Request for Federal Investigation, Gary spoke with an FBI agent in the Grand Junction Colorado Office this morning. This is what they were informed of. Gary is awaiting a return call after they check on some things.
This request for a Federal Investigation into the death of WSCU student/athlete Dammion Heard is based on the thorough review of the 187 page police report and our personal experience with the Gunnison Police Department, County Officials, and witnesses throughout the entire investigation.
Dammion went missing on March 29, 2014 from a wrestler’s house party. Most of the witnesses that were at the party spoke of alcohol/drug use and several physical altercations involving Dammion. On April 2, 2014 Dammion was found dead on BLM Road 3106, 8 miles east of Gunnison, Colorado.
The Gunnison Police closed the case in late October 2014. The GPD ruled it non-criminal and a suicide. We, Dammion's family and 84% of a public poll that was conducted by the Gunnison Country Times, believe the GPD were not justified in closing this case.
Upon extensive review of the 187 page GPD report, we have written the following report with our questions and concerns regarding how GPD handled this case. In our report, we will show displays of Public Corruption to include, dishonesty, misconduct, wrong doing, and violations by officers of police procedural policies.
After you read our report, it is our hope that you will see our questions and concerns are justified. Then you will grant our request for a federal investigation.
During the Missing Persons
During this time, WSCU Assistant of Student Affairs, Mr. Luekenga had told Gary Heard, Dammion's father, that WSCU had conformation that Dammion attended classes at 10:00am and 1:00pm on 3/31/14. He also told Gary that Dammion's meal card had been used at approx. 11:00am on 4/1/14. Then Mr. Luekenga told GPD that WSCU had made a mistake on both accounts. (pg. 3) The police report states that Gary was called on 4/1/14 and told of WSCU's "mistakes". Gary was in fact called on 4/2/14 in the early morning. There was no explanation as to how these "mistakes" occurred. So Who/What originally indicated that Dammion was in classes? Who/What originally indicated that Dammion's meal card was used?
Witnesses were allowed to change their stories about what occurred the night of 3/29/14. Some did this 3-4 times. When this happened the officers did not question their changing stories. Some of these students said they weren't even at the party. We were given pictures of that night and these people were in the pictures. Why were these adult students allowed to get away with such behavior?
Officer Ashe told Gary Heard that on 4/1 during his search for Dammion, some of the information he had received was strange. (pg.8)
Officer Ashe told Gary on the phone that he felt like he was getting the run around and "these kids" were lying. He also told Gary that when he spoke with M****** R*****, Dammion's ex girlfriend from last November, "she appeared to be very nervous and I could see her chest pounding in her low cut blouse".
The officers went to the wrestlers’ house at 620 North Taylor St., the last place Dammion was seen alive, to retrieve 2 skateboards that Dammion had left there. These skateboards were labeled as evidence. When GPD were at the house, they did not ask to search the house for Dammion or to search the garage for his car. Why? This was a missing persons. (pg.42)
Officer Ashe attempted to contact D**** "Bubba" Z***** on 4/1/14. Bubba did not return his call. The police again attempted to call him on 4/2/14 at 8am. He did not answer. The police contacted WSCU officials to get in touch with Bubba. He called the police about 15 minutes later. When the police requested his presence at the police station, Bubba wanted to wait until after 2pm. The police told him that they needed him to report "now". He showed up approx. 15 minutes later. (pgs.8,9) Bubba was avoiding the police during the missing persons. If Bubba was so concerned with missing classes and not wanting to meet police until 2pm, Then why is it, after he left the police station, he beat the police to K*** P****'s house? The police went there as soon as their interview concluded and Bubba was on the front porch of the house when police arrived. (pg. 42)
Scene Evidence
Gunnison County Sheriffs Department located Dammion's car. (pg.58) Sheriff Department Investigator Bob Summer gave jurisdiction of the case to GPD Detective Chris Danos. Danos said from the scene that "Dammion's death appears to be self inflicted" (pg.59) The Gunnison Sheriff's report pg.4 also shows that Danos says "that at this point he did not see any indication that this was going to be anything other than suicide". This shows the mindset of the lead detective from the beginning.
If all suspected suicides are to be treated like a homicide and worked there way to suicide, then the GPD did not follow proper policies and procedures. This is based upon the following:
***Refer to picture #14-0486 099 ungloved hands on Dammion's driver’s license
***Refer to picture #14-0486 100 personal, winter gloves on Dammion's wallet
***Refer to picture #14-0486 101 personal, winter gloves on Dammion's neck, ligature, and hooded sweatshirt
***Refer to picture #14-0486 085 Dammion's left hand has a much longer hair than his, between his ring finger and middle finger. This hair was NOT collected as evidence.
GPD said they did NOT find one single identifiable, latent print inside or outside the vehicle. (pgs. 49, 69) NOT even Dammion's. And Dammion owned this car for 3 years.
GPD found a latent print on Dammion's cell phone face. On page 49, they say they photographed and lifted the print. And put it in an evidence envelope. On page 70, they say the lift attempts were unsuccessful. Throughout this investigation Detective Danos told Gary Heard and the private investigators that GPD had obtained one good latent print off the cell phone. So did they or not?
According to Detective Danos, CBI determined what evidence was to be submitted. They did not take Dammion's vehicle, clothes, and the sleeping bag from the scene, or the uncollected hair from Dammion's hand at the scene. There was also hair on the hooded sweatshirt and Dammion's bare skin that was never collected.
***Refer to Montrose Autopsy Picture ‪#‎DSCN‬ 9562 & #DSCN 9563 dark hair much longer than Dammion's on the hooded sweatshirt
***Refer to Montrose Autopsy Picture #DSCN 9589, #DSCN 9590 & #DSCN 9598 dark hair much longer than Dammion's on his bare skin. Danos told Gary Heard in a recorded phone call that he knew nothing about any hair and it was not his place to have collected the hair. He instructed Gary to call the pathologist, Dr. Benziger. He followed up by saying that the hair would not mean anything anyway because Dammion was at a party and it would be considered "incidental contact". Seriously?
CBI evidence report shows that Dammion's DNA matched the Partial DNA profiles on several samples that they tested. This is to be expected considering the items tested belonged to Dammion. These items include: car keys, ID, swabs from steering wheel, and cell phone case and battery. There was a Mixture of DNA found on the jumper cables and the tree branch. And it was NOT determined that Dammion's DNA was on the tree branch. Why would there be a mixture of DNA on the tree branch? Possibly because whoever hung him touched the branch when they were tying off the ligature? Or were they pulling on it to determine if it would hold Dammion's weight? Or maybe it was the police, touching it with their bare hands like they did other key pieces of evidence and causing fingerprints to get smeared beyond use?
Once the case was closed. The GPD released to Gary Heard, 4 CD's that were to contain all the cell phone information, including all text content. Upon receiving these discs, Gary discovered that when put in a computer, the discs content could not be opened. He has since sent the discs to an IT specialist and even they are having difficulty opening all the files. Gary contacted GPD and explained the problem he was having with the discs. They told him in a letter that the discs are exact copies of what they have. So basically they aren't going to issue another set. So are we to just believe the GPD when they tell us what was on Dammion's phone? All the inbound/outbound messages, both text and voicemails that were made in the last hours of Dammion's life. Maybe we could have trusted them had they not given us so many reasons to distrust them.
Witness Interviews and Lack of GPD Follow Up
As you read through the GPD 187 page report, Note how long it took for GPD to interview most of the witnesses. anywhere from 1 to 6 months. 6months?? The police were told all the information that we gathered from the private investigators early on in the case. Yet, they neglected to act on any of it.
Refer to M***** L****** Interview with GPD on 7/9/14 (pg. 170) where she tells police that she witnessed K*** P**** dragging Dammion through the house in a "headlock". This headlock is described as a rear naked choke, although she says no pressure was being applied. How would she know this? Better yet, who told her to say that? And note that M***** told the private investigator this on May 4th. The police were told immediately about this. With persistence from Gary Heard it still took 2 months for GPD to finally contact M***** for an interview. And when she told them about the headlock, they did NOT follow up with K*** P**** on this. WHY?
Despite Gary Heard's attempts to get GPD to call K*** N****, they would not contact him. Detective Danos tells Gary, "we were unable to get in touch with him". We obtained some information from the interview K*** gave the private investigator in May 2014. The GPD were told immediately. K*** was also mentioned by several people in their interviews with GPD, so GPD knew he was someone of interest. ***Refer to L*** M***** Interview (pg.109) where she tells GPD some of the things that K*** told her about the party night. We also have screen shots of text messages between L*** and K***. They are talking about what happened at the party/to Dammion. K*** is telling her that he doesn't want to get K*** into trouble. In trouble for what? Gary has a recorded phone call with K*** from mid October. K*** denies the police ever trying to contact him. Why didn't they interview him?
***** R***-T***** was the WSCU cross country student that had a physical altercation with Dammion on 3/29/14.
***** was only interviewed during the Missing Persons. After Dammion was found, the GPD did NOT follow up with
***** regarding any questions based on other witness interviews.
***Refer to D**** W******** Interview (pg. 47) where he tells GPD that after the Dammion/
***** fight he saw
***** at another party at Mountaineer Village. He says that
***** was upset with Dammion. D**** told
**** not to "go after him" referring to Dammion, because D**** was fairly confident that Dammion was getting "beat up for beating him up".
***Refer to S***** B********* Interview (pg. 113) where he tells GPD that after the Dammion/
***** fight he went to the Mountaineer Village party and he observed
***** to be upset. S***** told
***** "not to worry about it, the wrestlers were taking care of it internally". NO GPD follow up with
***** after these interviews. WHY? Obviously
***** was holding a grudge or trash talking about the fight, or these guys would not have had to tell him these things.
Gary Heard also tried to get the GPD to contact WSCU student E****
*** and WSCU student D***** P*****. These two were at the party on 3/29/14 and had contact with Dammion. We have talked with both of them. They are people of interest. Daniel was texting Dammion 8 times during the party, which he said he was also at. D***** P***** was found dead in his car on November 16, 2014 from a single gun shot wound. GPD are calling it suicide. On page 173, GPD makes reference to Gary asking them to interview D*****. They did NOT interview him. We told them about D***** and E**** in May 2014. Why didn't GPD interview them?
WSCU wrestler, D**** "Bubba" Z***** was only interviewed during the missing persons. He was NOT interviewed after Dammion was found dead.
WSCU wrestler, S** M***** was NOT interviewed at all. He was mentioned (pg.73) as someone who had talked to K*** P**** and was told that Dammion's phone was dead, and that's why Dammion wasn't answering his dad's calls.
WSCU student, S***** V************ was NOT interviewed at all. He was mentioned (pg. 112,113) as someone who was with D**** W******* and S****** B********** at the party on 3/29 where Dammion was and also at the party at Mountaineer Village.
WSCU wrestler,
**** D***** called Gary several weeks after Dammion was found. He told Gary that he had "just remembered" that some "big time drug dealers from Denver" were supposed to be meeting Dammion.
**** thought that maybe these guys had something to do with what happened to Dammion. Gary shared this information with GPD (pg.151). GPD did NOT follow up with
**** regarding his statements to Gary.
L**** N*********, Gunnison County Finance Director (pgs. 51-54) was brow beat by GPD and Coroner Frank Vader over her statement of seeing a person with Dammion's body on 3/30.
L**** was at the location walking her dogs when she noticed what was later determined to be the body of Dammion Heard. She told GPD that she saw a second person kneeling beside the person standing up(Dammion).
*** She also saw a white late model pick up truck with a camper shell and a breast care awareness ribbon on the license plates. This vehicle was parked by Dammion's SUV.
***A few days later, The Gunnison County Coroner, unknowingly to the GPD, took this witness back out to the scene. And a few days after that, Detective Grace Cowan took her back out to the scene again. Neither the GPD nor Coroner Vader question L**** about the times she said she was at the scene. They don't question her about the white pick up truck. They do however, repeatedly question her about the second "kneeling" person she saw. And not in a way that says the GPD were trying to get a description. It appears they were trying to confuse her about what she saw. Because that second person didn't fit their ideation of suicide. And eventually they did make her second guess herself and the second person she originally saw.
L**** spoke with Gary Heard in a recorded phone call in late October 2014. L**** does NOT tell Gary that she had been mistaken about the second person. In fact, she tells Gary that she can't remember if the second person had long or short hair, was a male or female, or what type of clothing they were wearing. Now, if she truly thought she was mistaken about this second person, why didn't she tell Gary this?
***Detective Danos told Gary in a recorded phone call that the person L**** saw was probably "nothing more than a passer by who stumbled across the dead body, got scared and left because they didn't want to get involved". He also said, "Gary, it is what it is, I have no reason to believe that L**** would lie about this". What does Danos mean by this?
***GPD told several lies in regards to searching for the white pick up truck that L**** placed at the scene. They told Private Investigators in a phone interview on May 30, 2014, "that they were still trying to track down the white truck, and they are in the process of preparing another press release concerning that truck". Gary Heard waited for few weeks and when there was no indication that the search was being conducted, Gary called GPD and then ran his own ad in several local newspapers. The ad described the witness description of the truck and had Gary's personal cell number along with the GPD phone number. Gary received 5 license plate numbers from the ad. He had them ran to see who they belonged to. The last one that was run was registered to K*** P****'s parents. GPD was given all this information. The truck registered to P****'s parents also parks outside the wrestlers’ house. While K*** P**** drives a red truck, Gary was told by a witness that P****'s roommate,
**** M***** drives a white one with a camper shell. The GPD said that no one knowing Dammion in Gunnison drove a white truck with a camper shell. Clearly GPD had no intentions of searching for this white pick up truck. Every truck that matched the description of being late model, white and having a camper shell should have been thoroughly investigated. Even if the breast care ribbon wasn't seen. We all know license plates and surrounds can be changed.
***At the time the GPD processed Dammion's SUV, they found an unidentified set of Saturn car keys under the driver’s seat. (not belonging to Dammion's car) The GPD never had the key remote numbers checked with Saturn or a locksmith to see what model of Saturn the keys belonged to. Gary Heard has asked GPD to give him the numbers so he could forward them to a locksmith that he knows has the program to obtain this information. This request to GPD was denied.
***Possibly, the person who drove Dammion's car to the scene, and had the drivers seat pulled up to only 8 inches from the dash, dropped their own "Saturn" keys out of their pocket and they fell under Dammion's seat. The exact location of the keys was between the right side of the driver’s seat and the console, on the floor. And maybe that's why the white pick up truck and a second person beside Dammion's body was out there. They were searching the scene for the lost keys.
*** We had someone of the same height and weight as Dammion, sit in the car with the seat at this position, of 8 inches from the dash and even with the seat reclined back, like it was found, this would have been an uncomfortable position for Dammion. Especially since the GPD and Coroner Vader speculated that Dammion was "kicked back relaxing until he had the courage to kill himself".
Miscellaneous Facts
Detective Danos tells Gary Heard in a recorded phone call that he knows K*** P**** was lying. When Gary asked Danos what the plan was regarding this, Danos says,” I don't want to call him in again yet, this may be the last chance I get with him". We want to know why K*** P**** wasn't interrogated by proper police procedures. Instead he was interviewed on the comfy couch.
When the GPD continued to get changed stories about texts and other phone messages, they did not attempt to get cell phone information from the witnesses’ phones. They let several witnesses tell them, "I had to re-boot my phone and I lost all my messages, so I can't show you what Dammion and I talked about". Or they said, "I had to get a new phone". Or "I had to delete all my messages because it was full". Regardless of these reasons, the GPD could have obtained cell records and content from the time in question. And isn't it strange that all these witnesses had phone issues at the same time?
Detective Danos told Gary Heard that Dammion's vehicle was being kept in dry storage incase CBI wanted it for forensic testing. Refer to page 50, where Danos says that the vehicle was moved from long term storage to the impound lot on 4/4/14.
Due to GPD's limited resources Gary Heard offered to pay for polygraph testing on all the witnesses that kept changing stories. I also offered to have the evidence items that were not submitted to CBI, forensically tested, this was to include Dammion's SUV. These offers were declined.
Since the closing of Dammion’s case, I have requested the following from GPD: Dammion’s cell phone, case, and battery. The unidentified Saturn keys and the witness audio/video interviews. I have requested these because throughout the GPD’s 187 page report, they state “refer to the audio/video for actual wording. This implies that their written report is not verbatim.
I have also inquired on the storage of Dammion’s DNA card and the DNA packets from the evidence.
Requests were made to Coroner Frank Vader and Pathologist, Dr. Benziger for Dammion’s toxicology report. I specifically asked for the report on the reference laboratory letterhead. They released the results to the media, and I got a copy with the autopsy report, however, it is NOT on the reference laboratory letterhead. We have been requesting this for over one month.
This report contains only a portion of the concerns we have regarding this case. We have said from the beginning that if the evidence shows that Dammion did indeed take his own life, then we would accept that and deal with it. The evidence does not show us that. In fact, the totality of the GPD investigation shows us cover ups, lies, and the need for more witness questioning/interrogations. There are way too many things going on here for this to be a suicide.
In conclusion, we would like to quote a forensic expert;
"It is important that when performing a forensic analysis, the observers must not begin with a conclusion and seek supporting evidence. When pre-determined bias is involved, tunnel vision causes the observers to dismiss evidence and seek improbable explanations to reach the desired conclusions".
We believe that we have proven that the GPD and other Officials are guilty of doing exactly what the above quote says not to do. They began with their conclusion of suicide. They displayed tunnel vision and they dismissed evidence by their lack of follow up and by the destroying of evidence.
We know that the display of sloppy, unethical police work alone does not prove that Dammion was murdered. With all the witnesses’ inconsistencies and mistruths, we feel if GPD would not have displayed such gross negligence on the part of witness interviewing, the collecting, preserving, and examining of evidence the outcome of the "investigation" would have been different.
Thank you for taking the time to read our report and consider our request for a Federal Investigation into the death of Dammion Heard.
