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This is the chilling story of a man who, as a police officer, took his police department’s solemn oath to be guided by professionalism, integrity, courage and honor. He also promised that his behavior would meet his department’s standard of honesty and accountability. Then, for 10 years, he patrolled the community, gaining its trust, while simultaneously victimizing those he knew would be too afraid to speak up.

For this episode we sit down with Lieutenant Scott who broke this case in his Small Town. He didn’t want any part of it at first. But as he uncovered one alarming detail after another, he went from jaded skeptic, to full-fledged advocate for the victims. A case so big we had to split it up into 4 jaw-dropping episodes!

Special Guest

Lieutenant Scott
Lt. Scott is a 31-year veteran of law-enforcement. Scott has worked at variety of assignments from patrol, SWAT, Detectives, special operations, gang enforcement, internal affairs, and special investigations. Lt. Scott is also a Forensic Artist.

Read Transcript

Zibby:  The Sociopath and the Whistleblower is a four-part series. This is part four, The Conclusion. If you’re a new listener to Small Town Dicks, we recommend that you tune into this story from the beginning, which is Episode 11.

 Previously on the Sociopath and the Whistleblower.

Scott:  So, I started going down this investigative path. We started identifying through his phone records various victims. There was one girl who was driving while intoxicated and had a passenger in the car with her. Records led us to Anna. Jeanine is another woman, the woman with whom he most frequently offended against. And this is just we are scratching the surface.

 He locks the door, pushes her back on the bed and he sticks his service weapon inside of her vagina and threatens that I’m going to blow you up from the inside, if you say anything. So, I get there to see Jessica. The guard says, “You have nine other women who want to talk to you.”

Yeardley:  [gasps]

Scott:  We handcuff him, and he’s like, “Man, you got to do this shit right here?” And I go, “Yeah, we got to handcuff you.” He’s looking everybody in the face like, “You, traitor.” I’d been a cop for a long time, and I’d never really been afraid or worried necessarily about anybody that I’d arrested. I’d arrested some real desperate characters. But I didn’t go anywhere without a gun then. I’m not wearing a gun today. I don’t typically carry a gun.

Yeardley:  But you had become afraid?

Scott:  Yeah, I was worried about my family. We would sit in the car and look at each other and just silently shake our heads. Just when we thought we had heard the worst, here comes something else. We go to grand jury with 14 different women.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave-

Zibby: -to sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave.

Dan:  We’re identical twins.

Dave:  And we’re detectives in Small Town USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Scott:  So, the 14 witnesses that went to trial with, I made reference to trial preparation being like herding stray cats. When I took the girls to grand jury, one by one, I told them, this is an informal process. This is a formality, because they are suspicious of court. Because court has always meant consequence and sweat. And if you got a warrant or who knows you’re on dope, you’re afraid and paranoid that somebody’s watching.

 So, I convinced them all, “Hey, it’s easy. Just come in. I’ll be right there. You go into the room by yourself, you testify in front of a panel of citizen jurors. The district Attorney’s there. Robert’s not going to be there. His attorney’s not going to be there. It’s real mild.” One by one, this deputy district attorney sent these girls out crying.

Zibby:  You’re kidding.

Yeardley:  What?

Scott:  Because he was cross examining them. And in his mind, he told me, “I’m just preparing them.” But it was like, “Dude, you are sabotaging all my work.” [laughs]

Zibby:  yeah.

Dave:  This is the revictimization part that sex abuse victims really hate.

Scott:  Yeah. So, here’s these vulnerable women, and they trust me and then this dude steps on it. So, I literally have to go in. We have a crew of victim advocates. One of them, her name was Lori, was just great. We just got him into a room and I was like, “Okay, listen.” We talked through it. I apologized for him. And of course, he’s just an ass.

 So, this guy, this deputy district attorney who is very competent, it turns out at trial, he was masterful. I mean, he did a really good job. But this grand jury process, these women are all upset. So, I have to gather them all back together and get them back on track. I had Dennis, but didn’t really have a lot of support.

 I even had a deputy district attorney who, despite all my insight and input and reading all my reports, is still skeptical. From a trial attorney, prosecutor’s perspective, this is the high-profile case and it literally was the trial of the century in this area. You don’t want to lose, but I think also it’s difficult for a prosecutor to get his mind around the fact that I have to present these people who I don’t really relate to. I have to present them to this jury as my truthful witnesses.

Yeardley  Because they’re usually on the other side. It’s usually the cops who are the truthful, and these compromised women who live in desperate circumstances are the ones where you’re holding them up, going, “She’s lying. So, our guy is okay.”

Scott:  Right.

Dave:  Not to mention that office has prosecuted them for their various offenses.

Yeardley:  Right.

Scott:  Exactly.

Zibby:  And not to mention, all you really had that you could trust on your side of things was Dennis.

Scott:  Yeah.

Zibby:  You couldn’t go to anybody intimately involved in these stories that no one else gets to know about while you’re investigating them. You can’t trust anybody else with that information. I mean, fuck, I can’t imagine what that was like for you.

Scott:  Yeah, it was crazy. Along the way, we had a trial itinerary for witnesses, so you had to keep track of all of these witnesses. If testimony went long, then at least that’s going to be a day or so. And at one point, Lisa and her friend, when it was almost time to testify, went out to a small town near here where they manufacture mobile homes or coaches, the big Monaco Marathon coaches. She goes out [chuckles] and they steal brand new 2003 coach.

Zibby:  Come on, Lisa.

Yeardley:  How do you do that?

Zibby:  Come on. [laughs]

Scott:  I know. So, they steal a coach in this small town, like a $350,000.

Zibby:  I love her so much. The audacity like–

Scott:  I know. She’s got some edge to her, huh? So, her and his friend take this coach. They’re not masterminds. [Yeardley laughs] So, they take the coach from the lot, and they drive it into the small town that literally has one store and one gas station. They park it in front of the one store and one gas station on the main street and they start going through it, because they want to get the DVD player and the stuff out of it. So, the cops in this small town, trained investigators, drive by and see brand-new coach matching description, and they arrest the same [crosstalk]

Yeardley:  Oh, Lord.

Zibby:  No.

Scott:  I know where Lisa’s going to be when it’s time to testify, because she’s in jail.

Zibby:  Truly hurting cats.

Scott:  Yeah, it was remarkable.

Dan:  Those are stressful trials, because you’re thinking, what do I need to pay attention to the testimony, plus what’s going on outside that I can’t control.

Scott:  Yeah.

Dan:  And I need to get this person here and I hope they don’t turn into a shit show on the stand. You never want your witness or your victim to look bad on the stand, because it’s another victimization. But it’s just a wild card. What do I have here?

Zibby:  Even in jail though, she could be called to testify.

Scott:  Yeah, we just move her over.

Dan:  You always feel good as a case agent too, and one of your star witnesses is sitting on the witness stand wearing county orange. [Zibby laughs]

Scott:  Well, we had a wardrobe for her. That was one of the things that our victim’s assistance folks were doing, is they were providing these women with outfits for court.

Yeardley:  So they could look presentable.

Scott:  Exactly.

Yeardley:  I’ve been meaning to ask what Robert’s fellow officers felt about him since this whole thing went down.

Scott:  Within the police department, once the word got out, once the indictment was public and his fellow officers began to really embrace the fact that he was a predatory criminal, that he was really doing bad things. Officers began coming forward with information. People began coming forward and saying, “Now that I know, here’s a suspicious situation that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But in retrospect, I’m wondering if this was him doing bad things.” And so, they had these different stories. Some of them liked with behaviors associated with specific victims. Some of them didn’t necessarily, but they were nonetheless suspicious.

Yeardley:  Like what?

Scott:  Well, one time, there was a patrol officer, a female officer, who took her police car checked it out at the beginning of shift. These cars run 24 hours a day, so three shifts a day. When one officer fuels up their car and secures, they take all their gear out, they clean out the car, they check the back seat and make sure there’s no contraband or anything like that. Because sometimes prisoners will offload stuff out of their pockets. If you missed it, they’ll dump off drugs or weapons.

Dan:  Because they know it’s going to get found in the jail.

Scott:  Right.

Dave:  He ditch it in a car before you.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Scott:  Right.

Yeardley:  Good to know.

Zibby:  Note to self.

Scott:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Note to self.

[laughter]

Scott:  So, if you’re really doing it right, you’d search your car before you put your prisoner in there and then you search the car afterwards and make sure if there’s any contraband that you find it and associate it with that person. But regardless, this officer, in checking her car out, she shined her flashlight into the front seat and she sees, what looks to be, a bindle of bills, rubber banded together. She had driven the car the night before, and so she always checked her car, and she sees this money. She counts it out, and there’s like $1,000 in 20s, 10s, 5s, 1s. Small denominations. But neatly rubber banded and wound tight.

 She writes a police report, and she describes that she took it out and tried to see if there was any place that she could poke that money through from the backseat. The police car has a transport cage that separates the front from the back. The bar that surrounds the cage is foam coated, and so it pushes all the way up against the ceiling and around the floorboards. So, she concludes and she documents in her police report, the money didn’t come from the back seat.

 So, that means it either came from the front seat, and maybe an officer seized it during the course of an investigation, maybe a narcotics investigation and he has drugs and money. And then, when he leaves the car, he goes down to log it and he goes, “Oh, crap, where’s my money? Oh, it must have fallen off the console and it’s under the seat. Oh, I found it. Good.” So, it’s either that or it’s some cop’s cash kitty. But regardless, nobody ever reported it missing. A thousand bucks. It’s a lot of coffee money, right? [Yeardley laughs] Nobody ever reported it.

 So, she wrote the report and submitted it. The bosses all looked at it. Nobody within the organization did anything about it. This officer came to me, and she said, “I don’t know if anything ever happened. I never heard anything, but here’s what happened.” So, I found the report. Well, after 30 days, that cash goes into the general fund at the organization in the city. And so, your chances of fingerprinting are gone. Nobody had done anything to process it. They just put it in found property. So, I look back on the logs and I see the– guess who signed a car out the night before?

Yeardley:  Robert.

Scott:  Good old Robert.

Zibby:  How painful for your profession. Because at the end of the day, public perception of your agency is going to be damaged. What a challenge for, in a way, really, both the prosecution and the defense. I mean, no matter what happens, you can’t really do much to mend that overnight.

Yeardley:  You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley:  And I think people are– although they want to believe in law enforcement, they’re all so quick to go see, they all suck.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  You know?

Zibby:  That must have been a real challenge in court.

Scott:  Right. The district attorney, when he presented his opening statements, he had a reprographic company create a 4-foot by 5-foot image of the badge. And it came out out of focus, and he was going to send it back and he said, “You know what? I like that.”

Zibby:  It’s a metaphor.

Scott:  Right.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Scott:  He used that during the trial in his opening.

Zibby:  That’s pretty powerful, actually.

Scott:  Yeah. And he talked a lot about the damage that Robert had done. And then, he goes on and he goes through his list of victims and he says, “You’re going to hear from Miriam. Miriam is going to tell you about this incident and he would synopsize.” And then, when he got to Lisa, he said, “I honestly have no idea what Lisa’s going to say when she testifies.”

 It’s because she’s the one from the hotel, the sweatpants, she’s so off the charts peculiar, emotional, appropriate, inappropriate. You just didn’t know what you were going to get. And he just told him, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t really know what Lisa will tell you. I guess we’ll hear when she gets here.”

Yeardley:  Was that his attempt to discredit them or to marginalize their credibility? What’s the strategy there?

Scott:  I think that’s his personality coming out. He’s just an insensitive guy. But at the same time, it’s actually a pretty good strategy.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Scott:  I think in a way you’re saying these people are real. You can’t rehearse or anticipate what’s going to happen.

Dave:  And it’s better for you to get out in front of it than have the defense introduce it.

Scott:  Exactly.

Dave:  Because then they put their own spin on it, and the jury looks at you and says, “Why didn’t you tell us about this witness, or the potential issues of her being unpredictable?” You’re basically being transparent, and the jurors, that resonates with them.

Zibby:  I was also just thinking how striking it is. The least predictable of the women is the one with the hardest evidence, the most incriminating piece of evidence. So, she at least had that, and there’s something quite poetic about it.

Scott:  Yeah, you’re right. She’s the one who has remained in contact with me.

Zibby:  Really?

Scott:  Even when I went to the other agency, she found me. When she gets in trouble, she calls. You can’t help but feel sorry for her. She was really a champion, a reluctant champion, but she was. And then, she’s never really gotten out of where she was. I mentioned that Lizzie is her daughter. And at the time, she was nine. They did this courtroom testimony where she was called to the stand, and they asked, “Do you recognize anybody, and do you recognize the defendant?” And she said, “Yeah, that’s Officer Robert. He’s the one who kisses mommy.”

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  My God.

Yeardley:  That’s pretty damning for him.

Scott:  Yeah. She described she was in a studio apartment. And so, sometimes he would just come over, knock on the door, step into the threshold, shut the door behind him. Lizzie would be asleep on the bed, and he would have Lisa give him a blowjob. Right there. She’s right there sleeping on the bed.

Dan:  It’s so bold and absurdly stupid.

Scott:  Yeah.

Dan:  That’s what a predator would do.

Scott:  Sure. That’s the thing, is that we’ve talked about the general character of the typical victim in this case. I tell other police departments, a person who’s going to offend in this way in an official capacity, they’re not going to pick the mayor’s daughter. They’re going to pick these women. They’re going to select their victims deliberately. Because as Robert said many times, “Who are they going to believe, you or me?”

[Break 1]

Zibby:  I’m frankly shocked something didn’t come out sooner about Robert.

Scott:  Well, there’s a point four years before Terry that the system knew or should have known. There was a woman who testified in municipal court four years before the 911 call from Terry, where she said, “I told the judge, and nothing ever happened. I told him in court. I said, ‘Hey, how would you like a judge if a cop forced you to suck his dick?’”

The judge and the clerk both remembered it.

 When I talked to him later, he was a presiding judge, he’s a senior judge, and he said, “I’ve seen her come through this courtroom so many times.” He said, “She’s prone to outbursts.” She’s sometimes drunk when she comes to court. He goes, “Shame on me.” He goes, “I remember it, but I should have said something. I never said anything.”

Zibby:  That’s so painful.

Scott:  What was Robert’s demeanor in court? And at what point, do you think he realized, “Oh, shit, the gig is up”? Or, do you think he thought he was going to beat this the whole time?

Scott:  True to form, really. Sociopath, I think really describes him. He went down fighting to the end. They have a jury selection process. It’s called voir dire. It’s a selection process where a jury panel is queried by the attorneys on both sides. The prosecutor and the defense can question potential jurors. They went through an entire jury panel. I think there were 103, something like that. They finally seated a full jury.

 But Robert was involved in the actual process. I was in the room and watched. He routinely consulted with his attorney. I think was involved in selecting women who had been subjected to sexual assault.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Why? What’s the psychology?

Scott:  I just think that he is along those lines of being a sociopath. I think he believes that he can influence. He has powers over women.

Yeardley:  Even then?

Zibby:  He senses what he identifies as a particular flavor of weakness.

Scott:  Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. That’s a good way of putting it.

Zibby:  How is he legally allowed to participate in that selection process?

Scott:  It’s permissible, but it’s not something you see overtly. You might have some subtle signaling or maybe a little whisper from time to time. But he was pretty clearly involved. You would see notes passing back and forth, and him shaking his head no to certain people and then that person would not be selected.

 I remember there were two different women. One had been involved in some a sexual assault as a victim when she was younger, and there were actually two that were that way and they ended up seated on the jury. Typically, you would not see somebody with that sort of a life, maybe bias, that would be perceived to be against the defendant to be seated on a jury you would exclude them.

Yeardley:  Sure.

Dave:  It’s completely counterintuitive. When I see those during voir dire, I’m always like, “We won’t get that person. The defense is going to challenge that one.”

Dan:  What is his defense team?  What was their strategy?

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Scott:  Well, you know–

Dan:  Discredit?

Scott:  Yeah, I think it was twofold that the witnesses are not credible and you can’t believe them, because X, Y and Z. How many times have you been arrested? Have you ever lied under oath? That credibility approach. And then, secondly, there’s this sort of, yeah, but defense. So, he’d been a cop at this agency for 10 years. He was part of general population and he was well liked. He was also somebody who really was engaged in rumor, and innuendo and activity in other people’s business.

Yeardley:  In the department or just in general?

Scott:  Within the department. And this department had a lot of low hanging fruit, let’s say. [Yeardley laughs] They had a lot of internal strife and misconduct that was not necessarily criminal, but there was also things that were– You could look upon as having been criminal, but were not necessarily pursued as criminal. And so, there was a perception that the bosses got a certain treatment and the troops got a different scrutiny.

 And so, he was in the middle of that in that he knew dirt, and he knew the real story behind these things that had happened. And again, they were significant. There was some stuff.

Yeardley:  Like what?

Zibby:  How can you say?

Scott:  Robert’s patrol supervisor, he was married and he was having an affair with a volunteer officer from another agency nearby. His official vehicle was seen at this woman’s house routinely.

Yeardley:  These things were so easily traceable. You’d be be smarter if you’re going to be that stupid.

Scott:  Well, as we say in our business and let’s all say it together, we catch the dumb ones first.

Dave:  Yeah.

Scott:  We do. And it got discovered. It got disclosed. There was an investigation. There was an indication that these behaviors were happening in his official vehicle and that he himself was getting blowjobs.

Yeardley:  Oh Lord. So, this is another black mark against the agency.

Scott:  Sure. But it was historical information that Robert knew about that he felt he was being held accountable in a big way for stuff that, “Come on, everybody’s doing it, right?”

Zibby:  Right.

Scott:  So his, yeah, but defense was, “Yeah, but so is everybody else.” It’s also a veiled defense threat. All right, well, we’ve subpoenaed the entire department and they did. They subpoenaed almost everybody.

Zibby:  Oh, my God.

Scott:  So, their defense was going to be, they’re calling everybody, including the chief and we’re going to go through and we are just going to liquidate.

Dave:  Air everybody’s dirty laundry.

Scott:  Sure. Because in a way it had the potential off putting the jury, because the jury might go, “Well, Jesus is criminal.” Because it sounds like that’s part of the benefit package.

Yeardley:  Sure. It’s just permissible and everybody looks the other way.

Scott:  Yeah.

Zibby:  Were there any victims who couldn’t or wouldn’t testify in court against Robert?

Scott:  When I was going through his notebook, I found the first name, Rebecca, and a phone number. I tried to determine what the connection was. When I couldn’t find it, sometimes I just make a cold contact, like, and Lisa or I would make a phone call. So, I called this number and a girl answered and I said, “Rebecca?” And she said, “Yes.” I go, “Hey, this is Lieutenant Scott, calling you to talk about this investigation involving police officer Robert. I noticed that he calls you with some routine. I wonder what the nature of your relationship was with him.” And she says, “Can you hang on for just a second?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” I hear the phone go down and shuffle, shuffle. She comes back and I then, “Hello?” Same girl. And she goes, “Hello, who’s this?” I said, “It’s Lieutenant Scott.”

Yeardley:  What?

Scott:  She had been injured in a car accident and she had no short-term memory.

Yeardley:  [gasps]

Zibby:  Come on.

Scott:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Scott:  I had to re-explain.

Yeardley:  Like the perfect victim. He could just keep coming back and she would every time be like, “Hi, who are you?”

Scott:  Yeah.

Dave:  Erase the hard drive.

Scott:  Yeah. So, I went and visited this clinic. There was two sister clinics. So, there’s one on the north end of town. And according to her counselor, she was brain injured. She was taking medication that one of the side effects was that it made her hypersexual. But she also had this memory issue. But they allowed her to take trips to the sister clinic and she could visit friends.

 One evening, she had gone awol, absent without leave, so to speak. So, they didn’t know where she was, for a period of time. They had documented that in their chart notes, and that was the day that he had made that notation about her phone number.

Yeardley:  Oh my God.

Zibby:  Come on. Come on.

Scot:  But perfect victim, right? And of course, nobody we could go to trial with, because she can’t remember what happened. He was shark-like in his demeanor in court. He had this cold stare about him. When women were making this compelling testimony, he’d just go, “Pfft,” back in his chair and look at the ceiling and shake his head.

 He’s a terrible defendant to try to control, because he couldn’t help himself. I know from having interacted with him prior to this whole situation, he would think that was funny. “Can I get a blowjob?” Go around the block. “Hey, how about a blowjob?” you know, same girl, right? He would have just thought that was just funnier in hell. There’s a witness who will never know the answer, but we know the answer, right?

Zibby:  That is despicable.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  How long did this trial last?

Scott:  It was a five-week trial. I mentioned it was indeed the trial of the century. So, 12 jurors.

Yeardley:  All women?

Scott:  No, it was a mix. I think there were five women, and seven men and then there were three alternates that were there the entire time. Two of them were women. It was chaotic every day.

Zibby:  Were you nervous that it may not go your way, or was there some part of you that felt relieved it was finally here? Where were you in that?

Scott:  I look back on it, I think I was really emotionally in it. I think we try not to get attached to our work and our cases, because that can be counterproductive if you get emotionally involved. But this was such a transitional, life changing experience for me too. I had a vested interest in the outcome. I was prepared. I think I had all my ducks in a row, literally my little geese, you know?

[laughter]

 The only unknown really was the prosecutor. He was so emotionless. I felt like the jury wanted to feel something from him and he just didn’t get it from him.

Yeardley:  Just the facts, ma’am.

Scott:  Yeah. So, every day, the media had to draw by way of lottery to attend the trial.

Zibby:  Wow. Because there wasn’t enough room in there.

Scott:  Yeah. It was capacity every day. It was a big deal. So, at the end of the five weeks, the jury deliberated three days.

Zibby:  Three days?

Yeardley:  Really?

Scott:  Yeah. That feels like forever. But you got a pretty complicated–

Dave:  That’s a mountain of testimony to review.

Scott:  It’s a mountain of indictments.

Yeardley:  And so, what was the verdict?

Scott:  The verdict was guilty on all 42 counts.

Yeardley and Zibby:  Yes.

Dave:  The verdict is read. What’s Robert’s reaction?

Scott:  Yeah. So, Robert’s reaction is just to turn around– I remember him turning around. This was weird to me, because I’m not a hand-holder. While I’m fully invested and I’m in this emotionally and I’m waiting just like the rest of them, I’m not, “Huddle up girls.” But a girl on each side of me grabbed my hand and sitting there– He turns around when they start reading the verdict, and he just starts staring at everybody. He just goes from eye to eye to eye.

Dan:  All of his victims.

Scott:  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan:  Did he hit you too?

Scott:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was at a position where he could look down and say, [unintelligible  I’m holding hands. He looks over and he shakes his head like, I’m the traitor.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Did he say anything at all?

Scott:  He was outspoken. This is fucking bullshit. And his family was yelling. And then, of course, my crew, my girls, [chuckles] we were being tame. But you start spouting off bitch, and so they start going on.

Yeardley:  They’re going to give it back. [laughs]

Scott:  Yeah. And then, the judge is hitting the gavel and trying to settle things down. It was a little chaotic. Of course, I had my posse. I had a bunch of my detectives in the room with me. My girls would escort me to coffee every morning. [laughs] We would go and mass. [Yeardley laughs] I did. They were in the courtroom when this was all read, because we didn’t know what to expect.

Yeardley:  It must have been a crazy experience to be on that jury.

Scott:  Any jury is the voice of the community. But I think in this case, number one, they’re sending a message to Robert, but a bigger message to these women that, “Yeah, we actually will believe you and listen to you.”

Yeardley:  You matter. You can’t.

Zibby:  Was Robert’s family in the courtroom?

Scott:  His family was there. His wife was there. I really think that his wife was praying that the outcome would be what it was.

Zibby:  Really?

Scott:  Because she didn’t divorce him until the appeal process was over. She was sure that he was gone.

Yeardley:  Hmm. So, do you suspect abuse?

Scott:  I think, certainly. I had seen them together socially. He seemed to definitely have her on a short reign and she was very attentive, is what I remember thinking. In retrospect, I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but she was very attentive to him and submissive.

Zibby:  Wow. So, going back to way earlier in our conversation and maybe the first of these four episodes, when you mentioned women’s intuition as being something you hadn’t quite understood until this case showed up at your door, I feel certain that even if his wife didn’t know know the facts about what her husband was up to, she must have intuited on some level, this sinister side of the man, that she was married to.

Scott:  Women’s intuition never had really resonated with me until I experienced this case, and that intuitive sense that women have that men don’t necessarily, in the same setting, experience. I heard it repeated time and time again.

Zibby:  Time and time again. Were there complaints from his female coworkers?

Scott:  He didn’t offend against anyone within the agency that we know of, but women still had that feeling about him. Women talked about, “Man, he gave me the creeps. He made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I got that intuitive sense that I didn’t want to be alone with him. There was just something about him,” those kinds of things.

Yeardley:  Even within the police department?

Scott:  Yes.

Dave:  So, guilty on all 42 counts?

Scott:  Yeah.

Dave:  And I’m just curious. Sometimes a judge will deliver a sermon.

Scott:  Yeah. I think the judge, who is a presiding judge and he is a senior judge, he’s still on the bench now. He had gone through this entire process, five weeks. I noticed that he had paid most attention to the defendant, to Robert and Robert’s behavior in court. He started to talk about the sentence, and he started talking about the behavior and the public official and the mistrust and the badge. You could tell where he was going. Again, this is sentencing. So, I think he was looking at– I heard later that he was looking at somewhere between 76 and 94 years.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Scott:  And Robert said, “This is a kangaroo court. This is a fucking kangaroo court. My PD is listening to a bunch of whores. This is all bullshit.” A judge gets things calmed down. Tell your client to shut his mouth. And then, he says, “Robert, you are a petty tyrant and your tyranny is ending today.”

Dave:  I love it.

Scott:  So, he sentences him to 94 years in prison.

Dave:  What’s the resolution on Francisco’s case? What did he get?

Scott:  He took a, what’s called an Alford plea. So, he acknowledged that the state had evidence to prove a guilty verdict, but he does not acknowledge guilt. The prosecutor in that case allowed that to happen.

 I really feel like with Francisco, we just scratched the surface about his behaviors, because once the district attorney in that case notified me that they were going to accept an Alford plea and they were going to give him a deal, I stopped looking, because it doesn’t make sense to keep digging. But his behaviors were pretty similar to Robert’s. I mean, he was a little bit more sophisticated, he was a better-looking guy and I think he had a little bit more charisma about him. But he was as bad, I believe.

Yeardley:  So, the state says, “We know you’re guilty.” He’s like, “You know, I’m guilty. I refuse to admit I’m guilty. I’m out free, and I can now continue my behavior even though I’m not a cop anymore.”

Scott:  He got a four-year prison sentence. He was eligible for, what they call, programs. It’s rehab programs. So, he entered into inmate boot camp, and he got his sentence reduced to two and a half years. And so, he got out two and a half years.

Yeardley:  [gasps]

Scott:  He’s back in the community. I’ve seen him. I was not pleased with the outcome.

Zibby:  What happens when you see each other around town?

Scott:  He knows who I am. I know who he is. He avoids me. I know that he’s still– He’s the same.

Dan:  That doesn’t go away.

Scott:  No, it’s a behavior.

Yeardley:  That makes me so angry about Francisco.

Zibby:  I know that fucking turd. He’s still around.

Yeardley:  That’s so disconcerting, the whole thing from soup to nuts. Like, the light sentence, the fact that he went through, so called, programs, but it hasn’t changed his behavior at all.

Zibby:  And that behavior from both of them, it’s so dark. What’s haunting to me about it, is that there’s no real measuring where that begins and ends. You can’t get to the center of that. I believe I read that all in all, there was something like 70 victims just from Robert.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Scott:  70 plus. The presumption is he’s effectively imprisoned for life. And so, anything short of homicide, I would consult my records, historical records, and I’d try to validate whether or not the allegations that this person might be making were corroborated by this evidence. And then, we would just close that case with a disposition saying, “Basically, he’s in prison. He’s never going to get out.” But we’re documenting it.

Yeardley:  Wow. So, the list keeps growing after Robert is sentenced. While it doesn’t impact him getting more time in prison, you keep logging those complaints as part of your records.

Scott:  Right. But speaking of homicide, there’s a woman named Dixie who had been an active prostitute junkie at the time. And the women in this case told me, Dixie, when she saw Robert, she would just run. They said she wasn’t afraid of anybody or anything. She was a street savvy prostitute. But when she saw Robert, no matter where she was at, she would just fricking take off running.

 She was found dead down by the river in downtown. Her body had been concealed inside of a log, and her upper torso and her skull were exposed to the elements. And when she was found, she was skeletal remains. So, I had an investigator do a direct DNA comparison to evaluate her.

Yeardley:  To make sure it was her?

Scott:  Well, to see if maybe there was any trace of Robert on her.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Scott:  So, we did a direct comparison on that open homicide case, because she died just prior to when the investigation started in 2003. I want to say, actually, she died in 1999.

Yeardley:  Oh my.

Scott:  But because she was basically skeletal remains and her skull specifically was skeleton, there’s no material to get DNA from. So, as we know, his preferred sex act was oral sex, but You know–

Yeardley:  So, we’ll never know.

Scott:  We’ll never know.

Zibby:  And so, Robert sits in prison today?

Scott:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Hallelujah.

Zibby:  Yes. I hope people are not nice to him in there.

Scott:  Honestly, I would have anticipated back then that he wouldn’t last very long in prison. I just figured he’s a cop. He’s a cop who is offending against the most vulnerable in society whose families are likely, statistically, brothers, boyfriends, husbands are in prison also.

Yeardley:  Sure. You mess with my family, my girl, my women, I fuck you up.

Scott:  Exactly.

Dan:  Well, sex offenders– As far as the pecking order in prison, sex offenders are not high.

Yeardley:  The lowest of the low, as I recall.

Dave:  He’s got cop, sex offender, vulnerable population. And he’s probably sent people to prison based on his corruption.

Zibby:  Right.

Scott:  You bet. On his corruption, exactly.

Zibby:  He’s in prison now, so–

Scott:  As far as I know, he’s still alive. Prisons of state-to-state exchange high profile prisoners. So, they trade him.

Yeardley:  Why is that?

Scott:  Partly for the safety of the prisoner, partly to geographically separate them from their communities, keep them away from a potential conflict with other populations that we talked about that are somehow related to his victims. But I’m honestly not sure where he is.

Zibby:  Does his family remain in the same small town as you?

Scott:  Yup.

Zibby:  Do you ever encounter them?

Scott:  Yeah. His wife is still friendly. She’s remarried. I talked about the defense strategy being, you know, yeah, but. And so, there were subpoenas that were given to a lot of police staff. Robert’s wife was an employee with the same city. And so, she’s really a part of our family. She’s the spouse of a police officer. She was ostracized through no fault of her own. It was her husband’s behavior.

 But a lot of this testimony and these terrible, despicable activities that were going to be aired publicly were going to have collateral damage on her and her family. So, I talked to the district attorney. I said, I’d like to be able to warn her about this. I know that Robert is represented by an attorney, but I feel an obligation to let her know. So, I called her. She knew that I was the lead detective. And I said, there’s the possibility that some of this information, including that I talked about Anna and the phone records.

Yeardley:  Right. Anna, the 17-year-old.

Zibby:  The one that worked at the phone kiosk.

Scott:  Yes, and the whole drama around it. His wife had discovered and had him get rid of the phone and all that stuff. That this is going to have collateral damage. So, I said, I’d like to get the other meet for coffee and talk about it at some point. And she said, “Sure. Yeah, I’d like to do that.” She calls me back a little while later and she goes, “I was thinking about it, and I think that maybe we should have something stronger than coffee.”

Yeardley:  Oh.

Scott:  So, I’m like, “Sure, what are you thinking?” She named a bar. So, I agreed. And then, I called the district attorney’s office and I got ahold of one of their investigators who I knew that she didn’t know and wouldn’t recognize and I arranged to have him spot me in the bar.

 The day that we were supposed to meet, and I wish this would happen but it never happened, she called me and canceled and said that she had talked to Robert’s attorney and he advised against it. And so, that was that. But I was really hoping, just for my sake, to get a glimpse into what was going on at home, because that’s a mystery still. I think while it brought her world around her down as she knew it, now she’s on the other side of it and I’m sure they’re all better for it.

Zibby:  She’s free.

Scott:  I worry about her boys, because you go from being a hero to being a zero overnight. These people are our family. They’re our extended family. And he was astray.

[Break 3]

Zibby:  I have a bit of a wrap up question. At the start of this whole conversation, you had said something to the tune of, you know before if you were a cop, I was automatically just friendly to you. And you corrected that by saying, was, as if that had changed. And now, I’m wondering how that’s different for you now, having come through all this. And also, what other ways do you feel as though this has really changed you for good?

Scott:  Sure. Yeah, I think personally and professionally disrupted me and altered my life. After having been a cop for 18 years, I had mentioned before, I felt like I had seen it all and I had the Rubik’s Cube of police work figured out. So, it upended my life.

Yeardley:  Did it ruin your faith and humankind? That’s such an enormous question. But sometimes it’s extraordinarily difficult to come back from a great disappointment like that.

Scott:  Yeah. Sorry, I’m getting a little choked up. [laughs] I think about that. I think when you go through trauma– And I think that this isn’t– I wasn’t getting shot at, I wasn’t getting stabbed or involved in conflict, so to speak, where my life was in jeopardy, but I was nonetheless experiencing trauma back-to-back-to-back daily.

 It was that morally shaking, foundation disrupting stuff that was happening on a daily basis. Like these guys, I’m morally and ethically sound and I have my own conviction about life and consequences. I think I looked on this and I thought, how many times have I confidently made decisions that have impacted people’s lives and been wrong?

Yeardley:  It created a measure of self-doubt.

Scott:  Yeah. It was really tough to go through that just because I looked at that situation and thought, man, I’ve been pretty arrogant about the way I’ve gone about my life. As we do, we have to take control of situations as police and investigators. I think we have to make these decisions from the gut and based on our life experience. We all consult on our life experience to make decisions. And so, then to find out that my matrix has been wrong. Was really a tough one.

 Through the course of this investigation, I developed an aptitude. While I felt like I was broken, I actually grew a pretty strong spine. The part that we haven’t talked about is once these criminal convictions took place, and we advocated for these victims, and my agency and my city was behind me and showcased me as the champion, then there came the price tag that the captain had talked about. And so, they all filed suit against the city. And so, my testimony that was the lead witness against Robert on behalf of the state, then became the lead voice against my own employer on behalf of these witnesses.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Scott:  And you had to have a strong backbone. They do a deposition process in the process of civil litigation. I was in a conference room at a law office that had a table twice as long as this one with each of the women. Not all of them filed suit, but there maybe 14, but not all the same ones.

 Interestingly, and I’m going to sidetrack, some of the women who were victimized and testified in criminal trial, there were attorneys knocking their doors down saying, “Sign on and we’ll represent you, and you get what we get.” And they were like, to their credit, “I just wanted to go to prison.” I don’t care. And they didn’t have a pot to pee in, but they didn’t want that, which is incredible.

Zibby:  Wow.

Scott:  But I was in deposition for, I think, six days straight all day long, eight hours a day for six days.

Yeardley:  Oh, my.

Scott:  Because when there are attorneys in the room, one asks a question and the other one thinks of another question. And so, it was around and around and around. But my agency, my city that I had sworn to protect and I guess to work for and had faith in, I recognized through this process that the bottom line was very transparent and clear. It was money.

 I remember the city manager at the time talked about this benevolent intent to make whole these women. But behind the scenes, the reality was that they had to scratch, and kick and dig during the civil process to actually get a dime. There was no, “We’re sorry this happened to you.”

Yeardley:  It was all lip service.

Scott:  It’s like I mentioned, the lead attorney said, “Hey, come on, Scott. You don’t really believe all this shit, do you?” After all that testimony, [Zibby chuckles] all that stuff. And so, that was another particularly offensive remark. It’s like, number one, “What do you think? I am a fool?”

Dave:  And “What do you think we’re doing here?”

Scott:  “Who do you think you are?” I think I mentioned, he and I had been social after that, because I was a road cycler and I had put a lot of miles on my bike, especially during this trial.

Zibby:  Yeah. [Yeardley laughs]

Scott:  Like 100 miles a week. But I used to cycle with this guy once in a while, and I was like-

Yeardley:  Fuck that.

Scott:  -“Fuck that.” It really is about your true colors.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Scott:  What you do when nobody’s watching.

Zibby:  Who was your support system, or what was your outlet? There’s cycling–

Scott:  Yeah. No matter how far they pedaled though, it was right there behind me, the whole time. But I guess my outlet has always been physical fitness and physical activity. I was married. Two children. I had a supportive wife. But this is one of those things that Dennis was probably my work wife, I suppose.

Yeardley:  Because he knew what you were going through firsthand.

Scott:  Yeah. Similar experiences. I’m not one to keep a lid on it. As you see, just talking about now, it’s a mountain and I’ve probably forgotten more than I could remember. But going through it at the time, it was almost happening in slow motion. I think because it was back-to-back-to-back-to-back trauma when I came out of it, I think I was looking for some way to reconcile my life, and everything just seemed to be part of that. So, Robert, divorced, obviously. Hallelujah. Probably for his wife’s sake. [Yeardley laughs] His attorney, divorced. I remember reading it, and my divorce.

Yeardley:  And what about Francisco?

Scott:  Francisco? Different.

Zibby:  You mean, everyone got divorces during this time.

Scott:  Or, post.

Zibby:  I see.

Scott:  But when people come out of those traumatic experiences, you hear people talk about trying to assign purpose and direction. I think what I realized, at least for me, was that I wasn’t satisfied with– I think it made me look at life differently. I just realized that I had been spinning my wheels and that I had more interest in trying to have a bigger impact on my life. And so, I ended up finding my soulmate.

Yeardley:  Oh, Scott.

Scott:  Yeah. So, now, I started with two children. So, my wife had two children. And then, we’ve had one together. And so, I think that I had that calling, I guess, that I wanted to make a mark, I guess, I had made in this case with these people that I didn’t know. I felt like I needed to make a bigger mark on my own personal life.

 So, for me, that’s what I’ve come out on the other side. I think I’m a better man. I think I’m a stronger person. I’m a way better cop. We all grow from, I guess what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and certainly, this is one of those cases where in the end, justice prevailed. The rest of us, I think, are better after having gone through that process. The villain is still in prison, and that’s where he belongs. But the rest of us, I think, are whole and stronger as a result.

Yeardley:  This is really one of the reasons why we wanted to do this podcast, because we want to know how these things reside in your heart and your mind.

Zibby:  Yeah. This is the part of your work that we never get to hear about.

Scott:  But this work, I think I’ve developed an aptitude, and so it follows you. And so, after this case, I had other criminal cases involving criminal cops within the same organization.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Scott:  So, it’s like I’m typecast.

Yeardley:  It’s like, when you’re an actor and you do a lot of sitcoms, and they’re like, “Hey, you’re funny.” And that’s all you do. You’re like, “No, I cry a lot too. I don’t give a fuck about that.”

Scott:  Yeah, totally. Yeah, it was a weird situation.

Dave:  Scott comes up to you and says, “Hey, can we talk?” And you’re like, “Oh, shit.”

Scott:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Oh, no.

Dave:  It’s the Grim Reaper. Stay away.

Scott:  Wow. it was uncomfortable to get into that at first. It was awkward. I’ve noticed when people stop talking, when I’d come in the room and stuff. But then, after a while, I was like, “Yeah. Fuck, yeah. That’s who I am.”

Zibby:  Yeah.

Scott:  That’s awesome.

Dave:  Justice and truth.

Zibby:  Fuck yeah.

Yeardley:  Fuck yeah.

Dan:  I’ll tell you this. He joined our organization, a couple years ago. The reputation that he was bringing, guys like Dave and I were like, “Hell, yes. Get him over here.” Because we need guys like that. Rock solid investigator, great guy, he’ll have your back and he wants the truth.

Zibby:  It’s an honor to have you here, today, to have heard that whole thing.

Yeardley:  That was tremendous.

Scott:  Well, thanks for letting me share. It is one of those that I think, as much as that organization, would like to overwrite history and get rid of that and put that behind him. I think this is one that you don’t ever really want to forget about, because the theme remains the same and there will be other robbers. You have to be able to watch out for that, and carefully select and monitor people.

Dave:  I want the public to know. We don’t want to work with those guys either.

Scott:  Exactly.

Dave:  We want to expose them too. They’re really good at hiding sometimes, and it takes a while to figure it out.

Scott:  I never thought once about the influence that I have when I have that badge on. When we talked to Francisco at one point, and I’m pretty much quoting this recorded conversation with him, and he said, “You know, for me, it was all about getting a piece of ass. I got a wife, I got kids, I don’t have time.” But he said, “When I’m in uniform, this costume, I can get whatever I want.” I never thought about the influence. You wear it every day and you know who you are, but you don’t think about the influence.

Dave:  We don’t wear that with evil intentions.

Scott:  Right.

Dave:  I wear it in good faith. I know the vast majority of our profession wears it in good faith, that it’s a symbol.

Scott:  Yeah. I mean, we live and die for it.

[music]

Yeardley:  So, Small Town Fam, that concludes Season 1.

Zibby:  But don’t be mad. We will be back with a Season 2.

Yeardley:  In February.

Zibby:  And the cases are so good.

Yeardley:  Lots of true, crimey crime.

Zibby:  The crimest of crime.

Yeardley:  It’s going to be great.

Zibby:  So, in the meantime–

Yeardley:  Please stay in touch.

Zibby:  Fix yourself a crime-arita, sit down at the computer and send us love notes. Tell us how much you miss us.

Yeardley:  Because we miss you, and we so appreciate all your comments.

Zibby:  See you then, you know?

Yeardley:  [laughs]

Zibby:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith for Paperclip, LTD, with editing from Logan Heftel, and Yeardley and Zibby.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forrest.

Zibby:  If you like what you hear, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or wherever else you like to listen to your podcasts. 

Yeardley:  And follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @smalltowndicks. Also visit our website, smalltowndicks.com, for more information and to leave questions and comments for the team.

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