2011.04.18
Your daily Letter to the Columnist — April 18, 2011
Wikimedia Commons
He believes writer Doughas Chandler Graham is all wet about the Hodges family murders
While a detective, paid by Roanoke City and sworn as a special officer of the State Police, I had the opportunity to participate in the investigation of the murders of the Hodges Family in Vinton, and I’m surprised that the Roanoke Times would give a voice to the “writer” in your column this morning. It’s apparent why he’s had so many different professions, and why investigator wasn’t one of them.
A few seconds looking at his web site should make it clear that the “writer” is just name-calling. His allegations that all of the dozens of investigators, the prosecutors, and the judge all conspired to frame Earl Bramblett are malicious. He defames a lot of good men who were doing their job, and many would have done it for free to bring justice to Anah and her family.
You can just look at the time span between the murders and the arrest of Bramblett and it’s self-evident that prosecutors and investigators were careful to make sure they weren’t missing something. The task force included dozens of investigators from the State Police, Vinton, Roanoke County, myself, arson investigators and contributions from officers and detectives in several states. Additionally, analysts in the FBI at Quantico were consulted. Many of us were convinced several months after the murders that Bramblett could be convicted, but the lead investigators and prosecutors took years to make sure that Bramblett, and only Bramblett, was responsible for those terrible crimes.
After reading the material in the web site you referenced, I doubt that anyone who takes the time to evaluate it will award any credibility to the accusations of your “writer” or Earl Bramblett. However, I’ll make some comments since others with my information were the targets of these malicious, slanderous comments.
Let’s start with the fact that your “writer” fails to mention most of the evidence that led to the conviction of Earl Bramblett. Most of that is mentioned in a letter by Earl Bramblett, himself, in a lengthy letter on the web-site under the category of “Dead Man’s Words”. It doesn’t take a psychologist or detective to understand that Bramblett found Winter Hodges to be sexual when she was as young as nine and that he found Teresa Hodges, age 35, to be attractive because she had the body of a teenager. That letter is also very revealing about what was going on in Bramblett’s mind and the reason these very strange and horrible crimes occurred. In his letter and in his tapes, Bramblett frequently states: “Evil is in the eye of the beholder”, while he’s the one admitting the he was interpreting the behavior of girls as young as nine as to be sexual and seductive to him.
Your “writer” and Bramblett discuss some of the tapes Bramblett made, but neither of them discussed the one in which Bramblett considered “blowing off his (Blaine Hodges) head” because Bramblett thought Hodges was trying to catch him with Winter and thought Blaine was already carrying a gun. Those tapes reinforce impressions we gather from Bramblett’s letter on the web site.
The “writer” referred to in your column attacks the validity of the investigation in his shotgun fashion, hoping to hit something, and hits on the fact that the management of the Vinton Police Department was thoroughly discredited by a Grand Jury investigation after Earl Bramblett had been convicted. That Grand Jury investigation had no connection to the investigation of the murders of the Hodges Family.
The murder investigation was masterfully managed by the (SAC) Special Agent In Charge of the State Police in Salem, not by the Vinton Police and not by Special Agent Keesee. Vinton’s Chief Foutz did participate in the decision-making, and I found him, and the SAC, very open minded to any opinions regardless of the source coming from a different agency. Furthermore, on the day he realized he needed massive assistance, Chief Foutz stood in his parking lot to personally greet the investigators who were coming from all over Virginia. I was very impressed with him and with the management by the State Police.
In his letter, Bramblett referred to some of the evidence found in the dumpster where he worked, specifically a drawing with stick figures that included, by his admission, some of his own handwriting.
The significance of the stick figures drawing, not mentioned by Bramblett or your writer, was that it included four people with arrows pointed to their heads to correspond with the victims and the manner in which they were murdered. Bramblett admitted the handwriting was his but claimed that Special Agent Keesee drew the stick figures. I found the paper with the drawing and writings, and Agent Keesee wasn’t present. I almost threw the paper away without examining it because it was balled up and stuck together with a sticky substance. As soon as I opened it, I showed it to the three other investigators who were also searching the dumpster.
Bramblett didn’t mention the other items we found in the dumpster, including an expired license tag in his name, a shirt that probably belonged to Winter Hodges and several lengths of ropes.
Bramblett and your “writer” want us to believe that he was convicted as a result of a massive conspiracy that involved, at a minimum, the Virginia State Police, Vinton Police, Roanoke City Police, the Commonwealth’s Attorneys Offices of both Roanoke City and Roanoke County, and all of Bramblett’s three defense attorneys , their investigator, the trial judge, and the Virginia Supreme Court. ( How do you make that “Twilight Zone” music in words?) Your “writer” maliciously defamed all of these good men who brought justice to Anah, Winter, Teresa, and Blaine.
I should have been included in this list of “conspirators”. As an instructor of Search and Seizure Law I was convinced we had sufficient Probable Cause to search Bramblett’s storage building and had to convince the managers of the investigation and the prosecutors that I could get a search warrant.
I would be honored to be included on this list of men and a woman who were mentioned by Earl Bramblett and your “writer”.
Roger Harris
ROANOKE
Mr. Harris, thanks for your input. I’m glad you told the investigator’s side of the story.
Comment by Lori — April 18, 2011 @ 2:18 pm
Good letter, Officer Harris
The chain-of-evidence account on the stick figure paper vs. the claims of the defendant is particularly telling, IMHO.
FWIIW, I’ve never know of a true conspiracy of a large number of folk to stand up over time.
Also,some movies, and television tend to perpetuate the belief that circumstantial evidence may not be used to convict a criminal. But this view is incorrect. In many cases, circumstantial evidence is the only evidence linking an accused to a crime.
If A testifies that he saw B kill C, then A’s testimony is direct evidence that B killed C.
If, however, A testifies that he saw B and C go into another room and that he heard B say to C that he was going to kill her, heard a noisy dispute, and saw B leave the room with the murder weapon, then A’s testimony is circumstantial evidence from which it can be inferred that A killed C.
Some of the strongest evidence (the so called “Hard” evidence) is circumstantial evidence — DNA, fingerprints, etc. Even B’s finger prints on the murder weapon, B’s DNA at the scene, C’s DNA on B’s clothing, etc would all be circumstantial evidence — e.g., there could be circumstances other than B killing C, whicht explain the evidence away. The jury’s job is to judge how credible such a scenario of the circumstances is. In this case, it seems that a current respected judge and a prosecutor believe that the jury was right, in that the circumstantial evidence that was there was overwhelming.
BYW, direct evidence can be highly suspect — as in an eye witness who identifies a suspect that (s)he didn’t know the prior to the crime or one who is committing perjury.
My antenna always goes up when someone complains about convictions on circumstantial evidence.
Comment by DaveH — April 18, 2011 @ 2:57 pm
No comment on this case, but incompetence and incompetence covered up has sent people to jail and even death row who did not belong there. It is not in a police officer’s best interest to dig further than proving their theory and most do not. It is almost unheard of for any officer to question an investigator’s findings or to fail in helping find that which proves it, and only that which proves it. It is certainly not in the Commonwealth Attorney’s best interest to back down and withdraw charges or fail to prosecute when they can. The system is heavily weighted in favor of law enforcement (even when mistakes are made) and in favor of the prosecution. Sometimes even a really good lawyer and a really innocent person, lose to the system.
Bramblett seems to have been guilty, but there is always room for questions and there is always room to answer concerns lest you look even more like a mistake.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — April 18, 2011 @ 4:12 pm
After spending much more time reading Bramlet’s rambling statements than I wanted to I have to concur that he was one disturbed individual. His assertion that there was a concerted effort to railroad him involving multiple law-enforcement agencies and legal entities is preposterous. Mr. Graham’s website appears to be nothing more than an excuse to sell his books.
Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your perspective.
Comment by Art Hill — April 18, 2011 @ 9:54 pm
“It is not in a police officer’s best interest to dig further than proving their theory and most do not.”
Geez, biased much? Most officers and detectives I know don’t go into investigations with preconceived theories fo the crime. They look for evidence and see what is the most likely answer to the questions. They don’t make things up or fabricate evidence.
But I guess your theory explains why jails and prisons packed full of “innocent” people. All the criminals are telling the truth and the police and prosecutors are lying. In reality no one is actually committing any crimes. It’s all a massive conspiracy.
Comment by Chuck — April 18, 2011 @ 10:22 pm
I agree DaveH, “eye witness” accounts and identifications are more dangerous than carefully documented circumstantial evidence could ever be. Funny thing is, when there are witnesses, well you can’t go wrong/can’t possibly trust that and if the evidence is circumstantial, well you can’t go wrong/can’t possibly trust that. Guaranteed.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — April 18, 2011 @ 10:31 pm
Me thinks Roger Harris protest too much.
The conspiracy is shown in Tracy Turners affidavit where Keesee, Burkart and his lap dog Randy Leach get Turner to lie and make up evidence. Turner later recants everything he claimed for the reasons he states. Why no mention of that by Harris?
Are the lies by Burkart in closing where he claims the truck passed where it was darkest and then “stops the tape to show the truck under those halogen lights” just an oversight? I think not.
Keesee testifies in court Bramblett was the ONLY suspect.
How can the lies be denied when they are from the very lips of the people telling them?
Earl Bramblett was no angel by any stretch of the imagination but he didn’t deserve to be FRAMED for the Hodges murders. The murderer(s) are still out there and if Harris and the rest of the incompetents that framed Bramblett had spent their time looking it would have been relatively easy to find the real culprit. Instead, like Turner, each thought just adding their little lie wouldn’t make a difference and they went along to get along.
Unless a person is standing over someone murdered holding a smoking gun or bloody knife then it is a good bet the murder will never be solved in that part of Virginia. It is an undeniable fact like the ones on my website.
Comment by Doug Graham aka "writer" — April 19, 2011 @ 9:29 am
More letters from readers coming on this topic Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon!
Comment by Dan Casey — April 19, 2011 @ 9:36 am
Chuck, I seriously do not know whether to pity you for your lack of comprehension or stand in awe at the way you can twist the meaning of a comment into pretzels.
I did not say anyone went “into investigations with preconceived theories fo the crime“. I did not say they “make things up or fabricate evidence” either.
I have also never said, implied or felt that we have “jails and prisons packed full of “innocent” people. All the criminals are telling the truth and the police and prosecutors are lying. In reality no one is actually committing any crimes. It’s all a massive conspiracy” Geez, do you distort everything?
Everything I stated in my post #3 relating to law enforcement and prosecution was gleaned at a very in depth meeting with a Commonwealth’s Attorney when I questioned a particular investigation and prosecution of a case. You do not have to believe me, but people like me, who have seen it in action, know all too well how the system works and who it works in favor of. That is all well and good when they have the right criminal, but it can and does ruin lives when they do not, when they over-charge someone or when they just do not care to do more than the minimum. I work with people every day whose prospects for employment, housing, loans and a good life are ruined because a stupid mistake landed them the label of “convicted felon” or even “violent sex offender”. Those labels are meant for the worst and deservedly so, but there are also people who do not deserve to be there and without the wherewithal for an OJ size defense to keep them out of prison or off those lists. The system is only good when they get it right.
If you have some knowledge that disproves what I said, you bring it, but have the common decency to use what I actually said, if you can manage it. I have an ex Roanoke City police officer and a current State Police officer in my family. I do not disparage or denigrate the people. I tell the truth.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — April 19, 2011 @ 4:28 pm
Re: #6
I would never argue, that mistakes are never made — at the individual level or at the system level. Stuff happens.
What frost me is the failure to make it right, when found as in our thread 4/12 http://blogs.roanoke.com/dancasey/2011/04/innocent-guy-spends-14-years-on-death-row-the-supreme-court-says-he-deserves-nothing/comment-page-1/#comment-115080
Here is another one that really frost me:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/16/60minutes/main3512453.shtml
**
Sept. 14, 2008
Evidence Of Injustice
FBI’s Bullet Lead Analysis Used Flawed Science To Convict Hundreds Of Defendants
(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on Nov. 18, 2007. It was updated on Sept. 12, 2008.
Aside from eyewitness testimony, some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va. Part of its job is to test and analyze everything from ballistics to DNA for state and local prosecutors around the country, introducing scientific credibility to often murky cases.
But a six-month investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post last November showed that there are hundreds of defendants imprisoned around the country who were convicted with the help of a now discredited forensic tool, and that the FBI never notified them, their lawyers, or the courts, that the their cases may have been affected by faulty testimony.
[Emphasis added]
SNIP
**
BTW — as to LEOs not digging further, I know LEOs still working to get their own earlier “wins” based on this flawed “hard” forensic [i.e., circumstantial] evidence reviewed.
Comment by DaveH — April 19, 2011 @ 5:27 pm
Long before it was reported in the media I knew the evidence the FBI was furnishing in bullet analysis was skimpy at best in the Bramblett trial. I talked with Warren Cloninger, Ballistic Technician of the Speer Amunition Company in Lewiston, ID. He sent me two faxes. One was about the bullet testimony in the Bramblett situation (trial is not the proper word for it) and the other his history and qualifications. He was sixty-eight years old at that time and had worked for Speer for forty of those. I will have to quote a portion of what he says because the fax is too dim to scan. He says, “I think the answers in this testimony are essentially correct as far as they go. Unfortunately they just touch on the surface of a complte answer and as you know what is not said can often change the validity of a statement.” It is a long letter and he tells of many things that should have gone into any comparison.
The FBI helped frame Earl Bramblett. Deny that.
Comment by Doug Graham aka "writer" — April 20, 2011 @ 9:54 am
For some reason, I got sucked into watching a show on NatGeoTV the other night about how some people believe in a 9-11 conspiracy. I don’t in any shape or form believe the conspiracy theorists on 9-11… the show just basically pissed me off more than anything, but I still watched it. It made my head hurt watching a bunch of guys with no engineering background struggling to explain that they didn’t agree with the piles of engineering data proving their conspiracy theories to be garbage.
I did enjoy one of the guys who was interviewed for the show though. He is an author who specializes in writing about conspiracies throughout history. He explained one thing that really hit the nail on the head… and the basic idea of what he explained was that a conspiracy theorist loves to ask probing questions and try to make people think, but it’s really hard to get a conspiracy theorist to tell you what they personally think actually happened. If a conspiracy theorist was ever forced to actually give you their own opinion of what really happened instead of questioning what is accepted as fact, then they have to provide their own actual hard evidence to support their beliefs, and they usually aren’t capable of doing so.
Comment by hokie24 — April 20, 2011 @ 1:03 pm
hokie24, I don’t believe the 9/11 conspiracy theories that are rampant, but I also don’t believe that the public has been given anything close to a comprehensive and truthful account of all that happened that day, or what led up to it.
In the absence of genuine information, people will attempt to formulate their own constructs. There’s nothing wrong with asking probing questions and trying to get people to think. I don’t have to know who planned Kennedy’s assassination to suspect the Warren Commission report is a bunch of garbage.
Comment by Kristen — April 20, 2011 @ 9:52 pm
If Roger Harris is such a hot-shot detective why hasn’t he found what happened to the two missing girls they tried to pin on Bramblett back in the seventies? Or the Grandin Road murders or the old lady named Rogers, the mother of attorney Jonathan Rogers? Even further back the Angle girl in the apartments off Brandon Ave.?
It is a known fact that people they hire for police work are not the smartest or the brightest. The smartest and the brightest are soon bored with the job and don’t last but a few years. Let me see… who do we know that has done that?
The two years between the murders and the arrest of Bramblett was not used for any investigation on the Bramblett case. Special Agent Keesee of the Virginia State Police finally got Conrad, the alleged gun expert, to write the letter saying the gun could have been the one that killed the Hodges. Conrad later admitted he lied in an affidavit. It’s on the website.
Harris claims the stick figures show four people shot in the head. Only three were shot in the head, Teresa was strangled. Harris has the same attitude as the rest of the investigators, close is good enough. Bramblett’s truck was mislabeled by Keesee calling it a Ranger, the street lights were mislabeled, the gun was mislabeled, the driveway where the truck seen the morning of the crime was mislabeled, the accelerant on Teresa was mislabeled. This was the actual shotgun approach to the conviction. Just say anything because the two dummy defense attorneys were ignorant of criminal law.
Comment by Doug Graham aka "writer" — April 21, 2011 @ 7:10 am
http://allamosa.com/harris.html
Harris testimony in the Bramblett case
Comment by Doug Graham aka "writer" — April 21, 2011 @ 1:20 pm
A note the poster who calls himself “Charles.”
I trashed all of your posts, because you cannot assassinate some identifiable person’s character here on this blog. If you want to debate Douglas Chandler Graham’s arguments, fine. But I’m not going to let you get away with the crap you’ve been trying to pull.
And I tried to tell you this via email, but you listed a fake one.
Comment by Dan Casey — April 21, 2011 @ 2:58 pm
What are the freaking odds? Dan, if someone is posting and gives you a bogus email, you should not post their comments IMO. The level of anonymity some haters want is their problem, stay off public blogs if you cannot even give an active email address you monitor. This is Dan’s blog and he can run it as he sees fit and that does not mean helping anonymous people vent their spleen.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — April 21, 2011 @ 4:07 pm
Sandi,
I love this blog and its posters, but I don’t have the time to run down the email address of everyone who posts, or attempts, to post here.
Comment by Dan Casey — April 21, 2011 @ 4:12 pm
I’m sorry Mr Graham, but the web site looks like the credits for a low budget horror movie. It would look much better if the names were just listed there in regular font. The dripping blood look, makes it hard to take seriously.
Comment by Debbie — April 21, 2011 @ 4:54 pm
I know that Dan, but people need to accept some of that “responsibility” they are always asking others to take, don’t you think? Of course you cannot check everyone out, but when you run up on it, like in this instance, trash it and move on. You also owe no one the courtesy of tracking them down if they cannot be honest or meet you halfway.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — April 21, 2011 @ 4:55 pm
What really gets my goat is people that read the website and still say “I still think Bramblett was guilty.”
I didn’t make this stuff up. It is testimony from the actual trial transcripts, the FBI Freedom of Information and notes made bt Keesee and other police.
How can someone be guilty when there is not one piece of hard evidence connecting them to the crime?
All this “circimstantual Evidence” is made up lies. How much plainer can I say that? There is NO EVIDENCE direct or circumatantial! NONE!
Bramblett was FRAMED by these people. They didn’t need evidence because they made it all up.
Show me anything, anything, that shows Bramblett anywhere near the crime scene when these people were killed.
The Hodges were all killed at three AM on that Monday morning when the police dispatcher got a phone call that someone was shooting. This was never mentioned in court but it is on the video tape the police made, which was never shown in court either.
It is really frustrating when you show people facts that can’t be denied because they are real and part of official documents and they still “feel” Bramblett is guilty. People should be convicted by FACTS. Burkart, Keesee, Leach and the other people in this “felt” Bramblett was guilty. Feel and felt are not FACTS!
Comment by Doug Graham aka "writer" — April 23, 2011 @ 10:37 am
NEVER TRUST COPS, THEY ARE ALL CRIMINALS, ESPECIALLY HERE.
Comment by harold rocks — June 29, 2011 @ 4:16 pm