Transcription complète : In the Dark S1 E8 - Qu'est-ce qui se passe là-dessous ?

In the Dark: S1 E8 What’s Going on Down There

: Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know that we’d planned to have this be our last episode, but we’re adding one more, and that’s next week.

: Précédemment dans In the Dark.

: La question qui me vient à l'esprit est la suivante : comment ce type de crime peut-il se produire dans cette région quelque peu éloignée de notre comté ?

: The kind of place where you don’t expect a child to be kidnapped at gunpoint.

: The only sad part is that we couldn’t have found this out sooner. And, I guess, I would really stress to police, you know, pay attention and just go after these guys.

: Je suppose que si quelque chose de grave arrivait à nos enfants, quelqu'un serait là pour enquêter.

: I’ve been in doing major cases. I think, experience is very, very important. And you learn from every case you do. And if you aren’t willing to do that, then you shouldn’t be an investigator.

: Over the past year, as I talked to law enforcement officers about the Jacob Wetterling case, there was one thing I heard all the time, “Things were different back then,” they’d say, “Nowadays, we have all this new technology, new training. If a big crime happened in Stearns County these days, it would probably be solved right away.”

: But I had a reason to be skeptical about that claim that times had changed. And that reason had to do with the crime I’d been assigned to cover in Stearns County a few years before I started reporting on the Wetterling case, a type of crime that is almost always solved, the murder of a police officer.

: I covered shootings of officers in Minnesota before, so I knew that most of the time, if someone kills a police officer, one of two things is going to happen pretty quickly. Either that person is going to be arrested, or they’re going to be killed. But that’s not what happened in this case.

: This is In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. I’m Madeleine Baran. In this podcast, we’re trying to find out what went wrong in the case of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped in a small town in Central Minnesota in 1989.

: And today, we’re going to look into whether the problems in Stearns County stopped with Jacob. We’re going to do something that seems like it would be pretty straightforward. We’re going to look at the agency responsible for investigating Jacob’s kidnapping, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office. And we’re going to try to answer one simple question, how good are they really at solving major crimes?

: La première personne de notre rédaction chargée de couvrir la fusillade de la police était un journaliste avec qui je travaillais, Conrad Wilson.

: Here’s what happened. So, I got a call really early from the morning news editor, and she said, “Can you go to Cold Spring? There’s been a cop shooting.” I get there, and it was a strange scene to cover.

: And then, it’s just like … It seemed like it just kept getting weirder.

: Bien.

: Here’s what we know from law enforcement accounts. On the night of November 29th 2012, law enforcement in Stearns County got a call from a woman asking them to go check on her son. He lived in an apartment above a bar called Winners in the town of Cold Spring.

: Vers 22h35, un officier nommé Greg Reiter s'est rendu sur place. Et quand il est arrivé, il a appelé un autre officier en renfort, un policier de 31 ans nommé Tom Decker. Quand il est arrivé, l'officier Decker est sorti de sa voiture de police, tandis que l'officier Reiter est resté dans la sienne. Et puis, sans avertissement, et venant de nulle part, quelqu'un a tiré sur l'officier Decker dans la tête et l'a tué.

: After the murder, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office didn’t say a whole lot about what happened next. But Conrad and I found some of the details in a leaked document from inside the sheriff’s office.

: Donc, je me souviens avoir eu ce document. Je l'ai eu par une source. Et je me souviens l'avoir lu, et c'était stupéfiant. Je veux dire, c'était le récit de ce qui semblait être l'ineptie de la police.

: Once Officer Decker was shot, the other officer, Greg Reiter, didn’t get out of his car and try to chase down the shooter. He didn’t run out and try to see if Officer Decker was okay. Instead, Officer Reiter stayed in his squad car. And then, he put his car in reverse, and watched as the suspect walked away.

: I mean, it’s like-

: C'est fou.

: It makes no sense. And I even talked to like some … I talked to like a retired police chief in this tiny town in Minnesota. He had like four officers. I mean, it was a small town. And he was just … He couldn’t believe it, you know. I remember when we’re talking, he’s like, “That’s not what you do.” Like, “You go towards the suspect. You pursue.” And-

: Yeah. I mean, we were like asking people these ridiculous questions like, “Is this normal when a police officer’s shot?” And they’re like, “No. No, it’s not normal. How stupid are you, reporter?”

: La première personne à trouver l'officier Decker était une femme du bar qui est sortie et l'a aperçu sur le sol. Ensuite, elle est retournée à l'intérieur, et quelqu'un du bar a appelé le 911.

: Des coups de feu. Officier à terre. Il se dirige vers Cold Spring, 200 mètres.

: Deputies from the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office raced to the scene. And right away, people told police they’d seen a black van with a loud muffler leaving the parking lot right around the time of the murder. While all this was happening, the man who lived above the bar, the man who Decker and Reiter had arrived to check on was fast asleep.

: I was awoke to people screaming, “Police.”

: Son nom est Ryan Larson.

: I’ve seen the flashlights bouncing around on the crack of my doors, my bedroom door. The door flew open, a bunch guys came in with assault rifles and flashlights. And they handcuffed me, opened up the backdoor, and led me outside. I mean, there are hundreds of squad cars, two or three helicopters. I said, “What is going on? This is crazy.”

: A few months ago, I started talking to someone who worked in the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office back then. He asked that we not use his name and that we distort his voice because he’s worried the Sheriff’s Office might retaliate against him.

: You know, I still live in Stearns County, so I don’t need them following me around looking for anything and everything to harass me and retaliate against me.

: This person told me that the night Officer Decker was killed, the lead investigators were convinced they had the right guy, that Ryan Larson was the one who did it, but that other officers who’d responded to the call weren’t so sure.

: There were other people on scene that were saying, “Hey, I think we should … You know, why don’t we get the dog, and track, and do this, that, the next thing?” That’s investigation 101. We’re going to follow up on leads, and check all avenues, make sure everything checks out. And they said, “Absolutely no. We have the right person. Why would we go any further? Why would we do any more?”

: The officers brought Ryan Larson down to the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, and put him in an interview room. Ryan said two investigators came to interrogate him, Stearns County Sheriff’s Captain Pam Jensen and State Investigator Kenneth McDonald, the same team that had interrogated Dan Rassier about the Jacob Wetterling case a few years earlier.

: Captain Jensen has came in and asked me, you know, why I did it. I’m like, “Why did I do what?” You know, I had no clue what they’re talking about. “Why did you shoot the officer?” I’m like, “What? Excuse me.” “Just admit it. Tell us why you did it. It’s okay. You know, sometimes, some people snap.” “No, I didn’t do it.”

: Ryan Larson stayed in jail while investigators tried to build a case against him. I ended up finding out about this part of the investigation from that document that was leaked to us back then. The document was a two-page written statement from the Stearns County sheriff’s Office signed by two officers. And it was created to get permission to hold Ryan in jail for a little while longer.

: The document includes Officer Greg Reiter’s accounts of what he saw that night. It’s not clear from the document whether Reiter actually saw Officer Decker get shot. What it says is that Reiter heard two loud bangs, and then saw a man standing near Officer Decker’s squad car holding a weapon, and that it was a handgun.

: And that detail about the weapon was a big deal because when officers stormed into Ryan’s apartment above the bar, right away, they saw a handgun next to him. But it turned out that wasn’t the gun that was used to kill Officer Decker because Officer Decker wasn’t killed with a handgun. He was killed with a 20-gauge shotgun.

: And after five days, investigators still couldn’t find any other evidence against Ryan that would have allowed them to charge him.

: All of a sudden, on Tuesday, one of the jailers asked me what size shoes I wear and what size pants I wear. And, you know, I told my I wear a size 11 shoe and 34 pants. And he comes back, and he said, “All I can find is size 10 shoes, and a 38 pants, and this shirt.” And I said, “Well, what’s this for?” And he said, “Well, you’re going home.” And I said, “All right then. That’ll work.” I probably would have left there naked if I had to.

: Donc, Ryan est sorti de prison. Et, à un moment donné, les officiers ont reçu un tuyau sur un autre homme, un homme de 31 ans nommé Eric Thomes, un homme qui possédait un van sombre correspondant à la description du van que les gens ont déclaré avoir vu cette nuit-là. Ils sont sortis et l'ont interrogé plusieurs fois.

: And then one day, a little more than a month after the murder, investigators went to Eric’s house to question him again. But this time, Eric fled and ran into a metal outbuilding close by. He refused to come out. And after a few hours, officers finally decided to go inside and found Eric dead. He had hanged himself.

: Les autorités ont tenu une conférence de presse pour expliquer ce qui s'était passé. Elles ont dit qu'après qu'Eric se soit tué, elles ont trouvé une arme sur une propriété à laquelle Eric avait accès, un fusil de chasse de calibre 20. Ils l'ont testé et ont dit qu'ils pensaient que c'était l'arme utilisée pour tuer l'officier Decker. Le shérif du comté de Stearns, John Sanner, a dit quelques mots, principalement des éloges sur l'enquête.

: This was a real good example of how the community and law enforcement worked together to get to the point that we’re at today. We had a tipster call in based on the information that we were asking for. It actually couldn’t have worked even better. Thank you.

: A few months later in August of 2013, a spokesperson for the State Crime Bureau told reporters that if Eric hadn’t killed himself, he would have been arrested for the murder, and that Ryan Larson was no longer a suspect in the case. But it wasn’t the State Crime Bureau that was in charge of the case, it was a Stearns County Sheriff’s Office. And the Sheriff, John Sanner, has decided to keep the case open. When I went to see Sheriff Sanner a few months ago, I asked him why.

: Because we’re still hopeful that new information will come in. I have considered closing the case if it stays inactive for a period of time. If no new information comes in, that certainly is something we would consider.

: Keeping the case open means the public can’t look at the files. It means that none of us can see exactly what happened in the investigation into Officer Decker’s shooting. And it means that the sheriff doesn’t have to clear Ryan Larson even three years after the State Crime Bureau, known as the BCA, ruled Ryan out as a suspect.

: I don’t know if he was involved or not. I can’t say that.

: So, you’re not prepared to say like, “He definitely didn’t do it.”

: Oh, absolument pas.

: Oh okay because the BCA has said that. Like the spokesperson, at least, said he’s no longer a suspect.

: Ok.

: À ce moment-là, Sanner a haussé les épaules, et il n'a fourni aucune preuve que Ryan Larson avait quelque chose à voir avec la fusillade.

: Ryan Larson avait l'habitude de faire confiance aux forces de l'ordre. En grandissant, il a vécu à quelques pâtés de maisons de Jacob Wetterling, juste à côté de la route sans issue. Ryan avait le même âge que Jacob. Leurs anniversaires avaient juste trois mois d'écart. Ryan se souvient encore de la nuit où Jacob a été enlevé.

: J'ai été réveillé juste avant minuit par des lumières de recherche à la fenêtre de ma chambre. Je me suis levé pour voir des véhicules de police, des hélicoptères partout.

: Investigators even came in to Ryan’s house that night and looked around.

: Ils ont vérifié les placards. Je crois qu'ils ont fouillé la cuisine, vous savez, les salles de bains, les baignoires, partout où un enfant aurait pu être caché, je suppose.

: And as an 11-year-old kid, Ryan was impressed by all the searching for Jacob. And it was what he expected from the cops because growing up, Ryan really looked up to law enforcement. By the time I met Ryan, that trust he’d felt in law enforcement was gone.

: When I went over to his basement apartment a few months ago, Ryan showed me his laptop. The screen was filled with files from his own investigation of the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office. Ryan told me he tried to figure out what really happened the night Officer Decker was killed. He’d even called up Greg Reiter, he left the force after the murder, and asked him what he saw.

: Ryan said there was one thing in particular that really didn’t make any sense to him. And that was how Greg Reiter could have seen a handgun, the same kind of gun Ryan had, when really the crime was committed with a very different kind of gun, a shotgun. It was a difference that should be obvious to anyone with any experience with guns, and especially to a cop.

: And Ryan said Greg Reiter told him that despite what was written in the statement that was used to hold Ryan in jail, he actually didn’t see much at all that night. And that matches what I heard from my law enforcement source who told me that inside the sheriff’s office, investigators were saying pretty much the same thing.

: But when Ryan tried to get Greg Reiter to come forward and tell the public what he really saw or didn’t see that night, Greg Reiter hesitated. Ryan showed me texts they exchanged, including one he said was Greg Reiter’s last message to him, sent on July 1st 2013, about seven months after the murder.

: It said, “I talked with my attorney and Captain Jensen last week. I did give them, again, the details that you and I talked about. They, then, told me that if I said anything that I would be interfering with the investigation, and would be sued and/or charged. They also said that we are not to have any more communication.”

: Ryan said he hasn’t heard from Greg Reiter since. I couldn’t reach Reiter either. I tried to ask Sheriff Sanner about this and Captain Pam Jensen, who since left the sheriff’s office, but they didn’t respond.

: All of this has really damaged Ryan Larson’s life. He said even today, four years after the murder, people still look at him differently.

: Vous savez, les forces de l'ordre ont en quelque sorte appâté l'hameçon, et jeté mon nom en pâture aux médias. Mais le public, les gens, vous savez, que je côtoie, vous savez, tous les jours, certains des commentaires qu'ils faisaient suggéraient de construire les potences et tout le reste, de ramener les exécutions publiques, vous savez, de préparer le lynchage.

: Did anyone at the sheriff’s office ever apologize?

: No. No. And that’s, you know, probably the things I have the biggest problem with. I mean, you publicly accuse somebody of one of the most heinous crimes that a person could be accused of, you know, and it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to go away. It will always be there.

: Ryan a commencé à voir un thérapeute. On lui a diagnostiqué un PTSD.

: I haven’t actually gone out with my friends since 2012. I spent a lot of time at home.

: Ryan dropped out of school for a while and almost stopped leaving his apartment entirely. He started spending hours and hours late at night reading about other cases the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office had failed to solve.

: It’s more than me that have a similar story to tell. The Stearns Sheriff’s Office has quite a reputation for horrendous investigations, false accusations, leaving families in the dark. I mean, why can’t anybody solve crimes? I mean, why is everything such a secret? I mean, what’s going on down there? People of Stearns County just need to realize that something needs to change. You know, it might not affect them right now, but it’s going to someday if something doesn’t change now.

: Ryan Larson had become a part of a kind of sad fraternity, a loose brotherhood of people who felt wronged by the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, people like Dan Rassier, the man who was named a person of interest in the Jacob Wetterling case, and the boys in Paynesville who were attacked by a strange man in the ’80s, people without a lot of money or community support, people who are just out there on their own trying to figure out what happened, trying to solve their own crimes, or clear their own names.

: And out of all of these people I talked to, no one seemed more alone than a man named Brian Guimond, whose son, Josh, had gone missing in 2002, 13 years after Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped. I went to meet up with Brian Guimond at his house. He’s a landscaper and lives alone. He has boxes full of his own research into his son’s disappearance.

: All kinds of stuff in here. I haven’t looked at these forever.

: Like what’s in this notebook?

: Peu importe ce qui s'est passé à ce moment précis.

: Notebooks, each one numbered. Some of them had a copy of a missing person’s flyer for Josh taped to the front. And inside were all his notes about phone calls with detectives, interviews with the media, and possible leads to check out.

: It’s the only way you can remember. There’s a lot of things I got in here and times, you know.

: In November of 2002, Brian’s son, Josh, was a 20-year-old student at St. John’s University in Stearns County. And one night, Josh was at a small party at a friend’s apartment on campus. His friends said there was a little drinking but not much.

: And at some point, Josh left. He was never seen again. Authorities found his car still on campus. None of his stuff had been disturbed. He didn’t leave any kind of note behind. He just vanished. Brian said, right away, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office had a theory about what had happened to his son.

: Right off the bat, we are told he’s in Stump Lake. Pretty much, that was the end of the story as far as the Sheriff Department is concerned.

: Stump Lake is right on campus. Josh would have passed it if he’d walked back to his dorm room that night. A dog that investigators brought in the next day appeared to track Josh’s scent to an area near the lake or maybe to the bridge that crosses it.

: Les enquêteurs ont fouillé le lac. Et la famille a même payé pour une recherche séparée par une société privée qui se spécialise dans ce genre de chose. Mais aucun d'eux n'a trouvé aucun signe de Josh. Brian a dit que les enquêteurs sont venus avec une explication pour pourquoi Josh pourrait encore être dans la région, mais ne pas être trouvé. Cette explication, les sables mouvants.

: Okay. I went and got a hold of the soil and water guy for Stearns County. No, we don’t have any quicksand around here. So, that’s impossible. I got papers on it from him proving no, this can’t happen.

: Brian m'a montré la lettre de l'expert en sol du gouvernement.

: J'ai cette lettre juste ici.

: Oh, c'est la lettre.

: And no. As far as the soil expert knows, there’s no such thing as quicksand just lying out there in Stearns County. Brian told the sheriff’s office about the letter. He says that investigators came up with a new reason why Josh’s body wasn’t found.

: Les tortues l'ont mangé.

: Tortues serpentines.

: That was just one of their excuses. Now, he’s in that swampy area, you know. And, now, you can’t find anything. Well, let’s see. They ain’t going to eat the skull. They ain’t going to eat the clothes.

: We checked this out and talked to not one but two experts in snapping turtles. Both of them told us the same thing. No, a snapping turtle won’t eat a whole human being like that. I brought these two theories, the quicksand and the turtles, to Sheriff, John Sanner. Sanner became the sheriff a few months after Josh disappeared. And Sheriff Sanner told me he still does think it’s possible that Josh was sucked into some kind of mud and ended up completely submerged in it.

: Did he have too much to drink maybe and wander off into an area that’s very boggy and swampy? And then, of course, if you lay down, and become tired, or else, you get stuck. And you simply pass out because of the amount of alcohol you’ve consumed. These are just theories and possibilities.

: Et ensuite, je suis arrivé aux tortues.

: And then, the other explanation he said that he got from the sheriff’s office was that perhaps, like, Josh’s body was consumed by turtles, snapping turtles.

: I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine that happening.

: Ok.

: That didn’t come from me.

: Have you heard that before? Because that’s what he’s saying he heard from the sheriff’s office.

: Je l'ai. Je pense que ça a été publié dans le St. Cloud Times il y a des années.

: Ok.

: Est-ce que ça vient de quelqu'un des forces de l'ordre ? C'est possible.

: I asked Sheriff Sanner if he ever tried to figure out whether anyone in his office was the one who told Josh’s dad that snapping turtles could have eaten his son.

: Quelle importance à ce stade ?

: Josh Gimound is still missing. The case hasn’t been solved. You can probably find one or two stories like this of unsolved cases in any sheriff’s office in the country. So, the question is, does the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office have more than just these few cases? Do they have a bigger problem when it comes to solving crime? And to help me figure that out, I brought in Will Craft, our data reporter.

: Salut Will.

: Bonjour.

: Will a commencé par regarder un numéro en particulier.

: So, there’s this thing called the clearance rate.

: Clearance rates aren’t quite what you might think.

: So, a clearance rate is not actually a measurement of how many crimes are solved. A crime is cleared when an agency arrests someone for a crime and charges them for the crime. There are a few strange things such as if they find out who committed a crime, but that person is dead, or they’re overseas and can’t be extradited. But, in general, a crime is cleared when an agency makes an arrest and charges them.

: So, they don’t actually have to convict the person?

: Non.

: Wow. Ok. Donc, d'accord. Y a-t-il un autre ... quelque chose d'autre que nous pouvons utiliser alors ? Comme, il y a un taux résolu ?

: No. Even though clearance rates are problematic, they’re the best thing we have for measuring how effective an agency is.

: Donc, Will veut regarder les taux d'élucidation pour le comté de Stearns. Il les a trouvés dans un bureau du Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, aussi connu sous le nom de BCA.

: J'ai dû aller au BCA.

: So, that’s a state agency.

: Ouais. Donc, l'agence d'état, ils ne gardent qu'une copie de ces rapports de crime.

: Quoi ? Comme une vraie copie ?

: Oui, ils ont une copie.

: But, so, do they hand it to you? Do they bring it to you and say like, “No water”?

: Eh bien, j'ai dû m'asseoir dans une pièce avec une autre personne pendant qu'elle me regardait lire ces rapports de crime et prendre des scans avec mon téléphone de toutes les pages pertinentes.

: Ok.

: Donc, j'ai dû y aller, et je devais scanner chaque page. Donc, j'ai pris mes scans. Je les ai ramenés, et je les ai copiés à la main dans un ordinateur. Je me suis assise pendant une semaine et j'ai juste transcrit des rapports de crime.

: Will se penche sur un groupe de crimes, les crimes majeurs, également connus sous le nom de crimes de la partie 1.

: Dans la terminologie technique, ce sont les crimes de la partie 1. Il s'agit du meurtre, du viol, du vol qualifié, des voies de fait graves, du cambriolage, du larcin, du vol de véhicules à moteur et de l'incendie criminel.

: So, we’re not looking at like DWI, or my mailbox has been vandalized, or there’s graffiti at the school?

: Non.

: Will a examiné plus de 40 ans de taux d'élucidation pour ces crimes de première catégorie dans le comté de Stearns.

: J'ai donc cherché de 1971 à 2014.

: Ok.

: Donc-

: And you’ve got a graph there of all this?

: Oui, j'ai un graphique.

: Will showed me the graph he made. It’s just one line. It goes from 1971 to 2014. And it’s the percentage of Part 1 crimes the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office has cleared. The line goes up and down a lot. It starts out in the 1970s. Well, some years, barely above single digits. And then, it starts to go up in the 1980s. It reaches its highest point in 1984, five years before Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped.

: In 1984, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office cleared 38% of Part 1 crimes. They haven’t had a better year since. Under the current sheriff in the past 10 years or so, the line mostly bounces around in the teens. And for some years, the clearance rates are so low, the line is almost touching zero.

: En l'an 2000, le taux d'approbation de la partie 1 n'était que de 8%.

: 8%?

: C'était 8%. Et l'avant-dernier chiffre le plus bas a été atteint en 1978, avec seulement 9% des crimes de la partie 1.

: Qu'est-ce qui pourrait expliquer cela ?

: Je n'en ai aucune idée.

: In 2014, Stearns County cleared 16% of its Part 1 crimes. And I want you to think about that for a moment because what it means is that if you were the victim of a major crime that year in Stearns County, it’s way more likely than not that your crime wouldn’t be solved.

: I wanted to know how that number, 16%, compared with the rest of the sheriff’s offices in Minnesota that year. So, I asked Will to figure that out. And he found that there was a wide range of clearance rates from 98% all the way to 0%. But Stearns County’s rate was definitely low. It was in the bottom third for the entire state.

: Je voulais soumettre ces chiffres à un expert, j'ai donc appelé un chercheur de Pennsylvanie nommé Gary Cordner. Il a passé beaucoup de temps à étudier la criminalité rurale, en particulier.

: Way back in the day, I was a police officer and a police chief in two different departments. I’m actually retired from about 30 plus years of teaching at two different universities.

: I told Gary Cordner what we’d found out about clearance rates in the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office.

: So, in the ’70s, in the mid ’70s, it dropped as low as 9%.

: Wow.

: Oui, ce qui est remarquablement bas. Je veux dire...

: Elle l'est.

: Gary Cordner a été particulièrement surpris par la faiblesse de ces chiffres, car le comté de Stearns est essentiellement rural.

: En général, les services de police des zones non urbaines résolvent un pourcentage plus élevé de crimes que ceux des villes.

: What Gary Cordner is saying here that rural areas are usually better than big cities when it comes to solving major crimes, I think that’s the opposite of what a lot of people assume. When you think about our culture, we have these two main images of law enforcement, and we see them all the time on TV shows and in movies. There’s a small town bumbling cop who has no clue what he’s doing. And then, there’s the big city detective with all the fancy CSI gear who could solve almost anything. So, why would it be the opposite? Why are rural areas usually better at solving crime?

: Since my background is in small and somewhat rural policing, I’d like to say, you know, it’s because of, you know, the smarter and more savvy police that we have out there, but-

: Bien.

: But I don’t think that’s actually the main reason. I think police departments in more rural areas, first of all, all-in-all, are less busy. So, they might actually spend more time investigating crimes.

: Ok.

: That’s one reason, but I don’t think that’s the whole story either. I think, in general, solving crimes is easier in rural areas, in small towns than it is in cities. If you got to witness, the witness would be more likely to have literally recognized the person, maybe even know their name, you know, tell you where they live, which is not as likely to be true in a city.

: Bien.

: And then, you know, if it’s a burglary, let’s say, in a small town or a rural area, police are right away going to have several suspects in mind. You know, it may be even just one suspect just because of the local knowledge that you tend to have an in a more rural area.

: Right. You know, like a short list of, like, this kind of crime, that’s either like John, Steve, or Joe. That’s like a classic Steve crime.

: Exactement.

: But these are all just guesses. The reality is there’s just not that much research on why one place does a better or worse job than another when it comes to solving crime. We just don’t know. In fact, there’s a whole lot we don’t know about law enforcement. The federal government doesn’t even know how many police departments there are in this country.

: Un expert à qui j'ai parlé a dit que la meilleure estimation se situe entre 12 000 et 18 000. L'ensemble du système est tellement décentralisé, réparti entre les services de police, les bureaux des shérifs, les bureaux de la criminalité des États, chacun ayant ses propres données et ses propres procédures. Mais même l'obtention des faits les plus élémentaires peut être vraiment difficile.

: And this is surprising when you think about it. In this country, we’re obsessed with crime rates. It seems we always want to know whether crime is going up or down. But once the crimes happen, plenty of us don’t seem to be all that interested in whether or not law enforcement actually solves them.

: I was talking about this with a guy named Thomas Hargrove. He used to be an investigative reporter. Now, he runs a nonprofit called the Murder Accountability Project. The group collects information on murder clearance rates from across the country, and posts it on its website, so the public can be better informed. And one of the most striking things about Hargrove’s website is just how wide the range is. Some places clear almost every murder. Other places clear almost none.

: We were a little concerned about making this data available because if you wanted to kill someone, you would be well advised to go to our site. You’d find the many cities in America quite easily where it is statistically unlikely that you’ll get caught for murder.

: So, you actually … You have that as a legitimate concern like, “I’m providing the data to…

: Ouais. Oui. En fin de compte, nous avons décidé que la seule façon d'améliorer les autorisations de meurtre était de rendre ces informations très accessibles. Les gens ont le droit de savoir ça. Je veux dire, ils le font tout simplement, et ils devraient demander des comptes aux politiciens.

: Et Thomas Hargrove m'a dit autre chose que j'ai trouvé intéressant.

: In the case of a well-performing department, you ask the police chief what his clearance rate is, he knows to the decimal point and can cite those statistics year after year. He’s watching very carefully. In those underperforming police departments, it’s common for the chief to say, “I don’t know.” And he genuinely may not know. After all, why would you want to study things that don’t make you look good? So, they don’t.

: So, I went to the sheriff of Stearns County, Sheriff John Sanner, and I asked him Hargrove’s question, “Do you know what the clearance rate is?”.

: En ce moment, aujourd'hui, pas en haut de ma tête.

: Ok.

: Vous savez évidemment ce que c'est.

: Je le fais. Donc, je peux juste sauter à ça.

: J'ai montré au shérif le graphique que Will avait fait, le graphique qui montrait les taux d'élucidation dans le comté de Stearns pour les crimes majeurs, ceux connus comme les crimes de la partie 1.

: Ok. Donc, on a regardé les crimes de la partie 1. Et nous sommes remontés de 1971 à 2014. C'était la dernière année que nous avions. C'est notre diagramme.

: Le shérif Sanner a pris la feuille de papier dans ses mains et l'a regardée fixement.

: So, this is the percentages of the clearance rate. So, highest in the ’80s, 38% in ’84. And then, kind of 20s, 30s. And then, as low in 2000 as 8%. And then, 16% in 2014. These seem very low to me. Like, is this an acceptable clearance rate?

: I don’t think anything under under 100% is. I want to clear everything that we get involved in.

: Sure, but you’re not going to be able to clear 100%. So, it’s like-

: Non, mais je voudrais...

: … what’s the threshold of, you know? Is there a bar that’s, you know, every year, let’s aim to clear 60% or let’s aim to-

: En fait, le bar a pour but de les éliminer tous.

: Alors, pourquoi y a-t-il un tel fossé entre des gens comme...

: I don’t know. I have no idea why there is. And again, I’m not satisfied unless it’s 100%. I shouldn’t be satisfied unless it’s 100%.

: Compte tenu des taux d'élucidation, comment les habitants du comté de Stearns peuvent-ils croire que les forces de l'ordre vont résoudre les crimes ?

: You know, what you don’t see on this are all the crimes we do solve. And I’m not trying to make excuses here. I’m just telling you that I consider this unacceptable too.

: I ask Sheriff Sanner what he thought could be done to improve his office’s clearance rate.

: I suppose what you’re thinking about in answering that question is more training, that type of thing.

: I actually don’t know.

: Le shérif Sanner m'a dit que la résolution des crimes se résume à un facteur clé.

: Je suppose que le facteur qui est un peu à part dans toute enquête est qu'il faut tenir compte d'une certaine dose de chance.

: Luck, and Sanner said, sometimes, you get lucky, and sometimes you don’t.

: We haven’t had a lot of luck in some of these big cases that we’re working on; although, it doesn’t deter us from continuing to work as hard as we possibly can and do everything we possibly can to get them resolved.

: But if you’re looking at specifics as to how do we improve this, the first thing that would pop into somebody’s head is we need to do a better job of training our investigative staff or we maybe need to do a better job of collecting and preserving evidence, so it can be used. Those are the easy things. It’s the intangibles, that luck thing I’m talking about, that’s hard to gauge. And sometimes, just good old fashioned police work and a little bit of luck go a long way.

: About two months after I talked with Sheriff Sanner, as we were putting this episode together, the State of Minnesota released the latest Part 1 clearance rates, the ones for 2015. The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office rate had dropped from 16% to 12%.

: I also wanted to ask Sheriff Sanner about what he thinks of the investigation of the Jacob Wetterling case. At the time I talked to him, it was still a few weeks before Danny Heinrich confessed to the crime and led officers to Jacob’s remains.

: When I first started looking to this case, it was always described as like this giant mystery that, you know, Jacob just vanished, it’s dark, and there is like nothing that could have been done differently to solve it.

: Mais ensuite, lorsque j'ai commencé à me pencher sur la question, ma façon de voir les choses a changé, et en particulier certains des échecs de la police 101, comme le fait de ne pas frapper à toutes les portes cette nuit-là, de ne pas chercher sans arrêt, vous savez, d'arrêter les recherches au milieu de la nuit. Et puis, vous savez, la décision de nommer Dan Rassier comme une personne d'intérêt. Toutes ces choses me semblent être des erreurs de l'enquête ou des choses qui auraient pu potentiellement affecter négativement l'enquête. Et je veux juste vous donner une chance de répondre à cela.

: Of course, if things weren’t done in the right order, if things weren’t done at all early on, looking backwards more than 25 years ago, I can’t do anything to change that. No. So, I’m not going to get wrapped around the axle about things that law enforcement did or didn’t do. Do I wish some things would have been done differently? Sure. Can I talk about that in this particular case? No.

: I just wonder about like to the people in Stearns County whether it would make sense to say, “You know what, we really messed up some things in this. And we’re going to tell you that we’re … This is what we did that we wouldn’t do again.” Is there some accountability to the public that’s needed?

: You know, I guess, I’ve never really looked at it like that. When I’ve looked back and looked at things that, “Boy, I wish we would have done this,” or “I wish this would have been done,” again, that’s all we can do is wish about that, but I can’t go backwards and change time. Nobody can.

: So, this is what we settled on in this country as the best way to handle solving major crimes, to leave it up to people like Sheriff John Sanner, sheriffs who don’t know their clearance rates, have no clear plan about how to improve them, and who refuse to look back and see what they could have done differently.

: And Stearns County isn’t the only place with a crime solving problem. There are all kinds of places all across the country with Part 1 clearance rates in the single digits or not much higher. Farmington, New Mexico, your average clearance rate from 2005 to 2014 is 13%. Chicago, Indiana, your clearance rate is 9%. Honolulu, your clearance rate is 6%. Assumption Parish, Louisiana, your clearance rate is 12%. King County, Washington, your clearance rate is 5%.

: The way our country handles law enforcement with complete local control and no oversight means that you could live in a place that hasn’t solved a single crime in 50 years and nothing would happen. Your sheriff’s office could have a zero percent clearance rate, and no one from the government will step in and say, “That’s unacceptable. Here’s what has to happen,” or even just ask the question, ‘What’s going on down there?”

: And what this all means is that you are stuck with the law enforcement you’ve got. If you or someone in your family is murdered, you just have to hope that the place where you live has a law enforcement agency with a good track record of solving crime. And if your case is never solved, nothing will happen. No one will come in and take over the investigation. And eventually, your name will be forgotten. Thomas Hargrove put it to me this way.

: Vous disparaissez essentiellement du radar. Votre nom n'est enregistré dans aucune autorité centrale. Il n'y a pas vraiment de personne chargée d'examiner ce qui s'est passé dans votre cas, de déterminer s'il faut en faire plus, ou même de savoir qui vous étiez. Vous savez, vous devenez anonyme. Personne ne peut dresser une liste des noms de ces 216 000 Américains qui ont péri dans des meurtres non résolus. Et c'est vraiment une sorte de tragédie nationale.

: And in Stearns County, what this means is that no one can intervene when the sheriff’s office took nearly 27 years to find out that Jacob Wetterling had been killed and buried about a mile from the home of a man they all suspected had abducted a kid before, a man whose car a witness saw that night, a man whose name had been in the Wetterling case file since almost the beginning, a man who investigators had sat face-to-face with, a man named Danny Hiner. Everyone just had to wait and hope that somehow the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office would managed to solve the Wetterling case.

: So, this is where the story was supposed to end with the sheriff’s office that doesn’t get held accountable in a case that took nearly 27 years to solve. This was supposed to be the last episode of In the Dark, but over the past six weeks, as we’ve been airing this podcast, we’ve kept reporting, and we found out some things about the Jacob Wetterling case and about Danny Heinrich, the man who confessed to Jacob’s kidnapping, that we want to tell you about. And so, we’re releasing one more episode. That’s next week on In the Dark.

: In the Dark est produit par Samara Freemark. La productrice associée est Natalie Jablonski. Reportage supplémentaire important pour cet épisode par Will Craft. In the Dark est édité par Catherine Winter, avec l'aide de Hans Buetow. Le rédacteur en chef d'APM Reports est Chris Worthington, les rédacteurs Web sont Dave Peters et Andy Kruse. Le vidéographe est Jeff Thompson. La musique de notre thème est composée par Gary Meister. Cet épisode a été mixé par Johnny Vince Evans.

: Rendez-vous sur le site InTheDarkPodcast.org pour en savoir plus sur le cas de l'officier Tom Decker et sur celui de Josh Guimond, et pour en savoir plus sur les taux d'élucidation, ainsi que pour obtenir un lien permettant de connaître le taux d'élucidation des meurtres dans votre région.

: In the Dark est rendu possible, en partie, grâce à nos auditeurs. Vous pouvez soutenir davantage de journalisme indépendant comme celui-ci sur InTheDarkPodcast.org/donate.

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