完整的文字记录。在黑暗中》S1 E8 - 下面发生了什么事

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.

: 前情提要：在黑暗中。

: 我心中的这个问题是，你知道，这种类型的犯罪怎么会发生在我们县的这个有点偏远的地区？

: 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.

: 我认为，如果我们的孩子发生了严重的事情，就会有人来调查。

: 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?

: 我们新闻室第一个被指派报道警察枪击事件的人是我的同事，名叫康拉德-威尔逊。

: 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.

: 对。

: 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.

: 晚上10点35分左右，一位名叫格雷格-赖特的警官开车过来。当他到达那里时，他给另一位警官打电话请求支援，一位名叫汤姆-德克的31岁警察。当他到达时，德克尔警官从他的巡逻车上下来；而雷特警官则留在他的车里。然后，在没有任何警告的情况下，不知从哪里冒出来的人向德克尔警官的头部开枪，将他杀死。

: 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.

: 所以，我记得我得到了那份文件。我从一个来源得到它。我记得我读过它，它是令人震惊的。我的意思是，这是对似乎是警察无能的描述。

: 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-

: 这很疯狂。

: 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?”

: 第一个发现德克警官的人是酒吧里的一个女人，她走到外面，发现他倒在地上。然后，她跑回屋里，酒吧里有人打了911。

: 开枪射击。警官倒下了。向冷泉市进发，200米-

: 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.”

: 他的名字是瑞安-拉尔森。

: 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.

: 所以，瑞安出狱了。而且，在某些时候，警官得到了关于另一个人的线索，一个名叫埃里克-托马斯的31岁男子，这个人拥有一辆深色面包车，与人们报告的那晚看到的面包车的描述一致。他们走出去，询问了他几次。

: 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.

: 当局召开了一次新闻发布会，解释发生的事情。他们说，在埃里克自杀后，他们在埃里克可以接触到的一处房产上发现了一把枪，是一把20口径的猎枪。他们对其进行了测试，并说他们相信这是一把用来杀害德克尔警官的枪。斯特恩斯县警长约翰-桑纳说了几句话，主要是对调查的赞扬。

: 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.”

: 哦，绝对不是。

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

: 好的。

: 这时，桑纳耸了耸肩，他没有提供任何证据证明瑞安-拉尔森与枪击事件有关。

: 瑞安-拉森曾经信任执法部门。在成长过程中，他住在离雅各布-韦特林只有几个街区的地方，就在那条死路上。莱恩与雅各布同龄。他们的生日只相差三个月。莱恩仍然记得雅各布被绑架的那个晚上。

: 午夜前，我被卧室窗户上的探照灯吵醒了。我起床后看到警车和直升飞机到处都是。

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

: 检查壁橱。我相信他们检查了厨房、浴室、浴缸，任何可能藏有孩子的地方，我猜。

: 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.

: 你知道，执法部门有点诱饵，把我的名字抛给了媒体。但是，公众，人们，你知道，我每天走在他们中间，你知道，他们说的一些评论建议建立绞刑架和所有回，带回公开处决，你知道，让私刑暴徒准备。

: 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.

: 瑞安开始看治疗师。他被诊断出患有创伤后应激障碍。

: 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?

: 无论那一次发生了什么。

: 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.

: 调查人员确实搜索了湖面。家人甚至花钱请了一家专门从事这种事情的私人公司进行单独搜索。但他们都没有发现乔希的任何踪迹。布莱恩说，调查人员想出了一个解释，为什么乔希仍然在该地区，但却没有被找到。这个解释，就是流沙。

: 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.

: 布莱恩给我看了政府土壤专家的信。

: 我这里有那封信。

: 哦，这就是那封信。

: 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.

: 乌龟吃了他。

: 鳄龟。

: 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.

: 然后，我到了海龟那里。

: 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.

: 好的。

: 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.

: 我有。我想那是多年前发表在《圣克劳德时报》上的。

: 好的。

: 它来自执法部门的某个人吗？有可能。

: 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.

: 在这一点上，这有什么关系呢？

: 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.

: 嗨，威尔。

: 你好。

: 威尔一开始就特别看了一个数字。

: 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?

: 没有。

: 哇。好的，那么，好的。有没有其他的......我们可以使用的东西呢？比如说，有没有一个解决的比率？

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

: 因此，威尔想看看斯蒂尔斯县的通关率。他在明尼苏达州刑事拘捕局（也称BCA）的一间办公室里找到了它们。

: 我不得不去找BCA。

: So, that’s a state agency.

: 是的。所以，国家机构，他们只保留这些犯罪报告的一个副本。

: 什么？像一个真正的副本？

: 是的，他们有一个副本。

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

: 好吧，我确实不得不和另一个人坐在一个房间里，而他们看着我阅读这些犯罪报告，并用我的手机扫描所有相关页面。

: 好的。

: 所以，我不得不去，而且我必须扫描每一页。所以，我拿着我的扫描件。我把它们带回来，然后用手把它们复制到电脑上。我坐了一个星期，只是转录犯罪报告。

: 威尔正在研究一组犯罪，即主要犯罪，也被称为第一部分犯罪。

: 用技术术语来说，这些是第一部分的罪行。它们是谋杀、强奸、抢劫、严重伤害、入室盗窃、偷窃、机动车盗窃和纵火。

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

: 没有。

: 威尔查看了40多年来斯泰因斯县这些第一部分犯罪的清除率。

: 因此，我从1971年到2014年都在寻找。

: 好的。

: 所以-

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

: 是的，我有图表。

: 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.

: 在2000年，第一部分的清除率只有8%。

: 8%?

: 它是8%。而第二低的是1978年，他们只清除了9%的第一部分罪行。

: 什么可以解释这个问题？

: 我不知道。

: 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.

: 我想让专家来研究这些数字，所以我打电话给宾夕法尼亚州名叫加里-科德纳的研究人员。他花了很多时间研究农村犯罪，特别是。

: 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%.

: 哇。

: 是的，这是很低的。我的意思是...

: 它是。

: 加里-科德纳对这些数字如此之低感到特别惊讶，因为斯特恩斯县主要是一个农村地方。

: 一般来说，非城市地区的警察部门解决犯罪的比例要高于城市。

: 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-

: 对。

: 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.

: 好的。

: 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.

: 对。

: 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.

: 正是如此。

: 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.

: 与我交谈的一位专家说，最好的估计是在12,000到18,000之间。整个系统是如此分散，在警察部门、警长办公室、州犯罪局之间分割，每个部门都有自己的数据和自己的程序。但即使是获得最基本的事实也是非常困难的。

: 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…

: 是的。最后，我们决定，我们要改进谋杀案审查的唯一方法是使这些信息非常容易获得。人民有权利知道这些。我的意思是，他们只是做，他们应该让政治家负责。

: 而托马斯-哈格罗夫还告诉我一些我觉得很有趣的事情。

: 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?”.

: 现在，今天，不是我想出来的。

: 好的。

: 你显然知道它是什么。

: 我有。所以，我可以直接跳到这一点。

: 我给警长看了威尔制作的图表，该图表显示了斯蒂尔斯县重大犯罪的破案率，也就是那些被称为第一部分的犯罪。

: 好的，所以我们看了第一部分的罪行。我们从1971年回溯到2014年。这是我们有的最后一年。这是我们的图表。

: 萨纳警长把那张纸拿在手里，盯着它看。

: 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-

: 没有，但我想...

: … 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-

: 其实吧，我们的目标是把它们全部清除。

: 那么，为什么会有这样的差距呢？

: 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%.

: 但鉴于破案率，我的意思是，斯蒂尔斯县的人们怎么能相信执法部门会破案呢？

: 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.

: Sanner警长告诉我，很多犯罪的解决都归结于一个关键因素。

: 我想，在任何调查中，有一个因素是存在的，就是你必须考虑到一定的运气。

: 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.

: 但后来，当我开始研究它时，我看待它的方式已经改变，特别是警务工作101的一些失败之处，如当晚没有敲开所有的门，没有不停地搜索，你知道，在半夜叫停搜索。然后，你知道，决定将丹-拉西尔列为相关人员。所有这些事情都让我觉得是调查的错误，或者是可能对调查产生负面影响的事情。我只是想给你一个机会来回应这个问题。

: 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.

: 你基本上从雷达上消失了。你的名字没有被记录在任何中央机构中。真的没有人被指派去审查你的案件发生了什么，以及是否需要做更多的工作，或者甚至你是谁。你知道，你成了匿名者。没有人可以把那些在未解决的谋杀案中丧生的216,000名美国人的名字列在一起。这真的是一种国家悲剧。

: 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.

: 黑暗中》由萨马拉-弗莱马克制作。副制片人是Natalie Jablonski。本集的重要补充报道由Will Craft负责。黑暗中》由Catherine Winter编辑，Hans Buetow提供帮助。APM报告的主编是Chris Worthington，网络编辑是Dave Peters和Andy Kruse。摄像师是Jeff Thompson。我们的主题音乐是由Gary Meister创作的。本集由Johnny Vince Evans混音。

: 前往InTheDarkPodcast.org了解更多关于汤姆-戴克警官的案件和乔希-吉蒙的案件，并了解更多关于破案率的信息，以及了解你所在地区谋杀案破案率的链接。

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