Re: 9/29/02 - Hartford Courant: Few Claim Rewards, But Cops Love The Tips; Cash Offered When Police Get Desperate
Few Claim Rewards, But Cops Love The Tips
Cash Offered When Police Get Desperate
September 29, 2002
By JESSE HAMILTON, Courant Staff Writer
East Hartford police Officer Erik Hansen doesn't care if the odds are long. It doesn't matter to him who ends up with the big check. All he cares about is finding a killer.
That's why his department asked the state to post a $30,000 reward to help capture the person who killed Sherryann Harris in 2000 and left her battered body on the front steps of her house.
The reward was authorized this month, the most recent of 351 rewards offered by the state since 1967, the earliest year with reliable records. Only 20 of those rewards have been paid .
Hansen hopes this reward will find somebody who knows something about the killing of Harris, a mother of four. He hopes it will "push them over the fence, make them decide to call."
So far, nothing.
The state's reward program, which dates to 1949, is used in desperate situations, when investigators face a chasm between their best evidence and the identity of a killer still walking free. Investigators contact the state's attorney, who forwards a formal request to the governor.
When the governor signs a reward contract, it puts a price on information, an incentive for the person who can bridge the chasm. The rewards don't help very often, but there's little to lose because the state pays only when a criminal is sent to prison.
"Even a small tip can rekindle a cold case," said Chris Cooper, spokesman for Gov. John G. Rowland. "I think that's one reason these rewards remain on the books.
"Bringing justice for one family and bringing justice to one perpetrator - most people would say that would certainly be a worthy outcome."
The effectiveness of the program varies broadly.
The Martha Moxley murder case carried a reward - $20,000 offered in 1978, number 82 on the state's list. The reward was never claimed, but unlike most of the reward cases, Moxley's murder was solved. A neighbor, Michael Skakel, was convicted of the killing in June.
In 1999, a $50,000 reward was offered in the slaying of Yale University student Suzanne Jovin. So far, no one has collected and the case remains unsolved.
Police and prosecutors also understand that in the 5 percent of cases where rewards make the difference, the recipients rarely have altruistic motives. Some are criminals. Some are just looking for easy money.
Last month in Danielson Superior Court, Ronald Caouette thought he had a shot at $50,000. He was a routine witness in the case against Jose Torres, who beat and stabbed to death a neighbor, an 11-year-old girl in Willimantic.
Caouette had seen Torres around the apartments where the murder occurred, and told police that Torres seemed to be acting strangely. Caouette was able to pick Torres from a lineup of police photos, as other witnesses had.
He wanted the $50,000 offered for the conviction of Angelica Padilla's killer. He didn't get it, and it wasn't because of any fault as a witness. The problem was that he came forward with his information before the reward was offered. If he had held out, if he'd waited for the offer of cash, he might have had a claim.
That's the paradox of the system. Those who are most eager and helpful to detectives probably won't get a reward. By state law, reward money can be paid only to those who are motivated by the money, as State's Attorney Patricia Froehlich argued in Caouette's case. Those who collect the cash must show - at a court hearing - that they came forward because the reward was offered.
The rationale is that the rewards are meant to pry out facts that otherwise would not be found.
One reward recipient was David Whitehead, who shared a killer's prison cell in New York. He listened to cellmate Michael Curry brag about shooting Evelyn Betancourt, 27, in 1993 as she begged for her life. Curry told Whitehead he picked his Waterbury victim at random.
Whitehead took his information to authorities. In 1997, he collected a check for $10,000. State's Attorney John Connelly said that was fine with him. Such deals are like business contracts, he said, and Whitehead fulfilled his contract.
"That's business law 101," Connelly said.
Two years earlier, Markel R. Greene of New Haven got $10,000. Greene, 31, spotted Dennis Hodge of New Haven on the street and knew Hodge was wanted in the fatal shooting of two insurance executives because of a $3,000 disagreement over a settlement. A month after Greene got the reward, he was arrested in a sexual assault; he eventually was convicted.
Connecticut cut a $10,000 check for Shemeka Whitlock of Stamford in 1995. Two years later, she was arrested on a second-degree assault charge and was later convicted.
Martin McMahon won a $20,000 reward in 1996 in a Vernon case, but the Internal Revenue Service grabbed the payment for taxes.
Like most police officers, Hansen doesn't care much what his informants have done. He knows they're sometimes from the same underworld as his suspects, bringing "intimate knowledge of that part of society." The important thing, he said, is "the greater good being served."
So why not offer rewards to anybody who helps? New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington likes that idea, saying people shouldn't have to know about a reward beforehand to collect one.
"We're drawing fine distinctions here," he said. "The spirit of this is to get people to come forward and cooperate."
Other state officials say the rewards - up to $50,000 per crime - are supposed to be used as last resorts, to draw out miracle cures for stalled investigations. Law enforcement officials don't want rewards to be commonplace, because it might discourage witnesses from freely offering information.
By the time investigators seek a reward, they're usually desperate. They know the odds of getting the information they need are slim.
Hansen suggested that in routine cases, authorities get better results from $100 informants on the street than from public offers of $50,000.
Small payments are used by privately operated programs such as Crime Stoppers, which give money to people who call in tips anonymously. That's how it works in New Hampshire, which doesn't have a state reward system.
John Bancroft is chairman of New Hampshire's Greater Laconia Crimeline. Like other regional groups, his organization raises money from businesses and donations, which is then handed out - in rewards of up to $1,000 - for phoned-in tips. The people who call the crime line remain nameless.
"We don't want to meet the person," Bancroft said. He said he doesn't worry about the sort of people that help his group solve crimes. "That's what you rely on - people who will squeal on others."
Nevada has a similar private, nonprofit system called Secret Witness. Gerald Gardner, the chief of the state attorney general's criminal division, said there's no government program there to fill that role.
California has a program much like Connecticut's - the governor can authorize rewards of as much as $50,000. Tim Herrera, the California governor's spokesman for criminal justice, said their program, which has offered 19 rewards so far this year, is a "good investment for any state."
"The payoffs are not that frequent, but it does work," he said.
When it has worked in Connecticut, it's often years after a reward is offered. Over time, the reward may flush out a drinking buddy, wife or boyfriend who overhears talk of the crime or hears about it from the person who did it.
For killer John Fonte, it was his ex-wife, Tracie Fonte. She was living in Florida when, in 1999, she called police to turn in her former husband, who had told her several times during their marriage that he'd killed 15-year-old Kevin Prutting in Plymouth, Conn., in 1985.
But for every reward that brings results, about 19 others are ineffective, such as the one offered in the 1998 strangulation of Trudy Ochankowski of East Hampton. The reward poster for the case is still hanging on courthouse bulletin boards.
One reason for the low success rate is the delicate position in which reward recipients are placed.
William J. Halsdorf got $10,000 from a 1988 case that put away the killer of Meriden contractor Jeffrey Williametz. Contacted at his home recently, Halsdorf said he didn't want to talk about it because the killer may be free someday and he didn't want to dredge the matter up again.
Jack Cronan, an executive assistant state's attorney who works with the legislature, said the reward program is viewed as one of many tools in the fight against crime. Most of the 7,000 felonies committed in Connecticut each year are solved by police work, he said.
In most cases, he said, rewards are of limited use. He joked that the state's program could probably be set aside if each case could instead be mentioned on the unsolved-crime show "America's Most Wanted."
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