PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I have a quirk: After a verdict comes through the pipes - based on the actual evidence that was proved in court - I love to go back to the media reports predating the verdict, to get an idea as to how the case was reported. Dorian Hargrove's story - published in The San Diego Reader - was remarkably backed up by the $6 million award to Kevin Brown's widow, including important interviews with her, her lawyer, and an expert in serology and DNA analysis. We learn that the lab played down possible lab contamination, downplayed the criminal behavior of a convicted rapist who was also tied to the murder through DNA testing, and pursued the most tenuous theories of Brown's culpabilty - as it pursued Brown with a vengeance, abusing its police powers and the search warrant process. What a story. A brutal, misguided, bungled investigation of one of their own - with such terrible results. This shows all of the signs of a tainted police lab culture, as opposed to the acts of one or two bad apples. Yes this happened quite a few years ago, but how do we know that the culture that drove Kevin Brown, a fine, dedicated criminalist to suicide and devastated his family, no longer exists. If the culture had indeed changed, wouldn't the force have admitted its culpability, made a generous settlement which would avoid submitting her to a punishing trial and all of the mental pressure and financial expenses involved over so many years, apologized to the widow, and announced the steps it had taken to prevent cross-examination and future such tragedies. In these circumstances, an independent public inquiry with full subpoena powers, is called for. Nothing less will do. Congrats to Reporter Hargrove and 'The San Diego Reader' for the fine reporting.
Harold Levy: Publisher. The Charles Smith Blog.
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BACKGROUND: "They’d linked him through DNA testing
to sperm cells found on a vaginal swab collected during the autopsy.
According to the lawsuit, detectives recklessly rejected the most
obvious explanation for the sperm: accidental cross-contamination in the
police lab. Brown had worked there then as a criminalist. He didn’t
process the Hough evidence, but he and others routinely kept their own
semen samples on hand as known standards to check the efficacy of
testing methods, the suit says. It describes contamination by lab
employees as “a well-recognized, well-documented, and frequent
occurrence,” and identifies 41 instances of it happening at the San
Diego Police Department since 2001. Brown suffered from depression and
anxiety most of his life, and the suit says his final downward spiral
can be tied to unconstitutional police misconduct during the
investigation. It accuses the lead detective, Michael Lambert, of
misleading a judge when he got him to sign a search warrant, omitting
key facts about possible lab contamination, and downplaying the criminal
behavior of a convicted rapist who was also tied to the murder through
DNA testing."
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "His job,
says his widow, weighed heavily on him. He had visited therapists to try
and cope with bouts of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. “He was deeply affected seeing
the things he saw at crime scenes. They hurt his soul. They tried to
portray him as some misogynist who was into kinky stuff. That wasn’t
him. I should know. I was married to him for 20 years. No, he was
nervous. He had anxiety. He hated any kind of spotlight. He despised
testifying for cases. He was a nervous guy, very private. From the day
after the cops searched our house, that depression and anxiety grew. The
cops knew it. They preyed on it as if they were on some television
show. This is real life.”
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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Lambert also believed Brown was following the case like the eponymous character on Showtime’s crime thriller Dexter."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Rebecca Brown recalls, “When [Kevin Brown] was in New Mexico he worked the huge prison revolt
there. He was terrified of prison. Detectives knew what they were doing
when they confiscated our belongings. It was a desperate attempt to try
and find something, anything that would implicate Kevin and tie him to
Ronald Tatro. And when they couldn’t find anything, they took our items,
my family’s photo albums, to create stress and to cast doubt, and drive
him to the point of cracking. That’s one thing they did right.” Detective Lambert told Brown
that he planned to return the remaining items by April 2014. April
passed. Brown’s mental health deteriorated. “He wouldn’t get out of bed,”
says Rebecca. “He started taking sleeping pills and anxiety medicine. I
kept trying to give him projects around the house, to keep him busy.” In
August 2014, Lambert told Rebecca that the items would not be returned
until after the investigation. Kevin’s behavior began to
change. He pulled in front of a city bus one morning in August. The
following month he backed into a parked car. “The investigation was killing
him,” says Rebecca. “He was always so put together and so calm. But, as
the months passed, it was like I was watching him die. He turned into a
zombie. We lived in a constant state of fear that cops would knock on
our door at any minute, to search our house or arrest him for a murder
he didn’t commit. “One day, weeks before his
death, I came back from work and Kevin was still in bed. On the floor by
his bed was a bullet. There was a note thanking me for the 20 years of
marriage. He thanked his priest and his friend. That’s when I really
began to worry that he was going to kill himself. I called my brother
and we removed the guns from the house, but I knew that he was slipping
further and further away.”
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PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "Rebecca Brown sips on a coffee as she tries to turn off tears. She is
heading to a parent-teacher conference at school and needs to “hold it
together.” Every so often as she
describes her husband and the investigation, sadness sounds more like
anger. “However awful this murder was, and it was truly awful, I feel
like I’ve been raped. Police came into my life and confiscated my
belongings. They accused my husband of being some sexual deviant and
child killer. They came and went as they pleased like it was some sort
of game. Kevin was a normal person and they shoved him into the grave
and made me a widow. I can’t let this same thing happen to anyone else.
Detectives, just like the real murderer in this case, need to be held
accountable. That’s all I ask for.”
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STORY: "Kevin was a sweet, nerdy doofus. Was he also a monster?, by reporter Dorian Hargrove, by Reporter Dorian Hargrove, published by The San Diego Reader on September 16, 2015.
SUB-HEADING: "San Diego Police analyst, accused or rape-murder hangs himself in Cuyamaca."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Rebecca Brown believes harassment by the San Diego
Police Department and the district attorney’s office drove her husband
to suicide."
PHOTO CAPTION: " Claire Hough was found dead and mutilated on Torrey Pines State Beach in 1984. The case went unsolved for 30 years."
GIST: "Rebecca Brown was getting ready
for work at her Chula Vista home on Tuesday, January 9, 2014 when
detectives from the San Diego Police Department knocked on the front
door. Her husband, Kevin Brown, who
had worked as a crime analyst for the San Diego Police Department for 20
years, opened the door. The detectives had questions for him about a
homicide in 1984. Rebecca assumed it was a case that her husband had
worked on. She paid no attention to it and left for her job teaching
English literature at a Catholic school in Chula Vista. An hour before the end of the
school day, the phone in Brown’s classroom rang. Police detectives were
on the other line. They told her to come outside. Once in the parking
lot, officers handed her a copy of a warrant to search her car. They
followed her to her house to conduct the search. As she pulled up to her home,
Brown saw 15 to 20 officers carrying boxes from her house and placing
them into police vans. She met her husband, mother, and brother, who
were living with the couple at the time, inside the couple’s living
room. The four looked over the search
warrant for answers. It was sealed. She turned to her husband. The
61-year-old former forensic-lab worker said detectives were asking him
about the murder of Claire Hough, a 14-year-old girl who was found
bludgeoned and mutilated on Torrey Pines State Beach on August 24, 1984. As the family talked, officers
confiscated hundreds of items from the home, including laptops, Rebecca
Brown’s classroom syllabus, teaching materials, her mother’s wedding
pictures, her grandmother’s photo albums, a book of Christmas carols, a
bookmark. In all, San Diego police officers took 14 boxes and three
trash bags full of the family’s belongings. That’s when it clicked. Kevin Brown, Rebecca’s husband of 22 years, was now a murder suspect. Within eight months’ time,
Kevin Brown went from a loving husband to a suspect in a brutal killing
who hung himself from a tree in Cuyamaca State Park. At the center of the case were
minute traces of Brown’s DNA found on one of the two cotton swabs taken
from Hough’s body, a swab that had been stored in the crime lab where
Brown worked for 18 years after the murder.
Rhode Island girl found dead on San Diego beach:
It was a grisly sight:
14-year-old Claire Hough’s body splayed out on a bloody towel between
lifeguard towers 4 and 5 on Torrey Pines State Beach. A plastic radio,
pack of cigarettes, and a pair of shoes were positioned next to her. The
cause of death was ruled strangulation, but her face was bruised, her
throat was cut, her vagina had been mutilated with a knife, and her left
breast was amputated. Hough came to San Diego from
her home in Rhode Island to visit her grandparents. She had been at the
zoo with them that day. Afterward, as she had done most every day of her
visit, Hough went to Torrey Pines State Beach. She returned that
evening at 8:30. She talked with her grandparents before going to her
room. She was reported missing the following morning. Police had no leads, no
reliable eyewitnesses. They did, however, find similarities between
Hough’s death and the murder of Barbara Nantais six years earlier. On
August 13, 1978, the 15-year-old girl was found on the same stretch of
sand, dead from blunt-force trauma to her head. Nantais’s body bore
similar lacerations and a partially amputated right breast. On August 25, 1984, the San
Diego Medical Examiner’s office conducted an autopsy on Hough’s body.
Staff took two samples on two sets of swabs from Hough’s mouth, vagina,
and anus. One of the swabs was tested. There was no sperm. The numbers
of acid phosphatase, an enzyme found to be of much higher concentration
in semen than in vaginal secretions, was low, indicating no presence of
semen on the swabs. The other swab was transported to the San Diego
Police Department’s crime lab — where Kevin Brown worked — for storage.
Cold case stays cold
In 1996, San Diego Police
Department cold-case detectives reopened the case. They interviewed
witnesses and attempted to piece together the similarities between
Nantais’s and Hough’s murders. No new leads developed and the case went
cold. Meanwhile, DNA testing
improved. Law-enforcement agencies around the country turned to DNA
testing to solve cold-case murders. New methods allowed forensic
technicians to reproduce small traces of cells in order to obtain
complete samples. But the science isn’t perfect. Amplifying a small number of cell strains has its limitations. A study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology
in 2013 found that “because it is highly sensitive, any form of
contamination of the sample, even trace amounts of DNA, can produce
misleading results. In 2012, cold-case detective
Michael Lambert reopened Hough’s case. He ordered DNA tests on the
second swab obtained during Hough’s autopsy and stored in the police
crime lab. New results showed up. Samples of blood and semen revealed
two new suspects.
Kevin Brown; nervous, nerd. Murderer?
“There’s no other way to say
it. Kevin was a doofus, a nerdy guy who didn’t have a mean bone in his
body. I say that out of love. We would joke about it. He was a normal,
nerdy guy. Yes, he liked sex; same as every male that has ever lived. He
wasn’t into anything kinky or weird, despite what police detectives
say.” Rebecca Brown sits at a table
inside a downtown San Diego café. Her blue eyes are filled with tears.
Her platinum hair is neatly combed. Her arms are speckled with small
bruises and scabs. She picks at them as she describes her former
husband. The two met after their previous marriages failed in 1992. Kevin had placed a singles ad in the San Diego Union-Tribune. She answered the ad and met him at Seaport Village for a drink. She was 38, he was 40. “It was what people did before Match.com
and all these other internet dating sites. When I saw him I knew he was
just an ordinary, nice, and kind person. He was kind of dorky, into
science and math. I was energetic and outgoing, into literature. We were
opposites in that respect but we leveled each other out. I got him
excited and he calmed me down. He was a sweet guy, a bit socially
awkward at times but just sweet. He was sensitive, just nice, definitely
not some suave guy who went out and picked up women. We kissed that
night, and I never heard music in my head during a kiss before. He converted to Catholicism, and we were married six months later.” Brown opens up a photo album
the cemetery compiled after her husband was buried. The pictures show a
tall, slender man, curly hair sprouting up from a receding hairline. “I mean, it’s pretty easy to
see that he was a total nerd with a sweet sense of humor and not a mean
bone in his body. He would be the last person ever to be suspected of a
crime, any crime, let alone some awful murder. I never would have
thought, and still don’t to this day, that he was guilty of anything,
other than being normal.” Brown worked as a criminalist
on “criminalist row” at San Diego’s old police headquarters near Seaport
Village from 1982 to 2002. “Criminalist row” was a large, open room
lined with long tables. Brown tested DNA samples, took
pictures of crime scenes, and testified in dozens of cases. His job,
says his widow, weighed heavily on him. He had visited therapists to try
and cope with bouts of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. “He was deeply affected seeing
the things he saw at crime scenes. They hurt his soul. They tried to
portray him as some misogynist who was into kinky stuff. That wasn’t
him. I should know. I was married to him for 20 years. No, he was
nervous. He had anxiety. He hated any kind of spotlight. He despised
testifying for cases. He was a nervous guy, very private. From the day
after the cops searched our house, that depression and anxiety grew. The
cops knew it. They preyed on it as if they were on some television
show. This is real life.”
Kevin Brown cannot be excluded as a suspect
In July 2012, the new DNA
tests ordered by police detectives in the cold-case unit focused on the
vaginal swab, the bloody towel, and Hough’s clothing stored inside the
department’s property room. The items came back with three DNA matches.
Sperm from Hough’s boyfriend at the time was found inside Hough’s
underwear, underneath a panty liner. He was in Rhode Island at the time
of his girlfriend’s murder, excluding him as a suspect. The other match came from
bloodstains found on Hough’s jeans. The blood was from convicted rapist
Ronald Tatro. Tatro, 40 years of age at the time of Hough’s murder, was
on parole in San Diego County on a first-degree rape conviction in Hot
Springs, Arkansas. Six months before Hough’s murder, Tatro was a suspect
in the murder of prostitute Carol Defleice on El Cajon Boulevard. In
1985, a year after Hough’s murder, Tatro was arrested and later
convicted for attempted rape of a sixteen-year-old girl in La Mesa.
Tatro died in a 2011 boating accident in Tennessee. Detective Lambert then turned
to the remaining DNA match. Traces of Brown’s semen were found on a swab
from Hough’s vagina. Brown’s DNA profile had been logged into the
police department’s system when he was an employee to identify possible
cross-contamination issues. On January 4, 2014, Lambert zeroed in on Brown. He submitted an affidavit for a
search warrant of Brown’s home for items pertaining to the deaths of
Claire Hough and Barbara Nantais. At the time of Nantais’s murder six
years earlier than Hough’s, Brown was a student at California State
University at Sacramento. To convince the judge of the
need for a search, Lambert painted Brown as a quiet but disturbed sex
addict who frequented strip clubs, watched pornographic videos, and took
pictures of nude women. He interviewed a handful of Brown’s colleagues
during his 20-year stint in the crime lab. “Lab Supervisor Patrick
O’Donnell stated he remembered Brown had a reputation of unusual
behavior during the time of his employment,” Lambert wrote in the
affidavit. “I determined additional follow up interviews needed to be
conducted with former and current coworkers of Kevin Brown’s at the San
Diego Police Department Lab…. O’Donnell stated he never associated with
Brown outside of work and stated Brown’s reputation was only rumor to
him.” Lambert said Brown often made awkward jokes and once asked a female coworker to model for him for his photography group. Another former colleague said
she saw Brown leave the F Street Adult Book Store during his lunch hour.
His zipper was allegedly down. Fellow criminalist Annette
Peer said one day Brown and a coworker watched a pornographic movie
during work, though that coworker later denied it ever happening. Lambert addressed the only
other possible explanation for the presence of Brown’s DNA:
cross-contamination. Lab manager Jennifer Shen told Lambert that
cross-contamination was “not possible.” Brown had not worked on the case
and therefore his DNA could not have been present. Lambert revisited the DNA test
conducted in 1984 by the medical examiner’s office and interviewed San
Diego County chief medical examiner Glen Wagner. “The Toxicology Report
indicates the acid phosphatase present on the vaginal swab collected
were 37m I.U. (International Units). Acid phosphatase is an enzyme
present in seminal fluid and sperm and is also present in other fluid
sources in both men and women. Dr. Wagner stated he was ‘reasonably
certain’ that the acid phosphatase present was from a male individual.
He also stated that acid phosphatase markers lower than 50m
[International Units] is unreliable…. Dr. Wagner further stated there is
nothing to dispute that the sex between Brown and Hough could have
occurred at the time of Hough’s death and that, according to the
totality of the case, Brown cannot be excluded as a suspect in Hough’s
murder.” The affidavit continued,
“Based on the above mentioned facts, particularly the violent manner in
which Hough’s ‘Levi’ jeans were torn, indicating they were forcibly
removed, and Brown’s sperm in her vagina and not on her panty liner, I
believe the sexual intercourse Brown had with Claire Hough was not
consensual and appears to be contemporaneous to the murder. Furthermore,
I think it is unlikely that Hough was raped on either Tuesday or
Wednesday night by Brown, then [Hough] walks alone, in the darkness of
night to the beach and is murdered by Tatro. I also believe this, in
part, because I believe it is not likely that Claire Hough is raped by
Brown and then on the same night, and in a separate unrelated incident,
is murdered by Tatro.” Lambert also believed Brown was following the case like the eponymous character on Showtime’s crime thriller Dexter. “I believe Brown and Tatro
possibly met while traveling in similar circles. Brown was open with
fellow lab employees regarding the frequency in which he patronized the
local strip clubs. It is commonly known among law enforcement, many
times strippers often engage in prostitution.” San Diego County Superior Court judge Frederick Maguire granted the search warrant on January 3, 2014. One day after police
confiscated the 14 boxes and 4 bags full of their possessions, Kevin
Brown went to police headquarters for an interview. He denied knowing
Ronald Tatro. He said he never knew, nor did he kill Hough. He suggested
to detective Lambert that it must have been cross-contamination from
when he worked in the lab. He said that oftentimes criminalists would
air-dry swabs before placing them in storage and that back in the ’80s
he and his colleagues often submitted samples of their own semen and
blood to test the chemical reagents used in the tests.
Brown remained a suspect.
I was watching him die
Rebecca Brown recalls, “When [Kevin Brown] was in New Mexico he worked the huge prison revolt
there. He was terrified of prison. Detectives knew what they were doing
when they confiscated our belongings. It was a desperate attempt to try
and find something, anything that would implicate Kevin and tie him to
Ronald Tatro. And when they couldn’t find anything, they took our items,
my family’s photo albums, to create stress and to cast doubt, and drive
him to the point of cracking. That’s one thing they did right.” Detective Lambert told Brown
that he planned to return the remaining items by April 2014. April
passed. Brown’s mental health deteriorated. “He wouldn’t get out of bed,”
says Rebecca. “He started taking sleeping pills and anxiety medicine. I
kept trying to give him projects around the house, to keep him busy.” In August 2014, Lambert told Rebecca that the items would not be returned until after the investigation. Kevin’s behavior began to
change. He pulled in front of a city bus one morning in August. The
following month he backed into a parked car. “The investigation was killing
him,” says Rebecca. “He was always so put together and so calm. But, as
the months passed, it was like I was watching him die. He turned into a
zombie. We lived in a constant state of fear that cops would knock on
our door at any minute, to search our house or arrest him for a murder
he didn’t commit. “One day, weeks before his
death, I came back from work and Kevin was still in bed. On the floor by
his bed was a bullet. There was a note thanking me for the 20 years of
marriage. He thanked his priest and his friend. That’s when I really
began to worry that he was going to kill himself. I called my brother
and we removed the guns from the house, but I knew that he was slipping
further and further away.” On Monday, October 20, Rebecca
returned home from work. Her husband was missing. His cell phone and
watch were on his bedside table. “My mom, who was living with
us at the time, said he told her that he had some things to do. He
didn’t come home for dinner. I thought maybe he was watching Monday
Night Football with friends. I started calling neighbors and anyone else
I could think of, and no one had seen him or talked to him.” The following day, Rebecca called the California Highway Patrol. “I was sure he was in some car accident.” He wasn’t. That day, Kevin
drove to the couple’s cabin near Lake Cuyamaca where he put a chair into
his truck. He drove on Highway 79 to a tree near mile marker 7.25 where
he hung himself. Rebecca later received a phone
call that her husband’s truck was located near Cuyamaca State Park, a
mile from the couple’s cabin. At 11 p.m., officers called to inform her
that her husband’s body was at the medical examiner’s office.
Magic swab
One day after park rangers
found Kevin’s body, the San Diego Police Department’s cold-case
detectives and district attorney’s investigators continued to make their
case. District attorney investigator
Sandra Oplinger requested a search warrant for the couple’s cabin.
Oplinger wanted to search the premises for “evidence of monitoring the
progress of the investigation of the murders of Claire Hough, Barbara
Nantais, and anything related to the name of Ronald C. Tatro….” As was the case in the
previous search warrant, Oplinger failed to state that Brown was in
Sacramento for college when Nantais was murdered. That same day, the San
Diego Police Department issued a press release, naming two suspects in
Hough’s death, Brown and Tatro. A headline in a Los Angeles Times article read: “San Diego police solve 1984 killing of teen at Torrey Pines State Beach.” Homicide lieutenant Paul
Rorrison told the Times reporter he was “very gratified. It’s what we
strive for. We work for the victims and the family. These cases don’t
just go away.” In late July 2015, Rebecca sued the City of San Diego, Lambert, and Oplinger. “The search warrant and the
illegal seizure of the property shows police were desperate to find
something, anything to solve this case,” says Eugene Iredale, the
attorney representing Rebecca Brown.“What Lambert didn’t write in his
affidavit is that the other swab, the one not air-dried in the police
crime lab where Kevin Brown worked, didn’t reveal presence of semen.
That swab was taken at the same time from Claire Hough’s body but
somehow was different. Was this just some magic swab that the DNA
gravitated towards during the autopsy or was it because it was stored at
the same place that Kevin Brown worked?”
I feel like I’ve been raped
Suzanna Ryan is an expert in
forensic Serology and DNA analysis. Ryan has testified as an expert
witness in over 70 cases throughout the country. She has seen numerous
instances of cross-contamination in labs, and she disputes the San Diego
crime lab manager’s statement that cross-contamination was impossible
in this case. “I can’t speak for every lab,
but my experience in labs since 1999 is that lab technicians often used
their own samples, whether it was saliva or blood, as positive and
negative controls, to make sure that reagents are working properly. Many
labs purchase semen samples from companies to conduct these tests. It
doesn’t surprise me to hear that in 1984 some lab technicians were
providing their own semen samples. In my experience, male employees are
often asked if they will volunteer to provide semen samples as a
positive control. “It was a different world in
1984, in regards to DNA testing. We know for a fact that secondary
transfers, or cross-contamination, occurs inside these labs. All you
need is a small number of cells to get results, so to say that it was
impossible for cross-contamination or secondary transfer to occur on a
swab that was stored inside the police property room for nearly 30 years
is misguided.” Back inside the restaurant,
Rebecca Brown sips on a coffee as she tries to turn off tears. She is
heading to a parent-teacher conference at school and needs to “hold it
together.” Every so often as she
describes her husband and the investigation, sadness sounds more like
anger. “However awful this murder was, and it was truly awful, I feel
like I’ve been raped. Police came into my life and confiscated my
belongings. They accused my husband of being some sexual deviant and
child killer. They came and went as they pleased like it was some sort
of game. Kevin was a normal person and they shoved him into the grave
and made me a widow. I can’t let this same thing happen to anyone else.
Detectives, just like the real murderer in this case, need to be held
accountable. That’s all I ask for.”
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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