Botched Investigations

[PracTz]

Did anyone else watch UM and see cases where you thought the police did boneheaded jobs investigating things?
Case in point- there was this young woman named Cindy(?) who went missing from her office job. .and some months later an unidentified woman called the police to say that she and Cindy were being held hostage by someone living in a house owned by his parents that was right next door to their own house which they stayed absent from for lengthy periods. ..and ALL the police were shown doing was driving around neighborhoods looking at houses then concluding that it was hard to tell where houses were next to each other! Duh!
If I'd been in that investigation, I would have sought out property records and checked which property owners in the city owned two houses next to each other, then checked out the census records for their ages and ages of whatever offspring they listed as living with them and narrowed it down to those with grown sons. .then from THAT list, I'd have had investigators narrow it down further by talking to neighbors of each property owner and asking them about their travel habits and their grown sons' comings and goings. I think THAT might have led to something positive. Does anyone remember if that case was solved?

[CrushedVelvet]

That IS totally stupid. Cops have access to much more info than civilians so why they dont always use their resourses is beyond me. I dont know if its UM or the ways things really happen but I often feel the same way about them being boneheads (giggle)...sometimes i've thought of logical clues to research and all that they never mention and I find myself yelling at the TV set. Maybe the cops are playing dumb, maybe not.

[Kane]

You're referring to the 1981 disappearance of Cynthia Anderson. That's another UM case that sticks in my mind, and it's really spooky considering how she suddenly vanished from her office. Below is a Doe Network profile of her:

http://doenetwork.bravepages.com/287dfoh.html

As for botched investigations, there have been cases profiled on UM that have been undoubtedly mishandled. Not too long ago, I posted messages on this board about the Parents Against Corruption & Cover-up (PACC for short) web site ( http://www.thepacc.org ). It lists some cases that were shown on UM, including (but not limited to): Tommy Burkett, Keith Warren, Jeffrey Digman, and Kathy Fulton Page.

The investigation into the 1991 death of Kathy Fulton Page, in particular, was obviously botched. Her husband, Steve Page, was (and I'm sure still is) a primary suspect. Some blame the mishandling of the case on his personal connections with the local police. At one point during his UM interview, he referred to himself in the third person, saying something to the effect of "Steve Page is not the killer!" He's an arrogant son of a bitch! I think he had something to do with his wife's death.

[mphs95]

PraTz, when I watched the Cynthia Anderson case recently, I thought the same thing! The Toledo Police are morons!

[kadrmas15]

Well there are so many where there are botched investigations in terms of the UM cases. Watching these I am thinking how can the police botch these up? Maybe it is easier for me to say after watching the case and having some clues. However it seems to me too often that the police take a homicide and label it a suicide. I dont know if they do this because they dont want to investigate it to much or if they dont want to draw attention to their town so they label it a suicide just to make the case go away? But watching some of these cases they seem like they are fairly easy to figure out. They arent rocket science. To be honest with you I think a kid in junior high with one of those detective kits they used to make for kids could solve some of these cases better than the investigators. The Westerville, Ohio Police Department botching up the case of Tony Lombardi was one that comes to mind. Another one is Kathy Bonderson. The Eddy County, North Dakota sheriff's department botched that one from the start. I think if the North Dakota State Highway Patrol had been the lead investigator that case would have went much better. I remember the patrol came in to assist the sheriff's department and it just seemed like the investigators from the sheriff's department and the ones from the highway patrol were on two different cases almost that is how different they were. The sheriff's department kept the highway patrol in the dark. Didnt the sheriff send Kathy's body to the Twin Cities in Minnesota for autopsy and didnt even tell the highway patrol until like 5 hours after he sent it? I dont know if that detail is exactly right. I cant remember the town name but it was a small town in Illinois that botched the investigation into the death of Danny Williams. That one was an obvious murder. I remember Danny's dad saying "If they (the cops) spent half the amount of energy that they did it a murder instead of a suicide they would have found out who did it already." There are so many it is kind of scary. You got some agencies that are great investigators and you have some that are bad ones.

[NDAlum2003]

The Tommy Burkett case comes to mind. However, the police seemed to have something to hide. I don't buy their claims that Tommy's parents couldn't admit that his death was a suicide because the evidence showed otherwise.

[Mxy]

Probably the worst botch up by police was the murder of Bob Crane, but then again that wasnt on UM so i guess that doesnt count...

[New Brandon]

Originally Posted by NDAlum2003

The Tommy Burkett case comes to mind. However, the police seemed to have something to hide. I don't buy their claims that Tommy's parents couldn't admit that his death was a suicide because the evidence showed otherwise.

Is that the kid who was a police informant or whatever? I think the police wanted it to be a "suicide" and did not botch it...

[NDAlum2003]

Originally Posted by New Brandon

Is that the kid who was a police informant or whatever? I think the police wanted it to be a "suicide" and did not botch it...

Yes, supposedly he was a DEA informant.

The police botched it in the sense that they tried to rig the circumstances, and then lashed out when Mr. and Mrs. Burkett questioned the discrepancies.

[unsolved88]

One case that I have always thought had a lot of shoddy police work was the murder of Stanley Gryziec.

While the manner of death (homicide) was never in question, the cause of death was a source of controversy. Stanley's wife Esther claimed that she saw a pearl-handled gun lying on the floor as the killers ransacked the house and their son Peter found a bullet shell casing very clearing lying on the carpet, yet the police insisted that Stanley had been killed with a single stab wound to the heart. It wasn't until a second autopsy was performed that it was confirmed that he had been shot. I'm no medical expert, but I would think there would be a huge difference between a knife wound and a gunshot wound.

Also, why were there no records of the original investigators talking to the neighbor Amy Scott (who claimed that she saw a strange man enter and leave the Gryziec home the night of the murder) and local bookstore owner Patsy Peck (who said the two suspects came into her store and talked with her husband.)?

I remember seeing this case seven years ago when I was in sixth grade and even at the age of eleven, I had a feeling that the police were behind everything.

[NDAlum2003]

Yes, the Gryzeic case! It hardly ever is mentioned here and I can't find anything on the Net about it the last time I checked.