“Authentic…part memoir, part reference and such a great read!”

an excerpt from

Secrets of a Real-Life
Female Private Eye
by Colleen Collins

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Popular Misconceptions About Female Private Eyes

The First Private Investigations Agency

Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

A Possible Photo of Kate Warne

The End of Kate’s Career

Chapter 2 Being a 21st-Century Female P.I.

What Is It Like Being a Female Private Eye?

Is It Dangerous to Be a Female Private Eye?

Chapter 3 Is It Advantageous to be a Female P.I.?

Do Clients Prefer Female P.I.s?

Emotional Management

When Lawyers Call on Female Investigators for Services

Chapter 4 Tools of the Trade

Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool

How Our Private Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade

I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car

Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious

Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps

Chapter 5 Rock n’ Rollin’ with the Cases

“Danger” The Flirts, 80s disco song

Power Plays in Murder: Three Cases

Stalked Online by a Disgruntled Subject

Stalked Online by a Cyberstalker

Tracking a Felon Across Three Counties

The Violent Side of Process Services

“GhostBusters” (Who you gonna call?)

What Is a Paranormal Investigator?

My Informal Investigations at Various Haunted Hotels

Related Articles and Resources on Paranormal Investigations

“Undercover Agent for the Blues”

The Best Disguise in the World

Bored to Death: A Private Eye’s Bad Undercover Techniques

The Day I Worked Undercover as a Golfer

The Night I Worked Undercover as a Pole Dancer

How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?

The Case of the Stolen Marijuana Brownies

Merry Christmas! You’ve Been Served!

My Husband’s in the Alley Going for Krispy Kremes!

The Day I Learned to Respect Ace Ventura, Pet Detective

Flying Burritos and a Rolling Surveillance

The Day The Sheriffs Escorted Us to Another County

When the Amazing Race Reality Show Called and Invited Us to Audition

Chapter 6 Tips from a P.I.

Finding People: A Few Free Online Searches

Finding the Name Behind a Bogus Internet ID

Googling Made Easy: A Few Search Tips

How to Defeat a Cyberstalker

How to Find a Court File

How to Find a Lost Pet

How to Minimize Bad Reviews on Google

How to Protect Yourself from Cell Phone Theft

How to Remove Your Name Being Tagged on the Internet

How to Send an Untraceable Email

Chapter 7 Coming Full Circle

Appendix A: Favorite Sites

Appendix B: Articles on Private Investigations

Appendix C: Three TV Female Private Eyes

The Thin Man TV Series: Nora Charles

Honey West: TV’s First Reel Private Dickette

Moonlighting: Maddie Hayes

Appendix D: Lady Sleuth Cocktails

Book Excerpt How to Write a Dick: a Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman

Book Excerpt How Do Private Eyes Do That? by Colleen Collins

Chapter 1
History of the Female Private Eye

Private investigators have captured our interest and imagination for years. Edgar Allan Poe, the father of detective fiction, first wrote about private investigators in his 1841 novel, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, where he introduced us to the fictional detective Augueste C. Dupin. Some claim Poe’s inspiration for Dupin was the first real-life ex-con French private investigator, Eugene Francois Vidocq.

The First Private Investigations Agency

Born in 1775, Eugène François Vidocq lived a colorful life that included stints in jail throughout his twenties. In the early 1800s, Vidocq offered his spy services to the Paris police. Because of his often-successful criminal past, they figured he was the perfect for the job and hired him. By 1812, he started Sûreté, the first criminal investigative unit within a police department. By 1820, this unit boasted thirty men, many of whom were ex-cons. Sûreté served as the inspiration for Scotland Yard and, some claim, for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as well.

In 1833, Vidocq established the first known private detective agency, Le Bureau Des Renseignments (Office of Intelligence), again hiring ex-cons. Local law enforcement weren’t very happy with his new enterprise. Rather than hire women to conduct investigations that required a female, Vidocq adopted the dress and mannerisms of women himself.

A little over twenty years later, Allan Pinkerton, who founded Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, hired the first female private eye, Kate Warne.

Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

In 1850, Allen Pinkerton established a private security force to investigate various railway and industrial crimes, which eventually led to his agency investigating criminal cases as well. At times, when public police organizations’ forces were insufficient, they also used private services such as Pinkerton’s. Over time, the Pinkerton operatives also assisted in the investigation of international crimes as there were no such investigative agencies equipped to do so.

The Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency coined the logo “We Never Sleep” along with an open eye (hence, the now-popular term “private eye”).

Pinkerton’s business card, with the motto “We Never Sleep”

In 1850 (some sources say in the early 1850s), Allan Pinkerton and a partner established the North-Western Police Agency outside Chicago, one of the first private detective agencies in the U.S.

As I learned starting a private detective agency, it’s one thing to open such a business, another to successfully market it. Although there were other private detective agencies starting during Pinkerton’s era, his became the premiere agency because of his marketing acumen. Didn’t hurt that he had connections in high places: At the Rock Island and Illinois Central Railroad for which Pinkerton had previously investigated numerous cargo theft cases, he had the support of the president of the company, George McClellan, later Major General George B. McClellan in the Civil War, and McClellan’s attorney, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.  Both McClellan and Lincoln agreed to use Pinkerton’s private investigation services.

Kate Warne Demanded to Be a Private Detective

In 1856, Allan Pinkerton hired his first female private eye, Kate Warne. Within the U.S., she is widely acknowledged to be the first female private investigator.

There is little biographical information about Kate Warne, although sources claim she was born in 1833 in New York, and her husband died soon after they were married.  She had no children. Some people think Kate made up this back history for herself because single women during this era who were intent on having their own careers, especially in a field dominated by men, courted scandal.

In 1856, she apparently responded to an ad for detectives at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. In his book Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches, Pinkerton describes Kate as “a slender, brown haired woman, graceful in her movements and self-possessed. Her features, although not what could be called handsome, were decidedly of an intellectual cast… her face was honest, which would cause one in distress instinctly to select her as a confidante.”

Pinkerton presumed she was there to inquire about a clerical job. She wasn’t. He later wrote that he “was surprised to learn Kate was not looking for clerical work, but was actually answering an advertisement for detectives he had placed in a Chicago newspaper. At the time, such a concept was almost unheard of. Pinkerton said ‘It is not the custom to employ women detectives!’ Kate argued her point of view eloquently — pointing out that women could be ‘most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective.’ A woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence. Men become braggarts when they are around women who encourage them to boast. Kate also noted, ‘Women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers.’”

Pinkerton eventually hired her as his first female detective on August 23, 1856.

By 1860, Pinkerton had hired several more women to be detectives, calling them his “Female Detective Bureau.” Warne became the supervisor of the Female Detective Bureau.

She played a key role in numerous investigations. In 1858, she participated in the Adams Express Company embezzlement case in which an expressman, Mr. Maroney, was suspected of stealing $50,000 from the company. Warne, whose skillset included adapting accents and different disguises, befriended Maroney’s wife and through her, accrued evidence about his theft that eventually led to Mr. Maroney’s conviction (he was sentenced to 10 years in prison). Thanks to Warne, $39,515 of the stolen money was returned to the Adams Express Company.

Pinkerton and Warne often represented themselves as a married couple to gain entry to certain social circles and situations.

Warne Helped Thwart an Assassination Attempt on Lincoln

Perhaps Kate Warne’s most famous case was her role in helping foil an assassination attempt on President-elect Abraham Lincoln during his travels to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s website article “Saving Mr. Lincoln,” Warne accompanied Pinkerton, and four other operatives from his agency, to Baltimore where Pinkerton had heard a plot to assassinate Lincoln would take place.  According to other sources, she both helped to coordinate the operatives as well as to devise a strategy for getting Lincoln safely from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.

Different sources refer to Lincoln’s fervent opposition to the investigators’ strategy, which required him to go undercover, because he didn’t want people to view him as cowardly.  But Pinkerton, Warne and others had enough evidence of a plot to convince Lincoln to go along with their plan.  In it, he played Warne’s invalid brother, whom she was taking by street car to Washington, D.C.  Warne must have had an appealing, charming personality because this was one of several incidences in which she cajoled people to do her bidding.  In this particular case, she convinced the conductor to leave the back door of the street car open so her sickly brother could enter the compartment with privacy.

That night, as the carriage traveled to Washington, D.C., Warne, Pinkerton, another operative named George Bangs and a personal friend of the President’s, Warren Hill Lamon, took turns staying up all night to guard the President-elect. In a sense, she was one of the models for the future Secret Service.

A Possible Photo of Kate Warne

Considering she excelled in her profession as a private detective, often going undercover for cases, it’s not such a surprise that there are no known photos of her.  I know P.I.s who specialize in undercover work and surveillances, and they take care to not post photos, or have public pictures taken of them, to maintain their anonymity. This appears to have been Kate’s approach, too.

However, many believe there is one photo of her, in disguise as a Union solider, in the below photo (she’s the “man” standing behind Pinkerton, the bearded gentleman seated on the right):

Possible photograph of Kate Warne (standing behind Pinkerton)

Why do people think the soft-faced soldier is Kate Warne?  She was known to have been traveling with Pinkerton at this time.  The person has no facial hair, and the physicality matches Kate’s (slim, brown hair).

The End of Kate’s Career

On January 28, 1868, Kate Warne passed away suddenly at the age of 35 from pneumonia. Pinkerton was at her bedside.  She is buried in the Pinkerton family plot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Pinkerton is laid to rest next to her.

In his memoirs, Pinkerton credited two of his operatives for establishing the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an efficient, honorable organization: Timothy Webster, an agent who was executed during the Civil War for espionage, and Kate Warne.

Chapter 2
Being a 21st-Century Female P.I.

What Is It Like Being a Female Private Eye?

Despite the thousands of private investigators throughout the U.S. (PI Magazine estimates there to be approximately 60,000), and the wide variety of specializations (from insurance investigators to accident reconstruction specialists to pet detectives), many people still view private investigators as Sam Spade clones.  Meaning, they’re men, they’re tough, they carry heat, they talk like Bogie.

Ah, the lasting allure of noir.

Busting a Few Myths

Just as not all school teachers or plumbers or attorneys are tough, not all private investigators are tough. Tough as in (to quote the fictional private eye Sam Spade) “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.”

But if we’re talking tough in terms of being a successful business person (handling day-to-day business, managing clients and subcontractors, making more money coming in than going out), then yes, qualified, experienced private investigators are tough.  Carrying guns?  Some private investigators do, many don’t.  And although most P.I.s are men, PI Magazine estimates 15 percent, and that number is growing, are women.

Women Private Investigators vs. Women in Law Enforcement

In her dissertation The Feminization of Private Investigation: A Sociological Analysis, Jessica S. Pearce reasons that in occupations where authority and force are not the norm, women face fewer barriers, less stigmatization and diminished role conflict. Several consequences for females in a private investigation work environment are:

• Less intense socialization than females in police work.

• Shorter, less concentrated training periods because there are fewer requirements that guide physical training and certification.

• A diminished necessity for skills that are viewed as more masculine, such as strength, bravery and size.

• Fewer reasons to give males precedence over females when it comes to assigning cases because private investigators are not in a position “to protect and serve” as they are in law enforcement.

My Personal Experience as a Woman P.I.

In a recent issue of PI Magazine, the author of this book was listed as one of the “new wave” of women private investigators, so I suppose I have a good idea of what it’s like to be surfing in today’s P.I. waters.

I’ve never thought of myself as a shrinking violet, but I’ve certainly become more assertive in my work.  Occasionally people still assume I’m the agency secretary, not its president, but I’m happy to say those assumptions occur less and less.  I have excellent business relationships with my fellow P.I.s, men and women — I’ve never met a male P.I. yet who doesn’t treat me as a peer.  And for the record, I don’t carry a gun, but I know women P.I.s who do.

I’m friends with several women private investigators who work in other states.  Our friendships came about when they hired me or I hired them. One was a crime reporter before taking over her father’s, a former FBI special agent’s, P.I. agency.  Another is the president of a fast-paced, high-profile agency.

What do I love about the work?  The research.  Digging for evidence.  Really love finding the clue, the missing piece, the proof that solves a case. After more than a few dangerous episodes while serving legal papers, I’m not wild about process services, and I’m getting to the point where I’d rather poke a stick in my eye than sit on a lengthy surveillance.

What Other Women P.I.s Think About the Profession

Below are several Internet articles either written by female P.I.s or written about them. To read an article, click on its link.

L.I. Moms Bring Woman’s Touch to Private Investigation (CBS New York)

Women sleuths find success in Delaware (forum Private Investigators Union)

Female PI builds successful business from her Quilcene farm (Leigh Hearon Investigative Services)

For these married Denver detectives, truth is more fun than fiction (Westword, a story about Colleen Collins and her husband-P.I.-partner)

Is It Dangerous to Be a Female Private Eye?

I get asked this question a lot. I suppose people read and see fictional private eyes doing all kinds of dangerous, risk-taking actions in books and film so they assume that’s how it is in real life, too.  My general response is that, like many things in life, it’s wise to practice common sense and take precautions when necessary. When you go to a store at night, don’t park in a dark, isolated area–better yet, go during the daylight hours. That kind of common sense stuff.

But even saying that, I’ll add that private investigations can be dangerous at times if the person isn’t paying attention and taking precautions in certain situations. Two of these potentially dangerous situations I’ll list below.

Process Services: Get In, Get Out

Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon to experience danger while serving legal papers. A process server in our state was murdered several years back in the course of his serving papers.

When my husband and I started our investigations business, we would sometimes talk to the people to whom we were serving papers.  The person might ask, “What are these papers?  What am I supposed to do?” And we’d take the time to explain that the attorney’s name and contact information was listed on the papers, and that they should contact the lawyer with their questions.

These days, I limit my conversations to verifying the person’s identity and to briefly explaining that I’m serving business or legal papers to them.

Then I leave.

In other words, I get in and get out.  No dawdling. If they say, “What are these papers about?” I might say over my shoulder as I’m walking away, “Contact the attorney listed on the papers.”

But I’m not hanging around to chat.

This past year, I had two women go ballistic on me after serving them legal papers. Both times, the women followed me to my car, yelling and screaming and calling me a few colorful names. One was waving her fists and I knew if I stopped, one of them would likely land on me.

But did the danger level differ because I was a female versus a male P.I.? It’s conceivable that people might stereotype a female P.I.as being more vulnerable, but to my mind, it wouldn’t have mattered if a man or woman had served papers to those two women. What was important was for me to not engage in a verbal confrontation, and to leave immediately.

Surveillances in Bad Neighborhoods

In the past, I’ve conducted surveillances in some bad neighborhoods, and yes, I have felt more vulnerable being a female P.I. in those instances. My safety precautions have included:

• Ensuring that all my doors are locked

• Parking in an area that isn’t isolated

• Not moving around a lot (or conducting other activities, such as turning on the motor or the inside lights) that draw attention to my being in the car

• Leaving if the situation feels dicey.

This past year, our investigations agency morphed into a law firm-investigations agency, and I’ve been conducting more legal investigations on behalf of the law firm (preparatory work for litigation), and less surveillances.  That’s fine by me.

Chapter 3
Is It Advantageous to be
a Female P.I.?

Do Clients Prefer Female P.I.s?

In her dissertation The Feminization of Private Investigation: A Sociological Analysis, the author Jessica S. Pearce stated that “Women in private investigation may face fewer barriers because they may be the preferred gender by their clients” and that she anticipates “some reference to gender preference by the clients of the respondents.”

We’ve had three kinds of cases where a person typically requests a female P.I.: honey traps, women’s events, and a man-woman P.I. team.

Honey Trap Cases

At my agency, there have been times when a client requests a female private investigator. Sometimes those requests have been for honey traps, also called honey pots, which is when a female client pays for a female P.I. to flirt with a boyfriend or husband to see if he flirts back. Conversely, a man might want to hire a male P.I. to flirt with a girlfriend or wife, too, but in my personal experience, only women clients have placed honey trap requests. Although some P.I. agencies specialize in honey trap cases, we have never accepted them. We believe a private investigator’s role is to objectively document evidence, not induce it.

Women’s Events

We have had several cases where a man requested a female P.I. because he suspected his wife was seeing another woman. Because a male P.I. obviously couldn’t participate in an all-women event, the request was made specifically for a female P.I.

I have gone to women’s bars and all-women events to observe if a certain woman was flirting or being romantically demonstrative with another woman. A husband once hired me to attend a pole-dancing function to observe if his wife was there with a boyfriend. I have to be honest — I should have been in better shape before attending that pole-dancing event; nevertheless, I got the evidence I needed. I share that experience in this book (The Night I Worked Undercover as a Pole Dancer).

Man-Woman P.I. Teams

There are clients who are keen to hire a husband-wife P.I. team to position themselves as a romantic couple at a restaurant, a couple staying at a hotel and so forth. In such situations, a sole P.I. (man or woman) would stand out, so being a P.I. husband-and-wife team has been advantageous in such cases.

I discuss several of these cases later in this book

Emotional Management

Most people who contact a private investigator are in an emotional juncture in their lives, often at a point of crisis. It is crucial for a private investigator to work well with a client who is angry, sad, confused, possibly even feeling disoriented.

Working with Emotional Clients

According to the article “Are Women More Emotionally Intelligent Than Men?” in Psychology Today, April 2011, emotional intelligence tests show that women have an edge over men when it comes to successfully managing the four parts that comprise emotional intelligence: self-awareness, managing one’s emotions, empathy and social skill. This indicates female P.I.s have an edge over their male counterparts when handling emotional clients.

In the article “Gender Differences in Emotional Health” by Dennis Thompson Jr., the author considers women to be better than men at reading people’s emotional reactions.

On boundless.com, in a segment titled “Gender and Emotions,” it states that in “multiple studies, women have fared better than men at using nonverbal cues to determine things such as which romantic couple out of two is an actual romantic couple” and “who is lying about something.”

In my experience running a day-to-day private investigations agency with my husband, we haven’t always fallen into the gender categories laid out above. Although I have been generally better at dealing with emotional clients, I’ve fallen short when it comes to reading nonverbal dues. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat on surveillance in a bar, watching a man or woman to see if they’re being unfaithful, and my husband has been the one to catch the nonverbal cues. Once while sitting for multiple hours in a dark bar, watching a young wife talking to a young man (not her husband, who was our client), I said to my husband-P.I.-partner, “They’ve been talking for nearly three hours without so much as a flirtatious wink or smile or touch. I don’t think she’s having an affair with this guy.”

To which my husband said, “I just walked past them. Their knees are touching.”

I laughed. “Knees? Please. It’s a crowded bar!”

But based on my husband’s observation of their knees touching, we stayed and nonchalantly followed them out of the bar. Guess what? When they got to her car, parked in the shadows at the far end of the parking lot, they began kissing madly.

In the next article, my former P.I.-partner, now a lawyer, discusses why attorneys sometimes prefer to hire a female P.I. to work a case.

When Lawyers Call on Female Investigators for Services

By Shaun Kaufman

Although there are circumstances where either a male or female investigator will do, sometimes it really helps a lawyer to have a female P.I. handle certain investigations, such as when:

• A male investigator, because of stature, voice and mannerisms may intimidate recalcitrant witnesses (especially children and women) resulting in a situation where witnesses are “scared off”

• An investigator must get access to a government or private sector executive who is worried that a male may “turn them in” or otherwise chastise them with supervisors

• A witness must be interviewed in depth about a delicate, touchy subject such as sexual behavior or some other concern that requires discretion, because female investigators are seen as more empathetic, more compassionate and less clinical than a male investigator

• A subpoena or other legal paperwork needs to be served on a mistrustful or cautious witness. A female investigator (who doesn’t look like a cop) can catch these wary subjects off guard and give them the paperwork without tipping off what her purpose is.

I have practiced law for a couple of decades, and during that time I’ve learned that a handful of investigators, male and female, should be kept available for certain types of cases. A man may be useful if size and voice are the only means to get a statement, or to get someone served.

The Attributes of a Female P.I.

This is how I first learned about the attributes of a female P.I. I was a baby public defender in the mid-1980s. As the new lawyer in the office, I was assigned the newest investigator, a new hire. (By the way, public defender investigators are truly private investigators — they carry no badge, no gun and they have no official privileges to search or arrest.)

This new investigator was a Jewish mom from the suburbs who had recently lost her doctor husband to a heart attack. She wore hand-knit sweaters and granny glasses. She favored seersucker dresses and L.L. Bean clothes. She had been to some Eastern college, and spoke like someone who came from a privileged background. She drove a new Volvo. She would never get on a Harley, never touch a gun, and she had no retired cop buddies. By contrast, the lead investigator in the office was a retired police detective who used intimidation and bluster to get what he wanted (which didn’t always work.)

Immediately, I noticed that the new female investigator brought extraordinary compassion and empathy to her case work. She was tenacious and worked harder than her male counterpart. She had drive, and never shied from any task. People in housing projects and trailer parks took to her. She got interviews, and served witnesses with subpoenas in those places.

Over the years, I saw other women working as private investigators bring similar traits to their jobs.

A Recent Case

In a recent case, Colleen and I met with a local attorney who needed interviews in a case where his client, an adult, had been charged criminally for some conduct that took place in front of children. A young, troubled child witness had to be interviewed quickly and thoroughly before the other side got to him and tainted his view of the events.

The attorney had asked if I would conduct the interview. Ten minutes into the discussion with him, I knew that Colleen could speak to this boy without frightening him or causing him to shut down. I felt that the child would like Colleen, and she would get more information from him, so I suggested she be the lead investigator on the case.

She met with the boy, his mother, and ultimately got a great video interview that lasted over an hour. On top of it, she built enough rapport with the mother so as to make it easy to serve a subpoena on a later date. This was all accomplished using the very same compassion, sensitivity and intuition that I discussed earlier.

Beneficial Traits of a Female P.I.

From my perspective, here are some traits that make a female P.I. perfect for an investigation:

• They are non-confrontational, which in turn encourages witnesses to share confidences.

• They are intuitive, and they see the case as a whole

• Women will work to outdo male investigators because they know that they start with a disadvantage.

Beneficial Traits of a Male P.I.

In all fairness, there are also times when a male P.I. is perfect for an investigation. For example, if I have a difficult witness who knows the law (usually someone with plenty of personal experience with the courts), then it is often helpful to use a male P.I. whose presence demands attention.

One of the best weapons in a male P.I.’s arsenal is his voice. He can command someone to stop, and prevail more often than not. I have never used investigators of either sex to put “muscle” on subjects, but I have no objection to a muscular P.I. going to a doorway and letting people see his conditioning. This is especially true if the subjects have been thumbing their noses at less-intense approaches.

Conclusion

I will conclude by saying that a good investigator, female or male, must work tirelessly and with dedication. Female or male, a great P.I takes his/her character traits (empathy, intuition) and uses them on the job to get the best investigative results.

Chapter 4
Tools of the Trade

In this chapter, I discuss different types of investigative equipment and tools I’ve used, from physical items such as GPS devices to Internet resources. This isn’t meant to be an all-inclusive list of tools in the investigative business — there are entire books written on this subject — but a highlight of various devices, gadgets and services.

The chapter contains the following articles. To read a topic, click on the link.

Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool

How Our Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade

I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car

Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious

Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps

Let’s start with the first article, using online crime maps in investigations.

Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool

Crime mapping has been used by law enforcement analysts for years as a tool to not only see current crime trends, patterns and hot spots, but also where crimes are likely to occur in the future.

Crime maps are also a useful tool for private investigators — for example to assess if other criminals are committing similar crimes in a particular neighborhood (which might indicate an alternate suspect).

In my investigations agency, we have used crime maps to show that our client acted reasonably in self defense because he lived in a high-crime area. In several other premise liability cases, we learned through crime maps that there were repetitive patterns of violent activity in the immediate vicinity of businesses that failed to provide adequate surveillance outside their premises to protect their customers. One of these businesses was the high-profile Aurora theater shooting case. This theatre sits in a well-known high-crime area, yet the theater failed to protect its customers, the movie-goers, by providing outside surveillance cameras to monitor any problems. Also, despite sitting in a high-crime area, the theater didn’t lock the back door of the theater, which James Holmes had entered freely prior to the shooting to case the theatre…then later, he entered by the same unlocked door to shoot movie-goers.

Free Online Crime Maps

Below are links to several free, public crime maps (two of them also offer free, downloadable crime map apps).  Click a link to check out the service.

crimemapping.com: Developed by the Omega Group to help law enforcement agencies throughout North America provide the public with recent neighborhood crime activity. In checking this map for our state, only one city was listed.

crimemapping.com Mobile: Free app for iPhone. Must be at least 17 years old to download.

SpotCrime: Claims to be the most comprehensive online source for U.S. crime maps. In searching our region, we found current crime data for larger cities and old crime data (dated 2011) for smaller cities.  You can also browse crime by state, set up crime alerts for a location and report a crime. The key map is handy for quickly identifying types of crimes.

Trulia Crime Maps: This crime map from Trulia, the real estate website, is in its beta stage (as of the writing of this book). It pulls crime data from SpotCrime and Everyblock. Only a handful of regions are available, but for those cities currently available, the results are impressive: the number of crimes in area, a “heat” map that provides a color range for number and types of incidences in a block, cross streets of crimes and a crime trends graph.

Neighborhood Update: This service pulls crime data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. who are Ops Force (patrol analysis software) customers. We checked a major city in our state and there was no data. We then checked Los Angeles, California, and there was no data.  We’re guessing not too many law enforcement agencies are using Ops Force?

RaidsOnline: This public crime map claims to be the public face of a more robust crime-sharing and analysis system for law-enforcement. It took longer to load on our computer, but we easily found results for a handful of cities in our region (interesting, though, not the larger metropolitan cities). In checking crime data stats for a nearby city, the results were up-to-date (compared to other crime maps that offered month-old to years-old data).

RaidsOnline Mobile: Currently, this app is for iPhone or iPad.

How Our Private Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade

When we started our private investigations agency back in 2003-2004, we invested a chunk of money in equipment upfront.  We were starting on a shoestring budget (like many P.I.s), so we took great care to think about what equipment we absolutely, critically needed.  Therefore, the first question we asked ourselves was…

What Kind of Investigations Will We Be Conducting?

My P.I.-business partner had been a trial attorney for nearly two decades, and had trained many P.I.s in his practice, so he thought we’d primarily be conducting litigation support (which includes tasks such as locating witnesses and conducting interviews, serving legal papers, researching court records).

At the time there were no licensure or registration requirements in our state for private investigators, so we opened our business doors within a matter of weeks. As we had guessed, our first clients were lawyers who knew my business partner and hired us to conduct litigation support (AKA legal investigations). Interestingly, that wasn’t the bulk of our work, however. Instead, the majority of our work came from multiple divorce attorneys who hired us to conduct surveillances.  Soon afterward, an insurance company contacted us and requested us to do the same. So being able to conduct effective surveillances and produce quality evidence played a big part in what equipment we needed to buy.

Our Initial Equipment Purchases

Although we had a longer list of what tools we needed, here are some of the key items:

A good-working car. We had our favorite car-repair shop do a through once-over on the car because the last thing we needed was to be stuck somewhere with car problems.  We got new tires.  We stocked a bag with surveillance items in the trunk so we could be ready to go at a moment’s notice (the suitcase contained items such as water, flashlights, blanket, change of clothes, an extra camera, notebook, pen, batteries, and so forth). We wanted to tint the windows, but never got around to it.

Cell Phones.  Only one of us had a cell phone in 2003, and both of us needed to be reachable in real time.  These days, neither of us can imagine being without our smartphones.

Proprietary Database.  From day one, we were locating witnesses for attorneys, and we wanted access to a proprietary database that would help us gather information more quickly and efficiently than juggling a variety of public resources, so we signed up with a proprietary database.  In general, such databases are available only to P.I.s, law enforcement officers, consumer-credit professionals and others with a need to know. These database companies conduct careful background checks on all applicants, and they monitor the usage carefully. Each search typically costs money, although some are free.

These proprietary databases cull their information from many different public record searches.  I once asked a customer rep if she knew exactly what public records her proprietary database pulled from, and she said, “There’s so many, it’d take me a day to tell you just some of them.”  One proprietary database advertises they pull from billions of public records.

A good print camera. Because attorneys had a hard time trusting the evidentiary integrity of the digital camera back in 2003, we spent money on a top-quality print camera, along with a long-distance lens.  We only used it for approximately one year and a half, though, as our attorney-clients started trusting the digital age more.

A good digital camera.  We invested in one good digital camera in the beginning, as well as a long-distance lens.

A video camera.  We needed to document people in action, especially for the insurance company, so a video camera was essential. Just as some of our attorney-clients didn’t trust the digital age in 2003, neither did the insurance company.  After every surveillance, we had to courier to them the original video tape.  By the time we stopped working for this insurance company two years later, they still didn’t trust digital data.  We figured they’d be changing their stance on that in the near future.

But they didn’t. Three or four years later, their new P.I. contacted us. What video tape equipment did we recommend?  We strongly suggested he consider using digital video equipment — not only was tape equipment going the way of the dinosaur, but when he eventually moved to digital it would be an extra cost to transfer tape to CDs or other media.  Also, it was going to become more difficult to play tapes in courtroom situations as tape-playing devices grew older and more problematic, and digital images were clearer, easier to review and so forth.  “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but the insurance company refuses to use anything other than tape.”

I would bet good money that insurance company feels differently today!

As Our Business Expanded, We Purchased More Equipment

As business picked up, and both of us started going out in the field to conduct surveillances, we needed several digital cameras and video cameras.  As digital video cameras became less expensive, we purchased several of those, too.

When we were invited to conduct undercover investigations by several national retail companies, we began investing in covert gear.  Below are a few of those items:

• Video camera built into a purse.

• Pinhole cameras.  Literally how they sound — the lens fits through a hole, such as through a button in a shirt.

• Small camera that fit onto a keychain.

• GPS devices.

  Note: It is critical for a P.I. to understand and comply with state and federal laws regarding the use of such device to avoid charges of stalking and wiretapping.  Seems so obvious, and yet there will be some renegade P.I. who uses a GPS illegally, gets caught, and is lucky if he only ends up paying thousands of dollars to an attorney to keep him out of prison. We know because a local P.I. got into such trouble after illegally attaching a GPS device to a woman’s car. He ended up paying $8,000 in legal fees to a lawyer who managed to keep the P.I. out of prison.

Equipment That Was a Waste of Money

A cigarette-lighter-camera. The directions were printed in such tiny font, we needed a magnifying glass to read them, but we diligently read every word nevertheless. Despite our effects to understand the lighter-camera, we could never get it to work properly.

A wristwatch with a built-in voice recorder. The instructions were so complicated, and badly written, we finally returned the watch-device to its manufacturer and got our money back.

Then Along Came the Smartphone

When it comes to equipment these days, I first grab my smartphone. It takes excellent photos and video, which I can immediately send to the lawyer.  Below is a sampling of other apps I currently use:

• Flashlight app.  Why carry a clunky flashlight when you can just turn on your flashlight app? There are different flashlight apps available — I use one called Flashlight that has a large On-Off switch, easy to see in the dark.

• Magnifying glass and flashlight combo. Sometimes I need to read the fine print in a document or capture an image and zoom in on a part of it for closer inspection. For both of these tasks, I use the app Lumin.

• Document Scanner.  I’ve gone through several of these as I discover better document scanner apps. A few years back, we had a hand-held doc scanner we’d take into courthouses and other places to scan docs. The thing was a hassle to carry and cumbersome to use, but we loved being able to scan our documents on-site and download a digital file to our computer.

My current favorite scanner app is CamScanner that lets me capture an image, crop/enlarge a portion of it, choose what format I want to save it in (pdf, jpeg, etc.), as well as the option to email (or send via another venue, such as text message) on the spot.

• Motion Detector: I use an app called VM Alert, which detects movement and stores the footage. Later, I can send the video by email or as an attachment to a text message to a client. Another option is to send the footage to YouTube (it’s easy to set up a private YouTube account so only those with permissions, such as clients, can view the video).

• Homesnap: This is the name of the app. With it, you can take a picture of a home, get a download of information about the house, such as homeowner history, sales prices, home description, neighborhood stats and more.

• Voice recorder.  Handy for capturing voice recordings for interviews. I use one called Recorder that is straightforward to use. For an additional cost, users can purchase supplemental features such as an audio visualizer and more playback controls, but I haven’t had the need to add on features. Interestingly enough, I’ve seen this exact same app in several movies where reporters shove their smartphones with the recorder app running (instead of a microphone) into someone’s face.

• GPS. There’s a variety of GPS apps for smartphones on the market. My favorite also offers vocal turn-by-turn instructions and traffic alerts.

Having a smartphone means my equipment bags (yes, I used to carry at least one) are now reduced to a single smartphone. I also use my iPad on cases because it’s sometimes handy to work with a larger screen. One of my favorite iPad apps is Evernote, which lets me take notes, pictures and voice recordings — which I can then send via email to a client.

Sometimes I look at all that old equipment in our office and think of all the money we spent for things we no longer use. I suppose some of the older cameras will be collectors’ items someday, like rotary phones, typewriters and old phone books.

I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car

This kind of call has come into our agency a lot. And it’s not always a girlfriend or wife who’s upset that their boyfriend/husband is fooling around…men call, too, wanting to know what their girlfriends/wives are up to.

What Are These GPS Things?

Let’s start with a definition of GPS, Global Positioning System, which is an assemblage of satellites that orbit the Earth that people with ground receivers use to pinpoint geographic locations.  For most equipment, the location accuracy ranges from 10 to 100 meters; with special military-approved equipment, accuracy can be pinpointed to within 1 meter. GPS equipment has become sufficiently low-cost so that almost anyone can own a GPS receiver (some of you may have GPS trackers in your own vehicles).

In the past, we used GPS tracking devices in our work, and we were always extremely careful that their use was legal before we attached one anywhere.  It is illegal for a P.I. to attach a GPS device in/on a vehicle that his client doesn’t own.  No way around it unless the P.I. wants to court a felony.  We’ve had potential clients ask us to attach a GPS device on their boyfriend’s, girlfriend’s, spouse’s car, and we always ask, “Is your name on that vehicle’s registration?” No? Sorry, then attaching any such device is illegal.

Also, we never assumed that a husband’s or wife’s name is on the registration for their spouse’s vehicle. We’ve had husbands and wives claim their names are definitely on their spouse’s vehicles, but we always double-check (surprising how many times both spouses’ names are not on the registration).

Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious

There’s all kinds of spy equipment for sale on the Internet. Some of it is downright silly, while other tools are truly useful. When we were first starting our detective agency, we invested in some downright dumb stuff, like a cigarette lighter than had a hidden camera. We actually thought some of the stuff — like the lighter-camera — would come in handy, but no, it never did. Not once.

Below is a sampling of some spy equipment, from the silly to the serious. As of the writing of this book, these links are valid. But things can change quickly on the Internet, so if you find a link no longer works, try running a search in your browser on key words in the item (for example “passive GPS logger”).

Keep Tabs on Your Child with a Passive GPS Logger: Put this GPS logger in your child’s backpack, then later download its data to check where your youngster has been by date, time, location, even speed of travel. Keep in mind that if your child is over 18 and living elsewhere, legalities regarding privacy rights dictate that you shop for another gift.

Samples of passive GPS loggers

Store Items in a Secret Place. Hide money behind an outlet that’s really a secret wall safe, store jewelry in a beer can. Sounds silly, but what burglar would look in a beer can for a diamond necklace?

Wall outlet hidden wall safe

Beer can safe

Take Memos with a Voice-Recording Pen. You can write with it or talk into it. If you’re tempted to record others’ conversations with it, be sure you’re in a public place where those being recorded have no expectation of privacy (such as in a coffee shop, store, on the street); otherwise, you can be charged with eavesdropping, which depending on the state you’re in could be a felony offense.

Voice-recording pen

Clip a Video Camera on Yourself. For the lazy who don’t want to point-and-shoot, or to take video without being obvious, this ClipIt Laser Cam can be clipped on your shirt pocket, belt, handle of your purse, backpack strap…wherever you can clip it.

ClipIt Laser Cam

Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps

Face it, we live in a world under surveillance. From cameras posted at road intersections and business parking lots to cameras we install in and around our homes to portable cameras in our cell phones.

And then there’s Google Maps, which seems intent to document not only every street and region in the world, but also within businesses. But who am I to complain? When I’m investigating a case and need to see a photo of a street or home, I go to Google Maps.

Imagine my surprise one day when I decided to look up my home address…and I saw a photo of my P.I.-partner-husband, staring straight at me in front of the house! Obviously, he was staring at the Google Maps truck as it drove down our street, and it captured him checking it out. I saw he was holding something in his hand, so I zoomed in on the photo, and saw it was a camera.

Curious, I asked him about it.

Me: “Where were you going?”

Shaun: “Out on surveillance.”

Me: “Did you see the Google truck drive by?”

Shaun: “Yeah, I was reading the word ‘Google’ across the front hood, and saw the camera sticking out of the top.”

Me: “Did it bother you?”

Shaun: “No.  I was actually amazed how the world is being documented.”

Crimes Being Documented by Google Maps

More and more, all kinds of activities, including crimes, are being documented by Google Maps.  Below is a sampling of crimes it has pinpointed:

• In 2007, officers in Racine, Wisconsin, arrested Dean Brown for possession of 18 pounds of marijuana. Around his neck he wore a GPS unit that pinpointed the coordinates to all his other plants in the area.  Cops easily found these plants by plugging these same coordinates into Google Earth.

• Dwight Foster didn’t want to go through the hassle of legally disposing his boat, so he abandoned it 15 miles south of Pensacola, Florida. A sheriff’s deputy searched through an archive of Google maps and found the boat had previously been berthed at, guess where? Dwight Foster’s dock. Dwight was arrested for illegally dumping a boat, which carries a $5,000 fine and 5-year jail term. If he’d gone through the hassle of properly disposing the boat, it would have cost him $18.

In my own cases, I’ve searched home addresses on Google Maps, and seen vehicles parked in the driveway or in front of the residences. This isn’t a sure fire way to detect what kind of vehicle a person drives, but it gives me leads. I also use the street view feature to check the surrounding area for optimal surveillance spots and planning my route.

A word to the wise. Regarding the use of Google in general, keep in mind that your searches can be retrieved by authorities. Recently, a gentleman named Jeff Gundlach was robbed by art thieves. He gave investigators a critical tip: He suggested they check who had recently googled the unique name of his grandmother because that would be how the thieves learned about the value of the paintings and their location. The police did just that and found the thief.

Chapter 5
Rock n’ Rollin’ with the Cases

In this chapter, I’ll discuss different cases I’ve worked on, from the dangerous to the funny, each with its secrets, challenges and lessons learned. I’ve also included paranormal investigations, AKA ghost hunting, because of the interest people have in this type of investigation.

The cases are in the following categories, all named after songs befitting the classification. To read a type of case, click on one of the below song title links.

Danger by The Flirts (Dangerous Cases)

Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr. (Paranormal Investigations)

Undercover Agent for the Blues by Tina Turner (Undercover Cases; Disguises)

How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (Funny Cases)

“Danger”
The Flirts, 80s disco song

Although the work of a twenty-first century private investigator consists of a lot of fact-finding and report writing, there are still times the work gets dangerous. I’ve had more than a few scares while conducting cases, from subjects who get violent to people who have sic’d their dogs. Articles about the cases are listed below — to read an article, click on its link.

Power Plays in Murder: Three Cases

Stalked Online by a Disgruntled Subject

Stalked Online by a Cyberstalker

Tracking a Felon Across Three Counties

Categories free kindle nation shorts Tags colleen collins, Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye