Stop! This is a warning. . .
Suppressing news at police request
When a newspaper weighs its reporting responsibilities, where do law-enforcement priorities fit in?
By Jon Hall
He was dubbed the "Canal Killer," and in the summer of 1975 in South Florida this faceless murderer grabbed the headlines. The deaths attributed to him also touched off a classic confrontation between police and reporters on whether a story would compromise attempts to catch the killer, now believed by investigators to have been the serial murderer Theodore Bundy.
Beginning in June the bodies of six young women surfaced in or along drainage canals in Dade and Broward counties; speculation was rampant the deaths were related. Two victims were sexually mutilated so badly the medical examiner’s office said the murderer was similar to "Jack the Ripper."
At the time I was a reporter with the now-defunct Miami News. I was asked to join another staffer, Rick Abrams, to search for links between the killings.
For several days, we visited murder scenes looking for witnesses, clues, anything that would shed light on the deaths. One clue was a victim’s car found with a flat tire. Eventually, we learned another victim’s car also had a flat tire. Both vehicles were parked in shopping centers.
Focusing on this information, we worked out a scenario for those two killings; the killer flattened a tire on the car of a victim and awaited her return. He then offered help to get it fixed. We didn’t know that police had worked out a similar scenario and located a possible witness.
According to Ralph Page, spokesperson at the time for the Dade County Public Safety Department, the witness was approached by a man when she had a flat tire on her car. He "made the hair stand up on the back of her neck," said Page.
Fearful for her safety, she fled. But she provided a partial description of a man that investigators hoped might lead to a suspect or help snare someone in stakeouts at shopping centers. Police had not publicized that incident.
Rick and I knew we had a story. We also believed that if we published it the killer’s ruse would be unworkable; no one would accept help from a stranger to fix a flat. The killer would be forced to invent another scheme to attract victims. When we asked police for comment, Page asked us to hold the story and argued that publication would jeopardize efforts to catch the killer since he would change tactics.
Though we did not know it, Page, now a television reporter, sought permission from supervisors to tell us of the possible witness. Ironically, the witness’ observations had nothing to do with the case, according to Capt. Marshall Frank, who was then a homicide investigator on the case.
What to do?
It was a tough choice. The police argued that they had a good chance of catching the killer, but declined to say why. We believed the public was better served knowing the killer’s methods.
In addition, Rick and I and our editors faced the "what if" questions. What if we didn’t report the story and a woman was killed in the ensuing days? What if we ran the story and ruined any chance the police had of catching the killer?
We decided to run the story. Faced with that decision, police confirmed the connection between the two killings, quickly making it common knowledge.
And the killings? As far as anyone knows, they stopped; no one else was abducted by a man offering help for a flat tire. Though five or six young women were murdered in the area in the following six months, none appeared related to the canal killings. The canal murders remain unsolved and it’s unclear whether we compromised a promising police investigation.
"There’s a chance that (you) did," says Page, who believes the murderer was Bundy, who was executed on Jan. 24 for the 1978 slayings of two sorority sisters in Tallahassee and a 12-year-old girl. But those were well after the Dade County authorities thought they had a chance to catch the canal killer.
Capt. Frank also speculates that the canal killer was Bundy because those murders "were his MO (method of operation) entirely." He says Bundy may have killed over 100 women, and says the halt in the murders after Bundy’s arrest in August 1975 strengthens the contention that Bundy was the Canal Killer. Still, Frank says, it’s "entirely conjecture."
Frank tried to question Bundy but the convicted killer refused to him.
It’s unclear whether our decision was a good one, whether it saved lives or merely forced a killer to new killing fields. But the story illustrates the difficulties faced by journalists caught between the public’s right to know and the sometimes legitimate need of officials for secrecy.
Page believes he could have persuaded us to hold the story if he had been allowed by police to fill us in on what they knew, why police believed their stakeouts of shopping centers would catch the quarry. I wonder if he’s right, particularly in light of the belief that it was Bundy.
On the other hand, if we had not insisted on reporting the story and another young woman’s body had surfaced in one of Dade or Broward’s muddy canals, I think I would have felt like an accessory to murder.
Jon Hall, who has worked for several newspapers, is teaching at the University of Michigan.
Source: FineLine: The Newsletter On Journalism Ethics, vol. 1, no. 7 (October 1989), p. 6.
This case was produced for FineLine, a publication of Billy Goat Strut Publishing, 600 East Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202. Reprinted with the permission of Billy Goat Strut Publishing. This case may be reproduced for classroom and research purposes. Publication of this case in electronic or printed form requires written permission from the publisher and Indiana University. An exception is granted for use in readers designed for specific academic courses.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Like the writer of the story, I see both why you would want to publish the story and why you wouldn’t. I think it was good that the reporter informed the public that there was someone dangerous in the county, and he told the truth and exactly what he knew. I can also see where if the murderer got his hands on the story, it would only benifit him because he could change his plan. The only other reason I think this could be wrong to publish is because it could possibly offend victims of crime’s family or friends.
March 27th, 2009 at 4:50 am
I believe I may have been the witness you spoke about but at the time my mother and I had stopped at a local gas station to check the oil in my mothers car. The man approached me and offered to help. He did, indeed, make me very nervous. There was just something about him that made me hesitate about giving him my name or phone number, and that night a friend of mine brought a sketch of the canal killer to my house. I almost screamed with fear and when my mother saw the picture, she too, knew it was the same man. My father phoned the police and for the next few weeks I was followed my homicide detectives everywhere I went. They assured my parents and I that I would be safe. We moved clear across the country to New Mexico within the next year. I was terrified. I was never told that they suspected Ted Bundy but a few months ago, I was watching a program about Ted Bundy and one of the pictures of him made me realize that I, too, believe it was him. He was the same man that had offered to help us that day. When the police went to the station, the manager told them that he just hung around and offered help to young women….he never went back to that station. I think he though I knew who he was, or at least suspected. I now have a family of my own and to this day, I get shivers and goose bumps everytime I think about how close I came to becoming his victim.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I think you guys did the right thing on publishing the story. It lets people know what is going on and basically warned them on what was going on and to watch out for it.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Thats definitely a tough one. When its all said and done though, if the reporter managed to save just one life, then I would say that it was worth it. Although, I do think the police should have been more willing to work with the reporter as well. Together, they might have been able to catch the killer a lot quicker.