How Effective is the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation?

By Jennifer Loren, The Oklahoma Impact Team

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation claims it brings exceptional investigative service to the state of Oklahoma. But the agency's track record is being questioned by a state legislator. His questions put the agency on the defensive.

The list of Oklahoma's unsolved homicides is lengthy. Pastor Carol Daniels was murdered in an Anadarko church. Taylor Paschal Placker and Sklya Whitaker were gunned down in Weleetka. The Denneys were shot to death in their Locust Grove home. Poteau bar owner Joe Neff was found dead near Pocola. Sam Sanders was killed in Fairland, his wife badly beaten. Three young girl scouts were murdered at camp in 1977 and the list goes on. All of those cases were investigated by the OSBI. All of them are unsolved.

The Aja Johnson Case

In March, after 7-year old Aja Johnson was found dead with her alleged kidnapper, State Representative Richard Morrissette challenged OSBI's track record.

"We need to get to the bottom of this and find out what's going on at OSBI," said Morrissette.

Jessica Brown with the OSBI was quick to defend the agency.

"We had our people working 18 hour days, continuously, 7 days a week through ice storms. We should be getting accolades for doing as much as we did," said Brown.

But family members of Lester Hobbs, the man accused of kidnapping Aja, say the OSBI blew it by failing to send an agent to a particular cemetery. Three of Hobbs' relatives claim they each gave investigators the information they needed to catch Hobbs there the very night Aja went missing.

"I told them who I was and where I believed Lester would go," said Twila, a relative of Hobbs who didn't want us to use her last name. "To my grandparents' grave on 108th and Highway 9, the Denver Cemetery... and that's exactly what I told him."

Two months later Aja Johnson and Lester Hobbs were found dead less than a mile from the cemetery.

"They would have caught him turning on this road. They would have caught him before he had a chance to do that little girl any harm or him any harm," said Twila.

"It wasn't no hunch. It's a fact that he would come here because if he would have done something as terrible as he did then he would come tell his mom and dad about it," said Eugene Hobbs, Lester Hobbs' nephew.

According to the OSBI they looked everywhere.

"We were given hundreds of leads. They should be there. They should be there," said Brown.

But Brown said the conversations about the cemetery never happened.

"I don't think we ever got that information," said Brown.

The Jarret Clark Case

Four years after their son's suspicious drowning, Tammy and Eric Slater are still searching for "Justice for Jarret."

"I just don't have much faith in the OSBI," said Tammy Slater.

The Slater's say the OSBI investigator rarely communicated with them about the case, and when she did, didn't know all the facts. Tammy said she gave the investigator several leads, but never heard how they turned out or if they were even looked into.

"I hope she researched it and made some phone calls and asked some questions to these people. I don't know if she did or not," said Tammy Slater.

"Every agent does it differently," said Brown. "We have some agents who are very close to the vest with their information."

Brown said the investigator was purposely hiding her case knowledge, trying to protect the investigation. But Jarret's parents aren't buying it.

"There's so many ways they failed it's just hard to count them all...and our son's in the cemetery," Eric Slater, Jarret's Step-father.

OSBI's Statistics

When Representative Morrissette questioned the OSBI, the agency called a news conference. Jessica Brown released some impressive statistics. The OSBI boasts an 89 percent homicide clearance rate over the past five years. That's much higher, they claim, than the national average. But what exactly is a homicide clearance rate?

"That is a homicide that, uh, someone's been arrested or charged. The suspect is dead or it was a homicide-suicide," said Brown.

When questioned further about the rate, Brown seemed confused and had to double check that what she had just said was correct.

"I think that's correct. I can look it up real quick if you'll hold on just a second," said Brown.

There are actually more reasons a homicide could be considered cleared. According to the OSBI, a homicide is cleared when there's been an arrest, charges filed, if the investigation is complete but the District Attorney doesn't file charges, the suspect dies or other circumstances prevent prosecution.

"So it doesn't necessarily mean that the case has been solved?" asked Jennifer Loren, with The Oklahoma Impact Team.

"I think what we're doing here is semantical a little bit, solved versus cleared. It may not be solved but it is cleared," said Brown.

So the real question remains: How many of OSBI's homicides have been solved? The Impact Team asked for actual arrests over the past five years. Brown said she couldn't us get those numbers right away because she'd have to pull agents in off the streets in order to get us that data.

OSBI was able to provide us with homicide arrests for 2009. They say there were 32 arrests out of 45 cases. That's 70 percent, less than the agency's 84 percent clearance rate for 2009 or the 89 percent they cleared, on average, since 2004.

Plus, the clearance rate OSBI touted included 16 "partial" homicide investigations. That means the OSBI could have done as little as one interview and counted it as a cleared case.

The Impact Team tried to compare the OSBI's statistics with agencies in other states. Most agencies use clearance rates, but the criteria they use to call a case "cleared" is different. Even the national clearance rates, with which the OSBI compared itself, are different.

OSBI's Cases

But Brown said people need to remember the OSBI gets the most difficult cases any Oklahoma law enforcement agency tries to solve.

"We get the ones where there's no witnesses, very little evidence, and it's a real who done it," said Brown.

Family members of the Denneys, an unsolved homicide from Locust Grove, say they support the OSBI for that very reason. They say the OSBI has done everything possible to solve their case, but the circumstances surrounding the double murder make it difficult to solve.

The Daina Kizzia Case

But even with a case the OSBI did solve, family members complain about the agency.

"I'll never call them again. I won't do it again," said Nathaniel Clymer, a murder victim's father.

Clymer's daughter Daina was murdered in 2002. Her husband and a gunman are in prison for plotting her death. But Clymer said the only reason the case was solved is because he did the footwork himself, even finding evidence at the crime scene the OSBI missed.

"I went out there Tuesday morning and I found all kinds of evidence and I'm not a detective," said Clymer.

Clymer said the killer left behind bloody hand prints, but they weren't processed as evidence until he showed them to the OSBI investigator.

"His fingerprints... he couldn't have dipped them in blood and put them on the [door] any better," said Clymer.

A former Assistant District Attorney, who originally prosecuted that case, confirms Clymer's story and said there were "a lot of loose ends in that case."

Strout went on to say that most OSBI agents do the best they can, but the system they work in allows a lot of room for mistakes.

Jessica Brown with the OSBI said Clymer's story is not true, but by law the OSBI can't release the case file to prove it.

On Tuesday, Representative Sue Tibbs said she believes the agency is doing a good job.

Tibbs released a statement stating, "The OSBI does a sterling job with the information they have to work with. They often have very little to go on, but have the best investigators in the state. Are they going to solve all of these cases? Of course not. They're human just as we are. Overall they do a good job, the best, in my opinion."