A Glimpse into Advanced Investigations
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In this episode of 'Secrets from the Crime Lab,' host Angela Swarts returns after a brief hiatus to delve into an enlightening conversation with William Losefsky of Investigative Concepts. With a background in law enforcement and extensive experience in private investigation, Losefsky shares his expertise in forensic death investigation, drug diversion in hospitals, and statement analysis. He emphasizes the importance of unbiased investigation and provides insights into how defense investigations can uncover critical truths overlooked in initial prosecutions. Angela and William discuss their shared experiences and the critical role of continuous learning in the field of forensic science.
To learn more about our guest please visit his website at https://investigate-it.com/
Bill will be speaking about "Complex Investigations and Special Investigative Techniques" at the Florida Association of Private Investigators annual conference March 3-5, 2025, visit https://myfapi.org/speakers-2025/ to learn more.
Bill is the principal owner of Investigative Concepts, LLC a private investigation agency operating in New Hampshire since 2002. He is a Board-Certified Criminal Defense Investigator CCDI, Board Certified Forensic Death Investigator, Certified Master Investigator, CMI and a Certified Anti-Terrorism Specialist, CAS. Bill has presented on investigative techniques, drug diversion investigation, active shooter, leadership/mentoring, use of force and project management.
Bill is the recipient of the Prestigious Lindberg Bell award through the (IAHSS) International Association for healthcare safety and security. William is the current President of the New Hampshire League of Investigators.
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:53 Host's Background and Apology for Hiatus
01:24 Podcast Accessibility and Listener Support
02:07 Host's Professional Background
04:22 Guest Introduction: William Losefsky
05:13 William's Law Enforcement Journey
06:12 The Importance of Lifelong Learning in Investigations
07:06 Advanced Crime Scene Analysis Techniques
11:30 Challenges in Law Enforcement and Investigations
15:18 The Role of Evidence in Crime Scene Investigation
19:42 The Complexities of Death Investigations
31:03 Becoming a Certified Death Investigator
35:00 The Value of Specialized Skills in Investigations
41:29 Identifying Deceptive Behavior
42:41 Poker Tells and Real-World Applications
43:21 Investigations in Hospitals
46:44 Understanding Drug Diversion
53:26 Handling Hospital-Related Deaths
01:02:06 The Role of Private Investigators
01:12:23 Advice for Aspiring Investigators
01:13:37 Upcoming Conference and Contact Information
William Losefsky, Investigative Concepts, LLC. Advanced Investigative Solutions
Transcript is auto-generated
bill-losefsky: [00:00:00] I think at the end of the day every state in their courtroom, you have the blindfolded lady with the scales of justice, and they're supposed to be they're supposed to be equal, so it's important to respect . police and the prosecution and respect the defense, they both have their jobs to do, be recognized for, what they bring to the table and that we just hope at the end of the day that the truth will come out and the truth will speak for itself.
angela swarts: Hello, and welcome to Secrets from the Crime Lab, an educational podcast where we discuss forensic science and related scientific fields and topics. I'm your host, Angela Swarts. Thank you to my new listeners. And thank you again to those of you who are returning listeners.
I feel I need to apologize for my hiatus in 2024. Life became rather busy between professing [00:01:00] at the university, moving, and other unforeseen occurrences. But I am back this year to provide you with more nerdy conversations, sharing the reality of forensic science, and having some interesting conversations.
With interesting people. I plan to do all of this in my new studio, which is still under construction. But once it is done, I hope to add a little video content for those of you watching on YouTube. For those of you who are podcast aficionados, you will realize that Google Podcasts went away last year, so podcasters, um, transitioned from Google Podcasts over to YouTube.
To be fair, I should have done that a long time ago, but, you know, the best laid plans and all that, so. For those of you who don't want to watch it on YouTube, you can still listen on all the major podcast apps and a few of the smaller ones and wherever you're listening, if you could subscribe, leave a five star rating or a comment that would really help support the podcast and [00:02:00] spread the word.
For those of you that are new to the podcast, I will give you a brief introduction to myself. So I have a day job as a clinical assistant professor at the University of North Texas with the Forensic Science Program. I teach two courses primarily there. Here one is biomedical. criminalistics, and the other one is forensic molecular biology.
I do some other special classes in bloodstain pattern analysis and some more in depth case study reviews for primarily post conviction cases. However, this podcast is separate and it is not part of the university. This is my own thing with my own opinions in it. But I do like to share forensic science with everyone, not just my students at the university.
If you'd like to learn a little bit more about me and my background, I would invite you to go to [00:03:00] practicalforensics. science. That's my website. podcast directly on the website. You don't actually have to go and download any kind of special app for it or anything like that. I have been involved in forensic science since 2002, prior to that I was doing some cancer research with the UTMD Anderson Cancer Center, but I transitioned into forensics in 2002, um, starting as a CODIS DNA analyst and then moving into casework.
And that's pretty much where I've been up until I returned to the United States where I switched over to academia in 2022 to bring my knowledge and experiences to the Undergraduate Forensic Science Program. It also allows me to provide independent, services to those who wouldn't otherwise have access to their own forensic expert.
So I do that for. Primarily DNA [00:04:00] cases, but also those involving bloodstain pattern analysis. So if anybody is seeking help in those arenas, you can certainly reach out to me through my website at practicalforensics. science. And without further ado, let's start with our first episode for 2025. A conversation that I had with a listener that reached out to me.
He has a particular set of skills.
welcome to Secrets from the Crime Lab. Today we have William Losefsky with Investigative Concepts. Is that correct? Did I say it right?
That was pretty good. It used to be a field sobriety test. You can, finger to nose or try that name at one o'clock in the morning on of the road.
okay. I want you to go ahead and introduce [00:05:00] yourself to the audience because you have a rather interesting and unique set of skills, I think, and a pretty large breadth of experience over the years. Tell us about yourself, William?
bill-losefsky: I grew up in in Yonkers, New York, which is the fifth largest city in New York state. It borders the Bronx. I started out on the police department down there, which is 520 person police department. And then I moved to New Hampshire and wound up on a much smaller police department where, the officers do almost everything including prosecution investigation.
I quickly started building a skillset in law enforcement and really enjoyed it. I think the people that are drawn to public service and to serve and protect they don't do it for the money. You can make better money doing most other things, but it's at the end of the day, making a difference solving a crime maybe taking an intoxicated person off the road.
And I [00:06:00] found that I liked the complicated investigations, the stuff that would baffle other people. And I fell into, Trying to get information out of people when you interviewed them. And I started becoming a lifelong learner and going to a lot of classes to understand interview techniques, interrogation techniques.
Statement analysis, handwriting analysis, body language, micro facial expressions all these things to put into a toolbox. So when you roll up on a situation, either as a private investigator or security director, in which I did for 15 years in hospitals, you have that. That bag of tools there.
So if it's let's say a threatening note that you have to deal with or a phone call that came in that there's a bomb somewhere you have that skill set to pull out and become successful and I think most people. In this line of work, [00:07:00] become lifelong learners. You just thirst for new technology, new methodology.
I recently obtained credentials for doing document examination after having done it for 30 years, I wanted to take some formal classes, And then I also became a board certified forensic death investigator, which was probably one of the most challenging, curriculums I ever got into, but it was just so fascinating to learn the minutia of a crime scene.
And how to articulate and really look at it with a very critical eye and understanding of what questions to ask. And it goes back to Dr. Henry Lee when he told me that everything is evidence until it is not.
Through these type of classes, that is absolutely true. You almost have to be an evidence whisperer when you go to a crime scene, other people might have been there two and three times, [00:08:00] but when you have an advanced skill set, you may look at it much differently for instance, if it was, maybe an issue that dealt with water how long does it take to fill up a bathtub?
If you're going to go to court, you might say 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Was the water on full? Was it warm? They teach you to actually go out there and fill up like a Home Depot bucket five gallons of water and then calculate the square footage of the tub.
So you can know an answer in court. Yeah. It's 21 minutes and 30 seconds to fill a tub. It all comes down to time, distance and actual facts of being, on point and understanding every aspect of what could have happened. That the police alleged something, did they get it correct?
Did they do everything they should have done? Did they leave something out? Especially with, autopsy reports, autopsy pictures. They say a picture tells a thousand words. It absolutely does. But when you [00:09:00] go and visit the crime scene yourself, you're getting that 3d picture, so a lot of people don't make the effort or take the time to actually go to a crime scene. And how long did it take to go up the stairs? How many steps was there? What how much time was that involved because it all comes down. You could be an alibi is somebody arrived at 10 Oh five.
And was it dark at that time? They're claiming it was dark. You go back to historical data, so you're really, rechecking everything and leaving no stone unturned. So they've build that mindset into you is to what I learned a long time ago is ask the question why probably 10 times.
Why did you travel this route? did you leave at this time? You bring these certain people with you? And if you don't ask those questions you won't get the information.
angela swarts: Yeah. You touched on several things in there that, I, definitely agree with you on that going to the crime scene and [00:10:00] wearing a different set of glasses. Based on your specialized expertise, because usually the crime scene investigators that are there, they're very well trained generalists, but there are many cases where you need to bring in somebody that has a deeper understanding of a particular aspect of that crime scene, and you're very much dependent on those crime scene investigators to, at a minimum, be able to recognize .
Oh, I need to pull in that specialist. Like for me, it would be a specialist in blood stain pattern analysis, or I definitely need to get somebody that knows what samples are going to be the best for me to collect for DNA in this particular situation. And then, of course a death investigator is not the same thing as the police homicide detective.
Is it right that it's a different set of glasses that you're using? And it sounds like you've done things on both sides, both the police investigative [00:11:00] side and the independent investigator side. And could you talk a little bit more about that? The differences between those two viewpoints, when you're going to those scenes and investigating and things that may be, you know, like your lifelong learner, you learned that there's different things that you're doing in those different capacities.
bill-losefsky: What I call it is I think. Somebody that has experience on both sides of the aisle brings a lot more to the table because they understand police techniques, policies, procedures
And their limitations. It's not, this is not their only case, it's it's immense workload and you can only put so much effort into it.
And what tools did they use? They, Did they handle the, the evidence correctly, the chain of custody, and I'll go into a section where we'll just talk about pictures when the police go to a scene, they'll take pictures, but the defense is entitled to those same exact pictures in the same exact format.
And often Almost always, [00:12:00] those pictures are converted to a PDF or a JPEG from their original RAW, original file and they're made smaller. So if you're looking for tiny details like striations and skid marks or maybe bruises and scratches, the defense oftentimes gets inferior pictures.
And they don't know that they're getting that. It takes someone like me to come in and say what's the origin of this picture? And they're like what do you mean? It says it should be in it, in the same format that the police took it. So a lot of times an attorney with my help, we'll ask for discovery all over again and have the pictures in the proper format.
And now that picture, instead of telling a thousand words, it tells 2000 words because you're now seeing what the police see.
angela swarts: Yeah. That's you're reminding me, I have a cold case that I'm working on right now with someone and the photographs that have been provided to me [00:13:00] are. Snapshots that were probably taken on 35 millimeter camera somebody took the 5 by 7 photo, put it in the office chair and took a picture with it on their iPhones.
And then that is the photo that I received to look at in bloodstain pattern analysis. And I'm like, no, this is.
bill-losefsky: exactly,
angela swarts: this is not going to work. I need, so they've actually managed, I asked for the negative. It's now you've got to find somebody that knows how to go back. And hopefully the negatives are still in good condition so that they can be digitized maybe.
And then I can examine them. I'd be happy with an eight by 10 printout an actual photograph. Printed, but so when you were mentioning like the photographs need to be the same quality, they need to be what the prosecution had at the beginning of the investigation. Yeah, you really need to see. You need to see all the evidence.
There are Supreme Court rulings on this on purpose,
bill-losefsky: yes, you And Dr. Henry Lee [00:14:00] really drove that home I was very fortunate to spend two days, at a large seminar for him and he tells of being flown all over the world to solve crimes that were unsolvable. And he, I remember one particular instance where I think it was Sweden they were having a whole bunch of fires and arson fires and houses were getting burned and they had no leads they had collected a bunch of evidence, but he didn't really know what to do with it.
So they called this guy, Dr. Henry Lee, all the way in Connecticut and said, can you help us? So he's getting on a plane to go to Sweden and he said to them, I want all the evidence on the table when I arrive, because I only have a weekend to be here. So he gets there. He asked five people, is this all the evidence?
And they say yes. Finally, one person said There's a bunch of cigarette butts that were found at a couple of scenes and we didn't think much of it. So he goes, bring them to me. So we got these stinky cigarettes, [00:15:00]
and three different bags of it. And within a couple of hours, Dr.
Henry Lee was able to connect the DNA off those cigarettes to the same person. And that same person was a volunteer fireman and, was you can place him at the scene. And case solved over a weekend. What his point was is that everything is evidence until it is not. And you really need to look at everything because everything will tell part of a story.
angela swarts: Yeah. So are you, do you fall in the camp of, I'm at the crime scene, I'm going to collect more than I need to, or I'm at the crime scene and I'm going to do a targeted collection of evidence? Which, are you somewhere in the middle of those two camps?
bill-losefsky: At this point in my profession I work for the defense mainly, we're going to a crime scene that could be months old, weeks old. So we're relying on the original pictures, the original evidence that was found. But when we get there we're going to [00:16:00] take measurements, we're going to take pictures.
And then, for instance, how long does it take someone in a walk from, let's say the living room to the basement? How many steps it is. Your mind is constantly going, trying to think. Okay, this is the crime that occurred. These were the tools of evidence that are involved Because you have to connect the person to the scene the items to the scene And the items to the person so if there's any lag in between that you got to look for that so You usually go with a shopping list, I should say, of what you need to do.
But oftentimes when you get there you might run into a maintenance person and he might tell you that an alteration was done or this window was changed out recently, or the door was. So you need to ask a lot of questions because oftentimes you only got one shot the. Somebody is paying for your time, so you might be traveling [00:17:00] a big distance, so you try to everything possible from your training and your experience that could be or might be important including talking to people.
angela swarts: Yeah. It's that's interesting because my usually when I would go to crime scenes I always had a barrier between myself and. Like I was very focused on the scene and I don't talk to people other than, my point of contact because I'm trying not to have information implanted in my brain that subconsciously affects my decision making, but when it comes and when, and that's when it, that works more for the type of, the side of forensics that I'm on, right?
We want to do linear sequential and masking of information. And I know that you want to do something similar when you're doing any kind of death investigation, but it becomes a little bit more difficult, especially when you're coming to the cold scene [00:18:00] after it may have been cleaned up. You do need a little bit more information.
Was the carpet changed out and we moved doors and changed out windows and things like that. But, it's. death investigator does seem to have a need for a little bit more contextual information in order to function and do their job. And what do you just wanted to get your thoughts around that?
bill-losefsky: Yeah, like I said oftentimes our scene is stale when we get called out. Oftentimes like a blood stain might be, might have been cleaned up.
angela swarts: Mm hmm.
bill-losefsky: We'll try to fluoresce that if it's still there because it's important. The bloodstains will talk to you because was the person sitting, were they standing?
Is the splatter make sense for the location of the body? We're always told that the body is its own crime scene. Think
of the body as a separate crime scene. And then not always [00:19:00] is the the bad act occurring where the body winds up. Sometimes the body is moved often.
more than once.
angela swarts: Mm
bill-losefsky: multiple crime scenes. If you get to a scene and there's very little blood and the person bled out,
angela swarts: hmm.
bill-losefsky: they were, they put their afterwards.
angela swarts: Yeah.
bill-losefsky: You know, again, it goes back to not assuming anything. Let the evidence tell you
angela swarts: Yeah.
bill-losefsky: to have X amount of quarts of blood in the body and it was very little found at the scene.
There's
angela swarts: What?
bill-losefsky: in Denmark. Yeah,
angela swarts: Yeah. Where did the blood get cleaned up? Or is the blood someplace else? Where's our secondary crime scene? Yeah. So what do you think out of, from what you've done with the death investigations? Was there any case that you've worked where you feel like your analysis was essential for them to be able to really unravel what had happened?
They maybe the initial investigation got completely the wrong picture, but you were able to [00:20:00] go in there and say, and look at things from a different perspective and see what was the evidence actually saying versus what did the prosecution think it was saying?
bill-losefsky: You know that does happen. And a lot of times it might change the charges. If you can show that maybe somebody was depressed and it was possibly a suicide. And oftentimes when a medical examiner comes in, the police come, they're trying to assess the cause of death in the manner of death.
And oftentimes it's not 100 percent accurate. The family might call for a second autopsy and maybe they didn't check for drugs and other, substances in the system, and that might have precipitated why someone had a motor vehicle accident. They didn't have a heart attack.
They had a bunch of substances in their system, and then you get a toxic toxicologist to say this interacts with that, and that could have caused the person to die. To to have a seizure. It started out [00:21:00] as, perhaps an accident. And then you or a suicide, you find out all these different drugs interacted with each other.
And that changed the whole course of the call,
angela swarts: So does that happen often where the, is it that the toxicology wasn't ordered? Or was it that they needed to test for something nonstandard?
bill-losefsky: well, a lot of times they will test and this stuff was in somebody's system. But they're not like do they interact with each other? What happens when you take drug A, B and C all together? What does that do to the person? Does it affect their respiratory system? Does it affect their judgment or their depth perception?
Oftentimes that type of minutia and those kinds of details are left out. You really want to analyze. Like all the evidence and how does one react to another was their alcohol ingested at the same time? You know Interpreting the data is just as important as having [00:22:00] it, you know It's like having a reservation at a restaurant is fine.
But did you get did you have the meal there,
angela swarts: yeah.
bill-losefsky: so it's
angela swarts: Yeah. That's one of the other things I'm glad that you mentioned that because I'd know what I'd noticed is. Since I've been doing things more on the defense side recently, when you're working for the government crime lab, usually have case after case, and you have a standard operating procedure and you follow that procedure, do the lab work, do the investigative work.
Issue report next case, right? You just it's almost like an assembly line. And I'm not saying that it's not that people don't care. They do care. It's just, there's so much coming at them that if, the police investigator or the prosecution doesn't think to go back to that particular expert and say, okay what do these toxicology results mean in the context of the the overall [00:23:00] case. It's like we, we break everything down into these little silos of testing and analysis. And sometimes we forget that you need that person on the back end that helps to piece all of those things together. And it sounds like largely that's what you do. And as an investigator with your company, is it, am I getting that correct?
bill-losefsky: Yeah, and you bring up an excellent point because working in law enforcement It's a group think tank. So you have the officer, the responding officer, then you have a detective and maybe the detective sergeant and maybe medical examiner and they all want to come to an agreement together as to what happened.
So there's not a lot of individual thinking perhaps the officer there has five years of experience and he was first on the scene. Maybe he doesn't agree with what the senior people say, but he's stifled. He goes with the group think. So come to find out. Things are not what they appear to be because [00:24:00] everybody's got this tunnel vision on in the law enforcement is Hey let's wrap this up.
We're going to call it a suicide or, an accident and move on as opposed to Hey, let's slow down here and let's really see if this, everything makes sense.
We're taught to critically analyze every piece of evidence where I don't think the police have the luxury or that's not their their first instinct is to question everything.
It's like they want to categorize something is this is how it happened. And they all agree to it. And then down the road, find out that they should have taken a left turn when they went straight.
angela swarts: It's interesting because I feel like sometimes that, although when you're working for those types of organizations, there's not necessarily direct, this is what you're going to put in your report, or this is what I want your conclusion to be. There is this subtle pressure to, [00:25:00] complete it, close the case and move on. That might actually be pretty contributory in my opinion to some miscarriages of justice because we're not taking the time or there's that subtle pressure to get the cases closed and get them out the door. Do you find the same thing?
bill-losefsky: Yeah I can say of all the police agencies I've worked for, I can unequivocally say we were never overstaffed. It's usually If you ask the town or the city, hey, we need two three more officers. They said we'll give you one, there's that pressure to do more with less and the caseloads keep building.
I was. the police prosecutor. So I'm not only investigating the major crimes, but I'm also prosecuting them in court. So it's almost like Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory is trying to keep up with that load, and do as much as you can with the cases, with the resources you have.
That's that's a problem with law enforcement. I don't know of many departments unless it's a [00:26:00] very overly large department with a a nice budget, to say that they had. time and enough resources to do the case.
angela swarts: Mm
bill-losefsky: the best of their ability within their restrictions, because like you said they're rolling in as
angela swarts: hmm. Yeah.
bill-losefsky: to work something.
There's a point where the cake is finished.
angela swarts: Yeah. Yeah. And I know that sometimes the poor crime scene investigators, it's just. They finish at one crime scene and they don't even have time to they get the evidence in the back of their truck and then they've got to move on to the next scene. They, and they barely have any, they, they usually don't get to take a lunch breaks or dinner breaks and then, it's definitely a lot of pressure to, to perform, like you said, with limited resources.
Sometimes you have to be a little bit creative and trying to accomplish the task with what you have. And of course, the flip side of that is, is when you have the defense who are actually paying attention and maybe they get an [00:27:00] expert, is it fair for the defense side to be overly critical of the law enforcement side, the investigative side of things, when they were under resourced, it's hard not to, because if there was a certain thing you were supposed to do, you should have done it. Or found a way to do it, but if they didn't give you the resources to do it, how are you going to be able to accomplish it? But then you get, you get criticized on the flip side by the defense because you didn't do it. Um
bill-losefsky: If
you're looking for a pat on the back, Neither of those professions are going to give it to you, but it comes down to Bill Belichick what he says every Sunday is do your job. That's when he was running the Patriots, go do your job. So do your job to the best of your ability.
And if if all of a sudden it does not concur with the law enforcement, synopsis, then so be it. What is often overlooked is the initial responding officers and detectives. They're going to [00:28:00] the live scene here, somebody just died, there's a body there that was somebody's husband, wife, or son, or child, and they're thinking somebody's got to make the announcements that this person is deceased, there's a lot of moving parts at that moment, so for them to forget to take some fingerprints or tool marks or something, you have to understand that the emotional aspect of dealing with that type of scene and that type of call and then after they're done, they're rolling to a next call.
It might be a domestic call. That's we're at the end of the day. Everybody's a human and I have been on that side where I was the first responding officer to a suicide with a shotgun. And the family I ordered them upstairs because it was, let's just say a horrendous scene and they kept coming down and I was just the first officer to respond.
I called for backup finally I got a sheet off a bed and [00:29:00] just covered that room because they would just come down and see the scene and just lose it. So I'm trying to manage the evidence. Obviously, each time the family members would come down, they're stepping on things, they're moving things, they're crying, you have to weigh all that, and I think at the end of the day every state on their flag and in their courtroom, you have the blindfolded lady with the scales of justice, and they're supposed to be they're supposed to be equal, so it's important to respect Thank you very much. police and the prosecution and respect the defense, they both have their jobs to do,
angela swarts: Yeah.
bill-losefsky: be recognized for, what they bring to the table and that we just hope at the end of the day that the truth will come out and the truth will speak for itself.
angela swarts: Yeah. One of the things that I find when I'm doing training sessions for investigators and, physicians especially ones that deal with domestic [00:30:00] violence and sexual assaults. And speaking to them from the forensic evidence perspective and the preservation of evidence and what type of evidence to collected, collect and, how quickly they need to be able to try to collect it. But it's really hard to do when you have someone who's hysterical. And like you said, the body is the evidence might, sometimes the victim is deceased, but a lot of times the victim is not deceased, but they are still a crime scene in and of themselves. So you're it's difficult. I expect it to manage that the emotional side of that situation and still try to preserve the integrity of the evidence that you have. At least we should document when things happen. Like I had problems keeping the family from coming downstairs and trampling through the crime scene, but it's in your notes. So people would then be aware of that that having been part of the situation and can take that into account when you get to the end of it and do your interpretation of all of the [00:31:00] evidence that you were able to recover and analyze. The becoming a certified death investigator. What kind of process is that? I have a lot of students that are interested in becoming death investigators, and usually I just refer them to the American Board of Medical Death Investigators. So did you have any kind of pointers or advice for people that might be interested in going into that field?
bill-losefsky: Yeah, I would say try to get some formal education at a college level. Like for this particular credential, you have to meet certain criteria to even apply. for for certification. So that was very rigorous. I think you had to have a hundred cases and X amount of hours doing these type of investigations, you had to have a couple of references from attorneys that can vouch for the type of work product you had, And I think it was a certain minimum years of [00:32:00] experience.
So this is a very advanced certification that would probably take the average private investigator probably five to 10 years to get to that level of even being accepted into the program. My advice to people is pick a track. That you think you have a lot of interest in and keep taking classes and, offer to take those type of cases so you can learn.
There's no better teacher than a good mentor. You can learn from a textbook only so far, but if you actually can balance your academic, education with actual field work. I think that's the best balance, but there's no magic bullet that you're going to have a credential like this within the first couple of years of your career.
This is what I would call a very advanced level. It would take the experience from what I understand that the dropout and failure rate was quite high. To the point when there's only eight or nine [00:33:00] of us in the United States that have it and there's a ton of people that have paid their tuition and started the course.
But I remember getting a call. On a Sunday from the instructor and said, Hey, you passed your exam. And that's how big a deal it was. And then he posted it on LinkedIn and went on social media is almost like he had a child it was a Christian, he made you feel so special and then every month.
We have a webinar like what you and I are doing, and all eight of us, or as many as the investigators are, get on, and we'll talk about a particular case that we're working on, or a case law, or something that's going on that affects the industry. So that kind of brother and sisterhood just energizes the group, because if you're, in a, Zoom meeting with eight powerhouses you can feel that energy and if somebody's working a case and you might've had two or three that, that similar ways to say, Hey, did you try to do this [00:34:00] or did look at maybe taking a micro microscope to this piece of evidence?
So we're all there to assist each other, which is which is a, great aspect of the profession.
angela swarts: I did not realize that there were so few people that actually had managed to obtain that certification. So that just tells everybody that if you're interested, it's going to be a while before you can work your way up to that and being able to even sit the exam for it.
bill-losefsky: I thought the exam was absolutely brutal. But after I took it and passed, the instructor asked each student, do you think we should water down the exam at all? And everybody at the end says no, because if you really know your stuff, then you get the credential. And if you don't what Dean Beers doesn't want to have is somebody go testify or write a report and they really are not up to snuff.
He wants to make sure if he's going to certify you [00:35:00] that what,
angela swarts: You started out in law enforcement you're a licensed private investigator. Did you, so most of your experience, the number of years in the job, the number of cases that you worked, was that primarily because you started out in law enforcement?
bill-losefsky: I think it's easier to transition from law enforcement into the private sector.
And when I say that with a caveat, I've worked with police officers for 20 years that had 1 year's experience times 20. They went to the police academy. They had perhaps 16 hours of the required training, and then you have somebody else that went to accident reconstruction school or became a canine officer or, a breathalyzer or specialized in interview and interrogation skill set.
And that person is far more valuable than the person that was a patrolman for 20 years and really didn't [00:36:00] learn additional skill sets. When our police academy offered a document examination and handwriting analysis, I saw that in the catalog. I said, I got to have that. I, and I called up the police academy and they said, we have two seats left within two days, the whole class filled up.
And unfortunately that was the only class they ever had that one time. But I learned so much in that week. And it was funny because we used to gas up at a gas station our police cruisers. And the attendant said, gee, I hadn't seen you for a week. Where you been?
I said, Oh, I learned this new school of, document examination and handwriting analysis. He's really, how does that work? So I said to him just write your name down so he writes his name on a piece of paper. And I went like this. I said, huh. He goes, what? I said I see a little disconnection between you and your father and the guy looks at me and he says My father [00:37:00] abandoned me on birth.
I never, knew him and he started crying, but there was this huge disconnect in the capital letter I that we're told to look for. So I said, wow, I have to be careful of how, you release this skill thing. But it just showed how on point it was is once you learn a skill.
It's imprinted in your brain. And I always look at documents and writing, for any kind of a case. I remember somebody reported a car being stolen and one of the officers said, Oh I'm just taking a a stolen car report. He needs it for his insurance company.
And I said have him write a statement. He's here at the station, right? So I am analyzing the statement and he's telling me in certain aspects of the statement that there's problems with his story. Come to find out he was behind three months payments on this Mercedes and wanted to dissolve himself of it.
Paid someone to steal it. He left the keys in [00:38:00] it and he just figured he'd collect the money from insurance and, disassociate himself with but who would've known that if we didn't have the skillset to look at the interview and the words just told us that there's problems with the time.
There's, like we, we call things possession. If it's my car and all of a sudden at six o'clock at night, the car is missing, it's still your car. It might be missing, but it's still your car. Why are we now calling it the car? So it's little things like that that we're taught to look for and help solve cases.
angela swarts: this is one, it made me very conscious of how am I writing my "I"'s, but I have a very good relationship with my father, so it's probably not going to have that same issue as that guy did. But, So you're, what you're talking about there is a step beyond what I think of document examiners from the forensic laboratory standpoint.
So I previously talked to Meredith DeKalb Miller, a few years back and, [00:39:00] we talked about some of her work on that. And that was more like handwriting analysis type things, are they forgeries, but what you're doing is a little bit different. You're actually. Analyzing their word choices to verify the veracity of their statements.
bill-losefsky: Correct. It's called statement analysis.
So everyone knows what the fire triangle is about. In order to have a fire, you need an ignition source. You need fuel and you need oxygen. I look at it as, the the investigation triangle. Let's say you have a skill set and document examination and you could determine if something's forged or not, but you might have a case in which the statement that somebody wrote is not true. Is it truthful? Is it less than truthful? So that's a whole nother skill set. Statement analysis is completely different than forensic document examination. You're looking at people taking possession of things, how they write the time. And I'll give you an example. [00:40:00] Let's say I'm telling you that I'm going to go to a conference with Brad, John, Felix and oh yeah, Wally. Who is the least important person of that
angela swarts: I guess you don't really want Wally to be there.
bill-losefsky: So let's say this guy says that he was in the car and a crime occurred. And these are the people in the car with him. If you wanted to flip somebody, it probably wouldn't be the first person that he mentioned because he's closest to that person. But you'd probably want to talk to Wally first because Wally is the least important person to this guy, because he just told you that. So it's little things like that of how somebody is addressed. It's my wife, Barbara, as opposed to the wife or the ball and chain.
angela swarts: Mm
bill-losefsky: how how is somebody introduced? Are they properly introduced? Are they improperly introduced? And then throughout the statement did they stay the girlfriend of the wife or or they get downgraded or upgraded within the [00:41:00] statement. So it's a lot of analysis to look for to determine how to attack the interview. So quite often we'll look at statements and depositions. If somebody is asked, where were you at six o'clock?
And they say, wow, gee, six o'clock, let me think a minute. That's not a response of recalling a truthful fact. You would probably want to say at six o'clock, I was in route to the gas station.
The truth doesn't need a lot of tie ins with it, and you'll look at how the politicians talk, if they're asked a question, they never answer it we'll dance around it.
So you look for things like that is did this person answer the question? Yes or no. Did you do this? I, you can ask anybody and they'll tell you, I wouldn't do something like that. They still didn't say they didn't do it. They're not committing. You're looking for a commitment to a question.
And then, of course, you're looking for body [00:42:00] language, micro facial expressions and clusters. All of a sudden we might be talking about an incident occurred to three o'clock. And every time we talk about three o'clock, they're wiping, they're touching their hair or they're tapping their feet.
But all the other questions they're answering. Okay. That
angela swarts: Okay.
bill-losefsky: o'clock is sensitive. What we're taught is okay, let's get back to that. And I call it wait till your father comes home because they've got to fabricate a lie now to deal with three o'clock because they know that they didn't, you didn't buy that.
now they have to work with, how am I going to make a story about three o'clock to make sense to this guy? And I got to answer the rest of his questions in real time.
angela swarts: Sorry to interrupt.
I'm just thinking you must be very difficult to beat at poker.
bill-losefsky: There's actually podcast out of a guy that reads poker and he brings in all these experts it's how they hold their hand. And for instance, if they bring the cards towards them, it's better cards than if they push them slightly away. [00:43:00] So the tells in poker are just absolutely incredible.
And it's those micro facial expressions. Thanks.
When they say,
angela swarts: like there's your real world application outside of
bill-losefsky: I I don't go gambling. I guess I work way too hard for my money to take a chance on anything.
angela swarts: but so that's, this is actually pretty fascinating. So you can do this type of analysis of any written statements from victims, suspects, persons of interest. Yeah, I remember you mentioned and I think I saw on your CV that you've worked for some private hospitals as well and done some interesting investigations for them as well.
Could you share some of those too?
bill-losefsky: Yeah. I when I got to a hospital, it's like a city. And you're looking at like sometimes 15, 000 employees, which is like a small town or a medium sized town, and you've got all walks of life and all kinds of [00:44:00] disciplines you could be talking to a doctor and a research analyst with two PhDs and 10 minutes later, the person that cleans the bathrooms and they all have different jobs.
But at the end of the day, they're it takes all of them to get the hospital work. And what I've found is A hospital, I would say, runs beyond the, the view of their headlights. They're going a hundred miles an hour, they're open 24 seven. It never stops. You have helicopters coming in, bringing patients and a lot of things happen that most people have no idea what goes on in the hospital.
For instance drug diversion is considered health care's dirty little secret. And they say 12 percent of the employees that deal with drugs are diverting. So it's a huge problem. And I got caught up in it and I said, geez, I really got to learn a high skill set because these people are very smart.
You've got doctors, [00:45:00] anesthesiologists, nurses. And they work with these medications all day long in the machines, and they understand the system because they're in it every day. To catch them, takes a really, team effort. A lot of times hospitals will have a drug diversion team.
You'll have an attorney, HR. Security, and a pharmacist and director of nursing all on there to analyze these type of cases and oftentimes by the time you find a diverter, it's been going on a long time, and it's generally, they'll be so surprised. I said that's my best nurse they won't even consider it, but we're taught is to look for patterns.
If they diverted once we'll look at security footage and see geez, they're on the third floor here on a Friday. They were assigned to floor one. What are they doing on the third floor? Why are they entering that bedroom on the third floor? There's no business to be up there.
So we'll just connect the [00:46:00] pieces or they might tailgate in behind another nurse because in order to get into these secured drug rooms, you have to swipe your card. So that, tells security that Nurse Nancy entered that, that pharmacy at 3. 01 p. m. precisely. So if Sarah is tailgating behind her, there's no cookie. To tell that Sarah was there And oftentimes the nurses are so busy they don't realize how critical that is because if something's missing we're gonna, we're gonna want to talk to nurse Nancy because she swiped a card in.
So we have to change the culture. Somebody tries to tailgate we tell that nurses, hey, look it, you got to swipe your own self in don't put me at risk.
angela swarts: So the term drug diversion, I feel like that's definitely an industry jargon type term. How would you define that for just the casual listener here? What, does that mean? Are these people, is it theft for personal use? Are they [00:47:00] selling it? What are they diverting these drugs to?
bill-losefsky: That's an excellent question. It's a myriad of reasons. Sometimes it's for themselves. Oftentimes it's a family member that becomes drug addicted, or they're have chronic pain and their own doctor has cut them off. They put pressure on the nurse. It's Hey my knee hurts or my, my hand hurts so bad you got to get me something, you got to get me something.
Unfortunately, nurses are nurturing people and they want to help so they, they can get caught up in it that ways and other times they're hurting too. They're, that's a tough job to be a nurse. You're working odd hours, you're lifting patients, you're moving them. The chances of a nurse getting injured is really great.
They have back injuries, shoulder injuries, back injuries. So they're working in pain, and I try to explain it to people, it's a lot like when a police officer first becomes a police officer and they give you a gun, [00:48:00] and you've never carried one before your, elbow is on it all the time you're, checking it if it comes out of its holster, you're absolutely, you know, 10 years, it's just a tool.
It's a deadly force, but you're so used to it. So these nurses are injecting people with high powered narcotics and their pain is gone in an instant. They have less respect for that. They that uh, they start taking it themselves and oftentimes that's what happens.
I said, probably 60 to 70%. They're diverting it for themselves. They got themselves into a habit and it's easy access. It's like being at a candy store and, uh, who, why does it matter if I take a few chocolates with me? oftentimes, if a patient's supposed to have two pills, they get one pill or no pills, a nurse will take a vial, let's say 200 micrograms [00:49:00] of a drug, she's only supposed to disperse 10.
So she's gonna say I had to waste the other 190. Really,
it's
angela swarts: of waste.
bill-losefsky: a lot of waste. You could have taken one that holds 25. Why did you take the 200? But oftentimes, it's so busy in a hospital. that people aren't seeing that until it gets out of hand. And you realize that they've taken five, 200 microgram bottles and they're supposed to waste.
With a witness. So a lot of times the diverters will hold on to those drugs here on the overhead PA that a helicopter is coming in with severely injured people. And just before the helicopters arrived, they'll go to a nurse and say, Hey, can you waste with me? And they're like, hey, the helicopter's coming in.
All right I'll waste myself, but you just say that you were here. And I'm like, oh okay. So now it's not getting wasted. It's going home with that person.
angela swarts: That's interesting. Cause now you've got the primary bad actor. Now they've roped someone else in who thinks that they can trust [00:50:00] their coworker that is now unwittingly been drawn into their, their bad web of naughtiness. So what happens to those employees, both the primary actor and the other nurse, that, that should have actually been verifying the waste?
bill-losefsky: That's, that again is a great question. And what I found when I came into different hospital, systems, they don't realize how bad it's going on. Because they don't see all of it I teach my folks how to look for it and all of a sudden we're you know, every time I'm I'm calling HR oh my God, another nurse bill wants to but I said, Hey, we got to deal with this.
So what I suggested is. And it goes back from like the 1970s when Cumberland Farms came out they used to have a tape measure on the door as you walked out it said you were five foot six or five foot eight or six foot, and that alone, once they put that up, there was [00:51:00] less theft because people were the employees were aware that theft happened and they can at least get the person's exact height when they left.
So if I said, look at that mentality and let's extrapolate with it because every hospital has a week long orientation program for a new employee. It doesn't matter if they were a nurse for 15 years at another hospital association. They're required to have all these trainings before they can be on the floor.
And I said, let's tell them that we're a member of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators and that we investigate drug diversion very thoroughly here. and set that tone, set that culture from day one that this is not accepted. We know that it goes on and we look for it and we don't tolerate it.
So a lot of those problems were corrected once we known and we even put it know, a member of the Na of Drug Diversion [00:52:00] invest you're a diverting nurse just want to go to anothe that's what we wanted, yo they're like, O of aggressive and everyth We got to sign out says no weapons. Don't bring a gun in here, right?
Don't divert set that culture and train the nurses that this is not acceptable. Have 800 hotline that a nurse can call leave a message at security and you don't have to give you a name. We don't have a way to Phone number you called from said, hey, this might this is happening on this shift and this floor and I'm concerned.
I don't want to get personally involved, but I think you should be aware of it. So that alone we get tipped off on that. it's a matter of changing the culture and it's that could be done in any industry. It's just. People really want to know what's acceptable and what's not. And if you don't have the ground rules laid out it's like the Lord of the flies book,
angela swarts: Yeah. Yeah. You need to set those expectations from the outset. I wonder, did HR [00:53:00] keep any stats on after how many people decided not to work there after going through their initial,
bill-losefsky: We had these talks and they said, wow, we had this really great nurse and we made her an offer and she declined. I said, really? Yeah, we had her set up for her flu shot and, the come in and everything. And she just at the last minute decided, not to not to bunk with us.
angela swarts: You're part of a hospital, you've been private and you've been a law enforcement. Did you ever end up getting involved in hospital related deaths, while you were working for the hospital or even separately as a private investigator? Because we know that sometimes unexpected deaths do happen in the hospitals.
I think New York might call them medical misadventures or you can't remember it was some kind of term like that. It's different than an undetermined death, just because they're we can't necessarily determine what happened, but it was something related to the medical work that was done.
Do you do anything in that realm or is
bill-losefsky: Yeah that [00:54:00] happens way more than you would think it does. The statistics of people dying in a hospital environment. Or being injured is really high. It's like I said, it's a fast pace issue. And uh, you know, I remember you know, a guy came in for a colonoscopy and his friend brought him in and his friend said I'll be back in three hours. This is a routine colonoscopy. And the guy asked me, he said, Hey, where's a good place I can get a breakfast around here? I told him where to go, where all the cops go and the security guys go. You can get a nice breakfast.
angela swarts: Yeah.
bill-losefsky: comes back three hours, his friend's not alive anymore.
Routine colonoscopy.
angela swarts: Yeah. They're actually more dangerous than people think Yeah.
bill-losefsky: they got patient relations and all these specialty people that are trained in counseling, but who do they call and something like that? The security director. We need you to go tell this guy that is no more. Yeah. And I said who's going to go with me?
And they'll say [00:55:00] Rebecca and Sandy will go with you. I get halfway down the hall and I look back, Rebecca and Sandy are not with me. And unfortunately, that has happened many times, And, you just have to, you have to deal with it and you hope that they learn from these mistakes and it doesn't happen again. But unfortunately it occurs when someone goes into a hospital, I would always say, send the guardian angel with them. Send a family member to be with them every part of the way because things happen and get them home as soon as you can. Let the hospital do the work they need to do. And when it's time to be discharged, get out of Dodge.
angela swarts: Yeah. I, my experiences working for a hospital are very similar. If you don't need to be there. Get out as quickly as you can. There's even if you're just talking, even if not saying medical personnel did anything wrong, it's just that you're at a much greater risk for some kind of accident to happen or [00:56:00] just for you to catch some hospital born infection.
That there's some
bill-losefsky: Oh yeah.
angela swarts: nasty infections that are just, they try to manage and control them in the hospital environments, but it's just so difficult
bill-losefsky: I can speak to that a little bit and you're absolutely right. There's more germs in the hospital than that are at a gas station. Bathroom that hadn't been cleaned in two weeks, but they have things like these specially robots that come in and, zap the area and kill all the organisms.
And it's a laser, it looks like really R2D2 the thing goes into a room, you close the door and you need special glasses to operate this thing. And it, after 15 minutes it, really just kills any airborne. bacteria that's in there. So they do take measures.
You got to understand that people don't come to the hospital when they're feeling fantastic.
angela swarts: No.
bill-losefsky: They're touching the handrails and the doors and everything else. And, [00:57:00] it's just the way of the world, but yeah, to your point, I've been involved in many things that were things didn't go as planned one of them was, a person was discharged.
Being told that that there's nothing wrong with them and they were convinced that they did have something wrong, they no sooner got home that they went into a medical emergency and had to be brought back by ambulance and resuscitated and barely clinging to life because, the diagnosis wasn't correct.
Now this person is in their room and we got wind that they wanted to have a big protest come to the hospital. The CEO called me up and he said, can you talk to this guy? And I'm like it's really his right to do what he wants to do. But he apparently, he was calling for his grandson to come and have this huge protest on a Saturday, which in a hospital reputation is everything to them.
Again, I said aren't we sending a patient relations person? [00:58:00] Bill, we think you're the best guy for this. And I was like, oh, God. So again I went with the two people that were trained to talk to these people. And again, they were, they said, we'll be down at the end of the hall. I went in there and I'm like, I really can't tell the guy he can't do what he wants to do.
But let me see if I can make things better. So I told him who I was I'm the director of security and he goes, Oh, I thought a doctor or somebody would come in and talk to me. And I said we have 100 doctors here, but there's only one security director. I said, I'm your guy. I said, I tell you what, I can make sure that every meal that you order is hot on time and to your liking and that your TV works a hundred percent of the time.
You want your shades up, your shades down. I said, I can do everything possible from this point forward. To make you stay as good as possible. And I took a line out of a series called the unit, which [00:59:00] was a show in, in, I don't know, 2015 or 17, which was, a group of soldiers that were specially trained and I remember the command sergeant major.
Ask this reporter to hold her story for three hours because it would compromise the mission the reporter didn't want to do it. he hands the reporter, his card. He says, you now have this card. And if you need anything, and one day you will, cause everyone does you call this number and I will fix your problem.
And I remembered that line. I said, huh that's pretty impressive. So I didn't really know what to do with this guy. So I handed him my card. And I said, here's my card. I'm the security director. Here's my cell phone. I said, if anything goes wrong with your stay, you call me and I will fix it and I will make it right. Now, I never once asked him to call off the dogs of the protest. Because I said I did the best I could. I all I could do is fix things [01:00:00] going forward. I can't do anything in return. And also, I Dale Carnegie, the guy. He had a hat that said he was in the Navy. So we spoke about the aircraft carrier he was on and the ice cream maker that they had on the aircraft carrier and I thanked him for a service. And uh, I said, you got my card, you need anything, you just let me know. And I said, I will check on you at least once a day. And I left and the CEO went, Oh, is he going to protest or anything? I said that I don't know. We'll just have to see, but I think I might've gotten through with him. And sure enough, he called off the protest. But that was just an example of the kind of stuff we get involved in and the issues that can happen in a hospital.
angela swarts: Yeah. It sounds like he just wanted somebody to listen to him and understand the issues that he was facing. And I think that makes a big difference in not any walk of life, right? Just knowing that somebody is actually listening to you and cares makes a [01:01:00] difference.
bill-losefsky: You said that precisely, listening to him and caring at the same time and having genuine empathy and let him he raged on for a while and he got loud and he deserved it. He's rightfully so, he. Almost lost his life out of this misdiagnosis. And he had to yell at someone and of course the other two gals didn't want any part of that.
I took it, but I, I smiled and, like I'm here to help, I'm here to make things better moving forward. And that was the, that was what I pushed. I have control over certain things. I can get your meals I can get you're a better mattress for you or whatever you know, if your TV didn't work, cause he said he wasn't getting certain channel though, I said, I'll fix that for you.
Consider it done. And like you said after he had his rant, which he was entitled to. I think he just felt that his problem was was heard and people cared and try to make things better for him.
angela swarts: Yeah. So [01:02:00] definitely an interesting, life you've had or career with all these different things that, that you've been doing. So is there anything that stands out to you? This was my, the most interesting case I've ever worked or I most enjoyed this particular investigation.
bill-losefsky: Actually, yes, it was actually the first case I got as a private investigator. Now, I just retired from law enforcement. I was prosecuting people. All the time hopefully they're all guilty. And the first case I got was a rape case. And, in the state of New Hampshire and most other states, if you can't afford an attorney, one is provided for You
Public defender or in some cases, lawyers will be in a pool that they'll do some pro bono work as being members of the bar. But a person is also entitled to an investigator. So I got this case in which this guy is facing really heavy felony [01:03:00] charges of rape and the attorney said, Hey, I just got this case.
He's at the jail. Will you go interview him? Tell me if you think he did it or not and we'll work whatever the case was. So I go and interview this guy armed with statement analysis, handwriting analysis, microfacial expressions. I'm trained to detect deception. That's one of my skills.
And I spent about two hours with the guy. And at not one point did I ever detect any deception. And I had him write me a statement and he signed it. And again, where you sign your name means a lot of how much you're committing to the statement. If there's distance between the last paragraph and where you're signing it, that's less commitment.
He signed his name under the last part of the what he wrote. And I started checking his alibi and I came to find out that he was in a whole nother state when this allegedly happened. And the police they got tunnel vision they [01:04:00] believe this girl's statement.
And what had happened is through my investigation, she was huffing paint. You probably heard of that. You actually sprayed me
angela swarts: Yep.
bill-losefsky: And you inhale it in a paper bag. We got a toxicologist in to determine what that does to your short term memory. And it scrambles it. All of her facts, we were able to refute she said she was in his apartment and he had, believe it or not, he was a bodyguard for a famous actor.
So we had a picture of this actor with with a movie that he was in at the time, it's signed by the actor. So it was pretty significant thing. If you saw it, And she had said it was an eight by 10 picture. It was actually a full poster size, like you would have in a theater. That thing was enormous, almost as big as the real actor was.
We were able to really, dismantle every part of her statement. I further went to a restaurant in Massachusetts where he said he [01:05:00] had lunch at the time that this was happening. Allegation occurred I met these two waitresses because the guy ordered a lunch and then for dessert, he wanted a banana split, but without the banana and for some reason he orders that is a joke but
angela swarts: Mm hmm.
bill-losefsky: two waitresses, one served him initially, she left for her shift and then the other waitress cashed him out.
So they both had exposure to him and they remember the banana split without the banana. And we showed him a photo array with eight pictures. He said, yep, that's the guy he was here at this time on this date. And then he also made a phone call from a pay phone which I was able to substantiate.
So we were able to show that he didn't do this, but he was looking at a long time in jail for something that he really didn't do. And I wound up getting a Christmas card from him for five straight years. Thank you for my life. That really made me understand the true [01:06:00] balance of the criminal justice system and the scales of justice that if somebody is being vigorously prosecuted, then they should also have a vigorous defense and, let the facts speak for themselves.
angela swarts: I talked to my, my friend and colleague Dave Schudel a couple of times on this podcast and he wrote a book called The Role of the Forensic Defense Expert. And that's the crux of the entire book was just like, and he's worked on, on, on all sides. So he really does have a good perspective on things. And it was just all about finding the evidence. Look at the evidence. What does the evidence mean? And don't get that tunnel vision. And it seems like especially in your case right here if they hadn't taken the time to get their own investigator on it to actually go and look and see.
Okay. Yeah, he actually has an alibi and that's a pretty hard fact. That's not even having to dig into the the minutia of a lot of the [01:07:00] behavioral type analysis that you can do. You actually had records that you could substantiate and then you backed that up with more supporting evidence. And it's, just tragic that the, original investigators just either didn't have the time or didn't take the time to do that.
bill-losefsky: a lot of times when they interview these victims they just believe everything that they're saying and they don't substantiate it.
If she said that the picture was 12 inches or she was here at this time, they didn't do the work that they should have done to get them in that position I think it went again with group think, yeah, this makes sense.
And this is plausible. Let's go with the charges and the, county attorney, bought into this whole thing and he was going to trial for something that he didn't do. So that was probably I'm glad I had that as my first case because. It really showed me how we have to be very objective and look at everything if I didn't get phone records, if I [01:08:00] didn't drive all the way down to the restaurant and find those waitresses,
angela swarts: Mm
bill-losefsky: I wouldn't have been able to get him that outcome, but it was a a big effort on the attorney that I work with, to give me the long leash, I said, Hey, I need to drive to Massachusetts all the way down there.
And I've got this lead I need to follow. And he's Follow your instincts, Bill. Work the case is what he said. I was not micromanaged. He goes, work the case.
angela swarts: I think that, It's 1 of the things I think most attorneys are unaware of is that they can, they don't have to rely on the state's experts. They can get their own experts and they should get their own experts. You need an external pair of eyes to take a fresh look at things because people miss things or they misinterpret things or, they didn't realize that they needed to drive all the way down to Massachusetts and talk to the two waitresses in the restaurant, right? And it's really important. It's interesting there was a sexual assault case because a [01:09:00] large number of the cases that I get on the defense side is looking at the DNA results from these types of investigations. And it even goes back to, I've got to understand what was the initial outcry?
What kind of examination was done on the victim? What kind of samples were collected? What did they test? What was reported? The main thing I notice is that the attorneys don't understand what that report means, and they misinterpret what it means, and they think that it means their client Did this thing.
And I'm like, no, that doesn't mean that at all. And so you need that expert externally to just say, no, that's not what that means. You can very quickly give them a 10 minutes conversation and they have this light bulb go off, but that's, those are the ones that realized they needed to go and find
bill-losefsky: Yeah.
angela swarts: to help them.
bill-losefsky: Yeah. Once they see the light and they see how, Easier it is to manage the case when they bring in the experts then that could help [01:10:00] guide the case where it needs to be the ultimately they're the quarterback, but they they need all the players on the field to you to get to the, the, touchdown it takes a village as they say.
angela swarts: and I've, I have found that the investigator that the defense brings in, is really essential for me for when I'm doing my defense work because they're the, they're my go to person when I say, okay, I need this information. Where can I find this information? Were we able to obtain this? Can you go and get me some actual photographs? Did anybody do a sketch of the crime scene? Is there a video somewhere? Is there anything that I can look at besides these photocopies of photocopies? So yeah, that investigator is essential for the defense to be able to really put together their case and understand, because there's a lot of my some people I know that, that are more on the legal side of things, they, need someone to help them piece together all of those [01:11:00] puzzle pieces. Because they've got to figure out how does that slot into all the legal side of things, right? To make sure that things are properly weighed with those scales of justice on there.
bill-losefsky: Yep. And also get the evidence admitted.
angela swarts: Yeah, that's important. Or not
bill-losefsky: yes,
angela swarts: bad evidence.
bill-losefsky: absolutely. Yeah. If the police had a search warrant and for instance they searched somebody shed, but the search warrant only said the house and it didn't say curtilage, which means outbuildings. Then it's the fruit of the poisonous tree. So it's a matter of when I look at discovery, I look at everything.
I look at the search warrants, I look at the officer's reports and maybe officer a and officer B are writing contradictory things, but nobody actually just put the two reports together and say how could he be here? And this person see him from this location, it goes back to somebody said they heard something.
That's 30 or 40 feet [01:12:00] away. Go out and re-act that go to that location and talk in a normal voice and can someone hear it on the other
angela swarts: Mm
bill-losefsky: So it's a matter of we're trained to just really analyze and inquire and then document.
angela swarts: Yeah, okay, I think we've been talking for hour and 20 minutes now, so we should probably start wrapping it up. If there was one piece of advice you think that you could give to somebody who wanted to do your job, wants to be you in the future, what would it be?
bill-losefsky: I would say do what you have a passion for if you get excited when I get a case, is a certain amount of excitement is I want to do my very best. So if you are self driven, don't need supervision and have a high drive. You'll absolutely excel in this type of work because you're mainly working on your own with your [01:13:00] own skill set and your own toolbox.
When you're out at a crime scene, there's not not like on the police department where there's the captain and the deputy chief and everything else. And you could call and make phone calls and say, Hey, what should I do here? You have to bring and build enough of a skill set that You know, when you're out there you got to do your absolute best.
So, I would say, keep going to seminars and listening, listen to podcasts like yourself which I do all the time, there's always something to be learned from somebody read a book and if you have that kind of drive, then this is a good field for you.
angela swarts: So you're also going to be a keynote speaker at a conference coming up pretty soon as well. Could you, would you like to share some of the information on that in case anybody is in the neighborhood and wants to sneak in and see you in person?
bill-losefsky: it's out in Orlando, Florida. It's the Florida Association of Private Investigators. It's a three day conference. It's one of [01:14:00] the larger conferences for private investigators. You're gonna have heavy hitters from all over the country come down there because it's three days chock full of really good talks and information. And uh, I've been bequeathed with having two sessions.
angela swarts: Busy.
bill-losefsky: That particular day I'll be talked out, but I'm very excited because I'm going to talk about major case investigation. And I'm going to encompass handwriting analysis, statement analysis, interview techniques, criminalistics, anybody that's going to be sitting in there.
They can put a couple of tools in their toolbox and walk away with saying, Hey, that makes sense. And I can incorporate this in my next investigation. I'm excited to present, and I'm also excited to see my esteemed peers from all over the country.
angela swarts: Okay. So if someone needs to get in touch with you are you, where can, where's the best place for them to find you?
bill-losefsky: I'm on the web. It's www dot and [01:15:00] the word investigate. And then there's a dash and then the word it, so it's investigate it. com. And, that's my new robust site. And I'm also the president of the New Hampshire League of Investigators, and you can find me there at NHLI. dot net along with other investigators in the state of New Hampshire.
And we're affiliated with many other private investigation organizations. So it's both websites are chock full of information.
angela swarts: Awesome. Thank you. I'll make sure that I link those in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for reaching out and expressing interest in the podcast. Been great. Been a really fun conversation. I always appreciate people coming on the show and talking nerdy stuff with me. So thank you.
bill-losefsky: You make it easy to talk to Angela. You, ask great questions and it it really keeps the uh, the flow going. And uh, I didn't even realize [01:16:00] the time until you mentioned it you know, other times you're on a podcast and you happen to look over, but we were just so engaged that at some time we got to call the ball.
And I thank you so much for uh, your gracious hosting and this fine podcast.
angela swarts: My pleasure. And I'd be happy to have you back on the show some other time too. Thank you again and, good luck at your conference.
bill-losefsky: Thank you so much.