The Last Place You'd Look (4 page)

• Police want to protect the family from the needless heartache and pain that certain types of information can induce. Disappearances and the facts surrounding them can often lead police into some horrifying and very dark places. Stranger abductions of children routinely involve the investigation of known and possible pedophiles: information police hesitate to share with families because the details are often so terrible. Most cops err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing families to such heinous possibilities.

• Police want to control the investigation. When sharing details, especially unsubstantiated leads, authorities run the risk of interested parties taking more active roles than perhaps they should. Police understand the frustrations of families wishing to see things happen in what can often seem like an agonizing process, but they also don’t want the investigation to grow out of control. There is always a chance information in the wrong hands could turn a bad situation into a tragedy.

• Police want to hold back certain information. It is standard procedure for police to withhold from release some details concerning the crime in order to help identify the perpetrator. A suspect with knowledge of the aspects of a case that only the guilty party or someone associated with the guilty party could know is that much closer to being convicted in court.

And that leads to this last point: police want to build a solid case in court. It is hard for families to understand that while officers are searching for their loved one, they must also control a case’s trial integrity. Police have hard-and-fast rules they must play by, and the courts are mostly unforgiving when those rules are broken. Police are also often vilified in the press when they have bungled an investigation, so they’re sensitive in most instances to the possibility of losing a case or key evidence. They have one chance to get it right. There are no do-overs in police work.

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Bill Kruziki knows all of this and he knows it well because he has handled plenty of missing persons cases himself. In his more than thirty-three years in law enforcement, he has had much experience with the investigation and coordination of investigations of missing children and adults. “As a former line officer and . . . law enforcement CEO, I have had to deal with the emotional stress from the families who frantically wanted their loved ones found safe and soon,” Bill says. “As any experienced officer [who has been involved in] this kind of investigation, we have been trained to keep all information ‘close to the vest’ and share very little detail with the media and family. I followed this train of thought for many years until that early morning on Christmas Eve when Matt vanished.”

Even though Bill understands that police still need to keep some details about the investigation to themselves, in the days since his son vanished and his disappearance turned to tragedy, Bill has become a passionate advocate for making as much information available to the families of the missing as is feasible. He says turning the tables changes the equation on every level.

“Family members must know that the police are going to be responsive, have empathy, and most importantly . . . not keep information from the family that may help them more readily understand where the investigation is going and what the police are going to do to find their loved one,” he says.

He wants law enforcement to update the family regarding information gleaned from interviews with persons of interest.

“Even if the information is basic or of no use, the family needs to hear and know that the police are actively working to resolve this case,” he says.

Bill points out that in most jurisdictions, missing persons cases receive low priority. An already-stretched-thin blue line must work homicides, robberies, rapes, assaults, and other crimes that count toward their annual Unified Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics, which is a federal accountability program that measures the national and local crime rates. In addition to working criminal cases, police also deal with traffic issues and crime prevention, subjects that resonate with their constituents.

Although the number of persons reported missing and entered into the system each year is staggering, most are found and the cases cleared. What changes that numbers game is the missing persons—adults and runaways for the most part—who are either not reported at all or for whom police refuse to take reports. No one knows how many people are missing and unaccounted for in an official capacity because no records are made or kept, but it is estimated that the numbers run into the thousands each year.

While missing children always bring out the neighborhood, missing adults, without clear-cut evidence of foul play, remain a low and sometimes nonexistent priority for police agencies.

“Unfortunately, many police are not trained properly or at all to deal with this type of incident,” says Bill.

He calls on department heads—chiefs of police and sheriffs—to do some soul-searching and think about what time, resources, staff, and budget dollars they would expend if a family reported that their adult son or daughter had not been in contact with them for more than twenty-four hours.

“My bet is that most of you, depending on the circumstances, would tell the family that he or she is an adult and is free to do what they please and there is no current law against it,” he says.

Families, as he points out, do not care about budgets and personnel, because they don’t understand that point of view. They are about one thing: finding their lost loved one. And because of this, the former marshal says, “it is the duty of the department head to ensure that the family is aware of what level the agency is going to investigate this missing persons case.”

Bill wants law enforcement agencies to take it personally. He says investigators owe it to families to be as forthcoming as possible with them, including sharing information whenever possible. “If searches are planned, no matter how small, the family should be notified and given the opportunity to be present. If media contact is going to be initiated by police, meet with the family first to discuss information that will be provided to them so [that the families] do not learn something new about the investigation by reading the paper or watching television,” he says.

He touches on a sore subject among many families of the missing: it is not unusual for families to find out about the progress of an investigation—or even that a body has been found or an arrest made—through the media, either by hearing it on television or from a media inquiry. No parent wants to receive a telephone call that an adult child has been found deceased—but it becomes even worse when that call comes from some local news reporter trying to make a deadline.

Bill reaches into his deep law enforcement background as well as his role as a bereaved father to recommend that law enforcement agencies implement a two-pronged approach to missing persons investigations. He says departments should first appoint an officer to act as the contact liaison with the agency, while families should do the same by designating a family contact person. That way, both news and questions can be passed along without duplication and with reduced confusion.

Although the amount of time and manpower a department can dedicate to a missing persons investigation varies from agency to agency, Bill urges agency heads to keep families in the loop and make certain that liaisons stay in regular contact with them. If, for example, an agency decides to suspend its search for an individual or the investigation into his or her disappearance, Bill says the family has a right to know this.

“Nothing is worse than thinking that the police are actively trying to investigate the incident and then learn . . . the case is dormant,” he says.

He believes that although police must walk a fine line in deciding what to share and what not to share, it is important to make families feel they are part of the effort to find their loved one.

“My son was found drowned in the Mississippi River almost three months after he went missing. As a family, we have some resolution to at least have him back. Think of the helpless and desperate people who are missing an adult family member [and] are still waiting for answers,” he says.

The Kruziki family still has many questions about Matt’s death. They want to know why the individual who was with Matt on the night he died didn’t leave the bar with him. Why, Bill asks, did the East Dubuque police officer who stopped Matt at 1:10 in the morning on a freezing night not at least go into the bar and get Matt his coat? Why was Matt allowed to wander, intoxicated and alone without proper clothing, in a town where he knew no one and was staying in a hotel miles across the river?

What happened to Matt? Bill believes Matt’s death was most likely an accident, but he would like to see what investigators turned up in his son’s case. The only way he can do that is to allow the case to be closed, and that would mean the investigation would stop.

For Bill, it’s a double-edged sword: neither option will bring him peace.

Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it.—Lois McMaster Bujold,
Barrayar

T
ime chips away at promising leads and makes important information seem less significant. When too much time passes, witnesses no longer recall facts with the same clarity or detail. Notes get shuffled, lost, or misfiled. Old handwriting fades, pictures grow fuzzy and less defined, and people move on with their lives. Cases that remain unsolved grow cold.

Cold cases are difficult to work and even more difficult to crack. Resolving them requires skill, patience, and a big helping of luck. Some detectives don’t have what it takes to work cold cases; others find they’re good at digging up answers from the past.

In Rutherford County, Tennessee, Lieutenant Bill Sharp of the Rutherford Sheriff’s Department Cold Case Squad and his partner, Sergeant Dan Goodwin, excel at cold case work. They thumb through the dusty, tattered files and boxes of evidence compiled in the twenty-odd cases assigned to their unit. Among those were the abductions of two small children: Bobby and Christi Baskin. The Baskin siblings were believed to have been taken by their grandparents, Marvin and Sandra Maple, when the kids were seven and eight years of age. Bobby and Christi disappeared on March 1, 1989, moments before a hearing ordered them returned to their natural parents.

The siblings were removed from their parents’ home after the Maples accused them of sexually abusing the children. A subsequent investigation found the allegations to be false. Authorities say the Maples absconded with the two older kids, but left a third, younger child, Michael, behind with Mark and Debbie Baskin.

“You’re saying they’re doing terrible things to the kids, but why wouldn’t you take the youngest kid, who was the most vulnerable? It makes no sense,” notes Sharp.

Doctors and psychiatrists examined the children and found no signs of abuse. When the pair failed to show up in court, investigators launched an immediate search for them, but the trail withered and died. Soon the case was shelved for lack of viable leads.

Criminal investigators at the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, like many law enforcement officers in rural areas, have impossible caseloads. It’s not uncommon for a detective to carry 150 cases ranging from vandalism to homicide. Once the Baskin matter grew cold, the abductions were moved back in priority. Still, detectives would pull the file every once in a while and look for new leads, drum up a little press, and touch base with Mark and Debbie, who held out hope they would see their children again.

They had reason to hope. Occasional press coverage would yield a few tips, all of which were followed up by RCSO investigators. None brought home the gold, though.

Then the Baskin case was assigned to Bill Sharp and Dan Goodwin. Sharp has worked for the sheriff’s office since 1993. With headquarters in the county seat of Murfreesboro, the RCSO is the fifth-largest jurisdiction in the Volunteer
s
tate. It lies southeast of Nashville.

The lieutenant’s voice is soft and polite, laced with the distinctive twang of his home state. Sharp says he and Goodwin were transferred from criminal investigations and put into cold cases to work homicides, but his captain had investigated the Baskin abductions when they first occurred and asked them to take another look. They did.

They worked the case like it had just happened, interviewing the original detectives and following up on telephone numbers and leads. When a tip from a woman who recognized the children from age-progressed photos hit their desk, Sharp and Goodwin chased it and found the Baskin children, now grown, in San Jose, California. Sharp was overjoyed to tell Mark and Debbie that after two decades, their missing kids had been located safe and alive.

“They’re fantastic people. I don’t know that I could have handled the situation as well as they did,” says Sharp.

But Bobby and Christi were no longer the same children raised by the Tennessee minister and his wife. They were grown-ups who called the Maples “mom” and “dad.” And they no longer answered to Bobby and Christi; instead they went by the names Jennifer and Jonathan Bunting.

Debbie Baskin didn’t care. She did what any mother who has not seen her children for twenty years would have done and hopped onto a plane for California. But this tale of two little kids taken from their parents was not resolved as well as Sharp and Goodwin had hoped: the kids—now adults—were shocked by the story told by investigators and—at least so far—have decided they want nothing to do with their biological parents. It was a tough blow for both investigators, who wanted so much for this story to have a happy ending, and for the Baskins, who spent a large part of their lives searching for their children.

“[Bobby and Christi] have access to the investigation; it’s open records now, [so] they can look and see what was done. I can’t believe intelligent young adults don’t want to know,” Sharp says.

As for Mark and Debbie, Sharp says it’s been hard knowing their children are so close, yet still so far away.

“It’s difficult on them. I just can’t put it into words—the sorrow, the hurt, the anger—all the range of emotions they went through,” he says.

Sharp says Marvin Maple exhibited no remorse when detectives interviewed him, telling them, “I raised the kids the way I wanted to. I won.” Marvin Maple was charged in the case and is still awaiting trial as of this writing. Sandra Maple died before the children were found.

Despite this, the Baskins still have hope, Sharp says. They believe they’ll be reunited with their children and although the family dynamics have changed, they will adjust to their new reality.

For the cop who has come to know the family and their heartache, it’s a bittersweet ending at best. Solving the case is what a police officer does. Nourishing the hope it will end well is the human part of the equation.

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Drew Kesse’s voice still retains a touch of Jersey edge. Kesse and his wife, Joyce, are longtime Florida residents now, but they maintain with pride their distinct Yankee attitudes. They also refuse to be pushed around. But as tough and uncompromising as he is, Drew’s words sometimes falter as he talks about his lost daughter—blond, beautiful Jennifer—and what he sees as the failure of police to move forward on her case.

Jennifer Kesse disappeared on January 24, 2006. Smart and popular in high school, Jennifer moved without effort into college life at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, studying to be a doctor. She decided medicine wasn’t her field and changed her mind, graduating with a degree in business.

Jennifer loved Orlando and wanted to stay there, so she found a good job as a financial analyst, bought a condo, and maintained a serious long-distance relationship with a young man in Fort Lauderdale.

“It was pretty much who was going to crack and give up their job [first],” says Drew.

Jennifer Kesse. Courtesy of the Kesse Family.

Jennifer was smart and happy—so happy her father says the family had a hard time finding a photo of her where she wasn’t smiling. They needed it for the flyers they distributed when Jennifer vanished.

Jennifer had returned from a short Caribbean vacation with her boyfriend. The two spoke the night of January 23; they made a habit of talking every morning and again at night before they retired. She also telephoned her family every day. On the following morning, her boyfriend says they did not speak, and Jennifer failed to show up for work. It was so out of character for her to not call in that her employer contacted her family, who lives in Tampa. The family tried to reach Jennifer and, failing that, left for Orlando.

“Jennifer is very responsible. If she is going to be five minutes late, she will call,” says Drew.

They first checked Jennifer’s condominium and found that she had slept there and taken a shower earlier that morning. There were clothes laid out on the bed and other signs that she planned to go to work. Under normal circumstances Jennifer left for work between 7:30 and 7:45 in the morning, but no witnesses reported seeing her. They called the jails. They called the hospitals. They called the police.

The first contact they had with the police came in the form of the officer who took the initial report. Drew says, “He said she probably had a fight with her boyfriend; then he chuckled and walked out. He gave us a two-page incident report.”

Their son, Logan, Jennifer’s younger brother, “slammed on doors” at the condo complex, looking for clues as to what had happened to his sister. No one admitted to anything. By that afternoon, the family was putting flyers on cars.

Unhappy with the response of the first officer, Drew made some phone calls until two homicide investigators showed up at eight that night. He says the investigators did little to allay their unhappiness.

“We’re pro law enforcement, but [police] need to be better at what they are supposed to be doing,” Drew says. He adds that not all of the officers with whom they dealt were insensitive, but in the beginning some were.

On Thursday, January 26, Jennifer’s car was found abandoned in a parking lot a little over a mile from her condominium complex. Old, grainy tapes showed a man parking the car and then walking away. Because the quality of the tape is poor and there is a barrier in front of the man, it has been impossible to identify him, even after using sophisticated enhancement techniques.

They searched surrounding fields using volunteers—something that Drew says he now regrets. Unprepared for the reality of dealing with their daughter’s disappearance, the Kesses had no idea that using unqualified search-and-rescue personnel could destroy evidence.

“We’ve made the mistake of having fourteen hundred people trample a field. At the time that’s what you think is needed: find the areas where she was, which you do, but you do it in the wrong way. And someone teaches you the right way and you think, ‘Oh, God, what did we do?’” Drew says.

He says families depend on police to guide them. “The first two cops thought they’d find Jennifer in two or three days, dead, and it turned out to be a different situation,” he says.

After her car was found, he says one investigator told him, “If you don’t find her this hunting season, you’ll find her by next year.” The family engaged the media. They’ve appeared on
America’s Most Wanted
and many other shows, always advocating for Jennifer. They believe it’s essential to keep her before the public.

“We’ve been on every show known to mankind, except
Dr. Phil
and
Oprah
. When her story goes away, then that’s it,” Drew says.

Drew admits he is obsessed with finding his daughter and believes she was kidnapped and trafficked. He says no trace has ever been found of Jennifer—not even a rumor. And her bank account and credit cards remain untouched.

Her car was processed and one unidentified latent print was found. But finding a latent fingerprint is of no value unless there is another one on file somewhere for comparison. This one has not yet been matched.

Leads poured in—more than eleven hundred calls were received—and none panned out. The Kesses turned up the heat at the police department. They say they had been meeting with the police chief on a regular basis when one day she told them that the detective assigned to the case was being removed. The relationship with the Orlando Police ended on a sour note for the Kesses.

Drew is bitter. He says no one at the department would return his calls. He says the police made mistakes that “could not be undone,” mistakes he believes could have cost both time and information.

He admits that many of the officers they met during this ordeal were good, hardworking police who did everything right. His bitterness is for the things that were not done well and his feeling that his daughter’s case was kicked to the curb.

Drew Kesse is not an easy person to be around. He demands attention and is prepared to go to any length required to get it. When he’s stymied in court by a prohibitive law, he presses his state legislature to change that law. He’s been successful.

Some find it uncomfortable to be around Drew. Hurt flows from him like a river. He’s drowning in it. He says, in fact, his whole family is drowning.

“We are a house of broken dreams,” he says.

The FBI now has the case. Drew says they told him they would find his daughter. As for the police, he believes they were well intentioned and, “except for that first week, everybody has been on the same page for four years.”

Drew says the biggest problem he sees with police and missing persons cases is the lack of training. “Homicide detectives should not be working missing persons cases,” he says.

And he thinks the mistakes made in the case have cost them: Drew says Jennifer’s dental records and other vital information have been misplaced, and she was not entered into all available databases at the beginning of the investigation.

Drew now works with families of the missing, helping them avoid the missteps that took place in his daughter’s case. It’s rewarding, but not a job he wishes on anyone.