REAL Case History: A Sheriff’s Department was called to respond to a suicide in a residence. The responding Deputy asked the husband what had transpired. The husband told the Deputy that he and his wife were having some marital problems and that they were in the process of separating and that his wife was thinking about committing suicide. Based on what the husband told him the Deputy stated the in his report: It appears that the deceased was despondent over her marriage and had threatened to commit suicide. She went into the bathroom closet and put a pillow over her head and appeared to have shot herself in the head area. The reference to her threatening to commit suicide and her alleged despondency was not supported or corroborated by anyone who was interviewed except the husband, who reported that his wife committed suicide. Furthermore, the reference to her putting a pillow over her head and shooting herself is purely speculative and was not based on any crime scene reconstruction or evaluation of the evidence present in the scene. When the First deputy notified the detective he told him that the case was a suicideand that the victim had been upset the last few days because of marital problems according to her husband. It was apparent that the detective bought into the “Suicide Theory” based on the First Officer’s information. My review of this case indicated that the investigator was just “Going-through-the-motions” of an investigation. The detective did not properly document the crime scene. He removed the gun before it was photographed and disturbed the original crime scene. The detective’s report did not contain any independent observations. The detective did not conduct any interviews of the victim’s family or friends nor did he look into the victimology. The detective basically repeated what the First Officer told him and then constructed an expedient conclusion. He classified the case as a Suicide. A coroner’s inquest later ruled that the death was a Homicide.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 02:20:13 +0000
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