Below we’ve posted several writer’s questions and our answers about evidence and cheating spouses. We provide background to some of the questions in brackets.
Finding Evidence Months After a Crime
[This first question was in response to our describing how PIs might find evidence months after a crime has occurred. In this instance, Shaun, one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s PIs, had found a .44 casing outside our client’s residence]
WRITER’S QUESTION: In the case where Shaun found the .44 casing … did he leave it alone and call the police so they could photograph it in place? Or did he take pictures of it and put it in a bag and take it to the police? What happened?
The casings proved that the neighborhood was crime-ridden
GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES’S RESPONSE: The .44 casing was found months after the charged crime and it was not material evidence in our case. However, the casing was proof that the neighborhood where this occurred was extremely crime-ridden, and that our client had a reasonable belief that he had to resort to deadly force to protect himself and his son.
Had the casing been found the morning after the confrontation where our client shot his .357, Shaun would have done the following:
- Not touched it
- Left the casing exactly where he found it
- Contacted the police
- Taken a photo of it for our client’s attorney
To bring this story up to date, the photograph Shaun took was listed as evidence at the trial, at which he also testified about the nature of the neighborhood (it being crime-ridden, which was backed by data from various interactive crime maps), and how he found the casing. Our client was found not guilty.
WRITER’S QUESTION: Couldn’t the defense (or prosecution depending which side your client was on) claim that the casing had been placed there later? Or was from a different incident at another time?
GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES’S RESPONSE: In this case, our client was the defense attorney, and it didn’t matter how the casing got there months later–what mattered in this particular case is that it showed how reasonable our client was in pulling his gun in self-defense.
Answering Writers’ Questions: Cheating Spouses
[This next question pertains to our sharing a story how we interviewed the “other woman” in a cheating spouse case]
WRITER’S QUESTION: And about interviewing the woman in the cheating husband case – I take it there’s no concern about tipping off the cheating husband that he’s being investigated?
GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES’S RESPONSE: For this case, no, as he’d already seen the photographs (because his wife had filed for divorce and her attorney had the photographs) by the time we’d interviewed the “other woman.” Generally speaking, however, we wouldn’t want to tip off the cheating spouse that they’re being investigated.
WRITER’S QUESTION: Have either of you ever been threatened by a spouse who has been caught? Or by the person they’ve caught them with? Without wanting to give away too much from my WIP, I’m thinking that might be a possible threat to my guys. I’m just wondering if it’s a credible storyline that the cheater might go after the private investigators for destroying their marriage.
GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES’S RESPONSE: In the “other woman” case we’ve been discussing, she was also married. A week or so after we interviewed the other woman, she contacted us saying she’d hired an attorney and we were to not contact her again for any reason. We didn’t believe she’d hired an attorney, and figured she was bluffing because she was scared, but we had no reason to contact her again (after interviewing her). In fact, we felt sorry for her (she had two young children, and her husband was devastated that his wife had fooled around).
To answer your question whether we think it’s credible in a storyline that the other woman or other man might get so freaked out, have so much to protect, that they’d go after the PI? Yes, that’s credible. We’ve been threatened in other situations that weren’t cheating spouse cases (we’ve had dogs sic’d on us during process services, and Shaun once had a woman follow him, pounding her fists on his back, after he served her legal papers). The worst threat by far was a case where the woman to whom we served a restraining order mounted a full-on cyber-stalking attack on our business/reputations. This woman had a lot to protect–five million dollars she’d stolen, and which by the way has never been found. Colleen wrote about this case in her nonfiction book Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye.
Have a great week, Writing PIs
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