ABSTRACT
Investigators understand the importance of conducting their analyses in a manner that will lead to the arrest and prosecution of the guilty while at the same time protecting the innocent. Most investigators are competent, dedicated professionals who want to solve their cases and arrest the right people (Rossmo, 2006), but sometimes they can become ensnared in the subtle hazards and traps to which all investigations are exposed. The chances for a miscarriage of justice increase proportionately with the degree that reliable investigative and analytical methodologies are ignored, marginalized, or subverted. This case demonstrates how a flawed investigation led to the indictment of three innocent teenagers. A subsequent thorough investigation prevented the ultimate miscarriage of justice by bringing the true killer to justice, but not before the original investigators and the FBI, experiencing a type of institutional folie à deux, devastated the lives of three young men and their families. It took years to reveal how a cascading series of errors, including anchor traps, tunnel vision, groupthink, belief perseverance, ego, and other pitfalls, put the initial investigation on the wrong course and then locked it into a fatal tail spin. I have been involved in this case for a number of years and have provided expert testimony regarding many of the issues. I offer the following assessment in an attempt to present an educational note to law enforcement on how to identify, understand, and, hopefully, avoid these errors.
