Veteran detectives say that solving a murder is not like the glamorous television shows where goatee-sporting hunks and platinum-blonde models are able to conclude the investigation in an hour with the aid of a little kit they carry with them in their Italian sports car.
"I wish it was solved as fast it is on TV. Our DNA comes back to us on an average turnaround of between two and five months, and sometimes longer," Tyler police Detective Clay Perrett said.
Perrett said the real investigators' work is basically interviewing scores of people.
"One method we have to solve a murder is to trace the victim's movements over the past few days of their lives and then check to see if there is any criminal background. We interview people and look for discrepancies in their stories and we then we may interview them several more times," he said.
Another way is by getting information from tipsters.
"It's not very glamorous if you want to know the truth about it," Perrett said.
SOLVED YEARS LATER
Some cases like the 1986 death of 82-year-old Cherokee County resident Martha Ezell, a homicide that went unsolved for 15 years, are solved when a party involved in the murder gets in trouble for another crime.
Glenn Wilbanks Jr., and Aldney Clark Jr., were arrested in April 2001 after Wilbanks admitted his role in the murder to Cherokee County sheriff's investigators.
Testimony during the trial painted a picture of two men, who carried many others to the scene to see the body of the elderly woman and then told them they too would end up dead if they talked.
Clark, who was the shooter in the murder, was sentenced in June to life in prison and Wilbanks received 37 years.
In the Kilgore Kentucky Fried Chicken murders of 1983, prosecutors recently obtained capital murder indictments against two Tyler men with a long criminal history. Two decades after the mass execution.
Darnell Hartsfield, 44, and Romeo Pinkerton, 47, remain in jail charged with five counts of capital murder each for the deaths of Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte Landers, 19, were found shot to death. All five were shot at least twice.
NEW TOOLS
Though the crime shows are highly inaccurate in how murders are solved, investigators are now relying heavily on science and other methods to catch killers.
DNA has become routine where just a few short years ago science would only allow blood typing and not singling one person out from everyone else in the world.
"Technology has caught up with some of the old crimes and we are able to identify suspects through DNA collected at the original scene," Perrett said.
Perrett said investigators gather all the fingerprints, forensic and DNA evidence found at a scene and that information is then scoured until a suspect is arrested.
Tyler/Smith County Crime-stoppers uses posters and the media to portray a certain crime to generate tips, but a new tool will soon be reaching more potential witnesses.
Jennifer Roberts, Crimestoppers coordinator, said the organization would soon be using outdoor advertising to grab more people's attention. "We have new tools to help us and science is developing each day, but if someone commits a murder and doesn't leave any evidence and never tells anyone about it, then the murder could go unsolved," Perrett said.
Kenneth Dean covers police, fire, public safety organizations. He can be reached at 903.596.6353. e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com"> news@tylerpaper.com
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