The jury determined Friday that Dallas homicide Detective Dwayne Thompson showed a reckless disregard for the civil rights of 36-year-old Hephzibah Olivia Lord. I cant say unequivocally whether the young woman did or didnt do the shooting because I wasnt there., At the same time, Mitchell and other prosecutors in the DAs office were not convinced Thompson had committed any serious wrongdoing. He was the life of the party.. He then asked them to ride down to Dallas police headquarters in separate squad cars to give their statements. Chasing a trail of clues, Thompson and the Dallas homicide team are always one step behind their suspect. He actually turned to Lord and said, I know you didnt do it. He turned back to the jury and continued, But thats not the issue in this trial. Thompson repeatedly asked Lord during the interview why she waited seven minutes to call 911 after trying to reach a friend of Burnsides by phone. | Recent Lawyer Listings The day after the verdict, Thompson was placed on desk duty. On the floor was a pool of blood along with bloody towels. At the least, she said, she wanted to make sure his actions were publicly documented so that he could never do to someone else what he had done to her. And if the young man had shot himself, wouldnt the gun have landed closer to his body? Who cares? IMDbPro. Had she touched her boyfriends gun? And on this morning, Thompson was especially interested in the victimology of Burnside. (2014) She fell to her knees and said it was an accident and that she didnt mean to shoot him. Strapped around. He was wearing a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. Will detectives be able to catch the killers before they strike again? Its so ridiculous. After being honorably discharged, in 1991, while stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he joined the Dallas police. February 2023 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? Dont worry about it. Although the couple appeared to be joking, said Jaffe, you could tell they were serious., At that point, Jaffe said, he decided to leave, and when he returned after getting the frantic phone call from Lord, he found her in the front yard. Im willing to accept that Mikey might have totally screwed up. Chasing a trail of clues, Thompson and the Dallas homicide team are always one step behind their suspect. 3. Jurors in a civil trial on Thursday got to watch a dramatic video of that tense and aggressive interrogation of Lord, who is now suing Thompson for false arrest in a federal civil trial. And who knows? She had always insisted that she had not fled from the police. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. You said he was upset and he hollers and starts getting destructive, and the thing is, you said he gets scary. According to Thompson, Rastegar said he had been in bed during the early morning hours of May 9 when he heard screaming in Burnsides front yard. Every day, dozens of times a day, I think about that talk and how I wish I could take it all back, she told me. A team of U.S. marshals found her at her fathers home in Palmdale, about an hour north of Los Angeles, and Lord was held in custody for nine days. Why try to make money off Michaels death?. When Shearin asked if he had told anyone that there was blood spatter on Lords clothing, he replied, I may have said it, but I dont know whether I said it or not. Shearin then asked about the trajectory of the bullet through Burnsides skull. Lundberg paused again. Maybe he got dramatic and put the gun to his own head and said to Olivia, To hell with all this, Im just going to end it now. And then, accidentally, he pulled the trigger. 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. A police officer receives a high degree of protection when he conducts a criminal investigation. I want him held accountable. In this trial, Lord was definitely the underdog. Its difficult to go out in public without thinking someone is saying, Theres the girl who killed her boyfriend., Right at that moment, a waiter walked up, clearly taken with her, and asked if she was ready to order. Whos that? Thompson asked, pointing to a man kneeling beside Lord in the front yard. DallasJustice.com, Law offices of Michael Lowe, 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, Kim Sanders explained that the Lord interrogation was intimidation, Sanders also pointed out Thompsons failure to read Ms. Lord her Miranda rights, Michael Lowes Things to Know if You are Being Investigated for a Crime in Texas, Salinas 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. Lord explained again and again that while she was in the bathroom, her boyfriend shot himself (they had been fighting, he was drunk). He also had the medical examiner testify about what Thompson supposedly told him about the blood spatter on Lords clothes. Self - Detective; 2009-2014 2 eps; Credits. You fing shot him! he bellowed, nearly coming out of his chair. He says he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he got the goods on Lordand she not only avoided prosecution, she made a lot of money. 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. . Lord hired Don Tittle, a high-profile Dallas lawyer who specializes in civil rights litigation, to file a lawsuit against Thompson, which he did in late 2011. And even if he took a shortcut or two, he adds, he didnt hide or invent evidence. Leave them blank to get signed up. But Detective Dwayne Thompson testified Tuesday that nothing he has heard since his civil trial began last week has changed his opinion that Lord intentionally killed Burnside. In the video, Rastegar initially seemed to confirm what he had supposedly told Thompson and Lundberg on the porch. He stabbed the photo of the victim with his index finger. Im not even sure the word accident was used. He said he later surmised that Lord had shot Burnside because he had heard a story going around the neighborhood that Burnside had been shot in the back of the head, which would suggest he had been murdered. She also said that when he got angry, he could be a little scary and that he threw stuff in the house. She would usually ignore him when he got into one of his moods, but this time it had only made him angrier. In the taped interrogation, the detective asks Lord some general questions about what happened on the night that her boyfriend died then Thompson changed things up. Shearin paid a visit to Reade Quinton, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Burnside, to ask him why, just prior to Lords arrest, he had changed his ruling about the cause of death from pending to homicide. Quinton replied that Thompson had informed him about the statement made by Rastegar. His voice got even softer. Why, for instance, were there bottles of cleaning products scattered on the kitchen floor? Only Burnside and Lord were in the apartment where they lived at the time. Shearin got Lord out of jail on bail. In his lectures, he often told other officers that to find out why a killing had taken place, it was as important to study the life of the victimvictimology, he called itas it was to study the behavior of the criminal. After Jaffe went home, the argument escalated. Instead, he gave Brandi Mitchell everything he had.. He called the tone and line of questioning a formula for a false confession. And Sanders questioned why Thompson did not read Lord her right to remain silent after the point in which he clearly considered her a murder suspect during the interview. She was so hysterical he could not understand what she was saying. Something is not right.. In his free time, he read Civil War history and played Internet chess. The officer looked at the notes he had jotted down. . He is a Democrat representing District 96 in the Tennessee House of Representatives . Bring on the Shiplap? Rastegar again tried to explain what he had heard Lord say that night. I cant say any more, but its insane.. Or maybe Mikey did it, Jaffe said. Ive never seen anything like it, Sanders said. There was something else that didnt seem right: drops of blood leading into another room. Maybe, Jaffe speculated, when Burnside and Lord had started arguing, he had declared that he was never going to marry her, which sent Lord into a tailspin and led her to grab the gun. Home On May 9, 2010, plaintiff Hephzibah Olivia Lord, 36, who works in mortgaging, was alone with her boyfriend at his home, in Dallas. Physical evidence can be more baffling than conclusive. She grew up in the Dallas area and after graduating from high school, she went straight to work, leasing apartments for a large real estate company and later selling cosmetics at Neiman Marcus in NorthPark Center. I wondered about the story Jaffe had told Thompson about finding her in the front yard, desperately saying, I wasnt going to leave him. He took her to dinner, and the date lasted the entire weekend. He called Jaffe, who had also turned against Lord, to see if he could help him locate her. You shot him!, Olivia, youre not telling me the truth., Youre arguing about a goddamn birthday party, and he says, Im so upset about the goddamn birthday party that Im going to kill myself? Thompson said, his voice growing louder. Jaffe told him that Mikey was a good ol boy who liked hunting and fishing. The officer flipped another page. And then Thompson pounced. Burnside told her that he was under financial stress, having to pay both his mortgage and his income taxes. As for Burnsides relationship with Lord, Jaffe said, It was one of those old-school-type things. A 9mm Beretta was also on the floor about five feet from where Burnsides body had been. 1983 claiming that she was wrongfully arrested for a killing that she did not commit, which landed her in jail for nine days. And whats really frightening is that Thompson could come back after me, plant some new fake evidence, and arrest me for murder again. He was not a depressed type of person at all. Im innocent.. He is one of the most popular detectives in the Dallas Police Departmenta charismatic man, big and boisterous, with a powerful deep voice, says Craig Miller, a former deputy police chief who served as Thompsons lieutenant in the homicide unit in 2010. 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. She helped him with his finances, reminding him to pay his bills and to keep his spending in line. 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