ATLANTA — Tight-lipped DeKalb County police investigating the slaying of the county's sheriff-elect seem to be doing the right things, say law enforcement officials familiar with other high-profile cases.
Slain Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown's family and political supporters have questioned the dearth of information available about his Dec. 15 death, saying it makes them wonder whether the mystery surrounding Brown's slaying will ever be solved.
But state and federal investigators who have solved other complicated, high-profile crimes say success requires tightly controlling access to information while maximizing communication among detectives.
"The biggest problem with multijurisdictional investigations is command and control," said Georgia Public Safety Director Robert Hightower. "Someone has to be in charge, or you lose control and risk missing evidence."
The crime is unusual. One measure of just how unusual is the fact that veteran law enforcement officials are hard-pressed to cite similar ones without going back decades.
Hightower said he worked on a similar Georgia crime 33 years ago. In 1967, Floyd "Fuzzy" Hoard, solicitor general of the judicial circuit made up of Jackson, Barrow and Banks counties, was assassinated as he left his home outside Jefferson to begin grand jury proceedings to investigate a gang of bootleggers. Dynamite planted in his car exploded as he turned the ignition.
Hightower was one of dozens of GBI agents called in to help county authorities investigate the murder. Eventually, the assassins were caught, convicted and imprisoned for life and the county's sheriff was removed from office.
In large investigations, controlling the flow of information is important, Hightower said. While state and federal agencies can give police added resources, "there has to be a single commander," said Hightower.
Hightower, a veteran of the FBI and GBI who was Cobb County's police chief before being named Georgia's top cop, said the GBI and its Crime Lab will stay on the Brown case as long as county officials want them to. "And we'll help out with any additional resources, but it's their investigation," Hightower said.
Brown, 46, was shot 11 times as he returned from a party celebrating his graduation from a four-week sheriff's training course. Authorities have called the killing an assassination.
Investigators have a long list of potential suspects, including companies with department contracts and more than 30 employees who had been told they would be fired Jan. 1.
"Derwin was a reform candidate and he ruffled a lot of feathers," said county prosecutor J. Tom Morgan. "He made a lot of people mad with the changes he was going to make."
DeKalb Assistant Chief Phil Joyner and task force commander Maj. Rodney Maddox lead 30 DeKalb detectives and four agents from the GBI, FBI and State Crime Lab working full time on the case.
Both Joyner and Maddox have experience with multi-jurisdictional investigation from their work on metro Atlanta's largest interagency crime task force — the investigation of 29 missing and murdered children in the late 1970s. Neither Joyner nor Maddox will talk about the process by which investigators are pursuing the case.
But Riverdale police Chief Mike Edwards, who also worked on the "missing and murdered children" case, said communication among investigators is critical when there are a large number of suspects. Edwards said several dead-end leads in the children murders were followed up several times because investigators from different agencies didn't share information.
"If you don't talk about everything you find, you can waste valuable time," Edwards said.
The Brown slaying task force meets daily to share information. Its members have done more than 300 interviews and collected more that 100 telephone tips.
DeKalb investigators are experienced in homicide investigations, having fielded 63 in the past year. The chief difference in this investigation, according to Hightower and other experienced investigators, is who the victim was and the possible motives for the crime.
Brown, a DeKalb police officer for 22 years, had campaigned on a pledge to clean up corruption in the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office. He was killed just two days before he was to be sworn in.
Prosecutor Morgan said he has received only one call about a recent crime involving the slaying of a crusading lawman. A few days after Brown was killed, Morgan said, a Florida prosecutor called to say one of his assistants had been slain in 1982 by drug dealers he was investigating.
The last law enforcement candidate to be assassinated in the United States was Albert Patterson. The crusading Alabama attorney general-elect was shot to death in 1954 after campaigning on the promise to clean up gambling, bootlegging and prostitution in Phenix City, Ala.
In Jefferson three decades ago, a letter Hoard had written was found after his slaying. A passage included on a memorial to Hoard could apply to Brown: "We now realize that the preserver of law and order is courage, and that fear and inactivity in the face of threats and growing crime can only lead us to moral decay."