BRONX COLD CASE HOMICIDE-Joseph L. Giacalone

baby's son unharmed nearby. She was stabbed in the neck and shoulder and appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Gurdy Cabrel fought his extradition from the Dominican Republic for nearly two years. Police also spect him in a half dozen other crimes in the Bronx Manhattan and Queens, including rapes and murders, but he could only be charged with the nineteen ninety three murder due to a clause in the

extradition deal. He was a detective supervisor for nineteen years and commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Homicide Squad, personally working on hundreds of murder and missing person cases. In his career, he has written The Criminal Investigative Function, a guide for a guide for new investigators, a real world look into criminal investigations from the crime scene all the way to the courtroom, all the actual legalities that

impact investigations the most. The book we're featuring this evening is Bronx Cold Case Homicide, The Investigative Pardon me, The Investigative Function, with my special guest, Joseph L. Jack Coloney. Welcome to the program, Joseph, and thank you for ingreeing to this interview.

experiences as commander of Bronx Cold Case Homicide. We're going to talk about some cases like the Angel Gabriel case that I mentioned in the introduction, but also The Criminal Investigative Function, a guide for new investigators, which is required reading, and we'll talk all about that, and just welcome to the program. And let's first talk about what you why you were in a position to want to write The Criminal Investigative Function.

more or an encyclopedia. Let's look at that, you know, most of the criminal investigation textbooks that I found were more likely you know, Encyclopedia Britannica, and they just everything is an overview. Everything is you know, this is what this is, this with this, you know that with that is. And it's kind of one of those things where they they end up dealing with more what the uniform officer

does than the actual detective. So I said, if I want to teach these kids, or teach even law enforcement on how to you know, conduct an actual investigation, I need to write a more of a practical guide. Then let's just say, you know, a descriptive guide or you know, a descriptive text that you find out there. And I wanted to do it too. Then respect that I wanted it easier to be understood. I wanted to run in

investigative order. So they designed the book so that the student get you know, picks the case up from crime scene actually the notification of the crime, to the crime

scene to the courtroom and everything in between. And I wanted to lay it out that way so that the student would be able to absorb everything that he or she had have to do in all those steps, so you don't miss them, and I throw in a lot of things, a lot of errors that I made, you know, as a supervisor and even as a mistigator way back when that to make sure you don't you know, you can avoid these things so that you know, we can

move on from that. And the second reason that I wrote this book is that we have a big problem in the country where we're starting to see clearance rates, especially in murder, dropping in many major cities. And it has to do with a lot of the experience to investigators have retired or they've been transferred from investigations back to patrol work because of this whole downturn in the economy. So there was a real experience gap that I wanted to try to fill.

So tell us how exactly you did and got to this position, and take us through the entire process what you had to do to be able to be classified and to be qualified for this investigator rule.

become a detective. So you know, most of I said, most of it is the you know, you kind of earn it kind of thing, and there are actually two routes within the earn it kind of thing, and I'll explain that. What happens is after you come out of the academy, everyone gets assigned to a precinct. So I'm just gonna talk like in general terms of New York City because I'm not really so familiar with every police department's way of how they do this, but this is

generally how most departments follow it. Out of the police academy, you get assigned to a patrol precinct or a district or you know where they have lots of different names for them. And what happens is you try to, you know, you try to get recognized by the amount of arrests

that you do make and what they look for. They look for quality arrests, such as, you know, gun callers and you know where you're finding people out on the street with guns, and you're looking at areas where you know, you burglary collars, major felony collars, and some of them.

They want to see if you what they call referred to as a pickup arrest, which is you didn't get it off the radio, like you didn't get a call that there's a robbery going on the street corner, you pulled up in your car and you interested the guy still there, So they want you to you know, they look for those individuals that will you know, observe it

some of these things. Now, one of the incidents I was actually involved in an on duty shooting that involved they actually walked into a I'm just a regular call for disturbance and we ended up walking into a robbery in progress. So I kind of fell into the you know, I went into the warrants do any investigations right after

for this incident. And what happens is after a certain number of arrests, what happens is most of the police officers they go into what they call the anti clime unit, which is the plane closed assignments where you're you know, driving around looking for guns and robberies and burglaries. That's basically what your role is, and it's you know, generally you work in knights and you're doing you know, you're really doing like that, beginning to build that investigative work.

Once you're done with the anti crime section, you will then be chosen by the detective bureau. And what happens is in the city. What they have is the precinct patrol offices and the detective squad are in the same building, but they're run by two different bureaus. Each one has their own chief and each chief is the same rank, so it's really becomes like they're really separate, if that makes any sense. Yes, So what happens is and that's just so that you know, nobody, you know, sticks their

nose into an area where they shouldn't. You know, where they shouldn't, so each one has the same level of rank so that you keep the peace. That way, everyone knows what their role they have to do. Between the detective Bureau and when I got promoted to I got promoted to sergeant pretty quick, and you know, it's for you know, basically for you know, exams for promotions and sergeants, and what they do is they scoop up people who have this type of experience or even don't into the

Internal Affairs Bureau. And I ended up going into the Internal Affairs Bureau as an investigator as a sergeant and working there. They there's basically I mean, you can volunteer for but most people are there are forced to be there, and you learn how to do the internal investigations, which you know are easy and difficult all at the same time. And what happens is after you do your stint age, you're generally last a little over two years or two years.

I ended up in the one to ten precinc squad, which was at a Corona which actually covers you know, Shay Stadium and well actually now a city field where the Mets play and you know, the tennis courts, and then you have you know, your your all the sections of Corona and Elmer's and all these other locations. And there I was responsible for We had about twenty at the time, twenty seven detectives, and we handled all the major crimes, murder, rape, robberies, you name it. You know,

these guys and girls handle it. And part of my job was being able to manage these things and get them, you know, make sure that where these cases are going up, and you know, going out and making arrest with these with the teams and you know, finding doing search warrants and those kind of things. And that's and that's basically how how that that what that aspect of my career went. And then I was going to school. I finished up my mass degree while I was trying to do all

this stuff. Believe it or not. I was married, no kids, so it was a little easy to go to work and work all day and overtime in school. But then you had to get your teachers to, you know, try to help you out and try to explain to them like, hey, listen, sometimes something might happen. I might not get the class. So you know, most of the teachers were you becx understanding, but probably not. Didn't miss too many too many classes

because of that. And what I did then was after I got my master's degree and the chief had reached out to me and wanted me to put together the training unit for the detectives. So this is how I started getting into the training aspect and you know, really trying to impart some of the knowledge that I've had and then bringing other experts in who can teach the

detectives how to do things. And my responsibility there for a couple of years was that I ran what we referred to as like the the NYPD Homicide School, which.

about how do you investigate a homicide? Because when you look at homicide, and I know from your you know, reading about you and your site and your books, one of the things that you learn is that a homicide is what we refer to as the exemplar, the example for every type of investigation. Every thing that you can learn how to investigate in a homicide, you would use for the much lesser crimes. You know, your obberies and your births, you use the same things that you would

for the homicide. It's just that and the homicide you pull out all the stops. So if you teach the detectives how to handle the homicides, those skills that you teach them how to handle homicides will filter it down into the lesser crimes. And you know, and like in my experience, I always found that rape wasn't a lesser crime per se, even though it is in the penal law. You know, what I found is that, you know, if you kill somebody dead, you know, the family had to suffer.

But unfortunately, with rape victims, I found that they suffer their whole lived, their relationships and everything else. So you know, to me, rape was always a crime that was more devastating than even murder.

might be frustrating. So tell us why specifically was rewarding and not frustrating as I might have imagined initially.

I wanted to get back out there and do what I referred to as real police work, even though you know you're helping out all these other aspects. I always

felt that I wanted to get out there. But even from the detective squad or even when I was in the cold case squad, the victims advocate is a big part because many individuals in the public think that the police, you know, just don't care, or you know, this is not an important case, or you know, it's something that all that you know, the case is cold, or the case has to be reopened. And I always just explained that,

you know, homicides are never closed. They're always open. They just have to be re examined from time to time. But when you reach out to the family members, either with good news or bad news, you know, and you try to make contact.

we know more times than not. So when you get to know your victim, you might end up identifying suspects in the case.

there that still care that we still try to carry on. You know, you're the last there's a cold case person. You are the last liaison between the police department and the public, and you know, and that's your role as the advocate to keep that relationship going. And you have to be very careful when you're dealing with that also because you don't want to get somebody's hopes up high.

So you know, when if you're contacting a family, you have something you know, either as a DNA hit or some other type of you know, information maybe from you know, that was developed through an arrest of somebody, and I wanted to make a deal, I mean, you know as well as I do. There are you know, a dozen things. Why cases that were so old that all of a sudden now come to light because new evidence comes out.

moisture that gets built up inside the plastic. So even if you have a DNA sample, if it was put in plastic, there might be a possibility that the evidence was destroyed. Things could be It can't be reversed. But for instance, if you find something in plastic ahead of time and you try to and you freeze it, you know, if there's something that you can save, but you know,

then you're okay. But like even when you were talking before about the size of a sample, I mean you needed the size of about a half a dollar, and now you need about eight cells, so that you you know, we can't even see unless you have a microscope and the the wave, the forensics and the DNA are moving

at lightning speed. You know, with the introduction of touch DNA or familial DNA, these are the things that can really help out, especially in cold cases where you might not have had anything before, and now this new technology all of a sudden afford you a suspect or a couple of suspects.

sample from them. He had given them permission. There's three ways that you can lawfully get a DNA sample, and I used to call it the three c's, consent, court order, or covertly. Right, So consent is the easy one if the person says yes, and you can get it without a warrant. The covertly you have to get it secretively, and the court order, you know, it's just what it sounds like. You go get an affidavit and you probably cause.

So what happened was they had he had they had taken a swab from him through a consent, and I guess he realized at the time that this DNA was eventually going to come back to a crime scene Hitt and cotis. Now, you know, there are two different databases

and codis. You have the crime scene database that they referred to as the forensic database, which is your unknown and then you have your known database or you're convicted database, which is anybody that's you know, certain states different rules, but some of them have now arrests, some of them have conviction and they take a DNA sample of you know, they had the person's name and all the information and they have it in the system. Well lo and behold. At the time, you know, DNA took a long time

in order to get stuff back. By the time the DNA hit had come back, he had fled the country and you were kind of like the at square one. And what happens was back at the time when the Dominican Republic and the United States really didn't have any extradition rules, anybody who went back to the Dominican Republic, you were basically not getting them out of the country. So yeah, I mean that's basically where it was. It was an old administration. I forgot who the president was

at the time, but it changed. It changed a number of years ago when the new new administration had come in and one of the friendly as posture with the United States, and well, what happened was the detectives and we started working on these cases and we started to realize some similarities between some of the other crimes that had happened in different you know, within the Bronx in

different burroughs. And the detectives put this together and they ended up finding several cases that you know, could have could match this stuff. So what we did was we went and you found all these cases, you dug up all the evidence, had DNA tested, had low behold, you

get hits on you know, different cases. So yeah, so and it's like, you know, it's amazing though, you know when you sit there and and you know, we had gone and we had spoken to you know, family members and different things to try to find out what exactly was going on, try to find out the connections. You know, there's there's one thing that you're you know, you're looking for, and we have developing a list of suspects and I put it in the book. I always say you have

to look for mom the means, opportunity, and motives. Those are your three elements that you have to satisfy it before you have a suspect. Because if you can't get

one of those elements, you don't have a suspect. So you always look at, you know, the means of the person able to do this, whether you know, the opportunity, where they actually available to do it, where they were they even in the state where you know, one of the things that you find out when you like somebody and then you're you know, you run them in the database. You find out that the guy's in jail, you know, so you find it out, God, he doesn't even have

the opportunity anymore. So there goes that idea, you know, and then the motive of course, and you know what motives run the gavit. I mean, most people are killed for love, money, and drugs. So you can, you know, pick any one of those three and and you know, run just about any case with it. You know, this just one just happened to be, you know, acts of random violence at some points, so you know, not even you know, love money or drugs, just one of those things.

I mean, you look at the behavioral evidence a lot where it's the you know, not so much the the modus operenda, the moo, but the signature.

of homicides. And the records that they had kept back then were all in books, so they were in the process or they're in the you know, they've probably finished by now the process of getting all this information into an electronic database. Now you say, well, you know, how do you not have all this information? I mean when you have volumes of you know, books, you know, it doesn't it takes a long time to get that stuff

entered into the system. So eventually it'll be you know, they had a lot of it in there, but you know, some of this stuff you still had to look through books.

But what you would do is you would do your searches, so you would pick you know, female victims, you know, you know, stabbing, shooting, whatever, you know, you choose whatever cause of death that you think that you would be you know, looking at or let's say, if you had cases where you thought where there was like prostitutes were being used and that wasn't in this case, but you know, you would check off, you know, prostitution you know as a possible you know reason why that the victim and

the perpetrator actually together. So you know, there's different things with computers now and the analysis that these these things can do they are amazing. But most of the stuff we had to do is through looking through books and then pulling the cases and finding the cases, which always becomes a mystery ol in itself. You know, these companies cases twenty years old, fifteen years old, and you you know,

have to go dig through the archives. And like I said, sometimes that's that's part of the mystery itself, trying to find these cases and then find the detectives. And you think nothing of reaching out to a detective that looked that investigated the case twenty years ago. I mean the guy's retired now, you know, ten fifteen, twenty years Sometimes and you call them up at the house. You know, you'd have to call the union, you get the phone number, you get thing, and you reach out to these guys.

And never once did I have somebody tell me they didn't want to talk about it. Sure, you know, people, you know, have to understand that when they choose murderers. There I say this quite often that when people choose murder as their answer to get out of their problems, you know, they don't realize the wheels that they put in motion. I mean, there are people like myself and many of the other members of police departments all across the country. You know, they this is what they do.

They don't you know, they don't give up. You're like a pitbull. You just you know, grab onto something and you keep on and you know, pulling at it. And really what everything comes down to, and no matter what investigation you're looking at, everything comes down to your interviewing skills, getting information from people, asking the right question, you know. And that's why we always do or are interviews in person. So sometimes these detectives would travel all over the country

just to talk to people. You could do things over the phone, but you don't get the same thing. Like so, for instance, if you were I were sitting in a studio right now, conversation to be different because you could watch body language and cues, and you know, you could ask a question and then I might think of something else and you could see the eyes light up, you know, so we know that you're on the right trail on

something if you know what I'm talking about. Sure, yeah, absolutely so, I mean, these are some of the things that you as an investigator do. And I always try to preach to every investigator I speak to now even after I'm retired, that always do your interviews in person because you see the face, you watch the non viable body language, you see if they're comfortable with certain questions and not.

it's not really so bad. But yes, I mean it's it's your mere presence alone, is is what they actually have on the continuum use of force, you know, on police use of forces, the first part of force, police force is your actual presence, wherever it may be foreboding as it may be. The uniform, the suit and tie and your you know, your pin. You know, it's just one of those things where your personal appearance plays a

big role in that. You know, so detectors always had to look the part, you know, shirt and tie and suit, and you know, that's what people expect to see.

knocking on the door and asking for information. And I remember we went to this house on an old case and we knocked on the door and this little old lady answered the door and we told them we were from the cold case squad and then she's like, you know, like, oh from television, you know, And we just laughed and we said yes, and then we said we're it is Ryan.

how old this lady is and this happened. I think it was like eighteen years prior to that. So I'm like dancing around the issue now because I don't want to ask her rite out if her husband is still alive or not, you know, so you know, and it's kind of difficult. So I'm kind of like beating around the bush and she's just like, Okay, Sonny, you could just ask me. I'm like, is your husband's still around that I could talk to him. She's like, nah, he died a long time ago. She said, you should just

come out and say it. You know, so she invites in the house. But really what it comes down to in an interview is that rapport building something that I did with this lady whatever that you know, kind of got her to like me to open up about certain things. So when you're dealing with the interview skills or the canvassing where you're knocking on the doors, that rapport building becomes a real big issue in respect that does this person like you? So sometimes you might have to try

to find a common ground. You know, maybe you know you're enter the house or you're on the stoop and you know they're wearing a baseball cap and you might want to talk sports for a few minutes, right, get somebody off the topic of why you're really there, get them to get them comfortable. But in an interrogation, you know, it's no longer a friendly things. It's really it's confrontational. The person is there, they pretty much know why they're there.

It's a psychological game where you have to have all your information. You got to have all your ducks in a row, so to speak. So, for instance, you have to know everything about the case, everything that happened, every interview that was done. And this makes it difficult because you're trying to and sometimes in a big case there were different detectives that would help out and you know,

in an active case, and then write reports. So you have to make sure these reports you read them before you went into your interrogation room because you wouldn't want to miss out on a specific fact. And the idea behind behind knowing everything is pretty simple because how in the world would you know if this person was lying to you if you didn't know all the facts about the case. So that's the most important aspect for any investigator. Know everything you can about that case before you go

in there. Ideally, interrogation is always the last step and when you go in there, and like I said, when we would I was doing this. I never asked the

question that I didn't know the answer to already. So if I asked the question, I knew what the answer or what the real answer was, and then you would see what this person was not like TV where you have, you know, forty five minutes and three commercials, you know, to solve a case, you know, like co case, the case they'll them for thirty seven years, right, they close it in forty five minutes. Yeah, unlike the real world where you know, these things take you know years to develop.

The issue that comes down to is that what you have is you know, either person's gonna lie to you, you keep on, you know, you just let them keep on lying. And you know, like the old proverbs says, you know, give you enough rope, you're gonna hang yourself, you know. And TV though, right, the first time they lie, they jump on it. And the other thing that TV does that's really not accurate is they do this tag team thing where you have the two investigators in the

room and you know, and they're both asking questions. That's not the way it's done. There's only one person that ask the questions. The other person is there for taking notes. And I say that you know, they're like children, they're seen and not heard, you know, so they you know, you don't do the tag team thing because you confuse people and you could also set you could also set off the investigation or the interview and the interrogation excuse me in a you know, on a tangent by asking

the wrong question or interrupting. You know, it's about you know, when you're interviewing somebody's per se, it's about that stream of consciousness trying to get people to remember. So if you're interviewing a witness to a crime or a victim, when you ask that open ended question, which is like to tell me a story question, you know, I try to get the detectives to selet just let the person do the talking, don't interrupt them, because when you interrupt

people that you break that stream of consciousness. And I always give the analogy to when I'm teaching my classes, I say, you know, imagine that you know, you had that dream that everything goes right and the phone rings in the middle of the night. You can never get back to that dream, right, You just never get there. So it's you know, no matter how many times you fluff your pillow and find the you know, the spot

without the spring, you never get back to that dream. So, you know, those are the most important skills that an investigator has to take into that room. Be patient till you know.

But tell us about the interview itself. You say that you get them to give them enough ropes so they can hang themselves, and once they've hung themselves, you're not confronting them per se. What do you do? And you say you can't solve these cases in forty five minutes. What's a typical interview in terms of length? And if there's some things that we've seen on television that are true, tell us and the things that are blatantly not, tell us about those.

still see through the glass. That room is specifically just for witnesses and victims to use for lineup purposes and for another detective or another investigator to watch an interviewer and interrogation to try to learn from some of the people. And I always encourage some of the DETECTI especially some of the new ones, like you know what, you should stand outside and watch these two guys and how they talk and what they do and how they go about

doing it. So it's it becomes like a learning tool for new investigators to sit and watch people who've done it for years, and some people are better at this. But the issue that comes down to is that as a supervisor, sometimes you have to pick the person that that you know to go into that interrogation room. Somebody maybe who had a who maybe locked this person up in the past and had had a better or somebody

had a better rapport with them. And you know a lot of cops don't realize it that you know how this person gets treated out on the street by the uniform cops really set the tone about you know how much this person is going to dig their heels in once they get into that interrogation room. So you try to treat everybody, and you try to teach the cop and you treat everybody with respect. You treat them, you know, nice and and believe it or not, it makes the

detective jobs a lot easier. So you know, you don't parade people through like that and let them see people on purpose. And you know, especially got for bid a witness or a victim. You know, that's the last thing you on earth you'd ever want to see. And and you know what they do is they they kind of show you, like when it's that co conspiraed a thing where they you know, they got the arrested their co defendant.

Remember that the that the police as part of the Supreme Court can lie and they can use deceit and trickery, but they can't you know, in certain places you can't fabricate evidence. So for instance, I can tell you that DNA was found at the crime scene, but I can't show you a report and says this report from the lab says, this is you. You know, that becomes too suggestive and it becomes too much of an issue. But believe it or not, in certain states that's allowable, but

in New York that's not allowable. So for instance, let's not give you a scenario. Let's just say you had a suspect in a rape case and there's DNA that's been recovered. You walk into a room, what do you think The first question that the you know what happens is you always look at it as are you a baseball fan? Dead a little bit? Okay, So I'm gonna use a baseball analogy. When the batter is way for that fastball, right, he's sitting on it. He's going to

hit this thing out of the park. But if he's waiting for a fastball and that slow curveball comes, what happens to the batter? Right? He needs buckle, He doesn't know what to do, he can't swing, and he kind of looks foolish. Well, as the interrogator, that's how you have to be. You're the pitcher and the guy in that room is the batter, and you have to keep

them more balanced. They already have their story in play, they've rehearsed it a dozen times, they kind of figure out what the first question is that you're going to ask them. And I always developed that curveball question where instead of showing a photo of the victim and say, hey, do you know what that's what he's waiting for, maybe my first question I might ask him is do you

know what DNA is? And see his or her reaction from that, And now, what do you think he's thinking of the entire time as I'm going through the paperwork? Do they have my DNA?

off face. So what do you think the number one alibi is that most people have take a shot in the dog. What people say where they were or what they were doing at.

order out? Yeah? Well I had pizza. Okay, I'm going to ask you twenty questions on the pizza. Did you have it delivered, did you pick it up, where'd you pick it up, what was the address, what did the person look like in a delivery? How much was the pizza?

What kind of pizza did you get? Right? So I can ratle off twenty questions in a row about something that has nothing to do with anything but just what I used to refer to as killing the alibi persona, And those are the skills that you develop over a long period of time, and those are the things you know. Like even sometimes my wife hates when I ask for questions or do something because I always I might do

something like that and drive it crazy. But psuter comes down to it's like, you know, he'd never forget how to do these things. And I tell people, don't bother lying to me, because I've heard every lie in the book, So just you know, be straight. I'd rather have you to tell me that you don't like me or whatever, then we'll move on. That's not a big deal.

they really don't care. You know, that's that's you know, you lose the personal fact out of that. So when people say, you know, they leave out the eyes and the wheeze and the usses when they're talking, you have to really start looking at that. It's part of that statement analysis. But and you really get into what people say and how they say it, and then you can usually turn the words against them when they say so. Basically, then you have no idea then, right, you know, well, yes, okay,

thank you. You know, so I could be a horror at the customers service line.

people bought it in the same day, who knows. And it wasn't. It wasn't during a school semester where you know, you and I I have a couple of colleges using it once and you see the book sales, you know, skyrocket. This was like in between time. So we started the publisher and I said, well, listen, you know the book for the last couple of days has been really selling a lot, and now it's sold out. What's going on? Oh we didn't tell you. I'm like, no, it happened.

Oh yeah. The State of New Jersey had requested a review copy the Civil Service Commission and they decided to use it as an adoption for police promotional example. I almost fell up the chair when they told me this, just to you know, this was it started off with the sheriff's exam, which was something like, you know, twelve

hundred sheriffs. So I was like, we kind of I was like proud of it because it kind of gave my work some validation about how easy it is to read and how any police officer or a detective can use this case used this book and it's actually led now to The second edition just became published a week ago, so thanks. Yeah, we completely revised it and expanded it. We added basically, we made the book larger on the size, had one hundred pages or so with illustrations and photos.

So I'm trying to build a so called beachhead in the in the criminal investigation textbook realm. Because there are

hundreds of criminal investigation textbooks. What separates mind from everybody else's is that it's a practical guide and what really So the Jersey picked it up was very exciting, but you know who other schools picked it up, like journalism schools, investigative journalism, people who want to know how the you know who are going to be working as journalists of future news reporters, and you know, they're using the textbook to teach the students about, you know, what the police

procedures are and how they can go about doing and then learning how to write about. I never even anticipated that audience. And then it fled into crime writers and then you know, I got I got a number of talks like the Sisters in Crime had invited me to come out and speak to the groups about you know,

because these are all the published authors whatever. Here I am amongst all these these ladies who've written, you know, dozens and volumes of books and and you know, I'm talking to them about police procedure and how to do these things. And they have great audience and and I get emails from different workshops and groups, and I've done it's it's really been a fun time. And I'm building what they so to speak, my platform. And I've been in the newspaper a lot lately. I was just in

New York Times the other day. I post them on my I have an author website at Joji Wrights dot com, and I just post all the author interviews that I've done. So I'm kind of excited. I'm kind of proud of it. I'm working hard. I'm trying to shoot you know, you know, people like you that give me the opportunity to come on the you know, on their radio show. I mean, I greatly appreciate this stuff. And it's, you know, opportunities like this don't you know, don't come around often, so

you jump on these things. You try to make everything work, try to keep everybody happy. And you know, I've been I've been very fortunate, so I really can't complain, well.

you're using it for promotions for police. That it's adopted by police departments itself. That's fantastic, and so you cannot ask for anything better than that, you know, really.

It's written like a novel where you know, you can almost see the steps being taken. And you know, if you just plug in a titious character from the beginning of the book and you work your way through, you can pretty much, you know, write your story. So you know, I never thought about these these things before. It is actually it always strangers that bring me things up to you that you just sit there and you scratch your head, you say, wow, never thought.

that invaluable connection and connection to police information. And also I think just to give them the nuts and bolts without having to try to concoct that themselves for the book itself. The other thing is that the the other we've had a perspective where we have judges, we have lawyers, we have victims and victims families and so all these

different perspectives. But what I found interesting was the a Bronx cold case squad, homicide expert, somebody that's been in the field, and then takes us all the way through from the very very earliest stages right to the courtroom and to the conviction. So that's something that you just don't get. And I think that's what people appreciate, that you taking the reader through this experience as you did

it yourself, and then using certain cases as example. So I think that's the perspective that even the true crime reader is looking for, just a different little perspective from because lots of true crime books are fairly formulaic. So it's interesting when somebody like a police officer writes a book because of his involvement and because of the incredible access that he has and from his perspective.

writing two new books, also practical guys. I'm doing a police patrol book and actually a law enforcement it's like basically like the handbook for you or a guy to somebody's law enforcement career, which is basically for that eighteen nineteen twenty one year old crowd out there who want to get involved in policing. It's a great profession, it's

a noble profession. And yeah, and it's right now is the time if you any of your listeners, anybody that follows you, I know you have thousands of people that follow you on this. This is great. You know, I always might tell my students, if this is what you want to do, you have to go out and do it. So you have to go out and actively pursue a test and take the test and do all these things. No one's gonna, you know, just hand you a police badge and a gun and say, hey, we heard you wanted to do this.

just mentioned a serial killer like it was nothing. Lots of people, you know, have read about serial killers.

I mean, you know, it's amazing some of the things that you see, and you know, some of the things that are killing. But we're having a phenomenal year the last two years in murder. I mean, we had the lowest rate of murders is like the nineteen sixties, you.

when I looked it up. I mean, that's that say you're telling me that sixty two percent of all murderers are still walking around Philadelphia or something. That's basically what you're looking at. That's yeah, no, no, And if you look at it, if you look at it, even at a sixty five or even a seventy percent clearance rate, we average about sixteen thousand homicides in the United States alone, so you're looking at you know, almost five thousand homicides a year go cold in the United States. So in

ten years, that's fifty thousand cases. So I mean, these cases are you know, you know, you know, it's it's just one of those phenomenons that unfortunately we've seen cold case at the cold case gets shut down. You know, I think you just in Seattle, lady shut their down because of the time consuming and the money that's spent on these cases.

they'd have been solved the ready. You know. You know, there's always something you know and listen, most of the time, you know who did it. It's just that you don't have the evidence to prove it. That's that's really basically what you're looking at. You know, you develop your suspects and you pretty much know who it is, but you need this thing cold evidence, you know, and just because you know you think that doesn't mean anything. You know.

So it's one of those issues where it can be very frustrating at times, and it gets frustrating dealing with district attorneys and stuff like that because even in the cold case, I don't know if people realize this that even though you develop probable cause to make the arrest, because the case is so old, you just don't go out and slap cups on somebody. You have to sit down with the district attorney who's going to prosecute this case.

You know, they're looking for a winner. The prosecutor and the police department are in different you know, different in the United States here, different you know, planes. I mean, they want to have convictions and we just want to make arrest in close cases, so ones like kind of you know, they both personal perspective, you know, in regards to your personal performance. But district attorneys get get rated,

you know, on how well they're conviction rates. So they you know, if they the case, they don't think they're gonna win the case. They you know, they want three nuns in the pope as a witness to think that's twenty years old.

we got nothing. So you know, it could can get very frustrating at times when you're dealing with this because, like I said, you you might have all the circumstantial evidence in the world that that points to a specific person and guess what, you know, no evidence, no confession, you got nothing.

be one of these people that give up easy. You also, like, for instance, if you're thinking about this career, or you think you're already in this career and you want to go into cold case. And I always say, you know, I would interview detectives and ask them questions like, you know, do you like to do puzzles? You like to do cross you know, and then you look at you strange,

because that's what this really comes down to. It's a big puzzle sometimes and you have to put all these pieces together, and sometimes it takes you, you know, hours to put a puzzle together. So if you're gonna get frustrated and walk away and just leave the outside of the puzzle, I'm not interested in you. You know. That's that's basically what you have to deal with.

comes into a big play. I mean, we I work with people that you know that no matter what they try to do, you know, people won't do anything for them just because they're just you know, not nice people. You know, and it's like everything else. You get more

bees with honey than you do it vinegar. And you just go through these steps and you try to you know, you gotta remember you you're working for the victim at this point, and that's what needs and that's what you need to keep telling yourself when you're doing this stuff, because it comes down to justice. You're the sole person that's talking for this victim. More than more than likely any of the victims that we dealt with, we're no

longer here. So you take on that role and you you take on that role, and you you stick through it and to the bitter end, either you're going to make an arrest or or it's not gonna happen, but you you give your best, You do everything you can do to get to that that place.

that I'm on Twitter, I'm on cold Case. If you go to any of those the blog, especially coldksquad dot com, you can find all my contact information and you know, and like I said, I've had in the past where you know, a write will ask me a question. I'll gladly take those emails, just I just don't want to. I had somebody send me, like, you know, their entire book and ask me to critique it. I don't have that out of time. So you know, if you have that one or two questions you want to buy me

in an email. That's great, but I can't read books.