Suzi Dodt, Maricopa MedEx

[believe09]

I am going to outline communications, events and information I received from her from Wednesday 8/20/2008 to the present.

 

[believe09]

As most of you are aware by now, Mike Mazzone Jr. woke up on the morning of August 20, determined to find his sister who had gone missing 9 years earlier. He called some of the DA's in Phoenix, where he resided, and asked for advice on how to begin looking, especially if his sister was possibly deceased somewhere and UID'd. They gave him the Maricopa MedEx website, he called the front desk and spoke with someone who walked him through the search process. He entered the criteria "female, missing from 1998-2008." The first case that popped up was 99-0305, what we knew as Maricopa County Jane Doe. He knew immediately that it was Tawni.

He spent the day on the phone calling family members and asking opinions-for all of them the clincher was the tattoo and the description of the jewelry found with her. One of Mike's uncle's googled 99-0305, brought up City Data and then Websleuths. An Aunt (Tammy) emailed Christine2448, she sent the email to me and by midnight I had spoken with Mike, Tammy and Uncle Marky.

There was no one in the ME's office at that time of night, so I emailed Suzi Dodt to give her a heads up that Mike was available for DNA, and that Tawni's family in Lynn believed they could obtain her dentals from her childhood dentist.

I received a call from Suzi around 5AM her time telling me to arrange for DNA for Mike at the police department nearest him because they did not have the ability to collect in the ME's office. She gave me detailed instructions regarding the dentals: 1.) Have the dentist fax a copy of the XRAYS. 2.) Have the dentist fax any paper from the chart because they could be used for a preliminary ID, but not a legal one. 3.) Overnight the hardcopies of the dentals and chart to her ASAP.

I spoke with Aunt Tammy who talked the dentist out of the entire chart-the dentist had NO CLUE how to fax the dental xrays. I called Suzi back, and while we were waiting Tammy (who works for CBS NEWS in MASS) scanned absolutely everything she had regarding Tawni Lee Mazzone including the dental XRAYS, school pictures and the like. The scans were so GOOD, I sent the whole thing to Suzi and she knew right away she had a match, but she had to wait for the hard copy of the dentals-this is a legal requirement. Legal ID can be done by at least a 10 point fingerprint match, dental XRAY Match, or DNA.

I had spoken with Mike Mazzone throughout the evening and into the wee hours of the morning while he was sitting and stewing waiting to find out where he could be processed for DNA. Around 11AM my time, Mike mentioned that Tawni had a juvie record in Frisco, CO for A&B from 1995. I called Suzi and she said to try and get the hard-card of the fingerprints sent to her by email.....

This is where the double secret probation comes into play-I called Frisco when they opened, was sent to Mary in records who never even asked who I was and referred me to Summit county Sheriff's office. I ended up at records there; they transferred me to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. I spoke with an agent by the name of Audrey who again never asked who I was, read me Tawni's file and told me that her records should have been destroyed, but they were actually being held off-site, so she would have to get a courier to go to the place, pull the record and have an agent see if there was a fingerprint card. I gave her Suzi's email address and we waited...and waited....Suzi was off the clock at 130PM her time but she sat and waited until the print card came via email to her at around 6:45PM, ET. At 7:11PM Suzi emailed me that the prints were a perfect match, and to hold the information until the family was notified.

The calls from the family began pouring in around 7:30PM.

 

[believe09]

What makes Suzi Dodt different from LE other than job description-after the ID process, she took every spare moment she had to comb the threads here at WS for the work that had been put into the ID. Many of you had adopted MJD as your pet case, but Tawni was Suzi's sole motivation for getting her UID's out on a website-for all the reasons we have discussed, MJD clearly came from people who cared for her on some level. Someone was missing her and Suzi was determined that she would not retire until her case was solved.

In any case, Suzi was completely overwhelmed by the idea that strangers would put so much into what is her job description and passion-there was much about what she found that she liked. There was some that gave her pause-primarily the rush to judgment on whether LE's actions contributed to the death of Tawni. It was Suzi who dug up the Scottsdale missing person's report....not even Tawni's family believed that there was a report done, but Suzi found it and has a copy that she cannot release as I have already stated.

Suzi was hampered from ID in a few ways:

• Juvenile Fingerprints are hard-carded and rarely entered into databases.
• Missing persons report databases do not "talk" to other LE databases in AZ. Is this why the missing person's report on Tawni did not help ID her? Perhaps. Suzi says a whole lot depends on the detectives working the cases and how motivated they are.
• The rolls of film documenting the evidence were never processed until FMW requested them-So Suzi could not get pictures of the jewelry or the tattoo on the website, in spite of her many requests.

Another part of the case, that had a happy ending I can say, is that initially they could not find Tawni's body. The Funeral Home that took her was purchased by a crematory and no one could find the old records....fortunately that was taken care of over the weekend. Deb has made arrangements to have Tawni cremated by the same company. Another thing I was unaware of was that all personal effects such as jewelry and clothing are buried with the body-so the family has to make separate arrangements to have the items disenterred prior to the cremation being done....so much for the TV shows where it is all in an evidence vault or cardboard box!!!!

 

[believe09]

I thought that the ME does a reconstruction of the incident to see if the story being told fits the physical autopsy evidence. They do NOT. That is the job of the Pinal County Detectives. To her knowlege they expressed little interest in a case they felt was a fight between a young hooker and her pimp that went badly...so they never checked out the evidence.

Our observations about Tawni's lip and other bruises has been completely confirmed by Det Lancaster and their cold case squad. Tawni was having the crap kicked out of her in the car-Suzi will let me know if they find the rape kit the hospital did and whether or not it indicated anything. I have a hard time with her panties being torn off and wrapped in her shirt unless it was something the EMT's did during their treatment-her road rash does not seem to indicate she slid on her butt at any point, right? So how were they torn off?

 

[fmw63]

I have a hard time with her panties being torn off and wrapped in her shirt unless it was something the EMT's did during their treatment-her road rash does not seem to indicate she slid on her butt at any point, right? So how were they torn off?

Actually yes. There were several more hospital photos that I wasn't even going to mention existing, out of respect for her & her family. I certainly wasn't going to post these.

Both outer hips, the area below her back, and all of her upper back were completely scraped off.

 

[Fairy1]

believe09, thank you - a million times - for sharing the "inside track" on Tawni's case. I am so grateful. :blowkiss:

There is just so much wrong here I can't wrap my head around it all! Knowing what we do know now, I am soooooo disgusted that this little girl lay buried, unidentified, for so long. I'm grateful to Suzi Dodt for being so determined and my heart truly goes out to Mike, Jr. and the other members of Tawni's family who truly cared about her and have wondered all these year what happened to her.

There is so very much we can take away from Tawni's case to make things better. I consider that a gift from her. That is why I'm still here. There is so much more to be done!

 

[VASHLEY88]

I thought that the ME does a reconstruction of the incident to see if the story being told fits the physical autopsy evidence. They do NOT. That is the job of the Pinal County Detectives. To her knowlege they expressed little interest in a case they felt was a fight between a young hooker and her pimp that went badly...so they never checked out the evidence.

Our observations about Tawni's lip and other bruises has been completely confirmed by Det Lancaster and their cold case squad. Tawni was having the crap kicked out of her in the car-Suzi will let me know if they find the rape kit the hospital did and whether or not it indicated anything. I have a hard time with her panties being torn off and wrapped in her shirt unless it was something the EMT's did during their treatment-her road rash does not seem to indicate she slid on her butt at any point, right? So how were they torn off?

I knew those bruises were not consistent as I have seen many road rash incidents before. If she would have fell on her face, her chin would have been busted open, almost always, especially at the rate of speed in which she was rolling, her face would have been in an unrecognizable condition if she sustained any of those injuries from falling on her face. Her face was in pretty good shape considering she only had a fat lip and swelling due to CSF leak. If you remember the illustration I did of her injuries, most of it was on her back and buttocks area, IIRC.

About her panties-- we have a rule of thumb, at least from my EMS experience-- IF IT'S IN THE WAY, CUT IT OFF. Seldom do we ever need to remove underwear, though. Bras, yes.. but I don't believe any injury below her waistline was as crucial as the injuries on her head, they would be more concerned about stabilizing her than looking at her butt.

 

[Vask]

Err.. When you say OFF.. do you literally mean lack of skin completely? Or just scraped a lot? *cringe*

Both outer hips, the area below her back, and all of her upper back were completely scraped off.

 

[Teresa Larson]

That makes me wonder if that was the point of impact (her back side) If it was then I think she went out the door backwards IMO

 

[fmw63]

Err.. When you say OFF.. do you literally mean lack of skin completely? Or just scraped a lot? *cringe*

How about "scraped a whole lot"...

 

[Vask]

Ah.. lol. Not a pretty mental picture, but at least better than the first one I got.

How about "scraped a whole lot"...

 

[VASHLEY88]

I wish we could differentiate between what happened in the car BEFORE she jumped/was pushed (was she smacked around?) and what injuries were sustained after she rested in her final place after she went rolling. I was trying to think back at what hospital treatment may have caused her lip to swell, with no luck so far. That's got to be trauma. I strongly believe she was punched or backhanded in the mouth, pretty recently as her lip had not become black and blue yet in the hospital photo.

Somehow it has always made me such sadder that she almost made it into another day, that she had to suffer for that long.. I bet she was a fighter, for sure.

 

[believe09]

I wish we could differentiate between what happened in the car BEFORE she jumped/was pushed (was she smacked around?) and what injuries were sustained after she rested in her final place after she went rolling. I was trying to think back at what hospital treatment may have caused her lip to swell, with no luck so far. That's got to be trauma. I strongly believe she was punched or backhanded in the mouth, pretty recently as her lip had not become black and blue yet in the hospital photo.

Somehow it has always made me such sadder that she almost made it into another day, that she had to suffer for that long.. I bet she was a fighter, for sure.

FWIW, I believe that Det. Lancaster is going to operate on the evidence that her lip and the chest bruise were due to an altercation inside of the vehicle.

I appreciate FMW clarification on how her underwear was torn-I was afraid they were ripped from her in the car.