though, Oh no, are you my sale? That's no
- 27:59Speaker 1: way good.
- 28:02Speaker 2: She's gonna be a liar.
- 28:04Speaker 4: In the final hours of twenty twenty four, Ton Vu
- 28:07Speaker 4: tends her supermarket, a pillar of the Nola Vietnamese community
- 28:10Speaker 4: since she opened thirty years ago, but three customers are
- 28:13Speaker 4: seeking more than groceries. Ton held at gunpoint while the
- 28:17Speaker 4: thieves emptied the register and pocket cigarettes. When Ton fights back,
- 28:21Speaker 4: she's shot and left for dead. Her killers quickly brought
- 28:24Speaker 4: to justice. Angenou, Henny Davis, Adrian Harris, and Nathaniel Carpenter
- 28:29Speaker 4: all charged in the fatal robbery, Carpenter confessing to the crime.
- 28:33Speaker 2: That original sound from our friends at Fox eight Detective five,
- 28:37Speaker 2: what happened to than View?
- 28:40Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a tough case.
- 28:41Speaker 2: Again.
- 28:41Speaker 6: We try not to qualify any of our murders, you know,
- 28:44Speaker 6: none are any better or worse than any others. But
- 28:49Speaker 6: ms Vu was sort of a fixture of the Vietnamese
- 28:51Speaker 6: community in the New Orleans East area and was a
- 28:54Speaker 6: longtime owner of a convenience store at that area that
- 28:57Speaker 6: had stood the test of time. Other businesses opened and closed.
- 29:00Speaker 6: That store has has been around for as long as
- 29:03Speaker 6: many people can remember it. And this is sort of
- 29:05Speaker 6: just one of those senseless, you know, botched robberies as
- 29:08Speaker 6: we understand it. Again, this is another one that is
- 29:11Speaker 6: still in court proceedings. But you had the right of it,
- 29:14Speaker 6: as you explained that there were three people charged with.
- 29:17Speaker 2: Us, Detective five, I don't like what you just said.
- 29:23Speaker 2: You refer to the murder of than Vu as a
- 29:29Speaker 2: botched robbery. I don't like that terminology going forward, because
- 29:36Speaker 2: somehow it lessens the degree of intent to have a
- 29:43Speaker 2: group of men enter a grocery store and confront an unarmed,
- 29:49Speaker 2: defenseless female and in order to rob her and she
- 29:56Speaker 2: got shot.
- 29:57Speaker 1: Like what, the gun just went off on its own.
- 29:59Speaker 1: That was big accident. I botched that bs. That is
- 30:04Speaker 1: an intentional murder.
- 30:06Speaker 2: Under the law, the time for formation of intent can
- 30:11Speaker 2: be as brief as a twinkling of a moment, the
- 30:14Speaker 2: blink of an eye, much less in time it takes
- 30:17Speaker 2: to raise the gun and pull the trigger.
- 30:19Speaker 1: That was intentional.
- 30:22Speaker 2: And I take umbrage at anyone describing as, oh, it
- 30:30Speaker 2: was a botched robbery.
- 30:32Speaker 1: She's dead wrong. They pulled the trigger.
- 30:37Speaker 6: Right, and it's no less terrible the context or the
- 30:42Speaker 6: motive behind it. But that's just I suppose, in the business,
- 30:45Speaker 6: one of the ways in which we would describe a
- 30:46Speaker 6: certain type of incident. But you're right that you know
- 30:49Speaker 6: that just as culpable as any other homicide, whether it
- 30:53Speaker 6: was a robbery or somebody that you just loathed and
- 30:55Speaker 6: wanted to put out of this world, just as bad.
- 30:59Speaker 1: Hey five, you know what hurts me?
- 31:01Speaker 2: On top of dealing with crime victims, in my line
- 31:06Speaker 2: of business, it was always a violent felony either homicide,
- 31:12Speaker 2: family left behind, rape victims, childless station victims are some victims,
- 31:19Speaker 2: but it made it worse.
- 31:21Speaker 1: For me when.
- 31:25Speaker 2: The victim would come from a part of our world
- 31:30Speaker 2: that is not really represented as.
- 31:33Speaker 1: It should be.
- 31:34Speaker 2: It could be a minority, it could be a woman,
- 31:39Speaker 2: an infant in this case, the Asian community, many of
- 31:45Speaker 2: them not advocated for as strongly as for other people, right,
- 31:55Speaker 2: And so it kind of heaps insult to injury, pain
- 32:00Speaker 2: on pain. When I saw nun vu Von's husband speaking
- 32:07Speaker 2: and he said I saw the blood on her head,
- 32:08Speaker 2: I told myself, there's no way she can still be alive.
- 32:14Speaker 2: They must sometimes feel like no one cares about them.
- 32:22Speaker 2: Do you ever hear that from minorities or women?
- 32:28Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure. I mean the data is out there.
- 32:30Speaker 6: There are certain demographics that are affected more by violent crime,
- 32:34Speaker 6: and those groups are it's really important to make inroads
- 32:38Speaker 6: with them and sort of establish some trust. And that
- 32:41Speaker 6: can be hard when you know, certain groups don't feel
- 32:46Speaker 6: like they've had the support of police or the colinal
- 32:48Speaker 6: justice system in general in the past. So you have
- 32:51Speaker 6: to sort of find a way to show somebody you
- 32:53Speaker 6: do care and you are invested and look, I'm here
- 32:57Speaker 6: to help, not to hinder, you know, not just write
- 33:01Speaker 6: people off, because maybe that's what they've been getting up
- 33:04Speaker 6: until now.
- 33:05Speaker 1: Did they defive?
- 33:06Speaker 2: The vast, vast majority of victims that I represented in
- 33:10Speaker 2: felony court were women, children, and minorities, and they felt
- 33:19Speaker 2: like nobody cared about them.
- 33:22Speaker 1: And that nobody would fight for.
- 33:24Speaker 2: Them, and that nobody cared about their cases. So on
- 33:27Speaker 2: top of trying to investigate and prosecute the case, I
- 33:32Speaker 2: felt this burden of trying to convince them that someone
- 33:36Speaker 2: did care. That's a big burden that you are now
- 33:41Speaker 2: carrying and I want to talk about another case that
- 33:45Speaker 2: you handle, which is dear to my heart, the case
- 33:48Speaker 2: of Raven Francis.
- 33:51Speaker 4: I missed my mama a lot.
- 33:53Speaker 7: She's pretty funny.
- 33:54Speaker 1: She was a nice person. She loved us very much.
- 33:57Speaker 1: She would do anything for us, and she will always
- 33:59Speaker 1: be with me.
- 34:00Speaker 4: Raven Francis, a mom of four, enjoys one of her
- 34:03Speaker 4: first nights out since welcoming her youngest six months ago.
- 34:07Speaker 4: Raven and friends head to the Shamrock, but an argument
- 34:09Speaker 4: breaks out with another group and the friends try to
- 34:12Speaker 4: escape in their car. As they pull out, gunfire erupts.
- 34:15Speaker 4: Raven's sister is just grazed, but Raven is shot in
- 34:18Speaker 4: the head, bleeding profusely, and the resulting panic, the driver
- 34:22Speaker 4: clips a fire hydrant, flipping the car. By the time
- 34:25Speaker 4: first responders can get everyone out, Raven is gone.
- 34:28Speaker 1: That was from my friends at Fox eight Crime Stories
- 34:38Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace.
- 34:42Speaker 2: I think another issue and I want to find out
- 34:45Speaker 2: how you deal with at five or the tangental murder victims,
- 34:51Speaker 2: the collateral victims of murder, like Raven's ten year old
- 34:56Speaker 2: little boy. I mean, okay, when the twins were born,
- 35:02Speaker 2: they were extremely premature in my children, and I would
- 35:05Speaker 2: pray every night, Lord, please just help us out of
- 35:07Speaker 2: the hospital.
- 35:07Speaker 1: Please help us out of the hospital. Okay, we got
- 35:09Speaker 1: out of the hospital.
- 35:10Speaker 2: Then it went to Lord, please let me get them stabilized.
- 35:13Speaker 2: Let me get them eating lucy weigh two pounds five
- 35:17Speaker 2: two pounds, as small as a kit.
- 35:19Speaker 1: All right.
- 35:20Speaker 2: Then we get to one, you know, like, Lord, please
- 35:22Speaker 2: help me get help me get them into school. Just
- 35:25Speaker 2: let me live long enough now is let me get
- 35:27Speaker 2: them through high school. There it's going to be college.
- 35:29Speaker 2: Let me get them, help me, help them find their
- 35:31Speaker 2: I mean, it never ends so for a mother to
- 35:34Speaker 2: be wrenched away from her children, and this little boy
- 35:38Speaker 2: just ten years old. I mean, when you get in
- 35:42Speaker 2: your car and you leave the crime scene. There were
- 35:46Speaker 2: times I'd have to pull over on the side of
- 35:48Speaker 2: the road and just sit there and try to process
- 35:51Speaker 2: all the suffering one bullet caused.
- 35:55Speaker 1: How do you deal with that?
- 35:58Speaker 6: Yeah? Sure, there's almost a little bit of like survivor's
- 36:02Speaker 6: guilt in this job sometimes if you let yourself really
- 36:05Speaker 6: think about it, like what right do I have to
- 36:07Speaker 6: be unaffected.
- 36:08Speaker 5: By violence like this?
- 36:09Speaker 6: You know, when you go home and if you have kids,
- 36:12Speaker 6: like hug your kid after something like this and just
- 36:15Speaker 6: you know, feel it. But yeah, you're right that so
- 36:22Speaker 6: many are affected by these murders beyond just a victim.
- 36:24Speaker 6: And that doesn't really always clear immediately, but as you
- 36:28Speaker 6: start talking to family, you establish that relationship, it really
- 36:31Speaker 6: becomes evident. And then you know, these cases take years
- 36:34Speaker 6: in court. Sometimes I'll show up to court and I'll
- 36:36Speaker 6: see a kid that's grown up, like hugely in the interim,
- 36:39Speaker 6: and it, like you said, it really just hits you
- 36:42Speaker 6: that this timeline that this child is going to live,
- 36:45Speaker 6: you know, their whole life and grow up in all
- 36:46Speaker 6: these milestones without a parent. It's hard to stomach, especially
- 36:50Speaker 6: once you have kids of your own.
- 36:52Speaker 2: We were just showing photos of Raven Francis, a mom
- 36:55Speaker 2: of four renched away from four children.
- 36:59Speaker 1: And then there is a teen girl, Leah Perry.
- 37:03Speaker 4: Leah Perry, seventeen, is the latest victim in a string
- 37:06Speaker 4: of drive by shootings. Leah, mom to five month old Peyton,
- 37:10Speaker 4: was clearly not the shooter's intended target. Surveillance footage shows
- 37:13Speaker 4: a newer model Infinity with no plate in dark tint,
- 37:17Speaker 4: pull up to the teen and fire several shots. Detective
- 37:20Speaker 4: Fife digs up more video of the alleged driver wearing
- 37:23Speaker 4: a distinct pair of striped red pants. The same exact
- 37:26Speaker 4: pair Kenn Salisbury posts photos in with a gun tucked
- 37:30Speaker 4: in the waistband. Salisbury, already behind bars for two other shootings,
- 37:34Speaker 4: charged with an additional count of murder.
- 37:37Speaker 1: So five, I'm not going to ask you to comment
- 37:39Speaker 1: on the facts of the case. I'll do it.
- 37:41Speaker 2: Idiot, idiot, So he's posting online the red striped pants
- 37:46Speaker 2: with a gun stuck down the pants.
- 37:49Speaker 1: I had a guy that wore a.
- 37:51Speaker 2: Red leather ensemble the night he gunned somebody down dead.
- 37:57Speaker 1: He was a dope lord.
- 37:59Speaker 2: He came to court some idiot, another idiot, there's so
- 38:03Speaker 2: many to pick from.
- 38:04Speaker 1: Gave him a bond. Five. What did he wear on
- 38:09Speaker 1: day one of court? The red ensemble. I was so happy.
- 38:14Speaker 2: I stood behind him and like was literally pointing to
- 38:17Speaker 2: him in front of the jury. So sometimes they throw
- 38:24Speaker 2: you a bone. Heaven just drops a fact in your
- 38:28Speaker 2: lap for you to run with those red striped pants.
- 38:31Speaker 1: I'm sure that's something you'll never forget. Five.
- 38:35Speaker 2: I know you have to leave the studio and get
- 38:37Speaker 2: back to the streets, but I want to understand how.
- 38:43Speaker 1: You deal with a crushing case load.
- 38:47Speaker 2: I remember I had been on trial for about three
- 38:49Speaker 2: weeks straight, and I would take all my evidence, all
- 38:54Speaker 2: my files with me.
- 38:56Speaker 1: I would carry them around on rollers.
- 38:59Speaker 2: And those giants postal white plastic boxes that sit around
- 39:03Speaker 2: the courthouse and the mail people leave and stack them
- 39:06Speaker 2: up and take them back and forth to my car
- 39:08Speaker 2: after court because I didn't want to leave them anywhere
- 39:11Speaker 2: for them to be tampered with. Long story short, I
- 39:13Speaker 2: wasn't back in my office for about two weeks.
- 39:16Speaker 1: I just go straight to the courtroom. That said.
- 39:20Speaker 2: When I got back to my office there was still
- 39:22Speaker 2: a jug of milk in there that I had left
- 39:24Speaker 2: there two weeks before. Uneaten Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and every
- 39:32Speaker 2: other day the Indictment Division Record the court records would
- 39:37Speaker 2: bring in new files while I was on trial, and
- 39:40Speaker 2: the stag I had gotten so tall on my desk
- 39:44Speaker 2: it had fallen over like an accordion and started going
- 39:48Speaker 2: down the side of my desk.
- 39:49Speaker 1: When I walked back in, I'm like, how am I
- 39:53Speaker 1: going to keep up?
- 39:55Speaker 2: And then I realized I couldn't, So I just took
- 39:58Speaker 2: the next homicide CA and started working, because that's the
- 40:02Speaker 2: only thing I need to do after I threw away
- 40:05Speaker 2: the milk and the Krispy Kreams.
- 40:07Speaker 1: But how do you deal with a crushing caseload?
- 40:13Speaker 6: Yeah, I can totally relate to that, and it's, you know,
- 40:17Speaker 6: the caseload itself. You're right to is just focus on
- 40:20Speaker 6: the task at hand and then sort of juggle some
- 40:22Speaker 6: time and bounce back to other cases when you can.
- 40:26Speaker 6: But beyond that, it's you know, when you don't solve
- 40:28Speaker 6: these they continue to follow you and they haunt you,
- 40:33Speaker 6: and the families parents of those cases will call, you know,
- 40:37Speaker 6: sometimes weekly for an update, and you have to tell
- 40:40Speaker 6: them this parent every week for years that there are
- 40:44Speaker 6: no updates on the case, I'm sorry, and that can
- 40:47Speaker 6: that sort of collects and it's like more of a
- 40:50Speaker 6: burden on your shoulders every year you do this job.
- 40:53Speaker 6: So it's about not giving in to apathy's cynicism or
- 40:57Speaker 6: just treating it like it's an assembly line, you know,
- 40:59Speaker 6: try to maintain that whatever optimism you can and not
- 41:03Speaker 6: come up with any dramatic conclusions about the nature of
- 41:05Speaker 6: mankind or.
- 41:06Speaker 5: Anything like that.
- 41:07Speaker 6: And then beyond that, everybody has their organizational tricks. You
- 41:10Speaker 6: have to really know how you work and what makes
- 41:13Speaker 6: you effective as an investigator, what your weak points might be,
- 41:17Speaker 6: and just try to tread with water and hope for
- 41:20Speaker 6: a time when the murder rate is down.
- 41:23Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting to me five well, so many things,
- 41:26Speaker 2: but we always hear about police conspiracies. For instance, that
- 41:31Speaker 2: Lapdate framed OJ Simpson.
- 41:33Speaker 1: That's a really good example.
- 41:36Speaker 2: And my experience, I was inundated, like a tidal wave
- 41:42Speaker 2: after wave after wave.
- 41:44Speaker 1: Of new cases.
- 41:46Speaker 2: I didn't have time to even think about framing somebody.
- 41:51Speaker 2: I could hardly keep my nose above water handling all
- 41:54Speaker 2: the cases I was given. Right, what do you what
- 41:58Speaker 2: is your reaction? And yeah, I know they're dirty cops.
- 42:01Speaker 2: I know that they're there. But all the theories that,
- 42:06Speaker 2: for instance, there's a theory right now that Brian Coberger
- 42:09Speaker 2: was fryed.
- 42:10Speaker 1: Really he just played guilty. I don't get it.
- 42:14Speaker 2: What's your response when everyone points back on the police.
- 42:19Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think not with that, not totally
- 42:22Speaker 6: without justification to be suspicious of the criminal justice system.
- 42:26Speaker 6: Sometimes if you go back and look at our history, yeah,
- 42:28Speaker 6: there are plenty of incidents of you know, egregious actions
- 42:32Speaker 6: by many of our you know, DA's police. But that said,
- 42:38Speaker 6: one of the frustrating things about this line of work
- 42:40Speaker 6: is that the systems often seen as like this monolithic thing,
- 42:44Speaker 6: like you know, they're There are so many different departments,
- 42:47Speaker 6: all with varying levels of oversight and different relationships to
- 42:52Speaker 6: their communities that it feels sometimes unfair if something happens
- 42:57Speaker 6: in you know, Oklahoma, and then the community here in
- 43:01Speaker 6: New Orleans now loses trust in police. And it's a
- 43:06Speaker 6: hard thing to sort of to pitch to the people
- 43:07Speaker 6: that know we're different.
- 43:09Speaker 5: Because you know we're not.
- 43:10Speaker 6: Then I'm a person, We're owned department, Please trust us.
- 43:15Speaker 6: But when police are all in uniform and sort of
- 43:18Speaker 6: seeing as the same thing, yeah, those a lot of
- 43:21Speaker 6: those scandals sort of follow all departments in the country.
- 43:25Speaker 6: It's sort of like we were all in this together
- 43:26Speaker 6: as police. Don't screw it up for the rest of
- 43:28Speaker 6: us by doing something awful.
- 43:30Speaker 1: You know.
- 43:31Speaker 2: Five, When I heard about all the specials about you
- 43:37Speaker 2: and your solve rates so far knock on web product,
- 43:42Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect. I'm glad to know
- 43:46Speaker 2: that you're not a show horse. You are a workhorse,
- 43:53Speaker 2: and I'm very proud.
- 43:58Speaker 1: That you are humble. I notice you never take credit,
- 44:03Speaker 1: and you're right.
- 44:04Speaker 2: You wouldn't be where you are if it wasn't for
- 44:08Speaker 2: what they are doing.
- 44:10Speaker 1: It's a team.
- 44:12Speaker 2: I would never have won a single case if it
- 44:14Speaker 2: weren't for my investigator, Earnest, trudging out in the cold
- 44:18Speaker 2: and the rain, sometimes of snow, going through crack houses
- 44:22Speaker 2: and whorehouses and strip bars.
- 44:24Speaker 1: And you name it, trying to find witnesses.
- 44:27Speaker 2: Combing through a shooting scene for any ballistics left behind
- 44:32Speaker 2: up at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock.
- 44:34Speaker 1: In the morning.
- 44:35Speaker 2: I could never have done it without him, right, So
- 44:41Speaker 2: I really appreciate you saying that it's your unit, and
- 44:47Speaker 2: you just happen to be in the chair right now
- 44:49Speaker 2: talking about these cases. I wish you the very very best,
- 44:56Speaker 2: and you're ongoing struggle against the violent crime and one
- 45:01Speaker 2: of my favorite cities, New Orleans. God bless you and
- 45:06Speaker 2: stay safe to take to Fife. And thank you for
- 45:09Speaker 2: your time.
- 45:10Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
- 45:12Speaker 5: a pleasure.
- 45:15Speaker 2: We stop now and we remember an American hero, Sergeant
- 45:18Speaker 2: Thomas DuRane el Reno, PD, Oklahoma, killed in the line
- 45:22Speaker 2: of duty after fourteen years leaving behind a grieving wife
- 45:27Speaker 2: and children with no dad. American hero Sergeant Thomas Durant
- 45:34Speaker 2: Nancy Grace signing off