Category: Blog Posts

One thing about my career, is I have gotten to know a lot of local reporters in the Seattle market.  Usually, I couldn’t talk about the cases I was working, but I respected the job they were doing.

This afternoon, I got to sit down with Elisa Hahn, of KING5 News, the NBC affiliate in Seattle.  She was gracious enough to interview me about my book.

That interview is available here.

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I try to remain apolitical on this site.  The following  is not intended as a political statement, rather a statement of reality.

The sheep gathered in the field.  They lived in peace and tranquility, until one day, the wolf came.  He ravaged the herd of sheep.

The sheep leaders all met.

“We’ll make wolves illegal!” they declared.  They passed a law outlawing wolves.

The next day, the wolf still came.

“This is illegal!” the sheep proclaimed.

The wolf still ravaged the herd.

It was finally decided that sheep dogs would protect the herd.

The wolf tried to come, but the sheep dog fought him off.

And the sheep lived happily ever after.

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I’ve gotten to know a lot of local, (and national) reporters in my career.  Early in investigations, we have divergent interests.  Reporters want to put out news, and we want to keep things secret.

Despite that, I’ve made friends in the media, borne out of mutual respect for the jobs we each have to do.

One of those reporters I befriended, was Brandi Kruse, at Q13 News in Seattle.  Brandi was gracious enough to invite me on the morning news to discuss my book, “Homicide:  The View from Inside the Yellow Tape” this morning.

You can watch the interview here.

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I’m going to appear on Q13 News this Wednesday morning, (February 21) at 9:30 AM with Brandi Kruse to talk about my book.  Tune in, or watch it on q13fox.com.

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I remember that day in 1983 clearly. I was in Patrol working nights in Rainier Valley.  When I got up the next day, I had the national news on.  There was a report that thirteen people had been bound and murdered in a club in Seattle’s Chinatown.  I was shocked.

A lot of my friends worked that case. The largest mass murder in Seattle history.

The two main suspects, Benjamin Ng and Kwan Mak, are also believed to have killed at least three other people in separate murders.

The news story from the Seattle P-I is here.

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Suzanna Ryan is an associate at AISOCC, and a DNA specialist.  She wrote a great article on the challenges of DNA mixtures.  It’s available here.

She was also recently interviewed by Michelle Malkin about a controversial lab case in Oklahoma.  That YouTube video is available here.

Suzanna was also featured in the History Channel series, “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer”.

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In the early 2000’s SPD finally formed a CSI Unit to process violent crime scenes.  Prior to that, the detectives had to process their own; a real pain in the butt, and very counter-productive. Most people don’t realize; a CSI detective doesn’t investigate the crime, doesn’t do the lab work, doesn’t question witnesses.  They collect all the evidence at a scene and put those items into evidence, a meticulous process. The investigating detective submits the evidence to the lab and whatever is appropriate. There was an Assistant Chief at the time that thought this should be a revenue-neutral situation.  (I have no idea how she thought that). The guy in the photo was always panhandling on the 6th Ave. side of Police Headquarters, near the on-ramp to southbound I-5. I made this sign, which reads: “Will Process Crime Scenes for Food”, with a DNA helix below. I told the guy, “I’ll give you five bucks if I can take your picture holding this sign.” “Sure!” he said. I emailed the photo to the Chief of Police, at the time, Gil Kerlikowski. “I found a budget-friendly solution to the CSI problem!” Kerlikowski liked me, so I could get away with things like this. He thought it was funny.

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John Liebert is a Forensic Psychiatrist.  He consulted on the Ted Bundy murders, the Atlanta Child Murders and the Green River Killer.

He specializes in studying mass shooters and has written many books on that subject.  He is a strong advocate for helping veterans.

A couple years ago, Dr. Liebert asked me to write a foreword for a book, “Psychiatric Criminology-A Roadmap for Rapid Assessment”.  I was honored to do so. His books are available here.

John also wrote one work of fiction, “The Palace Guard”.  It can be found here.

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The early reviews are in for my book. I thought I’d share them with you.

“The greatest book I’ve ever read!” -Cloyd Steiger
“I laughed- I cried!” – Cloyd Steiger
“Sure to hit the bestseller list!”- Cloyd Steiger
“Soon to be a major motion picture!”- Cloyd Steiger
“I thought there’d be food.” -Anonymous

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Here are the first few pages of “Homicide:  The View from Inside the Yellow Tape.”

1

My job’s been murder lately.

I mean that literally; the blood, and the gore. And don’t even get me started about the smell; the metallic scent of blood, usually mixed with alcohol, the putrid odor of decaying human flesh, the maggots, and blood spatter. It’s not the clean, tidy murder like you see on CSI or several other television dramas that think they got it right.

They didn’t.

My work life is about depravity; about asshole gang-bangers to whom life is some gangsta rap song advocating pulling out your gat at the slightest provocation, about sexual psychopath serial killers, domestic terrorists, the criminally insane, and a whole bunch of just stupid people who kill other people for no damned good reason.

At home, my life is PG-13, but my work life is definitely MA-17.
It’s not a job for people who don’t want to get their hands dirty.
This morning was no exception.

I drove the downtown Seattle streets, usually bustling with pedestrian and vehicle traffic, abandoned at that hour, except an occasional street sweeper or transient sifting through ashtrays, seeking out cigarette butts discarded with tobacco enough to roll their own.

The red and blue lights at the top of my windshield pierced the streetlight-lit night, I paused only briefly at each red light before driving through, eventually pulling my unmarked Chevy Impala detective car up to the scene, a gas station off Denny Way in the shadow of the Space Needle. Well, it would have been in the shadow if it wasn’t four in the morning.

Another homicide.

Yellow crime scene tape encircled the lot, a dead black male lying near a gas pump, his head surrounded by a large pool of blood, his eyes in the fixed cloudy stare of death I’d seen hundreds, if not thousands of times in my career.

A young patrol officer stood at the edge of the tape, a clipboard in his hands logging everyone entering the crime scene, his uniform immaculately clean and pressed; obviously a rookie.

“Can I get your name, sir?”

“Steiger,” I told him, “from Homicide.”

“Serial number?”

“Four-three-one-three.”

I saw the look in his eyes; he was looking at a dinosaur. His serial number was probably in the mid-eight thousands.

Two of my sons are patrol officers. He’d consider them old guys with seven and a half and eight years on respectively.
Johney Stevens was the Patrol Sergeant at the scene. I knew him well. I was a patrol officer with several years on when he was the rookie holding the clipboard.

“What’s going on here, Johney?”

“The clerk inside heard a bunch of shots. He ducked and called 911. My guys got here and found this dude obviously dead,” he said, gesturing to the body. “We found four guns; two in the car, and two outside. The thing is, all the shell casings are in the car, none outside. It looks like these guys were all sitting in the car when the shooting went down.”

“Wow,” I smiled. “The shootout at the OK Corolla.”

I walked up to the car and looked in, the scent of cordite and blood in the air. A semiautomatic pistol lay just outside the front passenger door. Another was in the backseat. The magazine was inserted backward. It couldn’t have fired in that condition.

Sucks to be that guy.

Another gun lay on the ground near the dead guy.

This wasn’t my case. I was there to help the primary detectives, in this case Tom Mooney and Jeff Mudd.

Bob Merner, the Chief of Investigations pulled up in his car.
Chief’s rarely show up at “routine” murder scenes. Bob isn’t like a normal Chief. He’d recently come to Seattle from Boston PD, where he’d spent most his career as a Homicide detective or supervisor. He shot up the ranks late in his career to Superintendent of Investigations, Boston’s equivalent of Assistant Chief.

I met Bob a couple years ago. He was a lieutenant with Boston Homicide when I attended a Homicide conference in New York.

I was glad to have him in Seattle.

“How is it I live in the suburbs, twenty-five miles from here, and you live just a few blocks away, but I beat you to the scene?”

“My phone only rang twenty minutes ago!”
I explained the scene to him.

“It looks as though these mopes shot it out in the car,” I said. “It’s amazing only one of them was killed. Most likely, it’s a drug rip. A thinning of the gene pool.”

It’s what we sometimes referred to as a Misdemeanor Murder.

Later that Saturday morning, my contribution to this case was complete. Because of this case, the next murder would be mine. My partner, Jason Kasner, was out of town on vacation, so I’d be on my own. I went home at eleven AM.
By eight o’clock that night, my ass was dragging. I’m too old for this shit, and my years in Homicide has taught me, always assume you’ll get called right back in. Get sleep when you can.

I went to bed.

My instincts were correct.

I woke to my cellphone ringing. I looked at the clock on my nightstand. Three-thirty in the morning again; two nights in a row.

Within a few minutes, I was in my car, red and blue lights flashing, heading up I-5 on my way to another murder. I’m definitely too old for this shit. This case is mine. I’ll be at work for fifteen or sixteen hours.

At least it’s my day off.

I’d been thinking of retiring. I’d been a cop thirty-six years. That’s a long time. Twenty-two in Homicide.

I’d seen a lot during that time that someone not in this business wouldn’t believe.

It’s been a long road.

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