One of the few black detectives in the unit, Thompson quickly made his mark. It was Lundberg, who had gone to Parkland to examine Burnsides body. How Florence ButtNot Her SonLaunched the H-E-B Empire. After the First 48 (2008- ) More at IMDbPro. I wondered about the story Jaffe had told Thompson about finding her in the front yard, desperately saying, I wasnt going to leave him. The lawyer was reluctant to open the door. An expert witness with expertise as both a retired officer and homicide detective from the same police department, testified on Lords behalf. Why wasnt that enough? Im willing to accept that Mikey might have totally screwed up. Strapped around. Theres no way my son shot himself,John said. When Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must solve without the victim's body. It was a very overwhelming issue., Thompson leaned back in his chair and stared at Lord. He sustained a fatal contact gunshot wound to the right temple. I do believe you killed him. He asked her again about what she was doing during that seven-minute gap between phone calls in the house that night. He took her to dinner, and the date lasted the entire weekend. The lawsuit also claimed that Thompson had permanently damaged Lords reputation in Dallas and caused her to suffer extreme emotional and mental anguish, including depression, insomnia, nightmares, and constant anxiety of the most extreme nature. Lord was asking for monetary damages, and according to courthouse gossip, Tittle was not willing to settle for less than seven figures. Im just as baffled as you are, she said. Ive never seen anything like it, Sanders said. According to Jaffe, Lord overheard the conversation and started to get upset. She told Burnside she was hurt that he would go to the trouble of organizing a friends birthday party when he had done next to nothing for her own birthday a few months earlier. After the service, she told Burnsides friends that she hadnt returned any of their calls because she had been overwhelmed with grief. As Lord hugged Tittle and members of her family, Thompson stood at the defense table, his mouth open. Tittle then asked about Rastegar. You did! (For a more complete description of the interrogation, check out Dallas Morning News coverage from the day that the jury was shown the interrogation videotape.). Burnsides father showed up to let her in, and when Lord tried to tell him she had not murdered his son, he cut her off. Filing in behind him were at least a dozen of his fellow homicide detectives, there to show support. She said that she had phoned Jaffe because she initially thought Burnside had fallen and was hurt. What this trial is about is whether this detective had probable cause to believe that she did it. Then Schuette began listing all the reasons that would make a detective like Thompson believe Lord had killed her boyfriend. But she never did: she kept saying that she loved her boyfriend, that they were happy together, and that he had taken his life for reasons she could not imagine. Chip Gaines Bought Larry McMurtrys Historic Texas Bookstore. He told Lundberg that he wasnt sure this was a suicide. When he finished, he left a packet of evidence that hed compiled for the grand jurors to peruse, including the results of two polygraphs that concluded that Lord had not shown deception when she said she had not shot Burnside. After she graduates, she hopes to go to law school and perhaps someday work for the Innocence Project. The day after the shooting, he had checked the records and discovered that there was no seven-minute gap on Lords cellphone between the calls to Jaffe and 911. I hope you die in jail and burn in hell!. Lord has just been awarded $800,000 in a jury verdict from a Dallas jury that has found Lord to be the victim of false arrest. He also had run up some debt: he owed a rental car company money for crashing one of its vehicles, and he had received letters from the IRS demanding that he pay more than $50,000 in back taxes. On May 9, 2010, plaintiff Hephzibah Olivia Lord, 36, who works in mortgaging, was alone with her boyfriend at his home, in Dallas. Then Shearin got his big break. Michael Lowe is Celebrating Over 20 YEARS of Service. As he nodded sympathetically, she again talked about how hurt she had been on her birthday. Thompson asked why there was so little blood on her hands and arms. But she was pointedly not invited to a get-together that Burnsides friends were throwing after the service at one of his favorite bars. Lord, who is now 37 years old, still lives in the same apartment, and she has barely spent any of the money she won in her lawsuit. By the end of the interview, Thompson had returned from his lecture and walked into the room. The officer shrugged. For more information, see Michael Lowes Things to Know if You are Being Investigated for a Crime in Texas and our blog postSalinas v. Texas: Your Silence During Police Interrogation Does Not Get 5th Amendment Protection, Can Be Used Against You As Evidence Of Guilt To The Jury.. Testimony. The officer identified him as Brian Jaffe, a thirty-year-old civil engineer who had been Burnsides best friend since high school. And then she burst into tears. What other results could you have with the police policing themselves? she said. It was Burnsides father. I dont remember the exact words that were used, he told Lundberg. In the video, Rastegar initially seemed to confirm what he had supposedly told Thompson and Lundberg on the porch. Leave them blank to get signed up. He asked Thompson if he had told one of Burnsides friends that this was the case of a lifetimethe kind of case that could make him famous. He was convinced Thompson had misled him, and on September 22, Quinton changed the cause of Burnsides death to undetermined. Quintons new ruling was definitely a boost for Lords case, but it was hardly enough to guarantee an acquittal. Seriously, does anyone believe this story that Olivia tells about being in the bathroom and hearing something that sounded like glass breaking in the kitchen? If the review determines that he did nothing wrong, he could be reinstated as a detective. Thompson, a 21-year veteran of the Police Department, has been a homicide detective since 2006. Veteran Dallas police homicide detective Dwayne Thompson is on desk duty pending an internal investigation. For the rest of the month, Burnsides father regularly called Thompson to get updates on the investigation. Whats more, she didnt want him to go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Shed given her telephone to her aunt, who was screening her calls. Thompson has still destroyed my life and hes still out there working cases. Both have worked numerous murders and each has been featured on the popular A&E reality television show, Personal details. . Something happened there tonight, and it doesnt make sense., The only thing I can think of is that he was careless sometimes with guns, Jaffe said. | Recent Lawyer Listings Thompson told Rastegar to go to the station and make an official recorded statement, which Thompson later used to obtain an arrest warrant charging Lord with murder. The Hephzibah Olivia Lord by Detective Dwayne A. Thompson lasted for hours. Scattered around the floor were a few bottles of household cleaning products. Basing an opinion on over 30 years with the Dallas Police Department, Kim Sanders explained that the Lord interrogation was intimidation, not questioning, and as Thompson handled the questioning it was a textbook example of how police can get false confessions. Thompson wanted to find out if Lord, under such heated questioning, would crack. | Advertising Stars Eric Barnes Monica Cordova Rick Duggan See production, box office & company info Watch on A&E Go to aetv.com More watch options He eventually learned about my arrest, and he was so bothered by what he read that he never called me again. Yes you did!. This has been kind of a sexy case here: an attractive female shoots the boyfriend, you solve the crime. "You look at that. Thompson formed his hand into the shape of a gun and pointed at his jawline, aiming upward at a 70-degree angle, which infuriated Shearin, who accused Thompson of wildly exaggerating the location and angle of the shot. Shearin went to see Brandi Mitchell, a prosecutor with the Dallas County district attorneys office who was in charge of the Burnside case, and claimed that Thompson had perjured himself. In Texas, both federal and state laws exist to protect people like Hephzibal Olivia Lord from being overwhelmed and mistreated by police during criminal investigations. City Employees Are Heading for the Exits. An officer came over to Thompsons cubicle and handed him Lords and Jaffes cellphones. Mikey said, Im not going to cheat on you in Vegas. Dallas Homicide Detective Dwayne Thompson revisits an empty plot of land where a grizzly double homicide had occurred years prior.Subscribe for more The Firs. When Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must solve without the victim's body. You did! Lord called 911, and police came. Thompson stared at a copy of Burnsides drivers license. It was so hard for us to believe that she was doing this, said Jaffe. He was not a depressed type of person at all. City attorneys are defending him, saying he acted in good faith and without malice. What he didnt say was that the case was going nowhere. I work cases because thats what I get paid to do., Tittle asked Thompson why he didnt seem particularly disturbed that Burnside was drunk and had showed off his Beretta on the night of the shooting. Her parents hired an attorney named Joe Shearin, a former guard for the University of Texas Longhorns who had played in the NFL before becoming one of Dallass most prominent criminal defense lawyers. But she maintained her innocence, claiming that he committed suicide. There was no way a person with an IQ above 65 could have concluded that Olivia had shot Michael.. They had not laid eyes on each other since he had interrogated her. Then, on June 5, his phone rang. In an excited voice, he said that he had been told by his sons next-door neighbor that a neighbor who lived across the streetan attorney named Sheida Rastegarhad information that linked Lord to the killing. Lord was accused of murder countless times, and she always denied it. And, yes, she said, she had grown irritated when she heard Burnside and Jaffe talking about the birthday party. (The autopsy report revealed that he had at least a .17 blood alcohol level when he diedtwice the legal limit to drive a vehicle.) Comments are moderated and these will not be published. She wanted to not only vindicate herself but also make sure the public knew just what Thompson had done to her. In his opinion, it was perfectly plausible that in the heat of the argument with Burnside, she had taken his pistol, slipped up behind him, and pulled the trigger. Believe me, she adored Michael with all of her heart. Thompson did his best to defend himself. His voice got even softer. A Right-wing Cabal Took Over Odessas Municipal Government. But those mistakes do not amount to malice., Tittle, however, wasted no time going on the attack, telling the jury in his opening statement, There is not and was not a shred of credible evidence to suggest that Olivia Lord had anything to do with Michaels death. She was wearing a blue T-shirt and gray sweatpants, her knees stained with blood. He then worked for a not for profit organization called "One Community" that's premise is to be a middle man between law enforcement and civilians. Testimony continues Friday, during which Lord may take the witness stand. The First 48 (2004- ) Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson hunts for a band of carjacking killers that are terrorizing a neighborhood. In August, three months after the shooting, Shearin requested an examining trial, a legal procedure in which a police officer must appear in a magistrates court to lay out the probable cause for the arrest of a suspect in a felony case. A jury in federal civil court ruled Friday that a Dallas homicide detective, Dwayne Thompson, violated Lord's civil rights by maliciously having her arrested for a killing she didn't commit,. Still, Thompson had only a theory. Thompson started his career in law enforcement as a corrections officer in a maximum-security prison in South Carolina. Texas law enforcement officers (troopers, police officers, deputies) arrest people then interrogate them and take people into interrogation rooms for questioning as part of crime investigation routinely. A couple of clerks grinned at him. Come on., Lord closed her eyes when I asked her about those detractors who continue to believe shes hiding something. The Reid method has been challenged as being primed for pushing people to give false confessions and many argue that it should not be used by law enforcement agencies. Okay, fine. Stars Heaven Bellinger Linda Carden Sheila Cooks See production, box office & company info Watch on A&E Trailer 0:21. He had been a good-looking young man, with a magnificent, wide grin. But there was one more turn in the story to come. Its so ridiculous. She certainly had not used them to wash herself off, she said. John, who had already been informed by Jaffe about the incident, could barely maintain his composure. The case was then sent to the Internal Affairs division for an administrative review. If the review, which is ongoing as of press time, finds that Thompson violated departmental policies, he could be fired, suspended, or demoted. Lord continued to deny involvement in the death during questioning, saying she was in the bathroom when she heard the shot and called 911. Forrest Wilder writes about politics and the outdoors. Lundberg walked into the interview room, pulled his chair close to Lord, and played the role of the good cop. Lord seemed shocked. Dwayne Thompson and Kim Sanders are both grizzled veterans of the Dallas police homicide unit. She said Burnside had been drinking heavily, and at some point, in the midst of the fight, he had walked into the kitchen and shot himself. Lundberg gently brought up the bloodied towels in the kitchen, asking if she had used them to wipe blood off her body. Thompson looked at his notebook, where he had written down the calls Lord had made on her cellphone. What do you guys think? I asked Lord if she had said anything to Burnside that night that would have led him to believe that the relationship was over. Thompson testified that Lord had little blood on her hands and that she smelled of cleaning solution, which led him to believe she had washed her hands. When Thompson asked why he didnt immediately tell that story to the police, Rastegar replied that the uniformed officers who first arrived at the scene had rudely ordered him to go back to his home before he had a chance to say anything. Lundberg paused again. Thompson misrepresented any of the facts that were provided by Witness Rastegar and that there were no signs of a criminal offense. Indeed, the report continued, Thompson did have probable cause to arrest Suspect Lord.. Nearly a year after the shooting, a grand jury met and heard the evidence. Summary: Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson and the homicide team investigate the brutal double murders of two friends shot and burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a car. After being honorably discharged, in 1991, while stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he joined the Dallas police. Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. He is a Democrat representing District 96 in the Tennessee House of Representatives . . She had desperately run from room to room trying to get better reception. (For a philosophy class, she wrote a paper on Socrates being sentenced to death under false charges.) 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