Mishandling of a case...

[FarinaforBrkfast]

Which case do you think was mishandled by police the most?

[ScaryFog]

Eric Tamiyasu (http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Eric_Tamiyasu)

"County Sheriff Joe Wampler, believing that Eric had died naturally, had his bed and bedding burned. The corner's autopsy revealed that Eric had been shot three times in the head."

Vital evidence was possibly destroyed when the mattress was burned.

[1990 UM fan]

Tommy Burkett, Tony Lombardi, Danny Casolaro, etc.

[TheCars1986]

Keith Warren, Su Ya Kim, and Doug Johnston

[RobinW]

Even though their incompetence wasn't featured on UM, the murders of Harold & Thelma Swain has to be one of the worst police investigations I've ever seen!

It seems very likely that Dennis Perry, the suspect convincted of the murders, is actually innocent. Many pieces of evidence in the case have been lost, including the pair of glasses that Robert Stack held up in the UM segment! Since Perry has perfect 20/20 vision, those glasses could have exonerated him, but nobody seems to know what happened to them after they left Stack's hands! Even if it wasn't LE's fault, how could they not keep major tabs on such an important piece of evidence?!
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=206594

[Steve W.]

Kurt Sova's case comes to mind. It seemed to me that Kurt's mother Dorothy did most of the investigating herself. I also read that no photographs were taken of Kurt's body when it was found [although someone would have to confirm that].

A newspaper article stated that one or two Polaroids were taken of his body being loaded either onto a stretcher (or already on the stretcher) or into an ambulance. Those Polaroids were put into a manilla folder and that was it.

[UMFaninMD]

Debbie Wolfe

Michael Rosenblum

Doreen Picard/Susan Laferte---the mishandling came out years after the initial UM broadcast though.

[owenrock]

Eric Tamiyasu has been mentioned thats horrible, I think another one would have to be Joyce Chiang

[1990 UM fan]

Eric Tamiyasu has been mentioned thats horrible, I think another one would have to be Joyce Chiang

Hers fortunately was solved last year

[owenrock]

I know that they had said that she didnt commit suicide in May of last year and that they had 2 suspects, but I didnt know that it was solved.....its good though that it is. Because even the idea that she committed suicide was just so beyond believable it made you wonder what the cops there were on

[1990 UM fan]

I know that they had said that she didnt commit suicide in May of last year and that they had 2 suspects, but I didnt know that it was solved.....its good though that it is. Because even the idea that she committed suicide was just so beyond believable it made you wonder what the cops there were on

They reopened her case and changed the status of it from "suicide" to "homicide" last year after learning that the 2 men were involved. Unfortunately, one of the men can't be charged because the country he is living in has no extradition treaty with the US. The other man is currently in prison on an unrelated murder charge I believe.

[TracyLynnS]

Kurt Sova's case comes to mind. It seemed to me that Kurt's mother Dorothy did most of the investigating herself. I also read that no photographs were taken of Kurt's body when it was found [although someone would have to confirm that].

Have you had a chance to read through Kurt Sova's case here? Those cops were disgusting! Practically the whole department was run by thugs and that's why Mrs. Sova had to do all the investigating herself.

That's something folks never really think about, imo. When you need detectives to help solve a crime, you expect that they're trained cops who want to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice. It's mind boggling to think that in the Sova case police work was the last thing on the Newburgh cop's minds and they were just using their power to make it easier to commit crimes themselves!

Oh, another case with a lot of coverup by the cops was Kaitlyn Arquette's murder. I just read her mom's book and not only were things botched, but tons of info and evidence was deliberately covered up, hidden, removed from the file, destroyed, etc. IIRC, they even lied to the FBI, preventing them from getting involved, even though the case was so complicated the crimes spanned several states and included major drug trafficking and insurance fraud, all just to keep the FBI from nosing into their inept and corrupt police department.

Several big leads that the cops told the family they were following up on had never even been looked into even a year later, and that whole time, the cops kept telling Kait's parents that they were working those leads and things were progressing. They never intended to investigate that stuff and repeatedly lied to the family.

[Lakeboy]

The boys on the tracks who died because they smoked too much weed. Whoever made that ruling should not have a job. No one would smoke so much pot that they would lay on a train track.

Keith Warren, Tommy Burkett, Kurt Sova and Deborah Wolfe.

[Blackout]

joyce mcclain


maine state police are freaking retarded

[TracyLynnS]

The boys on the tracks who died because they smoked too much weed. Whoever made that ruling should not have a job. No one would smoke so much pot that they would lay on a train track.

Best I can recall, it was actually completely impossible for anyone to smoke as much pot as the ME, Fahmy Malak, claimed these boys did.

Malak is a hack who committed some serious errors.

The local citizens had been complaining about Malak's poor quality of work for years. He gave erroneous testimony in many criminal cases. In one trial, he misread a common medical chart leading leading him to publicly accuse a Deputy County Coroner of killing a man.

He mixed up tissue samples (in more than one case), testified in a trial while unaware of his mistake, then later, DNA testing had to be done to prove Malak had been testifying about the wrong sample.

He once testified that a man who'd been found on his front lawn shot 5 times in the chest with a high powered pistol had actually committed suicide.

I know there's more, but I searched and found these examples pretty quickly.

[scc1222]

Wendy Camp,along with her daughter and sister-in-law,and that is because the police were directly involved in helping Chad,Beverly and Ida get away with it,IMO.

[justins5256]

I used to know some folks who were looking in to the wrongful conviction of Daniel Montecalvo. They alleged that the Burbank police department fouled that case up pretty bad.

[TracyLynnS]

Wendy Camp,along with her daughter and sister-in-law,and that is because the police were directly involved in helping Chad,Beverly and Ida get away with it,IMO.

Definitely agree and I hope this will finally be investigated and publicly revealed.

[Necco]

Kurt Cobain

There are serious questions about his death being a suicide. Not the least of which is a musician from LA passing a poly stating that Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt. Plus the death of Kristen Pfaff the night before she was supposed to leave Seattle and Hole for good, shortly after Kurt died. And attempts to use his credit card 3 days after he was dead...

[owenrock]

would Kurt Cobain be a mishandled case or would that just be a bunch of conspiracy theories?

[Necco]

Conspiracy theory or no, there were issues with the investigation. The missing credit card, the fact that Courtney Love pretended to be Kurt's mom when she filed the missing persons report, the real possibility that he would have been in a heroin induced coma considering the amount of drugs in his system, no legible prints on the gun

Yes, he still could have killed himself, but that doesn't mean the investigation wasn't botched.

[crochetbuff]

One of the most is the Jaclyn Dowaliby case:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/cwc/exonerations/ilDowalibySummary.html

The book “Gone in the Night” was very good.

[scc1222]

Definitely agree and I hope this will finally be investigated and publicly revealed.
me too.they all deserve it,and their familes as well.

[TheCars1986]

I used to know some folks who were looking in to the wrongful conviction of Daniel Montecalvo. They alleged that the Burbank police department fouled that case up pretty bad.

Outside of not believing Montecalvo's version of events, do you know exactly what they were alleging?

[Mr. Metalhead.]

Kurt Cobain

There are serious questions about his death being a suicide. Not the least of which is a musician from LA passing a poly stating that Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt. Plus the death of Kristen Pfaff the night before she was supposed to leave Seattle and Hole for good, shortly after Kurt died. And attempts to use his credit card 3 days after he was dead...
Not to mention that Seattle PD went in with a preconcieved notion that it was suicide. Several weeks before his death, Courtney Love called Seattle PD saying Kurt had locked himself in a room and was suicidal. When the police showed up, Kurt claimed he was merely trying to stay away from Courtney, and they confiscated several guns. So, when the police came onto the scene with him dead of a gunshot wound, of course with what previously happened and with how they found him, they immediately expected suicide.

[mwcarolina]

there's ALOT, but i go with Warren's death. there's no way he hung himself on that tree. that smells of coverup.

[Shamsky329]

For me it would be these 3 cases that are fresh off the top of my head.

1. Kurt Cobain
2. Keith Warren
3. Tommy Burkett

[Killarney Rose]

Tommy Zeiglar, Jon-Benet ramsey, Keith Warren, Jaclyn Dowillaby(UM?)

[DALLASTEXAN!!]

Ha, picking one is way too hard. this should be pick the top ten!

for me the one that still strikes me the most is the bordello murders segment. complete conflict of interest on the investigation and likely there was never a real investigation because of this. this case will remain unsolved unless new media attention brings forth more investigation somehow.

then another that was not mentioned would be for the hispanic guy in miami, florida area that was imprisoned for 20+ years because one rape acuser falsely identified him and the cops locked onto him. come to find out they lied about his case and had him prosecuted based on a few false accounts of poor witness identification. also lied about testimony from a neighbor that claimed that he spoke english, but was proven false.

Both of these cases show that when victims are weakened by particluar circumstances such as "prostitution" or a language barrier, police can get away with faulty practices until media attention is brought to late. It is just frustrating when some of the cases remain unsolved because of poor investigation.