The Case of Preston Hughes III: 20G40

I have an uneasy feeling that HPD Sgt. D. Hamilton injected himself into this case. I don't think he was actually instructed to go to the crime scene. It's not at all clear to me that the crime scene was actually within his area of supervision.

In other words, I think Sgt. Hamilton may have intentionally crashed a gruesome party to which he was not invited. If so, that would make his story about Shandra's dying declaration even more suspicious, assuming that's possible.

I can't prove that, but the thought gives me an uneasiness. I have a discomfiture, a perplexity, an anxiety. I have a curiosity itch in serious need of scritchin'.

I think I'll scritch it here.

Allow me to begin with the police report of Sgt. D. J. Gafford. He demonstrates how it's done, how one describes one's invitation to a crime scene.

At approximately 23:55 hrs, Sgts Bloyd and Gafford were in the homicide division when Lt. Neely assigned them to make a scene at 2400 S. Kirkwood.

There you go. Short, sweet, and to the point. He told us when it happened and where he was. He actually said that he was assigned to "make a scene", though he might have phrased that better. He told us who told him to make that scene. It was Lt. Neely.

Now let's see how Officers Cook and Becker told us about how they came to be involved.

Officers riding Unit 20G40 were flagged down by a person known as Drew Curtis Hartley regarding his wife missing. The time was approx 2330 hrs and the location was the Stop N Go parking lot at 2303 S. Kirkwood.

Not bad. It doesn't have the Jack Webb quality of Gafford's report, but it's not bad. Let's see how Officer Hale handled the task.

On Tuesday, September 27 1988 at approximately 0005hrs, I, Officer F. L. Hale being assigned to the crime scene section and riding CSU 14 received an assignment from homicide lieutenant.

Not as good, but passable. The "I, Officer F. L. Hale" was a bit pretentious, and he didn't bother to mention of the name of the lieutenant who assigned him to the case. So ... not great, but okay.

Now, finally, let's now see how Sgt. Hamilton described how he came to be involved.

Sgt. D. Hamilton, riding unit 19G02 nights on 9-26-88 while at the command station heard Officers V.L. Cook and C.J. Becker Riding Unit 20G40 nights call out on an assault victim tn [sic] the 2400 blk of S. Kirkwood. Around 2340 hrs Sgt Hamilton checked by with Unit 20G40 and arrived at the scene at approx 2343 hrs.

Hmmmmmmm.

Interesting.

Very interesting indeed.

It doesn't seem as if anyone actually instructed Officer Hamilton to make his way to the crime scene. It doesn't seem as if anyone actually assigned him to the case. Nor does it seem as if rushed over as he would have if he had been acting in a supervisor status. Instead, he chilled for an unspecified amount of time before he "checked by" with the officers who had recently called in a double homicide.

It wasn't as if Hamilton heard the call, then quickly picked up his radio and said "I'm on my way." It's more as if Hamilton, who was at the command station, searched for something in a database, or looked through some files, saw something interesting, and decided to head on out.

Once Hamilton made up us mind to get up and go, however, he got up and went. He made it there in 3 minutes. That includes the time he spent on the radio with Cook and Becker, and the time needed to mount up.

It wasn't very difficult for me to find an HPD beat map. I wanted one to understand the significance of 20G40 and 19G02. Here you go, from my Google search to your eyes. Click to enlarge.

Beat 20G40 is towards the left, below the centerline. Here, I'll blow it up for you to make it easier to see. If you click on it and enlarge it, you'll more easily see the X I added to show the location of the crime scene.

There are 8 beats that begin with 20G. Those 8 beats form District 20. There are 5 beats that begin with 19G. Those 5 beats form District 19.

District 19 and District 20 together form the Western Division of the Houston Police Department. The Western Division command station is located where you see the red star. That's where Hamilton was when he dawdled after hearing the call by Cook and Becker.

The address of that command station is 3203 South Dairy Ashford Street. Here's a swell picture of the command center, thanks to the fine folks at Google who have yet to send me a cease and desist order for using their street view images without written permission.

Sgt. Hamilton was working somewhere inside there around 11:30 PM on 26 September 1988 when he overheard Officers Cook and Becker call out a double homicide. Hamilton dillied for a bit, then he dallied for a bit, then he "checked by" with Cook and Becker, then he headed on over.

According to the fine folks at Google, the distance between the command center and the Fuddrucker's hamburger joint right there by the crime scene is 1.7 miles. Under normal conditions, the driving time is 5 minutes. It seems as if, once Hamilton decided to go, he lit it up. He got there in less than 3.

Notice that Hamilton said he was riding 19G02. Since there seems to be no beat called 19G02, I suspect the nomenclature has a more subtle meaning that I don't yet understand. It may indicate that he is a patrol supervisor responsible for taking charge of crime scenes anywhere within District 19. I simply don't know. In any case, it is clear from the nomenclature that Hamilton was operating in the same Division but a different District than that patrolled by Unit 20G40.

I suspect there is nothing fundamentally improper with a sergeant from District 19 responding to a call from District 20. I wonder, though, whether it was routine, or common. Again, I simply do not know.

It does seem, however, that if Sgt. Hamilton was not expected to respond and take charge of the crime scene, then another patrol supervisor should have done so. And since there is no police report filed by any local HPD officers other than Cook, Becker, and Hamilton, I guess there was no other patrol supervisor on the scene. Surely, any District 20 patrol sergeant who was on the scene would have taken charge and filed a report.

I guess, therefore, I'm simply making another mountain out of another molehill. So I'll just let it be.

THE END

But wait .... 

There's more.

There always is.

I just this very moment [ahem] noticed something a bit unusual in Sgt. Gafford's police report.

When we arrived, there were several patrol supervisors, Sgts D. Hamilton and J.H. Parham, already on the scene.

And then there's this, from Hamilton's report:

Sgt along with Unit 20G40 and 20G51 secured the scene and held it until it was released to homicide sgt's.

Holy Brady violation, Batman! There was indeed another patrol supervisor on the scene, and he was riding Unit 20G51 nights. He didn't write a police report, at least not one that was included in the official compilation of police reports for this case. And he didn't testify at trial. But he was there, somewhere. 

Perhaps patrol supervisor J.H. Parham, night rider of Unit 20G51, was standing right by Shandra Charles as she lay face down in the trail, her life blood spanning the entire width of the trail, soaking into the dirt. Perhaps he heard her give a dying declaration, speaking clearly and in complete sentences.

Then again, perhaps not.

Perhaps that's why we never heard from him.

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The Case of Preston Hughes III: KPFT Interview

My six minute interview with Marlo Blue of KPFT radio.  The YouTube clip was created by Marlo.

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Michael Ledford's Petition for Absolute Pardon: Chapter 3

DRAFT 

(Current as of 23 Aug 2012)

3. SEQUENCE OF EVENTS: AN OVERVIEW

In Apartment 17-A, Michael and Elise Ledford were having trouble with the table lamp plugged into the outlet behind their couch. The lamp would not turn on reliably by use of its own switch. In this sense, the lamp was much like the other electrical items that seemingly malfunctioned in other apartments suffering from overheating outlets.

Michael and Elise therefore came to rely on the wall switch to control the lamp, That wall switch was located right by the front door. That wall switch controlled the outlet that later showed evidence of burning, the outlet in which the insurance investigator found (but did not photograph or preserve) burned wiring.

It was odd that the lamp switch seemed not to work. The lamp had been given to Michael and Elise by Elise's parents just two months earlier. Her parents had owned and used the lamp for many years. The parents had never had a problem with the lamp. Not until the lamp was plugged into the outlet in the Ledford apartment did it seemingly begin to fail.

We learn of that from the trial testimony of Elise's father, who appeared as a witness for the Commonwealth.

Ervin: Let me show you photograph number 1, Reverend Arner. 

Arner: Yes, sir. 

Ervin: And there's a lamp here on a table near the door. Where did -- did that lamp come from? 

Arner: That was a lamp that we gave them about July of '99. 

Ervin: And what was the working condition of that lamp? 

Arner: It was excellent. 

Ervin: Had there ever been any malfunctions? 

Arner: Not -- none. No. 

Ervin: Any sparks or anything caused by the lamp? 

Arner: Never -- never blew a light bulb. We had used it all the time that we had it; which it was brand new until then.

Darlene Keiper also knew about the recent problem with the lamp. She shared the apartment with Michael and Elise. She was the person who actually moved the couch from the wall, plugged the lamp into the outlet, and moved the couch back against the wall. Only then, when the previously trouble-free lamp was plugged into the outlet at Highland Hills Apartments, did the lamp begin to misbehave.

Martha and Ronda Reames both knew about the problem with the lamp. On the very day of the fire, while attending a birthday party for one-year-old Zachary Ledford, they each noticed that the lamp did not turn on and off properly.

Nobody, however, noticed that the outlet was overheating. The outlet was located behind the couch: out of site, out of touch, and out of mind.

Later that night, when Zachary and Elise were both early to bed, Michael left to run errands. He planned to put gas in the car. He planned to stop by the firehouse where he volunteered as a firefighter. As he left his apartment, he decided to leave a light on for Darlene Keiper. She was scheduled to arrive home soon after he left. He flipped the wall switch to the ON position as he left the apartment.

It was a simple courtesy. It was a completely innocent act. It had deadly consequence.

Within minutes, Zachary Ledford would die of smoke inhalation. Elise Ledford would be seriously burned during her unsuccessful effort to escape.

The Commonwealth's fire investigator would make only a cursory examination of the fire scene. In his formal report, he would declare that the electrical system could not be ruled out as a cause of the fire.

In that same report, the Commonwealth's investigator would declare that he could not exclude an accidental or natural cause of the fire. He would declare the cause to be "Undetermined."

Instead of making a thorough and scientific investigation of the fire, the state investigator would relinquish the investigation to agents of the complex's insurance carrier, one of them an investigator and one of them an adjuster.

The insurance investigator discovered, but literally covered up, evidence of an electrical fire. The outlet behind the living sofa showed distinctive smoke patterns emanating from within. When the insurance investigator removed the outlet, he discovered burned wiring inside. The insurance investigator did not photograph the burned wiring, nor did he secure them as evidence. Instead, he replace the outlet and its faceplate as if he had found nothing of interest.

Within weeks, the insurance investigator and/or the insurance adjuster would convince the police that the fire was caused by arson rather than by an electrical problem. Their ultimate client, [Name of Insurance Company Withheld], would be spared a lawsuit for the wrongful death of a one-year-old child, a personal injury lawsuit for the burning of a young mother, and the cost of major electrical repairs to every apartment in the Highland Hills Apartments complex.

Within a month, when subjected to techniques later proven to produce false confessions, Michael Ledford would come to believe that he must have started the fire. He would claim he started the fire by removing one of two candles from one of two candleholders, and by then tossing the candle into the seat of the living room chair. Believing he must be mentally ill for being unable to previously recall the act, he would ask for psychiatric treatment. Believing he must unwittingly be a threat to others, he would ask also to be kept away from other people.

Michael Ledford's confession, however, would be utterly contradicted and absolutely falsified by the evidence from the fire scene. The fire did not start in the chair as Michael claimed in his confession. Nor was any residual candle wax found, though the wax could not have been entirely consumed by the fire. Nor were any candleholders found, though the candleholders certainly could not have been consumed by the fire.

Not only did Michael's confession include candles and candleholders that never were, his confession included precise details of a specific cigarette lighter never found, "a white one with the Dallas Cowboys." Michael confessed that he lit the candles with that specific lighter, the "white one with the Dallas Cowboys", and left the lighter "on the table that had the plants on it." The lighter could not have been consumed by the fire, since even the plants on the table were not consumed, but the lighter was never found

The lighter could not be found for the same reason candle wax and candleholders could not be found. No such items were ever involved in the Ledford fire. Michael's clear recollection of those items was but a confabulation, a false memory resulting from the persistent suggestions of his interrogators.

In addition to taking note of the many false claims central to Michael's confession, the investigators should have also taken note of a burned circuit breaker, and of smoke patterns emanating from the circuit breaker panel. The investigators should have taken note also of the burned wiring inside the living room electrical outlet, and of the smoke discharged from within that outlet.

The investigators should have carefully created a timeline of the events leading up to the fire. Had they done so, they would have realized that ignition occurred well after Michael Ledford left the apartment.

Had the state investigator conducted a thorough and scientific investigation of the Ledford fire, rather than relinquishing the investigation to agents of the insurance company, Michael Ledford would never have been charged. We would not be addressing this issue still today.

Because the state investigator relinquished the investigation to agents of an insurance company having a vested interest in the outcome of the investigation, Michael Ledford would stand trail for capital murder.

During the trial, the jury would hear only a select portion of Michael's confession. The jury would not hear the hours Michael spent denying he started the fire. The jury would not hear his interrogators try to convince him the fire started on the floor, as they knew it had, rather than in the chair, as they knew it had not. The jury would not hear his interrogators suggest dozens of bizarre motives, including sexual failure and a desire to be a fire chief. The jury would not see those portions of the tape where his interrogators told him he had failed a polygraph test when he had not. The jurors would not see those portions of the tape where his interrogators lied to him about the physical evidence.

Instead, the jury would hear only the moment Michael Ledford suddenly and quietly succumbed to the will of his interrogators.

The jury would certainly not hear of experiments yet to take place that would prove the interrogation techniques applied to Michael Ledford frequently lead to false confessions.

Equally troubling, the jury would not see the compelling evidence of an electrical fire. That evidence had been concealed by the insurance investigator, depriving both the Commonwealth and Michael Ledford critical evidence of his innocence.

The jury would find Michael Ledford guilty of arson and first-degree murder. They would spare his life. The judge would sentence him to fifty years in prison.

For the next decade, Michael's mother would attempt to free her son. In 2010, she would join forces with an advocate for the wrongfully convicted. After a two-year investigation, this petition now explains how the Virginia justice system was deceived by an insurance company into pursuing and securing the conviction of Michael Ledford.

The Case of Preston Hughes III: 2:58 AM

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.” -- Stephen King, The Green Mile

If you ever investigate a case and hope to learn the truth of it, be sure you make a detailed timeline. It will be much more difficult to do (and do well) than you now suspect. It will be much more valuable than you now  imagine.

Time is rather persistent. It refuses to run backwards. It keeps its own books, with infinite precision, but makes no particular effort to reveal or conceal its journal entries. If you can somehow find the journal entries for the crime you may someday investigate, if you can build a detailed and accurate timeline, you stand an excellent chance of finding truth.

There is a specific time that hovers like the Sword of Damocles over the heads to the Houston Police Department. That time is 2:58 AM, 27 September 1988. That is the time that someone added to Officer F.L. Hale's property invoice.

If that time is accurate, then the arrow of time reveals uncomfortable truths about this case.

The HPD must have recovered the items from Preston's apartment prior to 2:58 AM on 27 September 1988.

The HPD must have searched the apartment without a warrant, for they never obtained one in this case.

The HPD must have searched the apartment without a voluntary consent for search form, manufactured or otherwise. The only such form was (allegedly) witnessed at 5:35 AM.

The HPD must therefore have conducted an illegal search.

More significantly, the HPD must have conducted two searches: one prior to 2:58 AM and one after sunrise. The photos of what must have been the second search show the lights off and daylight coming from behind a sheer curtain.

The police must have removed from the property locker the items they had collected during the first search and returned them to Preston's apartment so that they could photograph them during the second search. The items photographed during the second search would therefore have been staged.

The eyeglasses photographed between the cushions of Preston's sofa were photographed during the second search, along with the other items. The photograph shows the room to be naturally lit and the lamp to be off.

The eyeglass must have therefore been staged for the second search, just as the other items were staged for the second search.

The 2:58 AM time, if it is correct, proves that the police planted Shandra's glasses between the cushions of Preston's couch.

2:58 AM hangs like the Sword of Damocles.

That time must therefore die a death of a thousand cuts if the police are to be not exposed. Those cuts will become an subtle undercurrent flowing almost unnoticed throughout the trial. The time itself will never, however, be uttered.

For now, in the remainder of this post, I will consider whether the police could have searched Preston's apartment early enough to collect the data, prepare a property invoice, and turn the evidence into the property room at 2:58 AM.  I will limit myself, for the time being, to information available before the trial. 

Buckle up. Here we go.

Working backwards.

If the 2:58 AM time is correct, and I give Officer Hale 18 minutes to type the property invoice and perform other miscellaneous tasks, Officer Hale must have arrived back at police headquarters no later than 2:40 AM.

I believe the property locker was located in or near the police headquarters building at 61 Riesner in downtown Houston. According to Google Maps, it is a 27 minute drive from 61 Riesner to the corner of Kirkwood and Westminster. We'll call it 30. Officer Hale would have had to leave the area of Preston's apartment no later than 2:10 AM.

I give Officer Hale 30 minutes to take the photographs of the items inside Preston's apartment, and to secure those items in plastic bags. That means Officer Hale must have entered Preston's apartment no later than 1:40 AM.

Officer Hale, however, could not have entered Preston's apartment until Preston had been placed in the patrol car, and that would not have occurred until Sgt. Gafford (and others) knocked on Preston's door, entered his apartment, questioned him briefly, and allowed him to dress. If I give Gafford and Preston (and others) 20 minutes to do that, then Gafford must have arrived at Preston's door no later than 1:20 AM.

Sgt. Gafford, however, claims he spent some time searching through the tenant list before he knocked on Preston's door. I happen to have a copy of that tenant list. I just searched it, in no big hurry, and I timed myself. I managed to get through it in 3 minutes and a few seconds. Preston's name was the last one on the first page. I'll give Gafford 10 minutes to search the list. He must have therefore begun searching the list no later than 1:10 AM.

According to the ME investigator's report, Marcell was declared dead at 11:38 PM. The ME was notified at 11:45 PM. We can assume homicide was notified around that time as well. Given a 30 minute drive from police headquarters to the crime scene, Sgt. Gafford could have arrived as early as 12:15 AM. That would give him 55 minutes to peruse the crime scene, talk to the other officers there, and find his was to the manager's office, where he would read the tenant list.

In summary, the timing is possible, but tight. If Gafford first knocked on Preston's door at 2:30 PM, as a number of people claim, then the 2:58 AM time on the property invoice cannot be accurate.

This timing issue will, I predict, eventually become a source of heated debate. I suggest, however, that it can be resolved by releasing all the chain of custody documents, including those tracking the items into and out of the property locker, including those tracking the items into and out of the labs.

The issue can be resolved also by providing a contemporaneous log of all pictures taken by Officer Hale, a log he certainly should have maintained. How else would the people who relied on the photos have known when and where they were taken, and what they were intended to capture?

I for one welcome and encourage the release of all such case documents.

I have no fear of 2:58 AM.

Michael Ledford's Petition for Absolute Pardon: Chapter 2

DRAFT 

(Current as of 20 Aug 2012)

2. ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS AT THE HIGHLAND HILLS APARTMENTS

Residents of Highland Hills Apartments were having problems with their plug-in appliances. The more fortunate among those residents were those who realized their outlets were overheating. They had their outlets replaced.

The Ledfords were not among the fortunate. The overheating outlet in their apartment was located behind the living room sofa. They therefore did not notice that the outlet was becoming dangerously hot. They did not realize that a circuit breaker would fail to protect them. Soon one of them would be dead, one would be seriously burned, and another other would be on trial for his life.

In Apartment 16-C, above and to the left of the Ledford apartment, the resident had a sewing machine motor that dragged and a nightlight that refused to work. She noticed that the outlet was "very warm." She flipped the circuit breaker to the OFF position and notified the management. The management had the outlet replaced.

A second woman in the complex noticed the outlet in her son's room was hot to the touch. She notified the management. The management had the outlet replaced.

In one of the apartments above the Ledford apartment, a kitchen outlet had been replaced, perhaps by the resident. The outlet is brown. No other outlet revealed in more than 100 photos of the building was any color other than white / ivory / almond.

In each case, replacing the outlet resolved the superficial problem initially attributed to the appliances. The more serious problem, however, remained unresolved. The electrical systems at Highland Hills Apartments were deteriorating and becoming unsafe. Given that overheating outlets result in more than 5000 fires per year, the multiple instances of overheating outlets should have prompted an inspection of all outlets in all units. Instead, the underlying problems were simply ignored until residents became so concerned that they either complained or attempted to correct the problem themselves.

The electrical problems at Highland Hills Apartments were not limited to wall outlets. Photographs taken at the Ledford fire scene reveal the hardwired fire alarm had been installed without an electrical box. This is a clear and egregious code violation. Instead of being secured to an electrical box which was in turn secured to rigid structure, the hardwired smoke alarm was carelessly attached using just two plastic anchors loosely embedded in the gypsum ceiling panel.

Of even greater concern than the missing electrical box is what appears to be a severed electrical cable visible in the space above the ceiling. Given the ragged nature of that exposed cable, and given the equally ragged edge of the hole in that area, it seems as if the electrical cable may have been severed when someone carelessly cut a crude hole in the ceiling to install the smoke detector.

The missing electrical box, the crudely cut hole, and the apparently severed cable suggest that the box was installed during a retrofit program, one that focused on minimizing cost rather than insuring safety.

What is not visible in the photograph is the means by which the smoke detector is connected to the apartment's electrical system. If the smoke detector was merely spliced into a circuit already passing through the overhead, and if that splice was made while working through the small cutout, and if that splice was of similar quality to the rest of the smoke detector installation, then that splice posed another serious fire hazard to the apartment.

Of greater concern than even the overheating outlets (and the crudely installed smoke detector and the exposed wiring in the overhead) is an apparently makeshift repair to one of a circuit breakers photographed after the fire inside the electrical service panel that was supposed to protect the Ledford apartment from electrical hazards.

The circuit breaker reveals startling evidence of an egregiously unsafe repair. Rather than replacing the breaker after a presumed earlier problem, maintenance personnel simply glued plastic strips over the top of it, or so it seems.

A sooted spider web connects the plastic strip and its oozing adhesive. The spider web is evidence that the improperly repaired breaker had been deteriorating for some time. The spider web is evidence also that a cheap, improper repair eventually cost an infant child his life, the parents their son, and the father his freedom.

So noticeable were the problems at Highland Hills Apartments that the residents of Apartment 20C expressed their concern to the police that the fire in the Ledford apartment was ignited by the electrical system. As it turns out, they were correct.