Evidence Board (MultiModule Project)

A Case Full of What Was Thought to be Trifles.

          As I arrived to the scene, the local police department had already began their initial investigation. They contaminated the Crime scene in a few ways. First off, they needed to shut the entire place down where no one without proper authority can walk in to see the scene. Next, they let the friends come to the scene to take a look around. Understanding, I noticed that the Police Department in charge of the investigation did not deal with many murders in their small town. The investigation should have began with with a full sweep to see who was on the scene. Next, they should have called for a wounded person or a dead body. After all these steps, the police officer should have taped off the crime scene and waited for the rest of the investigators (a detective, forensics specialist, and their Sheriff) to arrive. However, they did none of these things.

          I noticed the first mistake when I arrived to Mr. Wrights property that there were many of Mrs. Wright's friends on the farm. I quickly got everyone out, and asked if they had touched/contaminated anything. They all quickly answered no, and stated that George Henderson, the county attorney had agreed to let them collect items for Mrs. Wright who was taken in for questioning. I knew that the women were good friends of Mrs. Wright before she married John Wright as i got to the scene, because Henry Peters, the sheriff, told me how Mrs. Hale, one of the women, talked of how she knew how happy Mrs. Wright had been before the marriage she had with John Wright. After finding this out, I knew I had what the witnesses had taken from the crime scene to take to Mrs. Wright.

          I asked the ladies to come back to speak with me. Not knowing that I was going to search the stuff they were taking to Mrs. wright, they brought me some vital evidence. I found in one of the ladies jackets a dead bird that had been obviously strangled. I asked the ladies who found this, and Mrs. Hale busted into tears. She told me, "I found it in Minnie Wright's sowing box..." as she continued to sob. "I didn't mean to take it! I just freaked out!"

          We went back into talking with Mrs. Wright, asking her specifically about her bird. She kept telling us about how John did not like the song that her canary sang each morning when she played with it. She kept referring to her house as a cage while she rocked back and forth in her seat. When the investigators searched Mrs. Wright, they also found a bird's feather in her pocket. This linked Mrs. Wright to our murder.

Further investigation led us to the truth. Mrs. Wright had been investigated and after psychological views, we found out the murder of her bird was by her. Further investigation on the farm showed other animals (chickens, dogs and cats) with the same broken necks. Our psychologist explained that any criminal with the intent to murder may start their killings on smaller, weaker things, then they move up to their initial target. Mrs. Wright admitted to all the killings of the animals. She killed her husband after he beat her one night.

          Mrs Wright was charged with Voluntary Manslaughter - sentenced for 10 years. 5 years if with good behavior.
          Mrs. Hale was charge with Obstruction of Justice. - Sentenced for the maximum of 5 years.  She may get out in 2 years on good behavior.

The Case of Ophelia

Upon reaching the crime scene, we noticed all the death that had occurred in the lives of these people. However, one death in particular took us into question. "Was Ophelia murdered or did she commit suicide?" was the question that my team leading the investigation thought. We brought in Horatio for some questioning, but he seemed to not know that much.

As we investigated the death of Ophelia, we were told by Horatio about a book that Hamlet had been writing and kept that represented all that was going on the night of the deaths and murders. Hamlet had been writing it in the form of a play, and the last parts were written by Horatio to "finish the story." We read over everything in the book, but noticed the lack of detail on Ophelia's death. A woman is dead, and we have hardly any people alive to question. Horatio stated that he did not know much about the situation, and what he did know wasn't helpful to our case.

The part in Hamlet's story that took us by surprise was the queen's involvment in Ophelia's death. The Queen is obviously dead, but we wanted to figure out how we could find the truth rather than assume that the Queen did it. After further look into the crime scene where we found Ophelia, we found a pair of shoes that belonged to the Queen. Now we know that she was there, but did she really kill Ophelia? Looking further into the autopsy, we found sign of struggle on the back of Ophelia's neck. Now we just had to figure out who forced her struggle.

My team went back to the medical examiner's office, but our pathologist could not find the Queen's body. As we approached the bed she was laying in, the pathologist pointed out bloody footprints walking to the bathroom. I got everyone to stand back while i walked in the bathroom with my gun drawn, but no one was in there. There was no trace of her leaving or what happened to her body. This case will now forever be a mystery to our team...

The Case of The Yellow Wallpaper

          Starting with this case, the only true evidence we had was the secret diary our victim, Jane, wrote and the two witnesses who lived with the victim, John and Jennie. The diary started off with many things explaining how she had nervous depression, and it states that John, her husband, was her Physician. We read the diary through for the first time not expecting to find much in it other than an idea of how her home life may have something to do with the case. However, her later writings included that John kept her in her room for long periods through out the day, without leaving the room even after she was telling the other witness, Jennie, and even john that she was seeing stuff in the yellow wallpaper. Thus, we began to look at John as a suspect, including Jennie, who may or may not have been an accomplice.

          After speaking with John we found out that he believed the victim was not taking her medicine (prescribed by and made by him), and that he did not want to move her from that one room because "she was just being irrational." No matter how hard we looked, it didn't seem that we had anything on the two suspects, yet we knew something was going on that they, nor the diary, spoke of. We knew at this point to read over the crime lab's report on our victim's body. The report stated that her body was full of psilocybin, a chemical in Mushrooms that make people hallucinate. Now, we had to see what the drugs were that John had been making for the victim and possibly other patients of his.

          A closer look at these drugs proved to be what we had imagined. This drug was made by John, and Jane was his personal lab monkey. We checked closer into the scene of the crime. John's Lab had many locks on the door leading down, and had vials full of chemicals. Aside from that, ther were dead rats in cages all over, a dead body of someone whom he stole from a grave, and many amounts of bottles of this drug. We also noticed that John was attempting to make the drug air borne, but we weren't sure why. After checking his lab computer, we saw that he had been in touch with Russian military attempting to sell the product once it was in its final state. Now we knew the matter was much more serious than what anyone over the case could have possibly imagined. 

          At this point, I sent officers out to get John and Jennie in for questioning. John came in and fell apart. He cried and told us mid-sob, "I didn't mean for Jane to die... I just wanted to make the money for us to be able to run away... I'm just one of you, living the American Dream my way." We asked him how many other people were involved, but he said it was just his project with him working on it. Later we asked about Jennie. He stated, "Jennie had nothing to do with this... she just needed some extra money, so I hired her as my maid around the house. I promise, Officer Burgus, she's innocent." However, I know as a detective, you cannot just take someone's word. John was sentenced to life in prison and is now a registered terrorist to the United States.

          As we had thought, Jennie said she was clean, and that she had nothing to do with the crime. Jennie stated, "I had no clue about the contents of the lab downstairs, I was just the one who cleaned up the living quarters." Then, I asked to see her key ring. With a puzzled look, she passed them over the table. I asked her if we could take this to test out a theory of mine, and she agreed. Myself and one of the other officers on the case took the keys to the crime scene. We went to the mysterious lab door, and we began to try each key on the door. The third try was the charm. She had a key to the Lab. 

          Once we returned, I questioned why she had a key to the lab, she stated that she had keys to all the doors in the house. "Why would John give you a key to the lab where he was trying to make a terrorist weapon?" I questioned. She sulked down in her seat, and noticed I wasn't just going to give up on the small details of the crime. After the results for the finger printing of the lab came back, the computer keyboard had a small drop of queso dip spilled on the space bar that included Jennie's finger print. Later, we find out that Jennie was a Communication major in college, and she had a minor in Russian. Jennie was the communication between the whole crime, and was sentenced to life in prison as a terrorist along with John. 

The case of "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

          Throughout the years that I have worked on cases, I have not run into a case where someone crossed the path of one of our escaped convicts. In the case of A Good Man is Hard to Find, I found many different pieces of evidence that brought me to a narrow list of suspects. In the beginning, we talked to many family-friends of the family that was brutally and hatefully murdered on the spot. Once we found out that they were going on a vacation and that the Grandmother had already began talking about running into the misfit, we thought that the odds of them running into each other was slim if not close to impossible. However, in an investigation, you cannot rule-out a suspect on the "odds" of things happening. We, me and my squad, analyzed every inch of the crime scene and even looked under the mass amounts of leaves. Once we found a piece of gum, we knew that we could get the DNA off the gum. As we were sending that to the crime lab, we also found many different shotgun shells with finger prints all over them. After many hours of searching for more clues, we hit a stand-still. There was not much else to do other than send in the evidence we have found and wait for it to get back to us.

          A few days later, we got our results. The gum was being chewed by a man named Bobby Lee. Quickly, we ran background checks and got information that he was one of the men caught on camera helping The Misfit escape from jail along with a guy named Hiram. My team and I figured now, "this has to be The Misfit and his crew." We knew now that Bobby Lee had at the very least been there. With this information in mind, we got the analysis of the shotgun shells we had eagerly been waiting to receive. We noticed that Hiram was the one with his finger prints all over it. Now we had probable cause to grab our suspects and begin questioning them.

         We spent weeks trying to find The Misfit's crew, however, we got a call that they got arrested in Atlanta, Georgia trying to rob a bank. Now that we had them in custody, we could question them. After reading them their Miranda Rights, we asked the question everyone wanted to know, "was The Misfit at the crime scene?" After hours of questioning, they seemed to be a tight bunch, and they stuck to their friend and wouldn't say if he had been there. In my profession I've seen many dead people. It is a part of what I do for a living. I've also interrogated many people, yet this one subject, The Misfit, didn't seem to change his emotion from a careless face. I just couldn't understand how someone could brutally murder an entire family, even the little girl whom they left with a hole through her chest cavity. I knew once I placed my then tearing eyes on that little girls body that I had to figure out who did this and why they did it. At this moment in the investigation, I had began to lose hope. The longer I stared into the eyes of a mentally, puzzling suspect, I got even more frustrated. I went back to the stacks of evidence, and there just seemed to be nothing to place him at the scene of the crime.

          I went back to the crime scene checking for anything else that may lead me to evidence placing The Misfit on this old plantation, yet there seemed to be nothing. I walked up to an old cabin up the road from the crime scene that appeared to be unused in several years. I placed a note on the window with my number so that I may ask the owner of the property some questions of who he might have seen on his land. Anxiety began to settle in my chest as I waited on a call for hours. Finally, the owner called, and I, full of excitement in my voice, asked him question after question. Tom Jimmy, the owner of the property and an older man who has been living off the grid for several years, finally stated that he has some vital evidence. After listening I told him to come in and show me what he's talking about. Later, Tom came in and showed me pictures that were taken with deer cameras set up on the trees taking a picture every time there was a movement. Now I had entire flip-books full of how the crime went on. I even had a close up of The Misfit's face in one of them.

          I returned to the questioning room and didn't say a word. I just looked at the man that I now knew was involved in killing a whole innocent family. As I sat down,  with a calm voice I asked, "Sir, I'm going to give you one more chance. Were you involved in the killing that took place on the old plantation?" All The Misfit did was stare at me with a blank stare, until he rolled his eyes and shook his head "no." I then slapped the pictures I had just received from Tom on the table showing him I knew everything that happened. Now I only needed to ask one more question: What was his reasoning? All he could reply with was, "Why not?" I looked him in the eyes telling him that his criminal career is now over. He belongs to the state of Georgia.