commentary by Patrick H. Moore
In the world of capital crime, there may be nothing more fascinating than The Cold Case. The term itself conjures up dark, hidden mystery suspended in time yet forgotten by everyone except the family of the victims, the perpetrators, any determined detectives who refuse to throw in the towel and continue working on the case, and of course diehard crime fans who have memories like the proverbial elephant and never forget an unsolved murder.
One of the curious things about The Cold Case is that even if the resourceful detectives do ultimately bring it to closure, not everyone is going to agree that they got it right. Such would seem to be the case with the brutal murder and disfigurement of a lovely 14-year-old-girl named Claire Hough, whose young life came to an end at Torrey Pines State Beach in San Diego on August 24, 1984. It was death by strangulation with, for good measure, her left breast cut entirely away with fingernail marks lashing her body, according to the autopsy report.
In an excellent San Diego Union-Tribune article dated October 23rd, Kristina Davis and Lyndsay Winkley skillfully break down the case:
For 30 years, investigators worked to unravel the mystery of who killed 14-year-old Claire Hough as she smoked cigarettes and listened to cassettes at Torrey Pines State Beach.
On Thursday, San Diego police said they believe one of the suspected killers was working among them as a criminalist in the same police lab where evidence of the teen’s brutal slaying was examined and stored.
The case was solved largely though DNA matches analyzed in 2012 which established both men’s DNA matched samples taken from the teen’s body. There has apparently never been much other solid evidence pointing a finger at any alleged killers.
According to the authorities, the criminalist in question, Kevin Charles Brown, 62, who retired from the police department in 2002, killed himself this week as officers were closing in to arrest him.
One of the facts which could cast some doubt upon the investigators conclusions is the fact that there is apparently no evidence connecting Brown to the second alleged killer, Ronald Clyde Tatro
“Tatro, is also dead, having drowned in an apparent boating accident in Tennessee in 2011.”
Playing it cool, on Thursday when the case broke, police refused to speculate as to whether the two men had any type of relationship. On the surface, however, “they appeared to lead very different lives.”
For starters, Tatro’s history suggests a possible serial rapist. Not only did he have a lengthy criminal record, but in 1985, one year after Claire Hough’s violent death, Tatro, who was 43 at the time, “was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and trying to rape a 16-year-old girl in La Mesa, police said. He coaxed her into his van and tried to subdue her with a stun gun, but she screamed and managed to get away.”
This brave teen who refused to be raped and escaped, also managed to give officers Tatro’s license plate number. As police prepared to swoop in, the 16-year-old’s assailant, displaying anything but bravery, slit both his wrists. He got away with pleading to a lesser charge of felony false imprisonment and was sentenced to a mere three years in prison.
Compared to Tatro, Brown’s history is the essence of stability. He worked as a criminalist, first in Mew Mexico for two years, “then for the next 20 years at the San Diego Police Department.” While with SDPD, “he worked in many parts of the lab over the years, from firearms to trace evidence.”
Claire Hough’s death had mystified and frustrated detectives for decades, but what little evidence there is suggested she walked down to the beach that evening to smoke cigarettes and listen to music.
Her body was discovered on a towel under the Old Highway 101 bridge by a passer-by about 5 a.m on the morning after her murder, with a radio, cigarettes and matches nearby.
No one knows for sure why the teen took the short stroll from her grandparents Del Mar Heights home to the beach that fated evening, but her bereaved father reported that she would take similar jaunts down to the bay from her home in Cranston, Rhode Island. In any event, the authorities do not believe there was any coercion involved in her decision to walk down to the Torrey Pines beach. Her grandparents didn’t realize she was missing until 9 am the next morning.
Claire’s family expressed their appreciation to the detectives on Thursday.
“In a way, it doesn’t make any difference who killed her,” her father, Samuel Hough, said from his Rhode Island home. “She’s dead and there’s nothing we can do about that. The important thing for us is what she was and what she became — the fact that she was so positive, so rich, at the time that she died.”
However, Kevin Brown’s widow, Rebecca Brown, is having none of it, claiming this is a clear case of DNA contamination because of her husband’s proximity to the evidence in the Police crime lab.
“The police have hounded my husband all year, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown and killed himself,” Rebecca Brown said Thursday. “They kept hounding him on something he didn’t do. He’s a good, kind, sweet, gentle man.”
San Diego Police Department homicide Capt. Al Guaderrama dismissed Rebecca’s allegations, stating Brown had never been assigned to any part of the Claire Hough investigation and was in no way associated with any of the evidence processed.
“We do not believe that there was any type of contamination in this case at all,” Capn. Guaderrama said. (Well of course not. Even if there was contamination, which is probably not the case here, there’s no guarantee that anyone would report it.)
Most of you reading this post have probably never been in trouble with the law, although a few of you may have been. Having worked with up to 200 criminals over the past 11 years, I can state without reservation that there is no worse feeling than having law enforcement come to your home with a search warrant. Many suspects never fully recover from the shock of hearing that knock on the door, which in some instances is more of a pounding.
Brown’s Chula Vista home was searched on January 9th and I suspect the knock was probably reasonably polite, given his long history of working for SDPD. Rebecca Brown recalls:
“It shocked the whole family.” Investigators seized numerous items: computers, old photo albums, cameras, her mother’s cookbook.
Capn. Guaderrama reports that the DNA match had spurred an exhaustive investigation including interviews around the country, probably mostly having to do with alleged co-killer Tatro. 30-year-old evidence was re-examined.
Although the Captain didn’t specify what precisely it consisted of, he did say several pieces of evidence were found.
After the initial knock/search/seizure, Brown was questioned multiple times throughout the year. So were his family members, friends and neighbors. According to his criminal defense lawyer, Gretchen von Helms, Brown suffered from bouts of anxiety and depression.
Von Helms also stated that Brown passed an independent polygraph test administered by a former police officer. (Of course, polygraph tests are rarely admitted into evidence at trial though they can occasionally play a part at sentencing.
“They haven’t believed him and they’ve kept at it,” his wife said. “They just pushed my husband to an early grave.”
When Rebecca Brown went to work at Mater Dei Catholic High School, where she teaches, last Monday morning, Brown was still in bed. After Rebecca left, he got up, dressed and told his live-in mother-in-law that he had things to do.
He certainly did. His body was found on Tuesday, hanging from a tree at Cuyamaca State Park on Highway 79 near mile marker 7.25, according to Capn. Guaderrama, who has told his widow that no suicide note was found.
* * * * *
Solid DNA evidence, which was presumably present in this case, certainly cannot be taken lightly. What makes me suspect that Brown may well be one of Claire Hough’s co-killers, however, is the fact that under duress, rather than hang on and fight it out at trial, he chose instead to end his life. If he was innocent, he almost certainly would have gone to trial, alleged DNA evidence notwithstanding, wouldn’t he have?
On the other hand, he could have been an unstable personality, but even those types rarely kill themselves when under police duress. Rather, they stew and suffer and complain endlessly.
From my own personal standpoint, I am every bit as comfortable with a case never being solved as I am with definitive closure which I instinctively distrust. But that’s just me. I’m very aware that most people want to place their faith in the “facts” and prefer closure in criminal investigations.
I was probably damaged by going to college and graduate school in the late 1980s when Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism were all the rage and Undecidability was the order of the day. As an old man, I chuckle at what I imbibed at the university back then but it does, alas, seem to have perhaps taken a toll on me.
Or maybe it’s just that I like the mystery of the chase which closure irrevocably puts an end to…