Re: 11/2/00 - New Haven Advocate: Disappearing Act II
Hit & Run
By Paul Bass
Published 11/02/00
Once again, someone in the New Haven police department can't find part of a file.
Once again, the file has to do with an unsolved murder.
Once again, the file allegedly last rested with Sgt. Edward Kendall.
Welcome to the latest episode of Adventures in New Haven's Bermuda Triangle, otherwise known as the detective division of the city police department.
This latest case emerges as the city awaits the imminent results of a state grand jury investigation into police misconduct, which covers the same ground in a separate unsolved murder. The new episode raises a host of familiar questions about how much incriminating or otherwise vital information has disappeared into the black hole that apparently lurked in the detective division in the 1990s.
The Advocate learned last week that the department has spent a month looking for a report about the unsolved murder of Jacqueline Shaw, whose body was found at the base of East Rock in October 1990.
The cops were scurrying to comply with an order from the state Freedom of Information Commission. The Advocate went to the FOIC seeking release of a specific part of that file--materials relating to an interview early in the case with a supposed eyewitness, Ovil Ruiz. FOI Commissioner Frederick Hennick ordered the police, over their objections, to produce the entire case file for his private review before he could issue a ruling.
On Oct. 5, a city legal staffer hand-delivered a packet containing the requested documents to Commissioner Hennick. According to city officials, they noted in an index that the packet was missing one document: a "supplemental" statement describing the police interview with Ruiz. The very document the Advocate sought.
Chief Melvin Wearing said on Friday that the packet included the transcript of Ruiz' interview. Wearing said he doesn't know what the supplemental statement said. Typically, such statements describe a police interview, where and how it was conducted, who was involved and what follow-up action was planned.
Wearing did say that Ruiz had approached the cops with information about the murder. According to Wearing, detectives had reservations about Ruiz' credibility. "The information he gave wasn't too trustworthy. It wasn't truthful enough."
That's precisely what the Advocate was trying to find out in seeking the documents. We wanted to see them because of a separate case involving the 1990 double murder of former alderman Ric Turner and his lover.
An FBI investigation concluded that a crooked ex-detective involved in the drug trade framed two men for that murder. Chief Wearing and State's Attorney Michael Dearington insist the right two killers went to jail and have refused to reopen the case. The bulk of the case against the two alleged killers came in highly dubious and subsequently recanted testimony by an eyewitness named ... Ovil Ruiz.
That murder took place around the same time as Jacqueline Shaw's. This new revelation shows that even the cops didn't consider Ruiz credible--casting further doubt on the two men's convictions in the Turner murders.
No wonder someone might want to make such a report "disappear" from a file.
Which raises questions about another case of "disappearing files"--the 1996 murder of North Havener Philip Cusick.
That's the case the state grand jury has been investigating. Wearing has meanwhile suspended--and probably ended the careers of--two top cops who ran the detective division in the '90s, Lt. Brian Sullivan and Sgt. Ed Kendall. He says they gave untruthful statements about what happened to a key piece of evidence in that case--an interview with an eyewitness who identified a suspect. Kendall supposedly "forgot" to turn a transcript of that interview over to North Haven police, who were investigating the murder. The tape of the interview was "lost." The murderer remains at large to this day. (For more stories on this and other recent police scandals, see our web archive, <www.newhavenadvocate. com/articles/chaoslist.html>.)
Now, in the Shaw case, Kendall's name comes up again. According to Wearing, the now-missing supplemental report about the Ruiz interview was last in Kendall's possession.
"That's absolute bullshit," says Kendall's attorney, Joseph Wicklow. "He absolutely never had anything to do with that case, directly or indirectly, either as an investigator or in a supervisory capacity."
"Wearing is saying this in an effort to pile on. Ed is a convenient target right now," Wicklow adds. He questions how a chief, who delegates authority, could know where the report landed last.
Mayor John DeStefano calls the missing report "a matter of concern."
"It's not the first thing to disappear" from New Haven's detective division, remarks Dearington, the judicial district's top prosecutor. "I assume it will be located."
FOI Commissioner Hennick did read the rest of the documents presented to him, though. He recommended last week that the cops be allowed to keep the records confidential. He wrote that after a "careful" inspection of the documents, he concluded that disclosure would indeed endanger a witness and prejudice a prospective law enforcement action.
Maybe. I trust Hennick. He has a lifelong record as a partisan for a vigorous, independent press. He conducts fair hearings and issues press-friendly rulings. The issues here are complex and two-sided. (See "Murder is Silence," Advocate, Sept. 28.)
The more pressing issue for the public concerns what information is contained in that still-missing report--and what this episode adds to mounting concerns over two specific murder investigations, and maybe many more.
E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
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