Re: 6/1/00 - The Missing Captain
The Missing Captain
Hit & Run
By Paul Bass
Published 06/01/00
Sometimes you can determine a key player in a coverup by seeing whose name doesn't show up in the news.
Take the scandal tearing apart New Haven's police department. A grand jury is looking into why cops hid crucial evidence in an investigation into the 1996 murder of a North Haven man, reportedly in New Haven.
Until this past week, the name of a central figure--Capt. Brian Sullivan, chief of detectives and the man responsible for New Haven's end of the (non-)investigation--rarely showed up prominently, if at all, in other media accounts pointing fingers at who may be responsible for this outrage.
Sullivan, by dint of his position as press spokesman on key crimes and his genial manner, has developed the department's coziest relationships with journalists.
But the dubious excuses that have dominated coverage of the scandal--leaving Sullivan out of the picture--have imploded. This week, the scandal crashed directly on the head of the 24-year department veteran, whom Chief Melvin Wearing suspended indefinitely with pay Tuesday.
Sullivan's once loyal deputy, Sgt. Ed Kendall, also got suspended.
Local newspapers (including this one) previously reported on a portion of a jaw-dropping statement Kendall gave the department's internal affairs bureau: that he simply "forgot" he had kept critical evidence in the 1996 murder case in his drawer, unbeknownst to North Haven cops who were leading the investigation. (The evidence: a transcript of an interview with a street source identifying the possible killer, a New Havener named Jose. The tape of that interview has disappeared.)
But last week Kendall decided to stop playing fall guy. He returned to internal affairs last Thursday morning with a private attorney, Joseph Wicklow, to go over the transcript internal affairs had made of its original interview with him. They proceeded to argue for more than two hours over whether Kendall could have his attorney present as internal affairs continued to grill him about the scandal.
Eventually, Wicklow relented. ("I may as well have been practicing law today in Tiananmen Square," he later complained.) Without Wicklow present, Kendall changed his statement, according to to two people close to the case and familiar with the statement. Kendall said Sullivan had never told him to forward the evidence to North Haven. And he said that Sullivan personally ordered him and other detectives to stop working on the case. Sullivan claimed the order came from Chief Mel Wearing--but Kendall never heard that order from Wearing himself.
Sullivan's lawyer, former State's Attorney Jack Kelly, says Sullivan maintains he did ask that the report be forwarded to North Haven. (Kelly represents both Sullivan and Wearing. That won't last long.)
Wearing angrily denies ordering an end to the investigation. One cop close to the case and sympathetic to Sullivan insists Sullivan never made such a claim about the chief. But portions of a transcript of Sullivan's interview with internal affairs, read to the Advocate and reported in the Register, suggest Sullivan did.
To save his career, look for Sulllivan to pull a Bill Clinton. He's parsing.
Clinton claimed he didn't lie in a deposition because "is" didn't necesarrily mean "is." "Sex" didn't necessarily mean "sex."
Look for Sullivan to deny he ever ordered the investigation closed because it wasn't technically a New Haven-led "investigation." North Haven led it. So there was no "investigation" for him to shut down.
Clinton's semantic ruse failed. Now he's losing his lawyer's license. Sullivan won't do much better.
Meanwhile, the Hartford Courant last week suddenly splashed the scandal on page one. The headline and opening paragraphs offered an unsubstantiated story that the trail leads to Lt. Billy White.
The story highlighted a rumor going around the department linking the 1996 murder and its coverup to a separate 1994 murder of White's son and the son's friend by Latin Kings. That friend happened to be the half-brother of Jose, the man identified in the 1998 street source interview as carrying out the 1996 murder--the man New Haven police may be covering up for.
The 31-paragraph story never mentioned Sullivan, the boss in charge of handling the investigation.
The Courant story suggested, without offering evidence, that the 1996 suspect had "ties" to White and may have "provided important information" to help White arrest Latin Kings.
Last week I checked with four key investigators and prosecutors at three different law enforcement agencies who worked on the Latin Kings cases of the mid-'90s. None of them--including Ted Heinrich of the U.S. Attorney's office and retired New Haven detective Frank Roberts--remembers Jose playing any role in their Latin Kings cases. They couldn't even remember knowing of the man's existence.
Sullivan, like most cops involved, chooses not to comment on the case. Despite his low profile, he'll face lots of questions.
Mayor John DeStefano says he has formed a group within the Board of Police Commissioners, led by Chairman Rick Epstein, attorney Jon Einhorn and the Rev. Jerry Streets, to begin working with other city officials on this case. They will examine the failure of supervision. DeStefano himself visited the department last Friday.
"This issue, both based on the rumors and good management practices, begs consideration of supervisory activities," DeStefano says. "Leaving a piece of evidence for a year in a desk, if that's indeed what happened, that's a hard thing to reconcile. Particularly on a murder."
The murder coverup is bad enough. Now, as in many scandals, the coverup of the coverup has taken on its own life--exposing lies, a bumbling internal affairs office and a department adrift. E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
newmassmedia.com |
