In police work, I believe our lucky breaks and successes come as a result of real action. I will submit that sometimes that action is seemingly helped in inexplicable ways, call it divine intervention, or maybe karma—sometimes it seems like the universe helps. However, something must be set in motion to give a lucky break a place to land.
Successful people understand this. Just like you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket, taking relative, viable action is necessary if you are to expect any measure of success.
Years ago, a deranged man committed a heinous triple murder. He planned the homicides for months, right down to the smallest of details, like the specific doors and locks he would have to know how to breach. What he did not account for was the possibility that local surveillance cameras were present and would capture him on video coming and going from the victims’ residence the night of and the morning after the murders. Once discovered, this lucky break was the first piece of evidence that linked the accused to the scene and led investigators to his home, where damning evidence was found. This would have never happened if investigators hadn’t sent officers out to do extensive canvassing of the neighborhood, discovered the video evidence, and reviewed the footage in a timely manner to find that lucky break.
We are blessed to have a weather phenomenon called Chinooks that periodically blows into our city. These are a type of gusty wind that occurs on the downward slope of a mountain. Being tucked in the eastern shadow of the Canadian Rockies, we can experience these winds fairly often. When they hit in the winter, they can create balmy spring-like temperatures that quickly melt snow. With these melts, things under the snow become visible, like people who have been missing.
Prior to my time in homicide, there was a case where, following one of these Chinook events, the naked body of a woman became visible in the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in. With nothing on her to identify her remains, investigators received their lucky break when one of them noticed a receipt flapping in the wind off one of her buttocks. Remember I mentioned sometimes it seems like we get inexplicable help? That Chinook wind had bellowed in, melting the snow that led to the victim’s body being discovered in the first place, yet the receipt didn’t blow away. That little piece of paper was key to solving the case; investigators followed up on the information printed on it, which quickly led to the identification and arrest of the suspect. The receipt was loaded with potential, but that potential had to be realized by the investigators and relevant actions taken.
In another case, a killer who had just murdered a teenage boy lit the victim’s car on fire, leaving the body to burn inside the makeshift crematorium on wheels—or so he thought. After dousing the vehicle with an accelerant, he lit a match and walked away without realizing fire needs oxygen to burn. Minutes after he left the scene, the fire extinguished itself. Smoke, melted seats, and plastics were left behind. So was the intact and processable evidence, including the DNA of the perpetrator and the murder victim. To harness this lucky break, investigators still needed to carefully process the crime scene and diligently examine all of the exhibits collected. The break was always there, but it was up to the investigators to give that break a place to land, turning loaded potential into success.
In another case, a phantom camera operator was our lucky break. The cheer from New Year’s was just beginning to wear off as we entered the second week of 2018. But not for everyone. An impromptu house party at a residence across from a large retail space was a testament to that. On this night, six people were in the house when two party crashers arrived. The two late attendees—uninvited—made some of the guests uncomfortable.
These individuals were different. They had history, and everyone knew it. They carried themselves differently, walked like they would in a prison meal line, and even from across the room, you could see the chips on their shoulders. The host’s decision was to leave them be—Don’t poke the bear.
To this day, it is not clear what lit the match, but whatever it was, it led the uninvited guests to brandish mace and knives inside the home before chasing and stabbing two of the legitimate guests out into the snow—one suffering fatal knife wounds.
An exterior, motion-sensitive security camera installed to patrol mall parking captured the action. Set to sequence over the course of two minutes through multiple angles, including on the street in front of the residence, this camera panned and zoomed without operator control. The results were remarkable.
As if it was being controlled from the grave, the camera recorded the attack as it unfolded. The first victim was an aspiring MMA fighter with a bright future. He was stabbed multiple times in the street by both offenders while the second victim ran for his life and found refuge in the entrance to a tanning salon along the mall’s west side.
The automatic camera zoomed in and panned out at perfect times to capture the entire violent assault, seemingly better than if someone had been operating it themselves. Although the video’s night resolution was insufficient to exclusively identify both accused, it helped the members of the court see the level of participation of each accused in the murder. If this wasn’t enough, the camera continued its two-minute cycle to record the stabbed victim staggering across the street to the mall entrance, where he collapsed—again zooming in as if needing to capture his last breath for the absolute record.
In another lucky-break case, one dreary January morning, a group of intruders with vendettas forced their way inside the residence of several college students, stabbing one student critically and the other fatally. We learned that the murder weapon had been thrown from the suspect’s moving vehicle. To complicate matters, earlier that day, we had received a heavy snowfall, and the roadway where we expected to find the tossed knife had just been plowed. We knew recovering the knife would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Still, plans were put in place, and a two-block search radius was identified. It didn’t take long. Police vehicles moved into the community to set up for the search, and one became stuck in a large snow bank. Tires spinning, the driver attempted to free the vehicle from the drift, and the knife we were looking for spit out from the back wheel and landed at our feet.
I have always believed by giving the lucky breaks in our lives a place to land, we create opportunities that can help us toward our pathway to success.