Three Bodies Burning: The Anatomy of an Investigation into Murder, Money, and Mexican Marijuana

Author’s Note

Bringing the bad guys to justice takes hard work, patience, and luck. It’s about following the leads, making your own leads, and hoping for that lucky break that’s less about luck and more about being at the right place at the right time—and having the street smarts to know a break when it bites you in the ass.

I spent a majority of my career working in narcotics, gang, and homicide units. During that time, I wrote tens of thousands of police reports, search warrants, and even wiretaps. I made drug buys, chased down suspects, arrested plenty of dealers, and took them off the streets.

Writing this book is the culmination of a law enforcement career that spanned over twenty years. And this case has it all: drugs, guns, murder, and sound detective and forensic work that put bad guys behind bars for life. That’s the stuff of police work, and it’s not always like you see on TV cop shows. Yes, I got that lucky break too.

All the material in this book is derived from my own personal observation as a homicide detective in the pursuit of justice in this case and from official police records and interviews.

Names have been changed to protect the true identities of cooperating characters because they have gone on with their lives. I’ve even changed my own name. In this story, I am Bo Harrison. The real story lies in the behind-the-scenes police work most people never see (not even on TV). This is the story of a drug deal gone bad.

Over most of my career, I have volunteered time as a speaker in local high schools regarding search and seizure and general policing. During these talks, I would bring hundreds of real life pictures, showing drugs, guns, and bad guys. I would play actual audiotapes of myself making undercover drug purchases, with these suspects being arrested.

These props generated hours filled with questions, and I would generally give an answer with a story from my career. At the end of one class, a student said to me that I should write a book with these stories. That was the beginning of this project. I know I was a good cop. I now hope I am an entertaining author and you enjoy the book.

1

Murder in the Heartland

A beautiful spring day. The mercury in the thermometer showed temps up into the 50s and 60s, which was so greatly needed in the Midwest after the bitter cold of winter. Small leaves were starting to break open from buds on the trees and shrubs. The good feeling of spring life was in the air.

In just a few weeks, college baseball would have its spotlight right here in Omaha, Nebraska, the home of the College World Series. Nebraska . . . The Good Life is the state’s motto implying, I guess, a better way of life here in the heartland.

A Tuesday morning in early May 2005 started normally in this city with a metro population of nearly a million. Workers begin to commute into the city from suburbs and towns in all directions.

During the six o’clock hour, with dawn breaking over the eastern Iowa hills, one commuter coming from the northern outskirts of the city sees what he thinks is a small brush fire in an overgrown, wooded area, off to the side of the road.

This brushy area has the feel of country and serenity dense with foliage and trees. Several neighborhoods are nestled into this scenic and peaceful area—country living on the edge of the metropolitan area.

The commuter uses his cell phone to call 911 to report the brush fire. As the 911 operators broadcast this brush fire over the radio waves to the fire department, it is also simulcast on the police radio frequencies. An alert uniform patrol officer in the area responds to this radio transmission of the brush fire to aid the fire department with any traffic control, if needed.

The officer arrives before the fire department and does in fact locate a fire about fifty feet off the side of the road, in a heavily wooded area, which in dawning daylight now was protected from visibility from the street. But at night in the darkness the site would have been almost undetectable.

The officer pulls his cruiser off the road and gets out to observe the fire, which is exactly what any cop would do in an effort to get the best vantage point to watch the fire department do their thing. It is human nature. Everybody loves to watch the firefighters put out the fire. It’s also true that everybody loves the firemen—the heroes who put out fires and save cats from trees—and nobody likes the cops who are always pissing somebody off with a speeding or parking ticket.

As the officer is claiming his front-row seat, he can’t believe his eyes. He broadcasts to the 911 operators, Be advised. I’m at the brush fire, but it appears to be three bodies burning.

This is obviously more complex than the original brush fire call. Things now must be considered, such as securing the crime scene, which is currently on fire, and putting out the fire in a manner that destroys the least amount of possible evidence.

The officer made a smart decision fairly quickly: to put out the fire with his hand-held extinguisher from the trunk of his cruiser. This is actually surprising because, in general, during my twenty years as an officer on the Omaha police force, if something could get screwed up, it usually did. This is not to lay any blame on anybody, but very few times do the good guys, the cops, catch a break or get lucky.

This quick decision by the young, first-responding officer enabled many things to take place that were essential for a successful crime scene investigation. Most important, it enabled additional patrol cars to come quickly and set up perimeters with both an inner and an outer crime scene so it would not be compromised by a bunch of law enforcement personnel inadvertently walking through the crime scene or over-eager media people trampling on vital evidence.

Once those three words three bodies burning went out over the radio, every cop, firefighter, and media person is going to try to get as close as they can to get a peek, whether by walking, driving, or somehow sneaking in to say they were there. On this day, that did not happen. Life is good.

The homicide detectives now have to try to figure out what happened. Who are these victims? And who did this to them?

It was a good day for the good guys. An alert citizen reported a problem and a smart cop discovered a crime scene and protected the evidence with quick action in putting out the fire. It was a bad day for the three dead people who were set on fire.

2

Crime Scene: Journey for the Truth

The crime scene is a crucial part of every homicide investigation. It is at this point that the journey begins in an attempt to find the truth about what happened.

Documentation of the crime scene is the responsibility of the homicide detective who is assigned the case. During the crime scene investigation, the scene is documented by photography, by written report, and by the collection of evidence with the assistance of the crime lab technicians, and, in this case, arson investigators because of the fire aspect.

This crime scene was unique. First, the condition and position of the bodies was bizarre. The bodies were still smoking, lying nearly naked in a wooded area. Black burn marks were evident where some of the accelerant touched the bodies. Second, the overall size of the scene was larger than most.

The first homicide detectives on the scene soon noticed that blood trails on the road adjacent to where the bodies were found in both north and south directions, for approximately a fourth to a half mile in each direction. The crime scene was divided into two quadrants. The inner crime scene was the area where the bodies were located, and the outer crime scene contained the blood trails on the road in both directions. The inner crime scene consisted of the three bodies lying like cordwood. The clothing on the bodies appeared to be in disarray as if the pants had been pulled down near mid-thigh, exposing some genitalia.

Good investigators quickly have thoughts running through their minds. Was this an unusual type of staging by the suspects? Was this a sign of disrespect? The call signature of a specific gang? Is there some connection to a sexual act? No one knows, but these are just thoughts that start to fire in a detective’s mind at the onset of a case. Having these thoughts is normal and good in the investigative process. But the investigator must not come to any conclusions based on these observations. The investigative process will answer these questions.

Omaha police officers guard the outer perimeter of the crime scene as detectives trace the blood trail on the street. Reprinted with permission from The Omaha World-Herald.

The victims all appeared to be Hispanic because of their darker skin and black hair. One victim was very large in stature, six feet tall, 300 pounds, in his mid-twenties, with clean-cut black hair.

The dump site: Three burning bodies were found stacked like cordwood in a wooded area. Note the leg on the closest victim is completely burned away. Clothing has burned away and pants were found down near their ankles or lower legs.

Close-up of blood trail found on the street leading to the dump site.

The second victim was slender, also six feet tall, 180 pounds, clean-cut hair, also in his twenties, with a large dark-blue, five-pointed star tattoo on his abdomen.

The third burned victim was a Hispanic male with a stocky build, five feet eight or so, 250 pounds, in his late thirties. He was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a Western-style plaid shirt. This type of clothing is common with men who have an association to Mexico.

All three victims appeared to have trauma to their skulls that would be consistent with gunshot wounds (in other words, not cop talk, we saw gunshot wounds to their heads); however, this would not be confirmed until later at the autopsies. In addition, all victims had burns on different portions of their bodies where it had appeared that an accelerant had been applied to the bodies, causing the burning to occur in a pattern where the accelerant was touching the body.

The inner crime scene also revealed multiple vehicle tire tracks coming into it from the road several car lengths, then stopping, with the closest track still being about twenty-five feet from the bodies. These tracks would end up leading nowhere in the investigation because this area was a popular location with locals for the springtime sport of mushroom hunting, in which people walk through the woods looking for morel mushrooms, which are considered a delicacy by some.

The wooded area was just off to the east on a fairly well traveled rural two-lane paved road that dipped and climbed like a roller coaster. The site where the bodies were dumped was at one of the dips in the road, off to the side, well away from any of the homes set back in the wooded terrain and just north of the outskirts of the elite Omaha Country Club golf course.

Due to the multiple overlapping sets of tracks and the moist soil conditions, no distinctive track could be identified or associated with the three burning bodies.

The outer crime scene produced interesting blood tracks. These blood tracks appeared to be in a symmetrical pattern. Blood seemed to fall to the paved road in lines that were approximately five to six inches across from each other, but the distance between the drops in each line varied. It appeared that the distances between drops were larger the farther away from the area where the bodies were.

We analyzed these track patterns. We thought the lines resulted from what we speculated as pooling blood running out the grooves in the bed of a truck and, depending on the speed of the truck, the distance between the drops or puddles varied.

Markers were set up to show the pattern of these blood trails in a dimension so the path could be followed more easily. The pattern of these blood trails showed that the truck drove past the dump site where the bodies were located and pulled into two different gravel inlets, then backed up, turned around, and pulled into a third inlet where the bodies were found. The amount of blood that was either located in one specific area or had distances between the blood droplets depended on the speed of the truck.

This was all theory, of course, at this point and, ultimately, a witness or co-conspirator would have to confirm this theory. Nonetheless, these were physical pieces of evidence that could corroborate a statement by a witness or co-conspirator if one was ever located. The documentation of this crime scene took over sixteen hours, and during these sixteen hours, luck was very much on law enforcement’s side because the weather had held.

At any given time in the Midwest, during the spring, a thunderstorm or tornado or just a simple rain shower could appear in the calmest of days. If that happened, evidence could be lost. But it did not happen on this day.

3

Nothing Artistic in This Canvass

Bo, we got three dead guys dumped and set on fire. I need you to get to the outer perimeter and a briefing will take place there, said my Sergeant, Harry Bogowski, in an early morning phone call. This is where my part in this journey begins. My name is Bo Harrison. I am an Omaha police officer working as a homicide detective.

When these calls come in, I usually scramble for a piece of paper and pen to write down all the information, but this one was simple. I was already dressed for work and said hello and goodbye to my wife and kids on my way out the door. As I was driving to the briefing location, I wondered how screwed up this case would be based on the sergeant’s phone call.

After arriving at the outer perimeter, I met with Sgt. Bogowski and most of the day-shift homicide unit. The first piece of good news was that Detective Isadore Demann had gotten the crime scene assignment. This was good news for a couple of reasons. First, Isadore Demann is a superb investigator, and this crime scene was not going to be simple in any way to document, but I knew he would do a good job. He’s squared away, thorough in his documentation, relentless and would leave no stone unturned. In police circles, he was a real swinging dick.

Second, not that I was being lazy, but I had just finished a double murder jury trial on an international narcotics drug conspiracy murder between Arizona and Nebraska that took a year to investigate, and these three burned bodies did not feel like a ground ball investigation. (A ground ball investigation is a very simple one.) As a general rule, the officer assigned as crime scene investigator was usually assigned the case, so I was thinking, Congratulations to Isadore Demann on now being the new owner of this case.

The canvassing of a crime scene area is a basic investigative tool. Canvassing consists of making contact with residents or businesses in the general area of the crime scene. During this contact, the investigators identify themselves to the residents or business owners, inform them of the investigation, and, during this interaction, take down any information that could be of significance. This legwork is important because often people will not initiate a contact to the police on their own. Direct contact opens up an avenue of communication. If there is no one to talk to at a business or a residence, we leave a business card so that follow-up can take place.

Knock, knock. I couldn’t find a doorbell at this house near the crime scene in a neighborhood of acreages and nice homes a half mile away. I was going door to door. Many people were already gone—to work. Others were just getting up.

Yes? asked a thirty-something young woman who carefully opened the door and saw me standing on her front porch.

Hi, I’m Officer Harrison of the Omaha police, I said. I held up my badge. I don’t know if you know. Some bodies were found not far from here. Did you hear any noises or any vehicles? Anything out of the ordinary that you would consider suspicious?

This pattern went on for sixteen hours. After walking miles, knocking on hundreds of doors, and talking to dozens of people at their houses or businesses and dropping off dozens of business cards, all members of the homicide unit met back at central police headquarters to debrief what had been learned. The canvass produced nothing.

The crime scene was described by Sgt. Bogowski and Detective Demann. During their description of the crime scene, we learned additional pieces of information.

The bodies were cleaned before they were dumped, Sgt. Bogowski told us. There was no personal property on them. No wallets. No watches. No jewelry. No nothing. Except a hotel receipt on one of them, and a piece of paper inside another stiff’s pocket.

One of these pieces of paper was described as a hotel receipt to a hotel in the southwest area of Omaha, which was going to be followed up immediately after this briefing. This hotel receipt was found on the youngest Hispanic male who had the star tattoo on his abdomen. The receipt bore the name of Barry Willis.

The second piece of evidence was a small, torn piece of paper that was approximately six inches by four inches with six columns of numbers and each column totaled. There were 140 numbers in these columns that ranged from 26.2 to 14, but the general numbers ranged between 20 and 22. The total number of all these columns was 2,920.4.

Bo, does this look like some sort of drug record? Sgt. Bogowski asked me.

I wasn’t sure. If you looked at the total number of 2,920.4, and if it represented ounces and/or grams, it did not seem consistent with the way cocaine or methamphetamine would be packaged. This was based on an ounce weighing 28 grams, but none of these numbers were actually 28 grams, all were much smaller and, based on my experience in the narcotics unit, if someone was dealing at a high level and was selling ounce quantities, the ounce quantities would be exact.

The list of numbers found in the pocket of the victim who became known as John Doe 3.

If, in fact, someone was selling this many ounces, they wouldn’t calculate it in ounce quantities, they would calculate it in pounds or even kilograms. If these numbers meant either kilograms or pounds of cocaine or methamphetamine, these numbers would be extremely high for any investigation in Omaha.

I personally had never heard of 2,900 pounds of cocaine being in the metro area. Even if I thought this was referring to marijuana, this quantity was also extremely large for anything known from past investigations.

Right now, it doesn’t look like a drug record, I told him. Boy, was I going to be wrong.

Autopsies were scheduled to be performed the following morning and the follow-up at the southwest area hotel would take place right after the briefing.

4

The Bodies Tell a Story

An autopsy is the post-death examination of a body by a pathologist. At this examination an attempt is made to determine the cause of death. Evidence is collected from the