Documents obtained by the Deseret News show that a private investigator who tailed the Salt Lake County district attorney worked in tandem with a man accused of running a prostitution ring.
The documents indicate ties between several players in the controversy surrounding District Attorney Lohra Miller and her decision to fire a longtime prosecutor for allegedly leaking confidential information to a criminal defendant. The documents show:
• The private investigator, Shane Johnson, jointly obtained documents with the defendant accused of leading a prostitution ring, Steve Maese, about the police chief who headed the probe into Maese's former escort service.
• Johnson works for Todd Gabler, a Springdale-based private investigator who was hired by an unnamed client to investigate Miller's private life and then continued to investigate her on his own after his "client could no longer pay for (his) services."
• Maese is the man to whom Miller believes former veteran prosecutor Kent Morgan was leaking secret information.
The documents obtained by the Deseret News through public-records requests show that Johnson, who spent weeks casing Miller's home and following her to private clubs, jointly obtained audio recordings of a City Council meeting with Maese, who is scheduled to go on trial this summer for several counts of exploiting a prostitute, money laundering and racketeering.
The May 2007 City Council meeting included a presentation by Lt. Robby Russo about a controversial move to use sheriff's deputies to provide security at a golf tournament. At the time, Russo was the highest ranked over Cottonwood Heights for the sheriff's office, and now serves as chief of the city's new police force.
Gabler, Johnson's boss, recently revealed that his firm tailed Miller's vehicles, rifled through her trash, videotaped her home and placed a GPS tracking device on her car — all actions Gabler insists are legal and in no way an invasion of the district attorney's privacy.
Gabler wouldn't confirm that Johnson works for him — "That information would be considered proprietary," he said — but documents obtained by the newspaper show that Johnson cased Miller's home and followed her cars in December 2007 and January 2008 and filed a report under the letterhead of Rudiger Investigations, a company that Gabler is listed as the registered agent with for the Utah Department of Commerce.
Maese, who was charged Thursday with class A misdemeanor stalking and third-degree felony witness tampering for allegedly harassing a witness in his case, declined Friday to comment on his relationship with Johnson. Johnson didn't return telephone calls from the Deseret News.
While this doesn't prove that Maese was the driving force behind the private investigation into Miller's private life, it does show that Maese is connected to several controversial players in county politics.
Maese and Morgan are friends who met during Morgan's 2006 election for district attorney — which he lost to Miller. Morgan tapped Maese's marketing background to help him in his campaign.
After he lost, the friendship continued. But both Maese and Morgan insist no top-secret information about Maese's case was revealed.
They are friends who enjoy talking about politics, nothing more, they say.
Miller fired Morgan in March for allegedly leaking confidential information to Maese. Maese apparently made a statement to police in 2006 that made them believe he knew information only prosecutors involved in screening the case would have known, according to the Morgan's termination letter. The letter does not specify what information Maese supposedly knew that only prosecutors would have known.
Morgan had a lot of phone contact with Maese, with 132 telephone calls between them in a 21-month span. The newspaper obtained Morgan's phone records through the Government Records Access and Management Act.
The records show the pair spoke for 17 minutes the day after Maese was charged with the prostitution and racketeering counts, and the two talked for another 20 minutes the day of Maese's roll-call hearing.
And, according to an October 2006 police report obtained by the Deseret News through a public-records request, Maese told police that he knew at least one deputy district attorney had problems with the warrant served on the Doll House, the escort service Maese used to co-own.
"Steve said that he had heard that Howie (Howard Lemcke, Deputy District Attorney) had problems with the warrant," and that there was not enough probable cause, according to a October 2006 police report obtained by the paper through a public records request.
Maese declined comment on the police report.
Morgan is appealing his termination to the county's Career Service Council.
"What I want back is my integrity," Morgan said in an earlier interview with the Deseret News. "This is garbage."
Maese said he doesn't like Miller much. Although he refused to comment to the Deseret News on the matter, he told a detective with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office his true feelings.
"Steve continued to speak stating that Lohra was an idiot and that this was a personal thing against him ... " Detective Dan Bartlett wrote in a police report obtained by the Deseret News.
Miller declined to comment because Morgan's termination appeal is a personnel matter, and Maese's case is still being adjudicated.
E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com