Former police officers, what incident made you quit your job?
The Manhunt and the Verdict
I knew I had to talk to him and find out what the hell was going on. But when I called his phone he didn’t answer. I started to panic.
For a half second I started to believe that his involvement in the UN living was true but I pushed the thought out of my head just as fast as it had come. I raced to his house hoping it was all just some big misunderstanding.
When I got there the place was a mess. It looked like he had packed up and left in a hurry. Clothes were strolled all over the place, drawers were yanked out and his safe was wide open and empty.
It became obvious to me that he was on the run. The department launched a full scale Manhunt for him. His face was plastered on every News Channel, every cop in the city was looking for him.
And there I was stuck between being a cop and being a brother. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that he might be capable of murder but the evidence was staring me in the face.
Days went by with no sign of him. I was barely sleeping, barely eating. My whole life felt like it was unraveling.
Then we got a break. A motel manager on the outskirts of town called in a tip. He said a guy who looked a lot like my brother had checked in under a fake name.
I was there in minutes, my heart pounding the whole drive. There I kept thinking if it was really possible that my brother would go as far as to actually take the life of someone. Well we surrounded the building as soon as we got to the motel and I remember praying that I wasn’t going to have to be the one to put him in cuffs.
We did a thorough job. There was no way for him to escape. When we knocked on the door I called out to him and told him to come out with his hands up.
There was this long pause, then the door creaked open and my brother stepped out. He looked awful. He was disheveled and pale like he hadn’t slept in days.
But what hit me the hardest was the look in his eyes. He begged me to believe him. He looked me in my eyes and told me that he didn’t do it.
He swore to me. I wanted to believe him. And God must have been really laughing at me on that day because I was indeed the one to put him into cuffs and drag him into the vehicle.
After we took Adam into custody the interrogation began. I had to watch from behind the glass because there was no way I could go into the room myself. It was way too painful.
I tried to keep the way I felt separate from my duties but it was impossible. My brother told the detectives that he was innocent and that someone had set him up.
He cried, pleaded and tried to convince everyone that he was the victim in all of this. He even tried to appeal to me. He said that I knew him and that he would never do anything like this.
He tried to convince the detectives that he is my brother and by relation there was no way he could ever do something like this. He begged me directly to help him.
Every fiber of my being wanted to believe him but the evidence was too much. His fingerprints were on the weapon, the timeline matched perfectly and there was his history with the woman which we found by combing through her social media profiles.
Everything pointed to him and there were no other suspects. What if he really was innocent? I couldn’t just ignore the possibility not when it was my own brother on the line.
I threw myself into the investigation. I went over every piece of evidence and interviewed everyone who might have seen or heard something. I was desperate to find anything that could prove my brother’s innocence.
One night it was late and the station was almost empty. I had been going through the crime scene photos again and that’s when I noticed a small faint smudge on the back door frame in one of the photos.
I zoomed in and my heart sank. It was a fingerprint slightly smeared like someone had grabbed the door in a hurry. I checked the forensic report and compared it to my brother’s prints.
It was a perfect match. This was the back door, the one the woman rarely used. My brother had been there likely trying to leave unnoticed.
I looked closer at the photo and saw something else on the ground beneath the print. It was a tiny sparkling object. I hadn’t noticed it before.
I had the text enhance the image and identify the object. It was the woman’s necklace. The necklace was lying on the ground where his fingerprint was smeared on the frame.
The truth hit me like a punch to the gut. He had struggled with her, ripped the necklace from her neck and then fled. He had unived this woman.
The more I looked the more the evidence pointed to him and yet I couldn’t let it go. The trial was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to sit through. Watching the prosecution lay out their case piece by piece was like being stabbed over and over again.
They painted my brother as a cold-blooded monster, someone who with no remorse took a human life. They said that he had snapped and taken out his anger on his ex-girlfriend and with the evidence they had it was hard to argue with them.
The defense tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s case but it wasn’t enough. I sat there day after day feeling like I was living in a nightmare. My brother often tried to get me to help him but I didn’t know what to do.
I was torn between my brother and my job. As the trial dragged on I could see the toll it was taking on everyone. My parents were a wreck, my colleagues didn’t know how to talk to me and I felt like I was losing myself in the process.
I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight. All I could do was keep going, keep searching for something that would prove he was innocent. But no matter how hard I tried the truth was staring me in the face.
The day the verdict came in my world shattered. They told him that he was guilty of on multiple counts including first degreee on aling, breaking and entering and assault with a deadly weapon.
The words hit me like a sledgehammer. I looked over at my brother and he just stared at the ground. He had always been the one to get away with everything, but now he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The sentence was life without parole.
