In Mari's attorney's presser where he discusses Gilbert's 911 call, he states Shannan can be heard screaming several times in the call. That's weird that his statements totally conflict with Det. Vincent Stephan's January assessment of the call:
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/letters/letter-all-out-effort-for-shannan-1.3473520
I've emailed Mr Stephan to see if he can elaborate on the discrepancy.
THANX FOR THE VERY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE AND LINK. The detective took the time to write a letter to Newsday defending his police department? Those kind of things are not supposed to happen.
Why did this experienced detective find the need to defend a position that is not of his own doing? He has been in the police department long enough to know families of murder victims often complain the police aren't doing enough. It goes with the territory. IMO, the cops did a pretty good job considering the circumstances......that is if you want to be realistic.
The letter said the detective listened to the 22 minute tape and could find no indications SG was in distress. He said he heard two male voices in the background. I assume it was Brewer and Pak. What doesn't change is she made a call to 911 and was on for 23 mins. No indication of fear and hysteria? Was SG and the PD Dispatcher exchanging recipes?
We do know SG ran from that house to the house down the road. Mr.Colletti said he heard banging on his door and a female voice screaming HELP ME, HELP ME. He let her in and she was incoherent. So much so that HE called 911. Colletti called the cops. She seemed to be afraid. Was she afraid of the cops, if so, why?
The detective took exception to the family complaining the SCPD didn't ask the FBI for help. Personally, I wouldn't ask them for help. But the detective wrote they did ask the FBI for help - they used a helicopter and a pysch profile and other non investigative stuff. But they didn't go out and do an independent or joing investigation. Maybe SCPD didn't want them poking around to find things they would rather keep quiet.
Tom Spota jumped in feet first. I have spent half my career working with district attorneys. They DON'T really have much to say until you bring someone in with handcuffs. Why is Spota involving himself so early into an investigation when there is no one charged with the crimes?
The detective writing the letter is very odd in its own right. A few things that come to mind with the letter are:
1. The detective and his command have no idea of the chain of command because there is no one to control them. Far as I am concerned it was entirely inappropriate for a detective to write a letter at this stage of the investigation.
2. He had someone higher up the 'food' chain that told him to do this for whatever reason we will never know about.
My information on this detective is he is highly regarded with good reputation. He may be one of the better ones in Homicide.
He seemed to be disturbed that anyone could accuse his office of giving the investigation short shrift. They even made personal sacrifices. Did they waive the considerable overtime? This is the same unit that refused to pick up the phone when the Lucero fellow was killed. They had their 2 hour stand-by OT taken away by the police commissioner. They stood home and waited for the phone to ring. One detective per night was on stand-by. At after 1am, I would guess they were snug and sound asleep in their beds earning about $90.00 just for the chance to make another $500 or so if they are called in for a late homicide.
