Category: Blog Posts

Ben Franklin was an enigmatic fellow, but  he was is pragmatic and a realist.  We can learn a lot from him.

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Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson were kind enough to invite me on their morning talk show on KVI AM in Seattle to discuss my book.

You can listen to that interview here.

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In the late 80’s I worked 3^rd Watch patrol, (8pm to 4am) in the Central District of Seattle. Street gangs and crack houses were rampant, so the Watch Commander, Lt. Bill Moffat, formed a group of three two-officer cars, (designated the “09” cars—3G09, 3E09, and 3C09) to swoop down on open air drug dealing and gang gatherings. He asked me to be one of the officers in that group.

We weren’t responsible for 911 calls except for emergencies.

When a shooting, or other emergencies happened, we dropped everything and responded. We were three extra cars, besides the regular patrol cars going.

I worked 3-Charlie-09 with Jackson Lone. Jack was a younger officer with a great sense of humor. He was the lampshade on the head guy at parties, quick with a joke and always laughing. I had a lot of fun with him.

One night, we were the last of the three cars responding to a shooting scene, lights on, siren blaring. I was driving. As we raced down the city streets Jack tapped away on the in-car computer, pulling up the call.

“Talk to me Goose!” I said to him.

“We’ve got incoming bogies, Mav!”

We cracked each other up. I wonder what people would think if they knew what went on inside those police cars racing past.

Jack got married. My wife Doreen and I went to his wedding. It was on an old ferry docked on the Ship Canal, which connects Lake Washington with Lake Union, and then through the Ballard Locks, out to the salt water of Puget Sound.

A few months later, Jack got a divorce.

“I want my wedding gift back,” I said.

“You’re going to have to talk to Melanie,” (his soon-to-be ex-wife).

After I went to the detectives, Jack went to Narcotics. He later landed his dream job as a diver in the Harbor Unit.

I’d run into him from time to time.

“Herr Schteiger!” he’d say, in an exaggerated German accent.

On March 16^th, 2005, I was working in Homicide. We were called to a scene; a Harbor officer fell off his boat, hitting his head and falling into the Ship Canal. He drowned. As I sped to the scene, I called my office, and spoke to Ila Birkland, the long-time Homicide admin.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked her.

It was Jack.

I wanted to puke.

 

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I’m going to be interviewed this Friday, March 16th at 9:55 AM (PDT)  on KVI Radio, 570 AM.

I’ll be speaking with Kirby Wilbur about my book.  Tune in, or listen live on KVI.com.

 

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Today marks two years since I retired from the Seattle Police Department.  People always ask me the same question:  Do you miss it.

 

There are some things I miss and some things I don’t. Here’s my list.Things I don’t miss:

 

• Working nights every third month.
• My phone ringing at 1:30 in the morning, sometimes several nights in a row.
• 30 hour work days, or 20 hour work days, several days in a row.
• The dreaded STH. (Straight Time Homicide—See my credo: We will solve no crime before overtime.”)
• Dead kids.
• Dead cops.
• Looking in the face of someone who’s had a family member murdered, particularly the truly innocent victims, and telling them I’ll do my best to get the bastard.

 

 

There are some things I do miss.

• Having someone riding two feet off my rear bumper at freeway speeds, then flashing the red and blue lights in my rear window and watching them suddenly drop back several  hundred feet.
• Driving on the shoulder of the freeway at 60 MPH in rush hour when traffic is stopped. (See also: Driving on the sidewalk downtown at rush hour).
• Seeing the look on my partner’s face while I’m driving down the freeway shoulder at 60 MPH when traffic is stopped.
• Arriving at a murder scene at 2:00 AM and hearing “Good morning, father,” because one of my sons is a patrol officer at the scene.
• Interrogations.

Me: “You know, there’s a legal term for the situation you find yourself in today.”

Suspect: “Really?”

Me: “Yeah. You’re fucked.”

• Arriving at a true whodunit murder, having no idea what happened, or who did it. Working 30 hours straight of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants work, arresting the suspect, getting a confession and booking the suspect in the jail. Then at 3:00 AM, sitting in the office with my squad and a prosecutor or two with bourbon’s all around. (In case anyone important is reading this, that didn’t really happen. Ever. No, really, I mean it.)
• Getting to call those family members of a murder victim and being able to tell them we got the son-of-a-bitch.

 

 

 

 

 

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Muhammed Ali Brown, Jihadist Serial killer, whose case I wrote about in my book, surprised everyone in New Jersey today, when he changed his plea to guilty in murder and terrorism charges.

Jury selection was underway, when Brown made the announcement, surprising prosecutors and his defense attorney alike.

In his plea, he said, “I shot those people in Seattle, Washington, too, if you want to put that on the record,” adding that he shot the men for “the same dumb reason.”

Brown faces life without the possibility of parole in New Jersey.  He’s also charged with three counts of aggravated murder in Seattle, where his cross-country killing spree began.

Once he’s sentenced there, he will be brought to Seattle.  It seems likely he will plead guilty to those charges as well.

Here’s the news story from New Jersey.

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My buddy, Jim Rodriguez and I were on SWAT together in the early 80’s.  He dug up this old gem.  I was 25 years old.  Ha!

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This is the first trial for Ali Muhammed Brown, a Jihadi serial killer that killed three in Seattle, and one in New Jersey, all innocent victims, all picked at random.  (I investigated the Seattle killings and they are detailed in my book).

I went to New Jersey in December to testify in the pretrial hearing there.

The story appears in the Seattle Times here.

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In part 3 of the series on Ted Bundy, the tools of the M-Vac wet vacuum DNA collection system and DNA phenotyping are covered by  KIRO’s Dave Wagner.

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Seth Augenstein is a writer for Forensics Magazine.  He recently wrote this article (in which I’m quoted) about the number of deaths in seedy motels, like the ones that line Aurora Avenue North in Seattle.

I have responded to many deaths in those motels, including the homicide/suicide scene depicted in the photo (left), officer-involved shootings, and other murders, including the murder of a baby.

For all the deaths that are murders, scores more are overdoses, suicides and other deaths.

In those cases where there is no suspicion of murder, the Death Investigators at the King County Medical Examiner’s office are called by patrol officers.  These investigators are very knowledgeable, can assess the scene further to make sure detectives aren’t needed.

Augenstein’s article can be read here.

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