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Datum: Sonntag, den 13. Juni 2004, um 16:14 Uhr

Betrifft: Utahs "Superman" im Ruhestand!

Diesen Artikel fand ich in der heutigen Ausgabe der Salt Lake Tribune:

Retiring sergeant’s career is linked to some of SLC’s most notorious criminal investigations

Retiring Salt Lake City police Sgt. Don Bell, beneath a favorite quote by Dante. (Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune)

By Matt Canham
The Salt Lake Tribune

Looking at it as a nice addition to his rÃ©sumÃ©, a 21-year-old Don Bell signed up for the police academy on Nov. 8, 1971. He planned to stop crime for two years before pursuing other interests, maybe even law school.
Thirty-two years, nine months and 27 days later, Salt Lake City police Sgt. Don Bell, 54, will retire. His last day is June 11.
Bell’s career spans some of the most heinous and high-profile cases in Salt Lake City’s history and invariably Bell found himself entangled in the investigation -- from notorious forger Mark Hofmann to the Unabomber to the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. Along the way, Bell forged a reputation as a top investigator with a knack for interviewing everyone from child victims to serial killers.
Known by friends as D.B., Bell has investigated just about every form of crime, although sexual assaults are his specialty. He has taught new recruits since the 1980s, turned himself into the department’s Miranda expert and was even the hero of a made-for-television movie.
His reputation among most colleagues is stellar, but there are detractors -- chief among them Mayor Rocky Anderson.
"I think some people like me and some people hate me," Bell said. "But there is nobody who can compare their record with mine."

Starting off: The youngest recruit at the time, Bell says at the academy he was an "anti-war guy surrounded by Vietnam vets." The command structure of police work contradicted his nature, but he liked being paid to go to school. He received $528 a month along with a $15 uniform allowance.
While most graduates joined patrol, responding to calls, he was diverted to the traffic division. The move "sorely disappointed" Bell. He now considers it the "greatest thing that ever happened to me as an officer."
At the time, traffic division work was a step toward detective. After 14 months, he traded in his uniform for the undercover duds worn by vice and narcotics cops.
In 1973, he grew his hair out, hung out at bars and tried to buy drugs.
"I excelled in that assignment," Bell deadpans.
Still dressed in his undercover clothes, Bell met his future wife at a family wedding. Their first date -- a trip to San Francisco -- lasted four days. Don and Kris Bell have now been married for 29 years and have two adult daughters.

Master interviewer: No matter the assignment, administrators normally used Bell as a floater, assisting novice detectives on big cases where his attention to detail, disarming personality and knack for coaxing confessions from suspects proved invaluable.
In July 1983, former Police Chief Bud Willoughby asked him to help Detective Steve Smith find the 13-year-old runaway son of a prominent woman. Bell balked, but ultimately promised to look at the case of Graeme Cunningham, whose mother was convinced Graeme didn’t run away.
She was right.
Bell and Smith tracked down a series of leads culminating in the July 24 interview of a man they knew as Roger Downs.
Downs real name was Arthur Gary Bishop and after six hours of interrogation, Bishop confessed to Bell about killing five boys, including Cunningham. Bishop, a pedophile who sexually assaulted some of the boys after killing them, was executed for his crimes on June 10, 1988.
The Bishop case still haunts Bell, partly because Bishop seemed so normal. He was an Eagle Scout, a returned Mormon missionary and a good student. Interviewing Bishop drained Bell, but it also showed him the killer’s human side.
"Art could tell jokes better than anyone I knew," Bell said.
Ken Wallentine, the attorney for the police academy, says one of Bell’s best qualities is his sensitivity to victims and suspects.
"He is able to perceive people’s emotions," Wallentine said.
The same skills came in handy in September 1991, when Bell, a trained hostage negotiator, assisted Sandy police in an 18-hour standoff at Alta View Hospital.
Frustrated that he couldn’t find the doctor who tied his wife’s fallopian tubes two years earlier, Richard L. Worthington took a group of hostages and killed a nurse.
A number of police agencies responded in what Bell calls "the most embarrassing amount of infighting I have ever seen in my life." Bell eventually talked Worthington into surrendering.
The siege at Alta View became a television movie with Terry O’Quinn playing Bell, who was a consultant for the movie.
Over the years, Bell has been criticized by some of his peers for keeping a cozy relationship with the media.
"A number of people in the department can’t stand Don," said Sgt. Jerry Mendez, one of Bell’s closest colleagues. "They think he is a media hound."
But that’s a misperception, say Mendez and Wallentine. Bell will talk to reporters, but he doesn’t try to take the glory from his co-workers, they say.

Superman and sexual assaults: Bell spent a third of his career leading the sex crimes unit, a position he first took because no one else would.
Colleagues say he was able to stay in such an emotionally demanding position for so long because of his sense of humor and the rewards of helping victims.
"I call him Superman," said Susanne Mitchell, director of the Children’s Justice Center. "He approaches them at their level."
Bell took over the sex crimes unit for the second time in 1994 and wanted to retire from the post. When work started to lose its fun just before the 2002 Winter Olympics, he almost hung up his gun and badge.
But one more high-profile case was in his future.

Last big case: Bell should have had nothing to do with the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, but on the morning of June 5, 2002, the homicide sergeant had pneumonia, so Bell got the call.
He led the investigation until pneumonia struck him on Sept. 3. Bell helped identify Richard Ricci as the main suspect, a theory that turned out to be wrong.
After Elizabeth was discovered walking down State Street in Sandy on March 12, 2003, with religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Bell was criticized for his handling of his case. In response, Mayor Anderson created an independent commission to probe the mishandling of the Smart case, as well as a series of unsolved murders from the 1980s.
While Anderson said Bell was not the target, Bell was in charge of every case under review.
He took it as a slap in the face. "I was blindsided when it came out," Bell said. Although he had planned to retire that year, he stayed on. "I didn’t want to make it look like I tucked tail and ran."
Bell and Anderson have never met and only talked on the phone once, but the animosity is still ripe.
"I have given far more back to this community than he could if elected to two more terms," Bell said.
Anderson, in turn, said he doesn’t "respect" Bell. "Don Bell doth protest a bit too much."
The mayor, who was the attorney for some of the murder victims’ families and a small group of former police officers say Bell’s focus on the wrong suspect compromised the murder investigations now under review.
On the Smart case, Bell and his supervisor at the time, Cory Lyman, who today is the chief of police in Ketchum, Idaho, say such criticism is unfounded. By the time information about Mitchell surfaced in October 2003, Bell was off the case.
Still, in May 2003, Bell says Anderson filed an internal affairs complaint alleging that he broke police policy by releasing confidential information about the Smart investigation. The internal affairs division conducted a monthlong investigation before finding each claim unfounded.
Because internal affairs cases are personnel matters, Anderson could not comment.
Elizabeth’s father Ed Smart is more circumspect than Anderson. "Really in my heart," he said, "I believe Don tried to do what he thought was best."
Once cleared, Lt. Sam Hemingway asked Bell if he would join internal affairs. Bell agreed, believing Anderson’s commission had undermined his ability to work criminal cases.
"It is too bad it had to end that way," he said.

Passing it on: Bell will keep active after retirement by teaching at the state’s police academy, where he has been an instructor since the mid-1980s.
The "consummate storyteller," according to Salt Lake City police Lt. Kyle Jones, Bell also plans to write a book from a series of journals he has kept since 1977.
His memoir will include undisclosed information on some of the city’s biggest cases. Not to mention the time he stopped the bank robber who had nearly $1 million in a stolen car. Or the time he worked out of a hotel for a number of days because someone in the department was robbing banks and he didn’t know who to trust. And most likely the case of an aide to Gov. Cal Rampton caught by Bell in a Pioneer Park bathroom in a lewd act.
In a career that has spanned nearly 33 years, Bell has plenty of stories to tell.
mcanham@sltrib.com
Tribune reporter Heather May contributed to this story.

Quelle: http://www.sltr.com/2004/May/05162004/Utah/166945.asp

Einer Der wenigen, die in Utah etwas gwetan haben, um Verbrechen an Frauen und Kindern aufzuklÃ¤hren, bzw. einzudÃ¤mmen!

Mr. Bell, Sie haben meinen Respekt!