April 3, 2024 • 45 mins
Det. Jason White is a 25-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department. Throughout his career, he has worked in uniform patrol and served as a member of the Street Crimes Unit, an undercover investigator in the Special Investigations Division Narcotics Unit, a School Resource Officer, and a Crime Scene Detective.
Det. White is currently assigned to the Homicide Unit, where he has served for more than 14 years and has been featured in several episodes of The First 48 on A & E.
Listeners can learn more about Detective Jason White on IG @detjasonwhite
Resources:
Into The Fire, True Crime Stories
Othram: 21st Century Forensics
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with Detective Jason White to discuss his extraordinary life and career as a Detective. They discuss his early days in the medical field to his ascent as a distinguished detective known for his appearances on "The First 48". Jason’s diverse background became a pivotal asset in his investigative work, particularly in homicide cases. Jason's story is not just about career transformation; it's about the intertwining of passion, skill, and an unwavering commitment to making a difference.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [1:20] Sheryl introduces Jason White to the listeners
- [1:55] Into The Fire, True Crime Stories
- [5:00] Being cast on The First 48
- [15:00] “The number one most important skill for a police officer is, or a detective, it is easily your ability to communicate with people. If you can't do that, you're in big trouble.” -Jason White
- [16:00] The significant role of community trust in solving crimes
- [24:00] The new generation of detectives and retention rates
- [30:00] Homeocide Family Packet
- [32:00] Advice for new detectives
- [36:00] La Bianca house from the Manson Murders
- [38:15] Othram: 21st Century Forensics
- [39:40] Two pieces of advice from Det. Jason White’s father
- [44:55] “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the 9 to 5 hours.” -Hunter Thompson
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Growing up, my sister Charlene never missed an episode of
Perry Mason or The Rookies or Hawaii five O. She
equally loved all the medical shows. I, of course, was
only interested in watching the first half with her, but
she loved emergency and anything dealing with hospitals in any
(00:33):
way of helping people.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That was just her.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So today she's a Level one trauma nurse that loves
helping us at the Cold Case Institute own real unsolved homicides.
So today she gets to live what she was so
fascinated about as a kid, and it's awesome to be
able to work with her today. We have the salute
(01:00):
honor of having somebody with us that shows what can
happen when two different worlds collide. Honey, we have Detective
Jason White with us.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You know him.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You know him from the first forty eight, Detective Jason
White with the Tulsa PD. He's got twenty five years
of street crimes, undercover work, narcotics, a school resource officer,
a crime scene detective, a hostage negotiator. When I tell y'all,
he has virtually done it all he has, including if
(01:39):
he wasn't busy enough, he has started what he calls
a radio show called Into the Fire, and it is
so good. He had a buddy of mine own and
I could have listened to that all night long. When
I watched him the first time on the first forty eight,
(01:59):
I saw a genuine, level headed, authentic detective that had
just the right amount of street smarts, training and common
sense with a pretty good dose of humor on top
of a crazy solid work ethic. Welcome to Zone seven, detective.
(02:24):
I have been looking so forward to getting you on
this thing. I can't even tell you. And we've got
so much to talk about because you have many gifts,
and the first one is, just like Charlene, two of
your worlds collided because you started in the medical field,
did you not?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I did? I did. I love that intro, by the way,
so thank you for all of that, and I did.
I started out at Baptist Burn Center in Oklahoma City,
and so a month out of high school, I was
in there in the tank room and my job was
to debreed the burn patients and do burn dressing changes
on them, and probably the youngest person to ever work
(03:01):
in that burn center ever, and I ended up staying
there for six years. But along with that, I actually
went on to surgery and I worked as a scrubtech.
At started out on a surgery team that was eyes, ears, nose, throat, plastics, NEUROW,
but I really specialized primarily in brains, backs, in reconstructive
(03:23):
burn surgeries. And then I went on from there to
another hospital where I worked on an open heart team.
So I had a lot of experience, had ten years
of medical experience before I got back on track to
work in the law enforcement world with the goal to
become homicide one day.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You know, I tell rookies all the time, your advocation
and your vocation can both assist you hobbies.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Other interest other careers are vital.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I think when you're looking at a totality of a
crime scene, especially a cold case. So you went medical, PD,
detective to the first forty eight that's quite a quick
version of your world. But I want to talk right
this second now. I've been extremely lucky, and I tell
(04:09):
young people do not discount being lucky. You know, you train,
you get that education, you show up and you do
the best you can every day. But every now and
then you're going to have something happen to you that
you did not deserve and you just be grateful. So
I'll tell you one but one of the first things
that ever happened to me when I was assigned to
(04:29):
the Major Case Division, the prosecutor that was assigned to
that division was a Nancy Grace. Yeah, so I mean,
right off the bat, I'm working with a bulldog. I'm
working with somebody that's at the top of their game.
And as you know far as it went at that time,
i mean, she was the golden child. So I learned
an awful lot from her. And then I got to
(04:51):
work with people like Jim Birch and you know, Holly
Hughes and all these other folks that have gone on
and had stellar careers. So you know, that ripple effect
is good sometimes. Let's talk about twenty fourteen, when your
world changed a little bit and all of a sudden
they come to you and they're like, hey, we're going
to put you on TV.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Well, you know, I've been a fan of this show
since it's been on TV. I mean it started out
in two thousand and four. I'd kind of heard I
joined our unit in two thousand and nine, but when
the first forty eight came on TV for the very
first time in two thousand and four. I mean I
can remember sitting in front of the TV watching it,
and I was an absolute fan from the gate. And
(05:31):
so when I had heard that they were kind of
considering coming to our city. I had heard about that
probably in two thousand and probably around twenty ten or eleven,
there had been some mentions of it, but I think
at that time they were still under a contract with
another show that was kind of short lived. It was
called The Interrogators, and somebody with that show who actually
(05:55):
went on to go to the first forty eight she
actually uh continue to think about Tulsa and one of
the things that interested her and it really interests them
about the various cities that they have on TV, is
they want to they want to go to a city
that actually solves their cases. I mean, that's that's going
(06:15):
to be one of the first things is they want to.
They want it's not just getting access to a place,
they want a place that's actually going to solve their
cases and and uh, et cetera. So when we finally
heard about it that it was going to happen, we
had a meeting and it was it was roughly I
know that we had a meeting roughly with some of
(06:36):
the execs from It's actually IV just to let people
know it's I know everybody thinks, oh, it's A and E.
Well it is A and E. But the production crew
is via ITV and they basically are the ones that
do everything. They do everything from filming, editing, everything like that.
They send everything in there, then they put the episode
(06:56):
together and then the episode ultimately is going to end
up getting watched by the execsit A and E. And
then once they've approved of it, then it comes back
to us and we actually sit there and we get
to watch the episode. So they told us all about that,
and I remember them telling us how probably the number
one reason for having a show like that in any city
(07:20):
is for recruitment, and it really kind of puts that
city on the map. And that's and that's what they
said that you know you are going to be recognized.
It likely is if you the longer you're on there.
Of course, it's just kind of a it's one of
the it's one of the cool things. I think. I
think it's kind of fun. They started filming, and actually
my case was the very first case to actually get
(07:41):
started filming on so it was You're used to being
in a patrol car by yourself or with the guy
that you're running with on a case, and now you
have a third person in the car with you, and
they're basically telling you to stop, you know, hang on
a minute. And and as I've said many other times,
I've told people, it was a little bit unnerving at
first when you're you're basically doing interviews and stuff. First
(08:02):
of all, my case that I had was just a
miserable case. It was I knew it was going to
be difficult. I knew that people were going to lie
to me, which it was absolutely that. And then when
I would come out of these interviews and stuff, I
remember them having a camera in my face and they're
just like, what are your thoughts right now? What are
you going to do next? And I was just like,
You're going to have to give me a minute, yes please,
(08:25):
I've got to digest what's going on here. And so
it took a little bit of an adjustment. But once
once you get used to that and you get used
to the camera people. And we kind of put our
foot down early on. The one request that we had
was that we didn't want to have a bunch of
random people just rolling through here all the time. We
wanted to have some continuity with the camera people, and
(08:49):
they've you know, we've had probably twenty five camera people
that have rolled through and but but we have the
core group of like four or five that are your
general you know, the usuals. And that's good because they've
become part of the family. I mean, really absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I was going to ask about that. I think it's
like body cam. I'm all for it. You can follow
me with a drone, honey, I am all about it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And for me, you've got a community.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
They don't have to wonder what you're doing, they don't
have to wonder how you're doing it. They don't have
to wonder how somebody was treated. It's right there, it's
on TV. How you work the cases. And to me,
when you mentioned the recruiting tool, yes, but to me would.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Also it should reduce crime.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And to me, it would help you the minute you
walk into an interrogation room and I already know you,
that's a different ballgame.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'll tell you a quick story. I love this story.
There was I was up for the next murder, and
there was a family. It was a husband, wife and
they were both probably in their mid fifties, and you
could tell they'd lived a hard life, I mean. And
then they brought their they had their daughter with him
and she he's eighteen. And based on the conversation, I
(10:04):
happen to be up for the next murder, and based
on the conversation that had been going on to one
of my supervisors, they come and got me and they said, hey,
you're up for the next murder, you should probably come
out here and talk to these people. And so I
went out there and the guy was out in the
waiting room that the father, the whole family was there,
and the father immediately was like, oh my gosh, it's
so good to meet you. And you know, we get
(10:24):
that from time to time. Literally, we have people that
fly into Tulsa sometimes to meet us. It's crazy, I know,
but it's We're like a tourist attraction to some extent.
But anyway, so I was like, hey, appreciate it. You know,
that's great, thanks for coming down here, et cetera. And
he goes, listen, I got to tell you something, he goes.
I was, I've spent over half of my life in prison,
(10:46):
and I was raised to hate the cops. Okay, And
I'll tell you right now, I am not a huge
cop fan, but you guys are are amazing. You guys.
You treat everybody with respect, regardless if they're the bad
guy or the families. You just treat people right. And
he goes, I really really appreciate that, and he goes.
(11:07):
The reason why I came down here is because my
daughter witnessed a murder yesterday. And it didn't happen in Tulsa.
She can't remember where it happened, but it happens somewhere
in northeast Oklahoma, which is a big place. And she goes,
she goes, He goes, she's going to tell you all
about it. And I brought her here to you guys
because I trust you guys, because from what I've seen.
(11:30):
And I was like, well, do you mind if I
go back and take and talk to her. And he goes, yeah,
just bring her home when you're done. And that was that,
and that right there. I've tried to tell other cities
when a couple of times I've talked to other cities
that were thinking about being a part of this, and
I've told him I'm like, listen, it is priceless, priceless
(11:50):
to be a part of that show, and it's just
really it opens up so many more doors. And I
know that there's probably some cities that they're a little
bit concerned with the I think they're concerned with getting
caught up doing something stupid or hey, you're already if
you don't do anything stupid. I mean, they're the benefits
are far. They're just huge, and I can't tell you
(12:13):
how much it's been just really a blessing for us.
We've been on there longer where we're coming up on
the longest time that they've had a city there. I
know that we've had the most episodes that have aired
from on that program, and that's been probably right now,
it's probably close to one twenty as far as episode
So we've been on there almost ten years, and there's
(12:34):
no end in sight. There's no real reason. I mean,
we're we're still good with it, and it'll be a
little weird when one day it's gonna come to an
end for us, but it'll be weird when they finally
do leave. And that's what I was talking to Summer
about it. I was like, what was that like when
Summer bent from Atlanta. I was like, what was Oh,
she's my buddy too, I you know, like I told her,
I do know some of the detectives in the other cities.
(12:57):
I'm fans of their work. I mean there's been times
when I watched it episode and I thought of something
and I've called him or I've messaged them and told him, Hey,
have you guys thought of this or that? And then
there's been other times where I've just messaged him and said, hey,
I tell that detective. I did it once for they
have Tracy Lewis, who was who did her first case
on the first forty eight there in Atlanta, and I
(13:18):
had messaged one of the detectives and said, hey, let
her know that she just did an incredible job. And
I was just super proud of her and things like that. So,
I mean, I don't know, it's been it's been really
a great thing for us. I can't say anything negative
about it whatsoever. Plus it's kind of fun to want,
you know, have people that want to come up and
take a selfie with you. I mean with a cop.
(13:38):
That's that's almost unheard of, you know, So that's that's
always fun for me.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Anyway, there was one episode where the lead detective he
was great, he was outstanding. But he was asking this
witness who sells drugs over there? And she was like,
nobody sells RU rugs over there. And she was adamant,
nobody is selling drugs over there. And you're sitting in
(14:05):
the chair behind and you're just easy, you're not aggressive,
you're not mad, you're not even saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And all of a sudden you just said to her,
who's dropping off over there? And she looks right at
you and says, KP.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It was brilliant.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, well sometimes I look really good on there. Sometimes
sometimes we'll take it. Sometimes, yeah, well, I'll tell you
what that that's one of our favorite things to do.
There's everybody in our unit as a homicide detective, I
think that our number one ability as you know, what's
(14:47):
what's our secret? You know, we we solve. Since twenty sixteen,
we've had roughly five hundred and fifty five homicides in
the city of Tulsa, and I think we have twenty
eight that are open. So we we we and we
can't do that without the community. I mean, there's a
few things that are the ingredients to our success. Number
one for really any police officer period. If you want
(15:09):
to know what our the number one most important skill
for a police officer is or a detective, it is
easily your ability to communicate with people. If you can't
do that, you're in big trouble. I mean, it's more
important than shooting, driving, self defense, all that stuff. All
that stuff's important, but you are talking to people and
listening every single day. So therefore that's probably one of
(15:33):
the biggest things there is with policing. And the other
thing is one of the reasons that we're so successful too,
is that we work as a team, and teamwork makes
the dream work. And if you're one of those units
that used to drive me crazy when I would watch
not to throw any other city, I won't even mention
the city's name, but when I was watching, when I
would watch another city and I would see them have
(15:55):
a different shift, like a night shift, and then they
would hand it off to the day shift crew when
they came in, I I just it just doesn't you
don't have that ownership, and now you're it's almost discombobulated
when you get it, and it makes it much more
difficult to solve the case. In my opinion, so we
would we would just work really well as a team.
And the other thing is too, is that the city
(16:16):
of Tulsa is so used to us solving these cases.
Is they expect it, you know, so so really they
don't care. We don't really get hounded about what this
is costing. They they just want the cases solved. So
we don't get really restricted as far as working and
having over time. It's just part of the deal. And
they know it. You know, you go to New Orleans,
you know, they have really strict overtime issues there. And
(16:40):
and I mean it's just it's hard enough solving these
cases when you're when you're just hammering it and going
after these cases, but when you're restricted by how when
you can be working and this and that. That's one
of the reasons that I think that a lot of
a lot of these cities are probably not as successful
as they could be. All Right. The other reason is too,
is it's the other thing that's really big is the
(17:01):
fact that we get along well with the community for
the most part. You know, we've got a good relationship
as a police department with the community. And it hasn't
always been that way, but it's something that we have
worked on for many, many years. And I think we
just conduct ourselves pretty professionally within the community. And I mean,
(17:22):
I'm not saying we don't still have people that hate
that pl It doesn't matter what you do, they're gonna
hate you. But for the most part, that's how we
handle it. And it's not some secret ingredient that we're
just And we do have other cities that we'll call us,
like Boston, and there's been other major cities that have
called us to see what in the heck we're doing
here and why are we so successful? And it's really
(17:42):
the teamwork. It's getting out from behind your desk, knocking
on doors, finding video. I cann't tell you how many
cases I've came across that had we waited one more day,
we would have missed out on that video that actually
brought the case together. You know, things like that. You've
got to get out there and talk to people. And
that's the key.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
You got to get out there. You got to get
out there, you got to get in the street. And
it ain't a nine to five. I can't agree with
you more.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
No, it's not. It's and and and I'll tell you.
Something else too is for me, it really and I
like talking about this too, is the fact that the
people that are selected for homicide and really for any
any specialty unit for that matter. It's not like we
were something We're up on this pedestal, that were some
godlike creatures on the department. But but here's the deal.
(18:29):
It's like, you need to pick the right people for
the unit. And I don't care what people look like
on paper. I care about how well that individual is
going to work as a team player and how trainable
they are. They've got to be trainable. I'm not interested
in somebody coming to our unit that's going to be yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got it. Yeah yeah, I know. I'm not I'm
(18:50):
not gonna I'm not gonna mesh well with that at all.
And they have to be trainable. And that's one of
the things when I first came into that unit. I
don't really have any issue talking about it now because
I've been doing this so long. I really don't care
what anybody thinks. But the fact of the matter is
is when I came into the unit, I think that
they could have done a much better job with taking
me under their wing and training me and showing me
(19:11):
the ropes. Okay, And I think that now we do
that we set people up for success now as opposed
to failure. Like back when I first got in here,
I literally thought that that people wanted to see me fail,
you know, And it was almost as if they wanted
to look better, you know, And you just can't do that.
That's crazy. So anyway, the stakes are too high when
(19:36):
you're talking about these type of cases, because if you
don't get it right and you don't get this individual
in custody, then they could potentially go out and kill
somebody else. And so it could very easily happen.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Because again, the way y'all work, if you've got ten
detectives and y'all rotate, who catches the next one that lead?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
This is what I love for people to see.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
You may be the lead detective tonight, but the next
homicide that somebody catches, you may be doing the canvas.
You may be collecting something off the street. You may
be going down the road and interviewing somebody that you
know as a confidential informant.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So your job is fluid, so it takes the ego
out of it. You don't have to be in charge
every single time, but you can be so helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Like I just was talking to my daughter and Caitlin Clark,
who just broke the record for women's basketball NCAA. She's phenomenal.
I mean, she has scored over three thousand points. I
think unbelievable. But I told my daughter watch the people
that passed to her. She didn't do it by herself.
(20:42):
She didn't and the person that passes to her is
just as important. Everybody I've ever worked with, whatever team
I ever put together, whatever task force I ever put together,
I have had the same mantra. I want to be
the dumbest person in the room, because if I'm not,
we have limitations, you understand. And I don't want this
(21:03):
team to have limitations. I don't want this case to
have limitations. So I have no problem saying this prosecutor
or this detective, or this crime scene person, or my
husband or my two children are smarter than me. That
is the goal, baby, that's the point, no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But let me tell you how I love to watch
you work.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
This is exactly what I like hearing about how great
I am.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Now, Yes, and I hope your wife can hear me
because she needs to recognize I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That she necessarily agrees with everything.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Listen, every time somebody says, oh, Mac, I could listen
to you talk all night. I'll screenshot it and send
it to my husband. He's like, yeah, they're new, you know,
like they don't know. But honestly, here's the deal that
I and again did we've never met. I know you
from TV, so like everybody else, I feel like I
(22:00):
know you.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But here's what I see.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
As soon as you leave the crime scene and you
get back in your patrol car and you're headed back
to the station, you're on the phone.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
You are not wasting any time. You are calling people.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
You're saying, hey, don't you have a ci in that
same neighborhood. Didn't you arrest somebody a month ago in
that neighborhood. Let's get these people out, Let's shake these trees.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Honey.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
You will pull over on the side of the road
to talk to people. I've seen you say hey, come
here and bring somebody over.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
To your car.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You have stopped eating lunch, and I think that is
so critical for young people to watch this because again,
not only is it not nine to five, it is
not even in that eight hours, you may not get
a break.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well, you know, I'll tell you something that, Like I said,
I joined the unit in two thousand and nine, and
I can remember vividly a homicide that I went to
in October of twenty and fourteen, and it was a
case where this gangster and it's still unsolved to this day,
but he got just lit up. He got shot close
to twenty times as he sat in the front seat
(23:05):
of his car. And I remember that case and like
I said, it's still open to this day. And he
was a he was a big time og in the
Hoover crips. And I remember after that case, I tell
I told myself, I said, that's it. I'm not having
another open case period. It's not going to happen again.
And the couple of things that I did is number one.
(23:27):
I stopped I stopped having a something in my eye.
I stopped having a negative attitude about a case when
I started hearing the details about it, I would I
never really wanted to hear all the ins and outs
of it where I'm starting to get this in my mind,
we're never going to solve this case. I didn't want
that as part of insight of my brain. I So
(23:47):
what I did is I had to just say, I'm
going to remain positive. I'm going to have the mindset
that we are going to solve this case. Period, it's
going to happen. And because of that attitude change that
I because I think I ran across a couple of
cases that were just horrible, you know, horrible as far
as nobody talking. It was just miserable. And and I
(24:09):
didn't have an unsolved case, or I didn't have an
unsolved case I think for probably six years after that.
Uh so, which is a lot of luck sprinkled in
there too, mac. You know, people say there's no such
thing as luck. Yes there is, and it does happen.
And I got lucky a few times. But I changed
with the way I was thinking about this and I
and I would just try to continually be positive in
(24:32):
my thinking and positive moving moving the ball forward, always
trying to move that ball forward, and and in doing so,
that's really helped. Now I've had a few, I've had
a few open sins, but but I still live by
that and I try to I try to remain positive,
and I try to tell that and instill that in
those that will listen to me in the office. Now,
I've been in there the second longest actually right now.
(24:54):
Kind of a fun fact is that I've worked the
third most homicides in the city of Tulsa's history, and
so only there's only three of us that have actually
been assigned as the lead detective in Tulsa for over
one hundred murders. And I'm on, I'm number three on
that list, and number one's already retired. So I will
one day, I will fall I'll be the number one guy.
(25:16):
Eventually the number two guy. He's still probably going to
stick around for another year or so, but but I
will eventually pass him, and I will, and I don't
think that's going to happen. I don't think it'll ever
be broken. The reason why I say that is because
I think that the generation of today of detectives, they
seem to move on a lot quicker. They don't hang
out in these in these positions as long. Maybe they're smarter,
maybe they realized that, you know, they don't want the
(25:38):
life sucked out of them over the courts of fifty
twenty years of doing this. But you know, you have
cops of today that they go from one department to
another one. You know that that was unheard of back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Well, I just want to make one thing clear for
everybody listening. The clear rate, for y'all is about ninety
six percent. Now, that is unheard of when nationally you're
looking at sixty two maybe somewhere in there. And I
heard you say something that I thought was so fantastic
that I'm going to quote you. You said, and I quote,
(26:18):
I'm not interested in being ninety seven percent sure. I
want to be one hundred percent sure. So when you've
got somebody that dedicated, listen to me, y'all, this is
not for him about well, I'm just going to go
ahead and arrest this guy for it so I can
get this off my sheet.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And it's close enough. No, he's not about that.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
So when you're looking at that ninety six percent, it's
a solid number.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
No, it is. I mean, we don't lose cases in court.
I mean it happens very very rarely. I've never lost one.
I've never lost a murder trial. Now, a lot of
that has to do with the fact that we have
a tremendous relationship not only with the community, but we've
got a tremendous relationship with the District Attorney's office, and
(27:07):
not just you know, we covered Tulsa, covers like three
different counties or parts of three different counties, the main
one being Tulsa County obviously, but we do touch a
couple of other counties and we have we have an
exceptional relationship with the das in those communities too. So
and the thing that's kind of bizarre about us, and
I don't know if you know this or not, Mac,
but I'll mention it is that here in Tulsa, there
(27:29):
was a Supreme Court ruling that happened probably it's probably
four or five years now, and that happened, and it
basically made eastern Oklahoma, the eastern half of the state
technically almost like Indian Nation again. And what it means
is that originally it was if the victim or the
(27:50):
suspect was Indian, then it would fall under the jurisdiction
of the US Attorney's Office, which means that for a murder,
customarily it would be the FBI that would work those cases. Well,
there's no way in the world that the FBI was
going to It just wasn't going to happen. They it's
too much. It's too much for them to have taken on.
(28:12):
So what they did is that everybody that you see
from our city and from a lot of there's a
lot of cops throughout the eastern part of the state.
We all are task force officers with the FBI, were
task force officers with the US. Marshals were task force officers,
were basically marshals in the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee Indian Nation,
and also we have law enforcement credentials with the Creek
(28:36):
Nation and some of us have Bureau of Indian Affairs
credentials also. And it really doesn't make your job any different.
It just means that you've got a lot of different
jurisdictions that you're dealing with, and it could add a lot,
you know, if you've ever dealt with the US Attorney's Office,
it adds another layer of complexities. Also, it makes it
a little bit more. You know, you're dealing with a
(28:57):
thirty six page search warr't for Facebook, as opposed to
it two page search weren't.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So that's right, that's the best descriptions I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Lord, Yes, you know, so we don't have a team
of FBI guys that are going to show up on
one of our murders. We basically we just do it.
And so now we have the credentials to where we
can do that now. But I mean, it's just kind
of the unique thing that we have to deal with
as well. But I got to say this because I
want to say something else. You know, one of the
things that I love about our police department, and I
(29:31):
sent you that homicide booklet, and I really what that is,
and what I sent to her was a family booklet,
and it's an idea that I came up with. And
the idea was I wanted to you know, when you
give a death notification, the people people would probably retain
roughly ten percent of what you're telling them. I mean,
(29:52):
it's the worst moment of their life, and you're giving
them a lot of information about what the where their
loved one is going to be going, what happened, et cetera,
et cetera, and and so you're trying to explain this
stuff to them, and I got, really, I don't mind
getting phone calls from the family and stuff, but I
but to tell you the truth, it was just so
distracting at times that I was like, we got to
(30:14):
do something better here. So I came up with this idea.
And I was telling my former partner, we don't really
have partners, but a guy that I worked with a lot,
the guy that Rodney Leatherman, he's actually my co host
on my show, and I told him, I said, listen,
this is what I want to do. There were so
many good ideas that we would come up with our
in the car, you know, and one of my ideas
was is I wanted to come up with this idea
(30:35):
of some booklet we could literally hand the family. And
and so he's one of those type of people. Bless
him for this, but he's he's one of those type
of people that he's like, well, let's just just quit
talking about it, let's do it. And so with him
sitting down, and what we did is we just came
up with this booklet. And I think when you see
it and you'll look through that, steal that idea, Cheryl,
(30:56):
feel free to share it with everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I already I didn't just look at it. I read
it and here's what jumped out at me. And I
appreciate you saying go ahead and steal it. Because I'm
going to anyway. But what you did in the very beginning,
you even told them the statistics. You told them the
report number, you told them the detective's name. You gave
them all the information about victim's assistant. You told them
(31:20):
about financial things that they could apply for. You told
them what vine was. You went through the whole thing
about what the court hearing is going to be like,
and what's going to happen there, what to do about
trying to clean up the crime scene. I mean, honey,
you told them every single thing, including money for a
reward from crime stoppers. You didn't leave anything out.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, how about how about grief counseling.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Coat counseling. It's in there.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Business stuff that people need to know and then and
that's right. And so when you're when you when you
show up at their house, you could very easily give
them a business card. And that business card is going
to disappear. They're going to lose it. They're not going
to lose that booklet. And so I since I've been
fortunate enough to be able to teach throughout the country,
I always take a stack of that I take I
(32:08):
take a good amount of those with me everywhere I go,
and since I've been teaching everywhere, they're handing those booklets
out in Sacramento County, They're handing them out in North Dakota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas,
and I love it. Delaware is another place, and I
love it because, uh, that's what it's about. You know,
(32:30):
we should be sharing really good ideas. And then the second,
the second thing I wanted to mention too that I
rarely ever talk about this and I and I and
I wanted to mention it here because I love as
a homicide detective specifically, and really this isn't geared for
homicide exclusively. This is for anybody that it doesn't even
need to be law enforcement. It's whatever career that you're in.
(32:54):
Don't just do what is the bare minimum. Do try
to be better. I mean, think up innovative ideas, et cetera.
And one of the things that we did on our
department is I remember myself and Ronnie were Ronnie Leather
when we're sitting at a clandestine grave class. And for
your listeners, that is a shallow grave class. It's like,
you know what, when people kill somebody, they're going to
(33:14):
stick them in a shallow grave. So it's a class
about that. And while we were sitting there, I was like,
you know, this would be really neat to I wonder
if we can get a body, where would we get
a body at? And so then I came back down
to reality and I was like, there's no way in
the world we're ever going to have the city of
Tulsa approve us to start a body farm of our own.
Number one, Where in the heck are we going to
get a person? You know, that's just not going to happen.
(33:36):
But the closest thing to that is a pig. And
so we went ahead and did that, and we got
a pig, and we took it out to the range
and we already had a whole dug and we dug
it two feet deep because that's what most people do.
They did it usually two feet because they're so lazy.
And we just did all this stuff, and then we
had the range shoot it with whatever they wanted to
(33:57):
shoot it with, and we even close clothes the pig,
and we put clothes on this thing and et cetera.
And then we threw it in the hole and then
we monitored it with a with a trail cam, and
we got the city to buy both of those, at
the pig and the trail cam, and we just studied it,
and nobody was telling us to do this stuff. But
I've always thought for my whole career, I've always thought
(34:17):
you shouldn't, especially in homicide or if you're in crime
scene and you know this and me being a former
crime scene person, if you're in those positions, you have
an obligation to continue your education and to continue to
try to do things like that. And if if you're
just sitting back there and just sitting around doing nothing
and playing on your phone, that's not that you can't
(34:38):
do that. In those positions, you have an obligation to
continue your learning. So, believe it or not, we actually
the first forty eight actually filmed. They filmed us exhooming
that that pig, but you will never see it on
TV because the thing of it is is that people
they can see all kinds of stuff of death and
destruction to the human beings, and that won't bother them.
(34:59):
But you put up an a animal, oh my gosh,
the switchboard would go nuts. People would be complaining. But anyway,
it was a neat experiment and It's something that I
always try to tell people, Hey, think if you've got
an idea, think up how to do it, and and
and try. And that's how good things happen. And it
(35:20):
was a fun experiment.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You and I have something else in coming, and that's
visiting historical crum scenes, whether it's in Cold Blood or
Manson or Delphi. And I preach all the time, nothing
takes the place a walk in that scene.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Nothing, nothing, I'll tell you what, just specifically on that.
I still am constantly watching the Lobyanca House from the
Manson murders and it's it's located at thirty three eleven
Waverley Driving in Los Filees, which is located in LA
And I'm telling you the moment that thing turns, if
it ever turns into an airb or a VRBO, I
(36:01):
am renting that thing for at least one night. I
don't know that I can fall asleep in that house,
but I am going to rent that house and I'm
going to illumine all it. I'm not telling them I'm
doing this, of course, but I'm going to illumine all
it just to see if it luminesss over fifty years.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Jason I'm so in. I am so in we will
have that mother tonight.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Would that not be cool?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I'm telling it again, Think what you could learn.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, I think it'd be a fun experiment.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
It would be a great experiment because we already know
that in cold cases they've gotten DNA that was usable
to develop a profile after fifty years. So let's see
if we can go find some and see if the
light up. That would be remarkable.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
It would be And I just I'd kind of alluded
to this or mentioned something about this a little bit
ago where I said something about just the advances in
the world of forensics. You know, in the state of Oklahoma,
by twenty twenty seven, we are mandated that we're going
to have handheld DNA. And I when I was they
were telling me about this, I'm like, are you kidding me?
(37:03):
I mean, here I am supposedly and this is the
story I heard, So it may not be completely accurate,
but basically, they're able to scan blood at a scene
and you could literally go in and compare that to
the guy's DNA sitting in an interview room and see
if it's a match. I'm just like, remarkable, it is
remarkable and you know when with snapshot, the pair bond, snapshot,
(37:26):
DNA and and things along that, that line where you
could literally get a person's picture of what they look
like at twenty five years old is fascinating. And then
and then the frenzy genealogy, which is a world that's exploding.
I mean, if it wasn't for that, then that Idaho
case would still be open to this to this day.
And and I think that in that case, and even
(37:47):
that that Long Island Killer, I think they probably get
some friends of genealogy on that.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I would assume, Oh they did, I can guarantee it.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
And you've got groups like authorm that have changed the
game to where we used to have that you know,
we had to have fifteen hundred whatever in a sample.
Now we only have to have four or something insane,
and they can still develop a profile. I mean, it's
crazy to me where we are absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Well, I'm writing that. I'm writing that name down because
I have not heard of that company.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And it's offer from O th r Am and it's
doctor David Middleman. Yeah, you need to know them. Yeah,
they're a one stop shop, so they can get your sample,
they can do the coder's route or the genealogy route,
they are magnificent.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I sometimes wonder. There's been times when I've had a
case where we just didn't get a good profile, and
I'm like, how in the world how did we not?
I mean, I've had a couple of brutal rape well
one of them was mine, which was a brutal rape
murder where I know that this person was disorganized, wasn't
wearing gloves, it was I just know that there had
(38:59):
to have been some DNA transfer and the results that
we got back were not as good as you would think.
And but you know, you never know what the technology
is going to be in fifteen more years. Can you
imagine where we're going to be ten years from now
or fifteen years from now? My goodness, I mean, look
where we've come already, and it's actually exciting to see,
(39:21):
and I'm glad to see that we're getting We're getting
better and better.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Let me ask you this, is there any final fault
that you want to be sure that you say to
either rookie detectives or rookies period or prosecutors, anything you
want to say at all.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
I think that for the young detectives and stuff. What
I would tell there's two things that I'm going to
mention is number one, and these are things that I
learned from my dad. My dad was a California highway
patrolman and he always I don't think he was really
super excited about the fact that I wanted to get
into law enforcement, but once I did, and what I've
done in my career, he's been he's you know, he's
(39:56):
my biggest fan, easily. But the number one thing is
he would always tell me is shut your mouth and listen.
And this is the censored version of what he would
tell me, but basically, just shut your mouth and listen
to people that know what they're talking about. You don't
know what you're talking about, so listen and learn. That's
(40:18):
number one. And then the second piece of advice that
he told me, that's even more important than that, that
I really try to tell everybody no matter where I'm teaching,
whether it be at the academy or wherever, and that
is make sure that your badge is the same size
it was the day they issued it to you, not
five sizes too big. Meaning treat people right. It doesn't
(40:40):
say anywhere in the rule book that you can't be
nice to people, all right. I'm not advocating back rubs
in the community. That's not me. But I'm telling you,
if you just treat people right, you'd be amazed at
what you'll get back. And you know, and that's one
of those things that I would talk to young people about,
just tell them to because you know, you know as
well as I do, MAC that the communication skills of
the people coming into the business today are diminished compared
(41:04):
to you know, I don't think any of those kids
that are that are joining the police academy had a telephone,
a landline number one, number two. They certainly didn't have
a phone cord that was over one hundred feet long
and your parents yelling at you, going get off the phone.
They just don't communicate like that anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
You know, that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
But you know, we also didn't have a phone in
our hand at a party. We didn't have a phone
in our hand. At church, we didn't have a phone
in our hand at family union. We grew up talking
to people, all kinds of people all the time.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Hey, you can get to the bus stop in the morning,
and what did you do you were talking? Now, you
watch everybody at a bus stop. It's almost it's almost,
it's actually disappointing to see, but everybody is not even communicating.
They're sitting there looking at their own phones.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And they're losing vital time where they could be training,
literally training for this job.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
That's right, So I'll if hopefully the young detective and
I haven't, Like I said, I'm not, I don't, I'm
not all knowing. But those are the things that I
was fortunate enough to be a crisis negotiator, so I
got some enhanced skills as far. I got some additional
training when it comes to communicating, and I think that's
a big deal. So as a police officer, you know,
(42:19):
you really need to work on your ability to communicate
with people and talk to people and become really really
good at I don't really look at him as an interrogation.
I look at it more it's more of a conversation.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Really well, you know, you also, in that regard did
something brilliant and I'm going to sound like a hypocrite,
so thank you for that, Jason. But you realized at
a scene that it was going to be easier for
the person that had taken folks hostage for you to
text him instead of call him. So, even though that
might not have been your first go to, because you're
(42:52):
a phone person, you're a great communicator to that person.
He needed you to text him, and you understood that.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Well, tell you something, Maca. This is I don't know
that I'll ever be able to do this on a murder,
but if it was some case that really was not
going anywhere, I've always wanted to just try this to
where I just do an interview all in texting, just
to see because sometimes you know what I've made some
of these people that you're dealing with there, they're just
(43:21):
there just to see where it got you. But no,
I appreciate that, and that that that by doing that,
that you know, people just don't answer their phone. If
they don't recognize the number, even though it's even though
it's a standoff hostage situation. They don't recognize the number,
they're likely not going to pick it up. And furthermore,
people of today really don't even listen to their voicemails anymore.
(43:43):
So I knew that if this guy's phone is working,
why not text him. I mean, he's going to get
it and he's going to read it. And sure enough,
he did, and that really opened the lines of communication,
because in that world, if they are not talking to you,
you are in real, real trouble. And if you can
get them to talk to either, you're going to be
able to be successful getting that individual out of that
situation about ninety or ninety five percent of the time.
(44:06):
So it's a big deal when you get them to communicate,
whether you know and so that that was a huge deal.
But I appreciate you noticing that.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Well to take to Jason White. I could talk to
you all night long.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I just admire you and I respect you, and I
appreciate it. And I do get to Tulsa every now
and then, and I will be calling you for dinner,
so we will have a great time and I will
finally meet you in person. But I just appreciate you
sharing with us tonight, and you know, I'm looking forward
to making you a part of my Zone seven Sugar perfect.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I love it, and I definitely consider you a friend.
And thank you so much, Max for having me as
part of your show. And it's well respected and I
feel really I'm just thankful, So thank.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
You very much, y'all.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I'm end Zone seven the way that I always do
with a quote. I have a theory that the truth
is never told during the nine to five hours Hunter S.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Thompson. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Growing up, my sister Charlene never missed an episode of
Perry Mason or The Rookies or Hawaii five O. She
equally loved all the medical shows. I, of course, was
only interested in watching the first half with her, but
she loved emergency and anything dealing with hospitals in any
(00:33):
way of helping people.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That was just her.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So today she's a Level one trauma nurse that loves
helping us at the Cold Case Institute own real unsolved homicides.
So today she gets to live what she was so
fascinated about as a kid, and it's awesome to be
able to work with her today. We have the salute
(01:00):
honor of having somebody with us that shows what can
happen when two different worlds collide. Honey, we have Detective
Jason White with us.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You know him.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You know him from the first forty eight, Detective Jason
White with the Tulsa PD. He's got twenty five years
of street crimes, undercover work, narcotics, a school resource officer,
a crime scene detective, a hostage negotiator. When I tell y'all,
he has virtually done it all he has, including if
(01:39):
he wasn't busy enough, he has started what he calls
a radio show called Into the Fire, and it is
so good. He had a buddy of mine own and
I could have listened to that all night long. When
I watched him the first time on the first forty eight,
(01:59):
I saw a genuine, level headed, authentic detective that had
just the right amount of street smarts, training and common
sense with a pretty good dose of humor on top
of a crazy solid work ethic. Welcome to Zone seven, detective.
(02:24):
I have been looking so forward to getting you on
this thing. I can't even tell you. And we've got
so much to talk about because you have many gifts,
and the first one is, just like Charlene, two of
your worlds collided because you started in the medical field,
did you not?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I did? I did. I love that intro, by the way,
so thank you for all of that, and I did.
I started out at Baptist Burn Center in Oklahoma City,
and so a month out of high school, I was
in there in the tank room and my job was
to debreed the burn patients and do burn dressing changes
on them, and probably the youngest person to ever work
(03:01):
in that burn center ever, and I ended up staying
there for six years. But along with that, I actually
went on to surgery and I worked as a scrubtech.
At started out on a surgery team that was eyes, ears, nose, throat, plastics, NEUROW,
but I really specialized primarily in brains, backs, in reconstructive
(03:23):
burn surgeries. And then I went on from there to
another hospital where I worked on an open heart team.
So I had a lot of experience, had ten years
of medical experience before I got back on track to
work in the law enforcement world with the goal to
become homicide one day.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You know, I tell rookies all the time, your advocation
and your vocation can both assist you hobbies.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Other interest other careers are vital.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I think when you're looking at a totality of a
crime scene, especially a cold case. So you went medical, PD,
detective to the first forty eight that's quite a quick
version of your world. But I want to talk right
this second now. I've been extremely lucky, and I tell
(04:09):
young people do not discount being lucky. You know, you train,
you get that education, you show up and you do
the best you can every day. But every now and
then you're going to have something happen to you that
you did not deserve and you just be grateful. So
I'll tell you one but one of the first things
that ever happened to me when I was assigned to
(04:29):
the Major Case Division, the prosecutor that was assigned to
that division was a Nancy Grace. Yeah, so I mean,
right off the bat, I'm working with a bulldog. I'm
working with somebody that's at the top of their game.
And as you know far as it went at that time,
i mean, she was the golden child. So I learned
an awful lot from her. And then I got to
(04:51):
work with people like Jim Birch and you know, Holly
Hughes and all these other folks that have gone on
and had stellar careers. So you know, that ripple effect
is good sometimes. Let's talk about twenty fourteen, when your
world changed a little bit and all of a sudden
they come to you and they're like, hey, we're going
to put you on TV.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Well, you know, I've been a fan of this show
since it's been on TV. I mean it started out
in two thousand and four. I'd kind of heard I
joined our unit in two thousand and nine, but when
the first forty eight came on TV for the very
first time in two thousand and four. I mean I
can remember sitting in front of the TV watching it,
and I was an absolute fan from the gate. And
(05:31):
so when I had heard that they were kind of
considering coming to our city. I had heard about that
probably in two thousand and probably around twenty ten or eleven,
there had been some mentions of it, but I think
at that time they were still under a contract with
another show that was kind of short lived. It was
called The Interrogators, and somebody with that show who actually
(05:55):
went on to go to the first forty eight she
actually uh continue to think about Tulsa and one of
the things that interested her and it really interests them
about the various cities that they have on TV, is
they want to they want to go to a city
that actually solves their cases. I mean, that's that's going
(06:15):
to be one of the first things is they want to.
They want it's not just getting access to a place,
they want a place that's actually going to solve their
cases and and uh, et cetera. So when we finally
heard about it that it was going to happen, we
had a meeting and it was it was roughly I
know that we had a meeting roughly with some of
(06:36):
the execs from It's actually IV just to let people
know it's I know everybody thinks, oh, it's A and E.
Well it is A and E. But the production crew
is via ITV and they basically are the ones that
do everything. They do everything from filming, editing, everything like that.
They send everything in there, then they put the episode
(06:56):
together and then the episode ultimately is going to end
up getting watched by the execsit A and E. And
then once they've approved of it, then it comes back
to us and we actually sit there and we get
to watch the episode. So they told us all about that,
and I remember them telling us how probably the number
one reason for having a show like that in any city
(07:20):
is for recruitment, and it really kind of puts that
city on the map. And that's and that's what they
said that you know you are going to be recognized.
It likely is if you the longer you're on there.
Of course, it's just kind of a it's one of
the it's one of the cool things. I think. I
think it's kind of fun. They started filming, and actually
my case was the very first case to actually get
(07:41):
started filming on so it was You're used to being
in a patrol car by yourself or with the guy
that you're running with on a case, and now you
have a third person in the car with you, and
they're basically telling you to stop, you know, hang on
a minute. And and as I've said many other times,
I've told people, it was a little bit unnerving at
first when you're you're basically doing interviews and stuff. First
(08:02):
of all, my case that I had was just a
miserable case. It was I knew it was going to
be difficult. I knew that people were going to lie
to me, which it was absolutely that. And then when
I would come out of these interviews and stuff, I
remember them having a camera in my face and they're
just like, what are your thoughts right now? What are
you going to do next? And I was just like,
You're going to have to give me a minute, yes please,
(08:25):
I've got to digest what's going on here. And so
it took a little bit of an adjustment. But once
once you get used to that and you get used
to the camera people. And we kind of put our
foot down early on. The one request that we had
was that we didn't want to have a bunch of
random people just rolling through here all the time. We
wanted to have some continuity with the camera people, and
(08:49):
they've you know, we've had probably twenty five camera people
that have rolled through and but but we have the
core group of like four or five that are your
general you know, the usuals. And that's good because they've
become part of the family. I mean, really absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I was going to ask about that. I think it's
like body cam. I'm all for it. You can follow
me with a drone, honey, I am all about it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And for me, you've got a community.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
They don't have to wonder what you're doing, they don't
have to wonder how you're doing it. They don't have
to wonder how somebody was treated. It's right there, it's
on TV. How you work the cases. And to me,
when you mentioned the recruiting tool, yes, but to me would.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Also it should reduce crime.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And to me, it would help you the minute you
walk into an interrogation room and I already know you,
that's a different ballgame.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'll tell you a quick story. I love this story.
There was I was up for the next murder, and
there was a family. It was a husband, wife and
they were both probably in their mid fifties, and you
could tell they'd lived a hard life, I mean. And
then they brought their they had their daughter with him
and she he's eighteen. And based on the conversation, I
(10:04):
happen to be up for the next murder, and based
on the conversation that had been going on to one
of my supervisors, they come and got me and they said, hey,
you're up for the next murder, you should probably come
out here and talk to these people. And so I
went out there and the guy was out in the
waiting room that the father, the whole family was there,
and the father immediately was like, oh my gosh, it's
so good to meet you. And you know, we get
(10:24):
that from time to time. Literally, we have people that
fly into Tulsa sometimes to meet us. It's crazy, I know,
but it's We're like a tourist attraction to some extent.
But anyway, so I was like, hey, appreciate it. You know,
that's great, thanks for coming down here, et cetera. And
he goes, listen, I got to tell you something, he goes.
I was, I've spent over half of my life in prison,
(10:46):
and I was raised to hate the cops. Okay, And
I'll tell you right now, I am not a huge
cop fan, but you guys are are amazing. You guys.
You treat everybody with respect, regardless if they're the bad
guy or the families. You just treat people right. And
he goes, I really really appreciate that, and he goes.
(11:07):
The reason why I came down here is because my
daughter witnessed a murder yesterday. And it didn't happen in Tulsa.
She can't remember where it happened, but it happens somewhere
in northeast Oklahoma, which is a big place. And she goes,
she goes, He goes, she's going to tell you all
about it. And I brought her here to you guys
because I trust you guys, because from what I've seen.
(11:30):
And I was like, well, do you mind if I
go back and take and talk to her. And he goes, yeah,
just bring her home when you're done. And that was that,
and that right there. I've tried to tell other cities
when a couple of times I've talked to other cities
that were thinking about being a part of this, and
I've told him I'm like, listen, it is priceless, priceless
(11:50):
to be a part of that show, and it's just
really it opens up so many more doors. And I
know that there's probably some cities that they're a little
bit concerned with the I think they're concerned with getting
caught up doing something stupid or hey, you're already if
you don't do anything stupid. I mean, they're the benefits
are far. They're just huge, and I can't tell you
(12:13):
how much it's been just really a blessing for us.
We've been on there longer where we're coming up on
the longest time that they've had a city there. I
know that we've had the most episodes that have aired
from on that program, and that's been probably right now,
it's probably close to one twenty as far as episode
So we've been on there almost ten years, and there's
(12:34):
no end in sight. There's no real reason. I mean,
we're we're still good with it, and it'll be a
little weird when one day it's gonna come to an
end for us, but it'll be weird when they finally
do leave. And that's what I was talking to Summer
about it. I was like, what was that like when
Summer bent from Atlanta. I was like, what was Oh,
she's my buddy too, I you know, like I told her,
I do know some of the detectives in the other cities.
(12:57):
I'm fans of their work. I mean there's been times
when I watched it episode and I thought of something
and I've called him or I've messaged them and told him, Hey,
have you guys thought of this or that? And then
there's been other times where I've just messaged him and said, hey,
I tell that detective. I did it once for they
have Tracy Lewis, who was who did her first case
on the first forty eight there in Atlanta, and I
(13:18):
had messaged one of the detectives and said, hey, let
her know that she just did an incredible job. And
I was just super proud of her and things like that. So,
I mean, I don't know, it's been it's been really
a great thing for us. I can't say anything negative
about it whatsoever. Plus it's kind of fun to want,
you know, have people that want to come up and
take a selfie with you. I mean with a cop.
(13:38):
That's that's almost unheard of, you know, So that's that's
always fun for me.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Anyway, there was one episode where the lead detective he
was great, he was outstanding. But he was asking this
witness who sells drugs over there? And she was like,
nobody sells RU rugs over there. And she was adamant,
nobody is selling drugs over there. And you're sitting in
(14:05):
the chair behind and you're just easy, you're not aggressive,
you're not mad, you're not even saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And all of a sudden you just said to her,
who's dropping off over there? And she looks right at
you and says, KP.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It was brilliant.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, well sometimes I look really good on there. Sometimes
sometimes we'll take it. Sometimes, yeah, well, I'll tell you
what that that's one of our favorite things to do.
There's everybody in our unit as a homicide detective, I
think that our number one ability as you know, what's
(14:47):
what's our secret? You know, we we solve. Since twenty sixteen,
we've had roughly five hundred and fifty five homicides in
the city of Tulsa, and I think we have twenty
eight that are open. So we we we and we
can't do that without the community. I mean, there's a
few things that are the ingredients to our success. Number
one for really any police officer period. If you want
(15:09):
to know what our the number one most important skill
for a police officer is or a detective, it is
easily your ability to communicate with people. If you can't
do that, you're in big trouble. I mean, it's more
important than shooting, driving, self defense, all that stuff. All
that stuff's important, but you are talking to people and
listening every single day. So therefore that's probably one of
(15:33):
the biggest things there is with policing. And the other
thing is one of the reasons that we're so successful too,
is that we work as a team, and teamwork makes
the dream work. And if you're one of those units
that used to drive me crazy when I would watch
not to throw any other city, I won't even mention
the city's name, but when I was watching, when I
would watch another city and I would see them have
(15:55):
a different shift, like a night shift, and then they
would hand it off to the day shift crew when
they came in, I I just it just doesn't you
don't have that ownership, and now you're it's almost discombobulated
when you get it, and it makes it much more
difficult to solve the case. In my opinion, so we
would we would just work really well as a team.
And the other thing is too, is that the city
(16:16):
of Tulsa is so used to us solving these cases.
Is they expect it, you know, so so really they
don't care. We don't really get hounded about what this
is costing. They they just want the cases solved. So
we don't get really restricted as far as working and
having over time. It's just part of the deal. And
they know it. You know, you go to New Orleans,
you know, they have really strict overtime issues there. And
(16:40):
and I mean it's just it's hard enough solving these
cases when you're when you're just hammering it and going
after these cases, but when you're restricted by how when
you can be working and this and that. That's one
of the reasons that I think that a lot of
a lot of these cities are probably not as successful
as they could be. All Right. The other reason is too,
is it's the other thing that's really big is the
(17:01):
fact that we get along well with the community for
the most part. You know, we've got a good relationship
as a police department with the community. And it hasn't
always been that way, but it's something that we have
worked on for many, many years. And I think we
just conduct ourselves pretty professionally within the community. And I mean,
(17:22):
I'm not saying we don't still have people that hate
that pl It doesn't matter what you do, they're gonna
hate you. But for the most part, that's how we
handle it. And it's not some secret ingredient that we're
just And we do have other cities that we'll call us,
like Boston, and there's been other major cities that have
called us to see what in the heck we're doing
here and why are we so successful? And it's really
(17:42):
the teamwork. It's getting out from behind your desk, knocking
on doors, finding video. I cann't tell you how many
cases I've came across that had we waited one more day,
we would have missed out on that video that actually
brought the case together. You know, things like that. You've
got to get out there and talk to people. And
that's the key.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
You got to get out there. You got to get
out there, you got to get in the street. And
it ain't a nine to five. I can't agree with
you more.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
No, it's not. It's and and and I'll tell you.
Something else too is for me, it really and I
like talking about this too, is the fact that the
people that are selected for homicide and really for any
any specialty unit for that matter. It's not like we
were something We're up on this pedestal, that were some
godlike creatures on the department. But but here's the deal.
(18:29):
It's like, you need to pick the right people for
the unit. And I don't care what people look like
on paper. I care about how well that individual is
going to work as a team player and how trainable
they are. They've got to be trainable. I'm not interested
in somebody coming to our unit that's going to be yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got it. Yeah yeah, I know. I'm not I'm
(18:50):
not gonna I'm not gonna mesh well with that at all.
And they have to be trainable. And that's one of
the things when I first came into that unit. I
don't really have any issue talking about it now because
I've been doing this so long. I really don't care
what anybody thinks. But the fact of the matter is
is when I came into the unit, I think that
they could have done a much better job with taking
me under their wing and training me and showing me
(19:11):
the ropes. Okay, And I think that now we do
that we set people up for success now as opposed
to failure. Like back when I first got in here,
I literally thought that that people wanted to see me fail,
you know, And it was almost as if they wanted
to look better, you know, And you just can't do that.
That's crazy. So anyway, the stakes are too high when
(19:36):
you're talking about these type of cases, because if you
don't get it right and you don't get this individual
in custody, then they could potentially go out and kill
somebody else. And so it could very easily happen.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Because again, the way y'all work, if you've got ten
detectives and y'all rotate, who catches the next one that lead?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
This is what I love for people to see.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
You may be the lead detective tonight, but the next
homicide that somebody catches, you may be doing the canvas.
You may be collecting something off the street. You may
be going down the road and interviewing somebody that you
know as a confidential informant.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So your job is fluid, so it takes the ego
out of it. You don't have to be in charge
every single time, but you can be so helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Like I just was talking to my daughter and Caitlin Clark,
who just broke the record for women's basketball NCAA. She's phenomenal.
I mean, she has scored over three thousand points. I
think unbelievable. But I told my daughter watch the people
that passed to her. She didn't do it by herself.
(20:42):
She didn't and the person that passes to her is
just as important. Everybody I've ever worked with, whatever team
I ever put together, whatever task force I ever put together,
I have had the same mantra. I want to be
the dumbest person in the room, because if I'm not,
we have limitations, you understand. And I don't want this
(21:03):
team to have limitations. I don't want this case to
have limitations. So I have no problem saying this prosecutor
or this detective, or this crime scene person, or my
husband or my two children are smarter than me. That
is the goal, baby, that's the point, no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But let me tell you how I love to watch
you work.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
This is exactly what I like hearing about how great
I am.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Now, Yes, and I hope your wife can hear me
because she needs to recognize I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That she necessarily agrees with everything.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Listen, every time somebody says, oh, Mac, I could listen
to you talk all night. I'll screenshot it and send
it to my husband. He's like, yeah, they're new, you know,
like they don't know. But honestly, here's the deal that
I and again did we've never met. I know you
from TV, so like everybody else, I feel like I
(22:00):
know you.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But here's what I see.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
As soon as you leave the crime scene and you
get back in your patrol car and you're headed back
to the station, you're on the phone.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
You are not wasting any time. You are calling people.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
You're saying, hey, don't you have a ci in that
same neighborhood. Didn't you arrest somebody a month ago in
that neighborhood. Let's get these people out, Let's shake these trees.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Honey.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
You will pull over on the side of the road
to talk to people. I've seen you say hey, come
here and bring somebody over.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
To your car.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You have stopped eating lunch, and I think that is
so critical for young people to watch this because again,
not only is it not nine to five, it is
not even in that eight hours, you may not get
a break.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well, you know, I'll tell you something that, Like I said,
I joined the unit in two thousand and nine, and
I can remember vividly a homicide that I went to
in October of twenty and fourteen, and it was a
case where this gangster and it's still unsolved to this day,
but he got just lit up. He got shot close
to twenty times as he sat in the front seat
(23:05):
of his car. And I remember that case and like
I said, it's still open to this day. And he
was a he was a big time og in the
Hoover crips. And I remember after that case, I tell
I told myself, I said, that's it. I'm not having
another open case period. It's not going to happen again.
And the couple of things that I did is number one.
(23:27):
I stopped I stopped having a something in my eye.
I stopped having a negative attitude about a case when
I started hearing the details about it, I would I
never really wanted to hear all the ins and outs
of it where I'm starting to get this in my mind,
we're never going to solve this case. I didn't want
that as part of insight of my brain. I So
(23:47):
what I did is I had to just say, I'm
going to remain positive. I'm going to have the mindset
that we are going to solve this case. Period, it's
going to happen. And because of that attitude change that
I because I think I ran across a couple of
cases that were just horrible, you know, horrible as far
as nobody talking. It was just miserable. And and I
(24:09):
didn't have an unsolved case, or I didn't have an
unsolved case I think for probably six years after that.
Uh so, which is a lot of luck sprinkled in
there too, mac. You know, people say there's no such
thing as luck. Yes there is, and it does happen.
And I got lucky a few times. But I changed
with the way I was thinking about this and I
and I would just try to continually be positive in
(24:32):
my thinking and positive moving moving the ball forward, always
trying to move that ball forward, and and in doing so,
that's really helped. Now I've had a few, I've had
a few open sins, but but I still live by
that and I try to I try to remain positive,
and I try to tell that and instill that in
those that will listen to me in the office. Now,
I've been in there the second longest actually right now.
(24:54):
Kind of a fun fact is that I've worked the
third most homicides in the city of Tulsa's history, and
so only there's only three of us that have actually
been assigned as the lead detective in Tulsa for over
one hundred murders. And I'm on, I'm number three on
that list, and number one's already retired. So I will
one day, I will fall I'll be the number one guy.
(25:16):
Eventually the number two guy. He's still probably going to
stick around for another year or so, but but I
will eventually pass him, and I will, and I don't
think that's going to happen. I don't think it'll ever
be broken. The reason why I say that is because
I think that the generation of today of detectives, they
seem to move on a lot quicker. They don't hang
out in these in these positions as long. Maybe they're smarter,
maybe they realized that, you know, they don't want the
(25:38):
life sucked out of them over the courts of fifty
twenty years of doing this. But you know, you have
cops of today that they go from one department to
another one. You know that that was unheard of back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Well, I just want to make one thing clear for
everybody listening. The clear rate, for y'all is about ninety
six percent. Now, that is unheard of when nationally you're
looking at sixty two maybe somewhere in there. And I
heard you say something that I thought was so fantastic
that I'm going to quote you. You said, and I quote,
(26:18):
I'm not interested in being ninety seven percent sure. I
want to be one hundred percent sure. So when you've
got somebody that dedicated, listen to me, y'all, this is
not for him about well, I'm just going to go
ahead and arrest this guy for it so I can
get this off my sheet.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And it's close enough. No, he's not about that.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
So when you're looking at that ninety six percent, it's
a solid number.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
No, it is. I mean, we don't lose cases in court.
I mean it happens very very rarely. I've never lost one.
I've never lost a murder trial. Now, a lot of
that has to do with the fact that we have
a tremendous relationship not only with the community, but we've
got a tremendous relationship with the District Attorney's office, and
(27:07):
not just you know, we covered Tulsa, covers like three
different counties or parts of three different counties, the main
one being Tulsa County obviously, but we do touch a
couple of other counties and we have we have an
exceptional relationship with the das in those communities too. So
and the thing that's kind of bizarre about us, and
I don't know if you know this or not, Mac,
but I'll mention it is that here in Tulsa, there
(27:29):
was a Supreme Court ruling that happened probably it's probably
four or five years now, and that happened, and it
basically made eastern Oklahoma, the eastern half of the state
technically almost like Indian Nation again. And what it means
is that originally it was if the victim or the
(27:50):
suspect was Indian, then it would fall under the jurisdiction
of the US Attorney's Office, which means that for a murder,
customarily it would be the FBI that would work those cases. Well,
there's no way in the world that the FBI was
going to It just wasn't going to happen. They it's
too much. It's too much for them to have taken on.
(28:12):
So what they did is that everybody that you see
from our city and from a lot of there's a
lot of cops throughout the eastern part of the state.
We all are task force officers with the FBI, were
task force officers with the US. Marshals were task force officers,
were basically marshals in the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee Indian Nation,
and also we have law enforcement credentials with the Creek
(28:36):
Nation and some of us have Bureau of Indian Affairs
credentials also. And it really doesn't make your job any different.
It just means that you've got a lot of different
jurisdictions that you're dealing with, and it could add a lot,
you know, if you've ever dealt with the US Attorney's Office,
it adds another layer of complexities. Also, it makes it
a little bit more. You know, you're dealing with a
(28:57):
thirty six page search warr't for Facebook, as opposed to
it two page search weren't.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So that's right, that's the best descriptions I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Lord, Yes, you know, so we don't have a team
of FBI guys that are going to show up on
one of our murders. We basically we just do it.
And so now we have the credentials to where we
can do that now. But I mean, it's just kind
of the unique thing that we have to deal with
as well. But I got to say this because I
want to say something else. You know, one of the
things that I love about our police department, and I
(29:31):
sent you that homicide booklet, and I really what that is,
and what I sent to her was a family booklet,
and it's an idea that I came up with. And
the idea was I wanted to you know, when you
give a death notification, the people people would probably retain
roughly ten percent of what you're telling them. I mean,
(29:52):
it's the worst moment of their life, and you're giving
them a lot of information about what the where their
loved one is going to be going, what happened, et cetera,
et cetera, and and so you're trying to explain this
stuff to them, and I got, really, I don't mind
getting phone calls from the family and stuff, but I
but to tell you the truth, it was just so
distracting at times that I was like, we got to
(30:14):
do something better here. So I came up with this idea.
And I was telling my former partner, we don't really
have partners, but a guy that I worked with a lot,
the guy that Rodney Leatherman, he's actually my co host
on my show, and I told him, I said, listen,
this is what I want to do. There were so
many good ideas that we would come up with our
in the car, you know, and one of my ideas
was is I wanted to come up with this idea
(30:35):
of some booklet we could literally hand the family. And
and so he's one of those type of people. Bless
him for this, but he's he's one of those type
of people that he's like, well, let's just just quit
talking about it, let's do it. And so with him
sitting down, and what we did is we just came
up with this booklet. And I think when you see
it and you'll look through that, steal that idea, Cheryl,
(30:56):
feel free to share it with everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I already I didn't just look at it. I read
it and here's what jumped out at me. And I
appreciate you saying go ahead and steal it. Because I'm
going to anyway. But what you did in the very beginning,
you even told them the statistics. You told them the
report number, you told them the detective's name. You gave
them all the information about victim's assistant. You told them
(31:20):
about financial things that they could apply for. You told
them what vine was. You went through the whole thing
about what the court hearing is going to be like,
and what's going to happen there, what to do about
trying to clean up the crime scene. I mean, honey,
you told them every single thing, including money for a
reward from crime stoppers. You didn't leave anything out.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, how about how about grief counseling.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Coat counseling. It's in there.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Business stuff that people need to know and then and
that's right. And so when you're when you when you
show up at their house, you could very easily give
them a business card. And that business card is going
to disappear. They're going to lose it. They're not going
to lose that booklet. And so I since I've been
fortunate enough to be able to teach throughout the country,
I always take a stack of that I take I
(32:08):
take a good amount of those with me everywhere I go,
and since I've been teaching everywhere, they're handing those booklets
out in Sacramento County, They're handing them out in North Dakota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas,
and I love it. Delaware is another place, and I
love it because, uh, that's what it's about. You know,
(32:30):
we should be sharing really good ideas. And then the second,
the second thing I wanted to mention too that I
rarely ever talk about this and I and I and
I wanted to mention it here because I love as
a homicide detective specifically, and really this isn't geared for
homicide exclusively. This is for anybody that it doesn't even
need to be law enforcement. It's whatever career that you're in.
(32:54):
Don't just do what is the bare minimum. Do try
to be better. I mean, think up innovative ideas, et cetera.
And one of the things that we did on our
department is I remember myself and Ronnie were Ronnie Leather
when we're sitting at a clandestine grave class. And for
your listeners, that is a shallow grave class. It's like,
you know what, when people kill somebody, they're going to
(33:14):
stick them in a shallow grave. So it's a class
about that. And while we were sitting there, I was like,
you know, this would be really neat to I wonder
if we can get a body, where would we get
a body at? And so then I came back down
to reality and I was like, there's no way in
the world we're ever going to have the city of
Tulsa approve us to start a body farm of our own.
Number one, Where in the heck are we going to
get a person? You know, that's just not going to happen.
(33:36):
But the closest thing to that is a pig. And
so we went ahead and did that, and we got
a pig, and we took it out to the range
and we already had a whole dug and we dug
it two feet deep because that's what most people do.
They did it usually two feet because they're so lazy.
And we just did all this stuff, and then we
had the range shoot it with whatever they wanted to
(33:57):
shoot it with, and we even close clothes the pig,
and we put clothes on this thing and et cetera.
And then we threw it in the hole and then
we monitored it with a with a trail cam, and
we got the city to buy both of those, at
the pig and the trail cam, and we just studied it,
and nobody was telling us to do this stuff. But
I've always thought for my whole career, I've always thought
(34:17):
you shouldn't, especially in homicide or if you're in crime
scene and you know this and me being a former
crime scene person, if you're in those positions, you have
an obligation to continue your education and to continue to
try to do things like that. And if if you're
just sitting back there and just sitting around doing nothing
and playing on your phone, that's not that you can't
(34:38):
do that. In those positions, you have an obligation to
continue your learning. So, believe it or not, we actually
the first forty eight actually filmed. They filmed us exhooming
that that pig, but you will never see it on
TV because the thing of it is is that people
they can see all kinds of stuff of death and
destruction to the human beings, and that won't bother them.
(34:59):
But you put up an a animal, oh my gosh,
the switchboard would go nuts. People would be complaining. But anyway,
it was a neat experiment and It's something that I
always try to tell people, Hey, think if you've got
an idea, think up how to do it, and and
and try. And that's how good things happen. And it
(35:20):
was a fun experiment.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You and I have something else in coming, and that's
visiting historical crum scenes, whether it's in Cold Blood or
Manson or Delphi. And I preach all the time, nothing
takes the place a walk in that scene.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Nothing, nothing, I'll tell you what, just specifically on that.
I still am constantly watching the Lobyanca House from the
Manson murders and it's it's located at thirty three eleven
Waverley Driving in Los Filees, which is located in LA
And I'm telling you the moment that thing turns, if
it ever turns into an airb or a VRBO, I
(36:01):
am renting that thing for at least one night. I
don't know that I can fall asleep in that house,
but I am going to rent that house and I'm
going to illumine all it. I'm not telling them I'm
doing this, of course, but I'm going to illumine all
it just to see if it luminesss over fifty years.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Jason I'm so in. I am so in we will
have that mother tonight.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Would that not be cool?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I'm telling it again, Think what you could learn.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, I think it'd be a fun experiment.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
It would be a great experiment because we already know
that in cold cases they've gotten DNA that was usable
to develop a profile after fifty years. So let's see
if we can go find some and see if the
light up. That would be remarkable.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
It would be And I just I'd kind of alluded
to this or mentioned something about this a little bit
ago where I said something about just the advances in
the world of forensics. You know, in the state of Oklahoma,
by twenty twenty seven, we are mandated that we're going
to have handheld DNA. And I when I was they
were telling me about this, I'm like, are you kidding me?
(37:03):
I mean, here I am supposedly and this is the
story I heard, So it may not be completely accurate,
but basically, they're able to scan blood at a scene
and you could literally go in and compare that to
the guy's DNA sitting in an interview room and see
if it's a match. I'm just like, remarkable, it is
remarkable and you know when with snapshot, the pair bond, snapshot,
(37:26):
DNA and and things along that, that line where you
could literally get a person's picture of what they look
like at twenty five years old is fascinating. And then
and then the frenzy genealogy, which is a world that's exploding.
I mean, if it wasn't for that, then that Idaho
case would still be open to this to this day.
And and I think that in that case, and even
(37:47):
that that Long Island Killer, I think they probably get
some friends of genealogy on that.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I would assume, Oh they did, I can guarantee it.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
And you've got groups like authorm that have changed the
game to where we used to have that you know,
we had to have fifteen hundred whatever in a sample.
Now we only have to have four or something insane,
and they can still develop a profile. I mean, it's
crazy to me where we are absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Well, I'm writing that. I'm writing that name down because
I have not heard of that company.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And it's offer from O th r Am and it's
doctor David Middleman. Yeah, you need to know them. Yeah,
they're a one stop shop, so they can get your sample,
they can do the coder's route or the genealogy route,
they are magnificent.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I sometimes wonder. There's been times when I've had a
case where we just didn't get a good profile, and
I'm like, how in the world how did we not?
I mean, I've had a couple of brutal rape well
one of them was mine, which was a brutal rape
murder where I know that this person was disorganized, wasn't
wearing gloves, it was I just know that there had
(38:59):
to have been some DNA transfer and the results that
we got back were not as good as you would think.
And but you know, you never know what the technology
is going to be in fifteen more years. Can you
imagine where we're going to be ten years from now
or fifteen years from now? My goodness, I mean, look
where we've come already, and it's actually exciting to see,
(39:21):
and I'm glad to see that we're getting We're getting
better and better.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Let me ask you this, is there any final fault
that you want to be sure that you say to
either rookie detectives or rookies period or prosecutors, anything you
want to say at all.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
I think that for the young detectives and stuff. What
I would tell there's two things that I'm going to
mention is number one, and these are things that I
learned from my dad. My dad was a California highway
patrolman and he always I don't think he was really
super excited about the fact that I wanted to get
into law enforcement, but once I did, and what I've
done in my career, he's been he's you know, he's
(39:56):
my biggest fan, easily. But the number one thing is
he would always tell me is shut your mouth and listen.
And this is the censored version of what he would
tell me, but basically, just shut your mouth and listen
to people that know what they're talking about. You don't
know what you're talking about, so listen and learn. That's
(40:18):
number one. And then the second piece of advice that
he told me, that's even more important than that, that
I really try to tell everybody no matter where I'm teaching,
whether it be at the academy or wherever, and that
is make sure that your badge is the same size
it was the day they issued it to you, not
five sizes too big. Meaning treat people right. It doesn't
(40:40):
say anywhere in the rule book that you can't be
nice to people, all right. I'm not advocating back rubs
in the community. That's not me. But I'm telling you,
if you just treat people right, you'd be amazed at
what you'll get back. And you know, and that's one
of those things that I would talk to young people about,
just tell them to because you know, you know as
well as I do, MAC that the communication skills of
the people coming into the business today are diminished compared
(41:04):
to you know, I don't think any of those kids
that are that are joining the police academy had a telephone,
a landline number one, number two. They certainly didn't have
a phone cord that was over one hundred feet long
and your parents yelling at you, going get off the phone.
They just don't communicate like that anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
You know, that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
But you know, we also didn't have a phone in
our hand at a party. We didn't have a phone
in our hand. At church, we didn't have a phone
in our hand at family union. We grew up talking
to people, all kinds of people all the time.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Hey, you can get to the bus stop in the morning,
and what did you do you were talking? Now, you
watch everybody at a bus stop. It's almost it's almost,
it's actually disappointing to see, but everybody is not even communicating.
They're sitting there looking at their own phones.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And they're losing vital time where they could be training,
literally training for this job.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
That's right, So I'll if hopefully the young detective and
I haven't, Like I said, I'm not, I don't, I'm
not all knowing. But those are the things that I
was fortunate enough to be a crisis negotiator, so I
got some enhanced skills as far. I got some additional
training when it comes to communicating, and I think that's
a big deal. So as a police officer, you know,
(42:19):
you really need to work on your ability to communicate
with people and talk to people and become really really
good at I don't really look at him as an interrogation.
I look at it more it's more of a conversation.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Really well, you know, you also, in that regard did
something brilliant and I'm going to sound like a hypocrite,
so thank you for that, Jason. But you realized at
a scene that it was going to be easier for
the person that had taken folks hostage for you to
text him instead of call him. So, even though that
might not have been your first go to, because you're
(42:52):
a phone person, you're a great communicator to that person.
He needed you to text him, and you understood that.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Well, tell you something, Maca. This is I don't know
that I'll ever be able to do this on a murder,
but if it was some case that really was not
going anywhere, I've always wanted to just try this to
where I just do an interview all in texting, just
to see because sometimes you know what I've made some
of these people that you're dealing with there, they're just
(43:21):
there just to see where it got you. But no,
I appreciate that, and that that that by doing that,
that you know, people just don't answer their phone. If
they don't recognize the number, even though it's even though
it's a standoff hostage situation. They don't recognize the number,
they're likely not going to pick it up. And furthermore,
people of today really don't even listen to their voicemails anymore.
(43:43):
So I knew that if this guy's phone is working,
why not text him. I mean, he's going to get
it and he's going to read it. And sure enough,
he did, and that really opened the lines of communication,
because in that world, if they are not talking to you,
you are in real, real trouble. And if you can
get them to talk to either, you're going to be
able to be successful getting that individual out of that
situation about ninety or ninety five percent of the time.
(44:06):
So it's a big deal when you get them to communicate,
whether you know and so that that was a huge deal.
But I appreciate you noticing that.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Well to take to Jason White. I could talk to
you all night long.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I just admire you and I respect you, and I
appreciate it. And I do get to Tulsa every now
and then, and I will be calling you for dinner,
so we will have a great time and I will
finally meet you in person. But I just appreciate you
sharing with us tonight, and you know, I'm looking forward
to making you a part of my Zone seven Sugar perfect.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I love it, and I definitely consider you a friend.
And thank you so much, Max for having me as
part of your show. And it's well respected and I
feel really I'm just thankful, So thank.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
You very much, y'all.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I'm end Zone seven the way that I always do
with a quote. I have a theory that the truth
is never told during the nine to five hours Hunter S.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Thompson. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
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