Behind the Yellow Tape

by Jarrett Hallcox

  6

  CSI Frappuccino

  SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON

  Seattle, Washington, probably best known these days for Starbucks Coffee, was once known for its lumber and shipbuilding industries. Though Seattle was officially founded in 1851, archaeological evidence has shown that humans have been there since as early as 8000 B.C. The city is surrounded by natural beauty, bordered by Lake Washington and Puget Sound and surrounded by the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade mountain ranges to the east. The city also sits atop an active geological fault known as the Seattle Fault, which was last active in 2001 when a magnitude-6.8 earthquake shook the city. Most people think of rain when they think of Seattle, but the average rainfall is actually one of the lowest in the country. The Seattle Police Department has 1,837 employees; in 2005, the Crime Scene Investigations Unit worked twenty-five murders within its jurisdiction.

  Back in the sixties, Perry Como crooned that “the bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.” And it may be true to those who live and work in the magnificent Emerald City, though we’re not sure how they even remember what color the sky is, considering the cloud cover that seems to always blanket the city. The city of Seattle, Washington, is sandwiched between two mountain chains—the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascades to the east—and it looks out across Puget Sound, where the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean keep the temperatures relatively mild year round. These waters and high mountains keep Seattle vested underneath a layer of marine clouds most of the time. But when the sun does shine and that wonderful blue sky comes into view, Seattle’s remarkable natural wonders are revealed, including the breathtaking and usually snowcapped Mt. Rainier that seems to sit guard over the city. Yet contrary to popular belief, Seattle is not nearly the rainiest city in America—it’s not even close. As a matter of fact, it usually doesn’t even crack the top ten; Mobile, Alabama, takes the number one prize in that category. It is, however, the city that experiences the least amount of sunshine, the cloudiest city in America. This lack of sunshine has contributed to three things Seattle is best known for: serial killers, suicide, and coffee—three very different, yet uniquely related issues. This overtly cloudy area has produced one of the world’s most notorious serial killers in one Gary Ridgway, better known as the Green River Killer, who admitted to killing forty-nine women in and around the Seattle area over the course of more than twenty years.

  The cloudiness has also contributed to Seattle’s being called by some the “Suicide Capital of the World,” where dark days encourage depression, and the large number of bridges invite the depressed to jump off to their ultimate end. The city no longer even mentions suicides in the paper for fear of causing a copycat effect and tempting even more people to jump off bridges.

  Lastly, Seattle is home to the ubiquitous Starbucks—the leading coffee retailer in the entire world. Within the city limits of Seattle are forty-four Starbucks stores, with dozens of other branches owned by the chain dotting various outlets throughout the city. No other city in America needs a pick-me-up like Seattle does, which helps explain why Starbucks and a host of other coffee vendors thrive side by side on virtually every street, serving java to the masses and hopefully helping to medicate those would-be serial killers and potential jumpers.

  Unlike most other areas of the country, here in the Emerald City cops and crooks alike can agree on one thing: a good cup of joe. Invariably, crime scene photo after crime scene photo shows an easily identifiable white-and-green Starbucks cup—in venti size no less—somewhere in the background, lurking under tables, sitting on park benches, or in the hands of an investigator. So much coffee goes down the gullets of Seattleites that we began to think we should propose a forensic study titled The Effects of Coffee on the Smell of Decomposing Flesh, maybe even discovering a new chemical leeching from the body called javarine. But by our last day in Seattle, we found out that we no longer needed to conduct that study. Decomp still smells like decomp no matter how much coffee you drink.

  We had arrived after our cross-country flight just in time to catch NFA graduate Detective Mark Hanf testifying on the stand about a 2006 case—a gang-related shooting. Kevin Monday, the defendant in the case, had gotten into an altercation that turned into a shooting in the middle of the street, where he fired wildly, hitting two people in a car and one on the street. The person shot on the street, Francisco Green, ultimately died of his wounds. Ten fired cartridge casings were among the evidence collected at the crime scene.

  The case was a homicide, but since a fatal shooting had occurred inside the halls of the King County Courthouse in 1995, the entrances and exits of the public courtroom were highly regulated. No one could enter or leave until the judge granted a recess. After sitting outside the courtroom for several minutes, chatting with another NFA graduate, Detective Brian Stampfl, we finally entered the courtroom.

  Crime scene photo from the shooting at Pioneer Square

  in Seattle, Washington.

  COPYRIGHT © BY SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Trial court, real honest-to-goodness trial court, is, well, boring as hell. Atticus Finch, poignantly speaking to a jury and saving Tom Robinson from his demise, is nowhere in sight. We watched our pasty-skinned friend Mark, wearing his trademark fanny pack turned to the front, take sealed envelope after boring sealed envelope; cut it open, careful not to damage what was inside; and display the contents (in this case, fired cartridge casings) to the jury. Multiple cartridges had been collected at the scene, and according to good crime scene technique, each had been packaged in a separate container. After repeating this procedure numerous times, jurors and bailiffs alike were nodding off in their after-lunch coma. Starbucks should consider a kiosk in the courtroom.

  Despite knowing that his life was hanging in the balance by what Mark was showing the jury, the defendant seemed even less interested in what was happening on the stand. (Of course, it might have had something to do with the fact that the entire chain of events had been caught on tape by a street musician who had left his camera on while he had been performing on the street.) The defendant appeared more focused on how he might flee the courtroom, gauging the guards, their guns, and the distance to the door. He sat next to his attorney, slowly turning his chair toward the door and nervously eyeing the guards. Then the anti-drama improved a bit when the prosecutor asked the court for permission to enter the judges’ chambers and retrieve another piece of evidence. What he came back with was the passenger door off a Mazda, riddled with bullet holes. As the twelve men and women craned their necks to see the car door, Mark came down from the witness stand and educated the court on bullet trajectory, discussing each bullet entrance in depth.

  Finally, after all of the evidence had been entered into the trial, it was the defense’s turn to cross-examine Detective Hanf. “You don’t actually do all of the stuff they do on the television show CSI,” the defense attorney began asking Mark. On TV, he said, “They collect evidence, analyze it, and investigate the crime, so why do you call yourselves CSIs?” Mark smiled just a little because of our presence in the courtroom; we had had this very conversation about how invariably the defense’s first course of action nowadays is to cast doubt by referring to the television show CSI. “We call ourselves crime scene investigators because we investigate crime scenes,” the ever-introverted Mark answered, never making eye contact with the defense attorney. At that point, even the judge intervened, commenting tongue in cheek that the popular TV show likely stole the term CSI from police agencies. Everyone in the courtroom sort of chuckled, and the defense attorney’s futile attempt at using the CSI Effect to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors melted right before his eyes.

  It had been three years since we had last visited Mark. On his return from Knoxville, Mark had organized a new mini- crime scene school, and we’d brought a bloodstain course to the Seattle Police Department as a kickoff. In 2003, Mark had come through the academy representing one of the largest cities
in the United States that at the time did not have a dedicated crime scene unit. During his training at the academy, Mark realized that his department needed a dedicated crime scene unit to respond and bring consistency to the investigation of all violent crimes occurring within its jurisdiction. And then on TV one evening in 2006, we both caught a glimpse of a familiar stocky fellow in a white Tyvek suit working a crime scene being broadcast live on CNN. Mark and other NFA alumni, as well as future alumni, were all dressed up in their Michelin Man attire, working the largest and most horrific crime scene the city had seen in the last quarter century—dubbed the “Capitol Hill Massacre”—with their fully dedicated crime scene unit. What had once been an agency many years behind the curve was now benchmarking practices and sharing crime scene skills with agencies across the country. It goes to show that with the right person leading the charge, even in a bureaucracy, a lot can happen in just a few years.

  Mark finally finished testifying for the day. The jurors were removed from the courtroom first, returning to their room in single file while the rest of us stood waiting for the judge to release us. Then, with the jurors safely tucked away behind closed doors, sheriff’s deputies handcuffed the defendant and took him back to his cell. The jury never saw him brought in or taken out in handcuffs. Mark came down from the witness stand to greet us two tired and very weary travelers, and so with two sleepy out-of-towners on his hands, he was forced to take us to Starbucks for a pick-me-up. (Mark is an anomaly in this city—he doesn’t drink coffee, never having acquired a taste for the stuff.) After a good Starbucks drink and a short drive back to our hotel, we crashed for the night, resting up for our first full day with the Seattle crime scene unit.

  The next morning, or as we prefer to call it, the jet-lag-from-hell morning, we found our way down to the CSI Unit and the Police Support Facility of the Seattle Police Department. Seattle’s new CSI Unit is centrally and wisely placed among the department’s other forensic units (Latent Print Unit, Photo Lab, and Video Unit) as well as the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory. As championed by the city’s highly regarded police chief, Chief Kerlikowske, the City of Seattle renovated—what else?—an old Starbucks packaging facility and turned it into one of the best forensic areas we had ever seen. This new building is well equipped, extraordinarily organized, and multifunctional, providing every opportunity to work virtually any type of case.

  One of the most unique aspects of this complex is the vehicle processing bay—the envy of the Pacific Northwest. On average, one car per day arrives into this facility to be processed by either Seattle crime scene investigators or latent print examiners. It has room for dozens of cars, trucks, motor homes, boats, and just about anything that can be driven, floated, or flown. It even has a lift to transport many of these vehicles upstairs for long-term storage on more important cases. Touring the upstairs was similar to visiting one of those weird car museums, like the ones in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, that display cars with their own names and reputations, or cars that Elvis owned or that Hank Williams, Sr., died in. Except here, Mark walked with us down each row, telling us the often terrible stories behind each car, including the one with the missing passenger side door, which was still propped up in the downtown Seattle courtroom as a reminder to the jurors (who eventually found Monday guilty of homicide and sentenced him to sixty-four years).

  Some of the vehicles had been there for years, trace evidence already faded or covered up by a thin dust layer of sediment that had begun to collect on the exteriors. There were old cars, new cars, foreign cars, domestic cars, hoopties, and classics—each with a unique yet tragic story to tell. In one corner of the garage we even came upon a pleasure boat sitting cocked to the side, looking strangely out of place. Mark told us the story behind the boat: It had been involved in an accident with another boat in which several people were hurt and one person was violently killed. As we walked around the side of the boat, we could still see the blood smeared across the bow—another eerie reminder of how quickly and unexpectedly a life can be taken.

  Seattle investigator Mark Hanf examining the car driven by

  one of the victims from the Pioneer Square shooting.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  One of the CSIs who, by default, has become a sort of curator for the crime-car museum is Detective Kevin O’Keefe. Detective O’Keefe is one of those old, stereotypical homicide investigators found in every department. The guy has seen and done it all, lives on caffeine, and acts as if he hates just about everybody. That’s Kevin. Only he acts as if he hates us just a little bit. Kevin spent nearly five years working on the Green River Task Force trying to catch Gary Ridgway back before DNA technology was all the rage. For months, after Ridgway’s eventual capture, members of the task force, including Kevin, searched the Green River area weekend after weekend, along with other wooded clusters in and around Seattle, for the remains of Ridgway’s victims. It took years to recover the pieces of the missing prostitutes that the Green River Killer had considered “throwaways.” He would bury them in groups so he could drive by and relive the moment, but unfortunately he wasn’t that bright (or maybe he was) and claimed to have forgotten where a lot of them were buried. A shackled Ridgway was brought out to an area where Kevin and others had cleared acres of brush looking for bits and pieces of these murdered girls. Many times, the guys, including Kevin, got ribbed, hearing, “Hey Kevin, come over; I’ve got some brush in my backyard you can clear.” But over time, they were rewarded by finding at least some of the remains, though ultimately no one believes that they have all been accounted for.

  As we continued touring the amazing facility, Mark took us to the unit’s staging area. It was immaculately conceived and organized to the hilt—everything had a use and a place. And just like every other place we visited, ingenuity prevailed. Bureaucracies are wrought with a quagmire of impediments, written down in a compendium and usually guarded by a forked-tail person with big, red, pointy horns. Many of these “rules” stem from incidents that no one remembers and probably weren’t big deals anyway. But there they are, on the books, harder to remove than an indigo tattoo. So the CSIs in Seattle improvised on many things, creatively acquiring and paying for items out of their own pockets to make their jobs easier and their performance better. Otherwise, they might still be working out of a scarcely supplied silver van.

  Behind the gates and lockers and other organizational accoutrements hangs the CSI Unit’s shoulder patch, designed by none other than Mark Hanf. It’s just pinned there on a cork-board, without any fanfare (and without any real approval). The patch was created, displayed, worn, and traded proudly by the fledgling unit. The existence and acceptance of the patch by the police department is akin to a rite of passage, making the unit an officially accepted part of the agency.

  Mark conceived the entire unit, creating a survey instrument for other large agencies across the United States in an effort to determine how their departments handled crime scenes. The Seattle CSI Unit’s beginnings were auspicious, with the unit starting out on a six-month trial basis. Mark recruited seasoned veterans to the unit from among interested people from various detective units. He also put together the mini-crime scene investigator school and sent all of the new recruits through it over a period of a few months. The design of the unit was to get experienced investigators with an interest or a penchant for crime scene work to work in the newly formed unit. Many departments don’t have this luxury when creating a crime scene unit, often putting unseasoned cops without much experience into either investigations or crime scene work. An even worse trend around the country is using civilian crime scene technicians who have little or no police experience whatsoever and a sum total of training from a one-hour videotape on how to dust for prints. This is not to say that civilians can’t make excellent crime scene technicians; they most certainly can—as long as they have the requisite training and experience. But taking fresh college grads and putting them on the street is not the wa
y to run a crime scene unit.

  Investigator Mark Hanf shows off the Seattle Police Department’s

  well-stocked crime scene van.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  We have heard of several cases in which an untrained investigator made a leap in logic based on what was presumed to be the situation, relying on simple visual clues and statistical probability rather than on the evidence. For instance, victims of hypothermia can sometimes suffer heart attacks, tearing at their clothes and bare chests because of the pain. To an untrained investigator, it might look like a homicide. But someone with experience will know better. Suicides are another good example. It is a common belief that people who want to kill themselves won’t stab themselves with knives. But they will, and they have. And in a few cases the suicidal person has begun with one knife, sawed at his throat, and then, unsatisfied with the results, moved on to a bigger and sharper knife to finish the job. Again, to an unseasoned investigator, several different blade marks on a victim’s throat might look like foul play was involved, rather than self-inflicted wounds.

  The group Mark amassed for the crime scene unit certainly had that crucial investigative experience. But some administrators of the Seattle Police Department didn’t think the unit, regardless of their experience level, would be busy enough to last six months. Fortunately for Mark and the rest of the team—if unfortunately for Seattle’s crime statistics—they couldn’t have been more wrong. Nowadays, the unit is so busy not only with responding to crime scenes but also performing other administrative duties, such as public presentations and training, they can hardly keep up with all of the casework. And just as in all good bureaucracies, none of the original naysayers can be found. History has been rewritten, and now everybody claims to have always been in favor of the creation of the unit.