However, I have been unable to find who the person and their job title was, who said early in the investigation, that the case would be difficult to prosecute due to the way the case was being handled by the SPD.
Thanks Bartt.
Was it
Darrell Moore
Springfield News-Leader (MO)
June 9, 2002
Darrell Moore was at a prosecutor's conference in September 1992 when the television news magazine "48 Hours" jumped to life on the screen.
He found a television at a Lake of the Ozarks hotel because he knew Springfield's case of the three missing women would be featured for sweeps week.
Moore saw clips from across the city. The hair salon where Levitt worked. The house on Delmar where the three women vanished. The McCalls passing out posters with the women's photos and descriptions.
What he saw next, he'll never forget: footage of two suspects being given a polygraph test.
"That's a total violation of the disciplinary rules," Moore says today. "We can't even say whether or not polygraphs have been done. ... Much less allow the media to film it."
Reporters were given unprecedented access 10 years ago, prosecutors say. They were allowed to air and print tips that came in. Nearly every detail from the house - from what was inside to how rooms looked that June morning when the women disappeared - was released.
If police had developed a suspect, and that person was charged, prosecutors feared they would have trouble in court.
"If the defense was alleging police misconduct, it would have been true," Moore says today. "But that was done by one person - the chief."
Knowles disagrees. He needed to get information out, and the media helped do that, he says. If this was a serial crime, other communities across the nation might be able to help.
At one point then-Prosecutor Tom Mountjoy wrote Knowles a letter, saying the lid had to be closed on information being released. If things didn't change, people could be held legally responsible.
Mountjoy, now a Greene County judge, won't talk about the turmoil from a decade ago, explaining that dredging up the past won't help the ongoing investigation. He adds only that prosecutors are supposed to be kept apprised of a case, to make sure it's clean when it goes to trial.
"I don't think I had a handle on what was going on," Mountjoy says today. "There was not a case lead detective, not one person you could go to.
"With a high-profile case, those cases can take on a life of their own. If left on their own, something other than the law enforcement can become in charge."