She certainly had not used them to wash herself off, she said. City Employees Are Heading for the Exits. Burnsides father showed up to let her in, and when Lord tried to tell him she had not murdered his son, he cut her off. A light drizzle was falling in the early morning hours of May 9, 2010, when detective Dwayne Thompsonpulled up in front of a modest home on Spring Grove Avenue, in a tree-lined neighborhood in North Dallas. They too had been talking to Thompson and they were furious. Then she looked at Thompson. Thompson started his career in law enforcement as a corrections officer in a maximum-security prison in South Carolina. The officer shrugged. He was convinced Thompson had misled him, and on September 22, Quinton changed the cause of Burnsides death to undetermined. Quintons new ruling was definitely a boost for Lords case, but it was hardly enough to guarantee an acquittal. When Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must s Read allWhen Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must solve without the victim's body. She had started dating Burnside, the co-owner of a company that retrofitted homes to make them energy-efficient, about a year earlier. When Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must solve without the victim's body. Jaffe said he had been at the house earlier that evening, helping Burnside install a dishwasher while Lord was painting the doors and baseboards, and that he had left before midnight. Thompson testified that Lord had little blood on her hands and that she smelled of cleaning solution, which led him to believe she had washed her hands. When Shearin called Lord with the news, she thanked him for all he had done for her, but then she said something else. She also said that when he got angry, he could be a little scary and that he threw stuff in the house. She would usually ignore him when he got into one of his moods, but this time it had only made him angrier. | Recent Lawyer Listings In an excited voice, he said that he had been told by his sons next-door neighbor that a neighbor who lived across the streetan attorney named Sheida Rastegarhad information that linked Lord to the killing. Lord explained again and again that while she was in the bathroom, her boyfriend shot himself (they had been fighting, he was drunk). On the floor was a pool of blood along with bloody towels. She was so in love with him that she was always able to forgive him when he screwed uplike the night of her birthday, when he got rip-roaring drunk, staggered around the restaurant, and didnt even pay for dinner. Im innocent.. Im willing to accept that it might have been an accident. Thompson returned to headquarters and took the elevator to the homicide offices on the fifth floor. Michael Lowe is Celebrating Over 20 YEARS of Service. Hephzibah Olivia Lord, distraught and sobbing, sat across from Detective Dwayne A. Thompson in the Dallas Police Departments interview room several hours after her boyfriend had died from a gunshot wound to the head. She had loved dogs and painting. And youd say, you know, Thats not a toy., Jaffe said that Burnside had pulled out a gun that night. Basing an opinion on over 30 years with the Dallas Police Department, Kim Sanders explained that the Lord interrogation was intimidation, not questioning, and as Thompson handled the questioning it was a textbook example of how police can get false confessions. Alternative . One of the few black detectives in the unit, Thompson quickly made his mark. Burnside told her that he was under financial stress, having to pay both his mortgage and his income taxes. Lundberg conducted the interview because Thompson had a prior commitment to teach a class at the police academy. As Tatia Wilson, one of the City of Dallas attorneys representing Thompson, explained to the jury in her opening statement, Sometimes homicide detectives may make mistakes in their evaluation of the evidence. After the argument was over, Michael stopped being sarcastic and he became quiet and somber. He asked Thompson if he had told one of Burnsides friends that this was the case of a lifetimethe kind of case that could make him famous. Look at it! City attorneys are defending him, saying he acted in good faith and without malice. If the detectives thought they had noticed the smell of chemicals on her, it must have come from the paint thinner and the floor stripper that she and Burnside had been using that day. She explained that after she had found Burnside, her calls to 911 kept getting dropped due to a weak signal on her cellphone. Self - Detective; 2009-2014 2 eps; Credits. Lord said that she and Burnside had gotten into an argumentsomething about a birthday party. I was picking at him all night long about that, she said. Lord explained again and again that while she was in the bathroom, her boyfriend shot himself (they had been fighting, he was drunk). She grew up in the Dallas area and after graduating from high school, she went straight to work, leasing apartments for a large real estate company and later selling cosmetics at Neiman Marcus in NorthPark Center. DallasJustice.com, Law offices of Michael Lowe, For a more complete description of the interrogation, check out Dallas Morning News coverage from the day that the jury was shown the interrogation videotape, Kim Sanders explained that the Lord interrogation was intimidation, Sanders also pointed out Thompsons failure to read Ms. Lord her Miranda rights, Michael Lowes Things to Know if You are Being Investigated for a Crime in Texas, Salinas v. Texas: Your Silence During Police Interrogation Does Not Get 5th Amendment Protection, Can Be Used Against You As Evidence Of Guilt To The Jury. Thats the exact type of case that might have been portrayed on The First 48, right? Tittle asked. During the lengthy interrogation, Thompson repeatedly accused Lord of murdering Michael Burnside, who died in May 2010 from a gunshot wound to the head from his 9 mm Beretta handgun while drunk on vodka and Red Bull. She was on an airplaneon her way to California. Seven minutes is a long time, Thompson told her several times on the video. See production, box office & company info. And, Thompson guessed, she had wiped down her hands and arms with the towels he had seen on the kitchen floor. Whats more, she didnt want him to go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Every day, dozens of times a day, I think about that talk and how I wish I could take it all back, she told me. Had she washed up with towels before the paramedics and police arrived? If the review determines that he did nothing wrong, he could be reinstated as a detective. "When I work my cases, I don't have a dog in the fight," said Thompson, a homicide detective since 2006. Lord, who is now 37 years old, still lives in the same apartment, and she has barely spent any of the money she won in her lawsuit. His voice got even softer. Shearin called a friend in the homicide unit to ask about Thompson, whom he had never met. He thought he had a mild case of COVID-19. Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said he brought thousands of offenders to justice, bringing closure to victims and their families. He said that based on Burnsides victimology, there was no way that a young man with a bright future would put a bullet in his brain simply because his girlfriend was peeved at him. Because that is the only thing that makes sense.. Ill tell you this about Mikey: his motto was I love my life. Every time something worked out, hed be like, I love my life. In fact, Jaffe said, Burnside had used that very phrase that evening because his company was about to bill $70,000 for work it had done in a single week. According to Jaffe, Lord overheard the conversation and started to get upset. She told Burnside she was hurt that he would go to the trouble of organizing a friends birthday party when he had done next to nothing for her own birthday a few months earlier. She identified herself as Olivia Lord, Burnsides girlfriend, and said she had just found Burnside lying on the kitchen floor with a gunshot wound to his head. After Jaffe went home, the argument escalated. Why, for instance, were there bottles of cleaning products scattered on the kitchen floor? There was something else that didnt seem right: drops of blood leading into another room. Jaffe and Lord were taken to the station, and Thompson headed inside Burnsides home. In this interrogation method, its deemed acceptable to manipulate through accusations of guilt through an aggressive protocol of nine steps. Thompson left the room, walked down the hall, and opened the door to another interview room. And, yes, she said, she had grown irritated when she heard Burnside and Jaffe talking about the birthday party. Rastegar ran outside and asked her what had happened. Trailer 0:21. Based on what we see, it looks like you got upset and shot him. When Thompson asked why he didnt immediately tell that story to the police, Rastegar replied that the uniformed officers who first arrived at the scene had rudely ordered him to go back to his home before he had a chance to say anything. After she graduates, she hopes to go to law school and perhaps someday work for the Innocence Project. A team of U.S. marshals found her at her fathers home in Palmdale, about an hour north of Los Angeles, and Lord was held in custody for nine days. Do I feel an overwhelming feeling of guilt because I may have provoked something? Its psychological pressure as opposed to physical force, however many believe that the result, coercion, can be the same even though no blows are struck. For several seconds, the courtroom was quiet except for Lords muffled sobs. He called Jaffe, who had also turned against Lord, to see if he could help him locate her. Yes. In early May, word spread that the departments Public Integrity Unit had launched an investigation of Thompsons work on the Lord case. I want him brought down.. No, she said again. By that time, Lord was working as a loan officer, and although they were both romantically involved with other people, they were clearly attracted to each other. He was the life of the party.. Shearin made his own presentation, about 25 minutes in length, laying out the case for his clients innocence. He took her to dinner, and the date lasted the entire weekend. 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