Tam Transkript: Karanlıkta S1 E8 - Aşağıda Neler Oluyor

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.

: Daha önce Karanlıkta'da.

: Aklımdaki soru şu: İlçemizin biraz uzak bir bölgesinde bu tür bir suç nasıl işlenebilir?

: 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.

: Çocuklarımızın başına ciddi bir şey gelse, birilerinin bunu araştırmak için orada olacağını varsayıyorum.

: 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?

: Haber merkezimizde polis saldırısını haberleştirmek üzere görevlendirilen ilk kişi, birlikte çalıştığım Conrad Wilson adlı bir muhabirdi.

: 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.

: Doğru.

: 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.

: Gece 10:35 civarında Greg Reiter adında bir polis memuru oraya gitti. Oraya vardığında, Tom Decker adında 31 yaşında bir polis olan başka bir memuru destek için çağırdı. Oraya vardığında Memur Decker ekip arabasından inmiş; Memur Reiter ise kendi arabasında kalmıştır. Ve sonra, hiçbir uyarı olmadan ve aniden, birisi Memur Decker'ı başından vurarak öldürdü.

: 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.

: O belgeyi aldığımı hatırlıyorum. Bir kaynaktan aldım. Okuduğumu hatırlıyorum ve çok çarpıcıydı. Yani, polisin beceriksizliği gibi görünen bir şeydi.

: 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-

: Bu çılgınlık.

: 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?”

: Memur Decker'ı bulan ilk kişi, dışarı çıkıp onu yerde gören bardaki bir kadın oldu. Sonra kadın içeri koşmuş ve bardan biri 911'i aramış.

: Ateş açıldı. Memur vuruldu. Cold Spring'e doğru gidiyor, 200 metre-

: 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.”

: Adı 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.

: Ryan hapisten çıktı. Ve bir noktada, memurlar başka bir adam hakkında ihbar aldılar, Eric Thomes adında 31 yaşında bir adam, insanların o gece gördüklerini bildirdikleri minibüsün tarifine uyan koyu renkli bir minibüsün sahibi olan bir adam. Dışarı çıktılar ve onu birkaç kez sorguladılar.

: 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.

: Yetkililer olanları açıklamak üzere bir basın toplantısı düzenledi. Eric kendini öldürdükten sonra, Eric'in erişebildiği bir mülkte 20 kalibrelik bir av tüfeği bulduklarını söylediler. Silahı test ettiler ve Memur Decker'ı öldürmek için kullanılan silah olduğuna inandıklarını söylediler. Stearns İlçe Şerifi John Sanner soruşturmayı öven birkaç söz söyledi.

: 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, kesinlikle olmaz.

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

: Tamam.

: Bu noktada Sanner omuz silkti ve Ryan Larson'ın vurulma olayıyla bir ilgisi olduğuna dair hiçbir kanıt sunmadı.

: Ryan Larson eskiden kolluk kuvvetlerine güvenirdi. Büyürken, Jacob Wetterling'den sadece birkaç blok ötede, çıkmaz yolun hemen dışında yaşıyordu. Ryan, Jacob ile aynı yaştaydı. Doğum günleri arasında sadece üç ay vardı. Ryan, Jacob'ın kaçırıldığı geceyi hâlâ hatırlıyor.

: Gece yarısından hemen önce yatak odamın penceresindeki arama ışıklarıyla uyandım. Kalktığımda her yerde polis araçlarını ve helikopterleri gördüm.

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

: Dolapları kontrol etmişler. Sanırım mutfağa, banyolara, küvetlere, bir çocuğun saklanabileceği her yere baktılar.

: 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.

: Kolluk kuvvetleri oltaya bir nevi yem taktı ve medya için ismimi ortaya attı. Ama halk, bilirsiniz, her gün aralarında dolaştığım insanlar, bazı yorumlarında darağaçlarını inşa etmeyi, halka açık infazları geri getirmeyi, linç güruhunu hazırlamayı öneriyorlardı.

: 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 bir terapiste gitmeye başladı. Ona TSSB teşhisi kondu.

: 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?

: O an her ne olduysa.

: 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.

: Müfettişler gölde arama yaptı. Hatta aile, bu tür konularda uzmanlaşmış özel bir şirkete ayrı bir arama için para bile ödedi. Ama hiçbiri Josh'tan bir iz bulamadı. Brian, müfettişlerin Josh'un neden hala bölgede olup da bulunamadığına dair bir açıklama getirdiklerini söyledi. Bu açıklama, bataklık.

: 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 bana hükümetin toprak uzmanından gelen mektubu gösterdi.

: O mektup burada.

: Mektup bu.

: 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.

: Kaplumbağalar onu yedi.

: Kaplumbağalar.

: 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.

: Ve sonra, kaplumbağalara ulaştım.

: 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.

: Tamam.

: 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.

: Bende var. Sanırım yıllar önce St. Cloud Times'da yayınlanmıştı.

: Tamam.

: Kolluk kuvvetlerinden birinden mi geldi? Muhtemelen.

: 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.

: Bu noktada ne önemi var ki?

: 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.

: Merhaba Will.

: Merhaba.

: Will özellikle bir sayıya bakarak işe başladı.

: 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?

: Hayır.

: Vay canına. Tamam. Pekala. O zaman kullanabileceğimiz başka bir şey var mı? Mesela, çözülmüş bir oran var mı?

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

: Will, Stearns ilçesinin temize çıkma oranlarına bakmak istedi. Onları BCA olarak da bilinen Minnesota Suçluları Yakalama Bürosu'ndaki bir ofiste buldu.

: BCA'ya gitmek zorunda kaldım.

: So, that’s a state agency.

: Evet, öyle. Yani, devlet kurumu, bu suç raporlarının sadece bir kopyasını tutuyor.

: Ne gibi? Gerçek bir kopya gibi mi?

: Evet, bir kopyası var.

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

: Bu suç raporlarını okurken ve telefonumla ilgili tüm sayfaların taramasını yaparken beni izlerken başka biriyle bir odada oturmak zorunda kaldım.

: Tamam.

: Gitmem ve her sayfayı taramam gerekiyordu. Ben de taramalarımı aldım. Onları geri getirdim ve elle bilgisayara kopyaladım. Bir hafta boyunca oturdum ve sadece suç raporlarını kopyaladım.

: Will bir grup suçu, Kısım 1 suçları olarak da bilinen büyük suçları inceliyor.

: Teknik terminolojide bunlar Kısım 1 suçlarıdır. Ve bunlar cinayet, tecavüz, soygun, ağır saldırı, hırsızlık, hırsızlık, motorlu araç hırsızlığı ve kundakçılıktır.

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

: Hayır.

: Will, Stearns County'deki bu Kısım 1 suçları için 40 yılı aşkın bir süredir devam eden temizleme oranlarını inceledi.

: Bu yüzden 1971'den 2014'e kadar baktım.

: Tamam.

: Yani-

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

: Evet, grafiğim var.

: 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.

: 2000 yılında Kısım 1'in temizlenme oranı sadece 8% idi.

: 8%?

: 8% idi. İkinci en düşük oran ise 1978'de Bölüm 1 suçlarından sadece 9%'sinin temizlenmesiydi.

: Bunu ne açıklayabilir?

: Hiçbir fikrim yok.

: 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.

: Bu rakamları bir uzmana inceletmek istedim ve Pennsylvania'da Gary Cordner adında bir araştırmacıyı aradım. Özellikle kırsal kesimdeki suçları incelemek için çok zaman harcamış.

: 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%.

: Vay canına.

: Evet, ki bu oldukça düşük. Yani-

: Öyle.

: Gary Cordner bu rakamların bu kadar düşük olmasına özellikle şaşırdı çünkü Stearns İlçesi çoğunlukla kırsal bir yer.

: Genel olarak, kentsel olmayan bölgelerdeki polis departmanları şehirlere kıyasla suçların daha yüksek bir yüzdesini çözmektedir.

: 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-

: Doğru.

: 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.

: Tamam.

: 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.

: Doğru.

: 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.

: Aynen öyle.

: 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.

: Konuştuğum bir uzman en iyi tahminin 12.000 ila 18.000 arasında olduğunu söyledi. Tüm sistem çok merkezsiz, polis departmanları, şerif ofisleri, eyalet suç büroları arasında bölünmüş durumda, her birinin kendi verileri ve kendi prosedürleri var. Ancak en temel bilgilere ulaşmak bile gerçekten zor olabiliyor.

: 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…

: Evet. Evet. Evet. Sonunda, cinayetlerin aydınlatılması konusunda ilerleme kaydedebilmemizin tek yolunun bu bilgileri erişilebilir kılmak olduğuna karar verdik. İnsanların bunu bilmeye hakkı var. Yani, basitçe biliyorlar ve politikacıları sorumlu tutmalılar.

: Ve Thomas Hargrove bana ilginç bulduğum başka bir şey daha söyledi.

: 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?”.

: Şu anda, bugün, aklıma gelmiyor.

: Tamam.

: Belli ki ne olduğunu biliyorsun.

: Evet. O yüzden hemen oraya geçebilirim.

: Şerife Will'in hazırladığı grafiği gösterdim, Stearns County'de 1. Kısım suçlar olarak bilinen büyük suçların temizlenme oranlarını gösteren grafiği.

: Tamam. Birinci bölümdeki suçlara baktık. Ve 1971'den 2014'e kadar geriye gittik. Elimizdeki son yıldı. Diyagramımız bu.

: Şerif Sanner kâğıdı eline aldı ve ona baktı.

: 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-

: Hayır, ama ben-

: … 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-

: Aslında çıta, hepsini temizlemeyi hedefliyoruz.

: Peki, o zaman neden bu kadar büyük bir uçurum var?

: 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%.

: Temizlenme oranları göz önüne alındığında, Stearns County'deki insanlar kolluk kuvvetlerinin suçları çözeceğine nasıl güvenebilir?

: 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.

: Şerif Sanner bana birçok suçun çözümünün tek bir temel faktöre bağlı olduğunu söyledi.

: Sanırım her soruşturmada bir miktar şansı da hesaba katmanız gerekiyor.

: 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.

: Ancak daha sonra bu konuyu araştırmaya başladığımda olaya bakış açım değişti ve özellikle de o gece tüm kapıları çalmamak, durmaksızın arama yapmamak, gecenin bir yarısı aramayı sonlandırmak gibi polislik 101'in bazı hataları ortaya çıktı. Ve sonra Dan Rassier'i şüpheli kişi olarak ilan etme kararı. Tüm bunlar bana soruşturmada yapılan hatalar ya da soruşturmayı potansiyel olarak olumsuz etkileyebilecek şeyler gibi geliyor. Bunlara yanıt vermeniz için size bir şans vermek istiyorum.

: 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.

: Aslında radardan kayboluyorsunuz. Adınız herhangi bir merkezi otoritede kayıtlı değildir. Sizin vakanıza ne olduğunu, daha fazlasının yapılması gerekip gerekmediğini ve hatta kim olduğunuzu gözden geçirmekle görevlendirilmiş hiç kimse yok. Bilirsiniz, anonim hale gelirsiniz. Hiç kimse faili meçhul cinayetlerde hayatını kaybeden 216.000 Amerikalının isimlerinin bir listesini oluşturamıyor. Ve bu gerçekten de ulusal bir trajedi.

: 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'ın yapımcılığını Samara Freemark üstleniyor. Yardımcı yapımcı Natalie Jablonski'dir. Bu bölüm için Will Craft tarafından önemli ek raporlar hazırlanmıştır. In the Dark, Hans Buetow'un yardımıyla Catherine Winter tarafından düzenlenmiştir. APM Reports'un genel yayın yönetmeni Chris Worthington, web editörleri Dave Peters ve Andy Kruse'dur. Videograf Jeff Thompson'dır. Tema müziğimiz Gary Meister tarafından bestelenmiştir. Bu bölümün miksajı Johnny Vince Evans tarafından yapılmıştır.

: Memur Tom Decker ve Josh Guimond davası hakkında daha fazla bilgi edinmek, cinayetlerin aydınlatılma oranları hakkında daha fazla bilgi edinmek ve yaşadığınız yerdeki cinayetlerin aydınlatılma oranını öğrenmek için InTheDarkPodcast.org adresine gidin.

: In the Dark kısmen dinleyicilerimiz sayesinde mümkün olmaktadır. Bunun gibi daha fazla bağımsız gazeteciliği InTheDarkPodcast.org/donate adresinden destekleyebilirsiniz.

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