I had the impression that she told me that [Burnside] had nothing to do with it and she did it. But he refused to say, like he had said on his porch, that he had definitely heard Lord confess to the shooting. As one Dallas County prosecutor put it, They can, even for the most well-intentioned of reasons, get too focused on making an arrest at the detriment of the true story., Mitchell began evaluating Thompsons case against Lord. Anonymous It was a stupid fight., Jaffe paused. I know verbally from him that he owes the government a lot of taxes, Lord replied. After she graduates, she hopes to go to law school and perhaps someday work for the Innocence Project. No, said Quinton, Thompson hadnt mentioned either of those things. When she flew back to Dallas, she went straight to Shearins office. He noticed that there was a chemical odorit smelled like bleach, he would later sayon her clothes. For someone to say Dwayne maliciously would go after Miss Lord and try to set her up, I would say, You have the wrong guy, said Andrea Handley, one of the offices senior prosecutors. I wasnt going to leave him, she said, her voice breaking. . It was Lord. I did start dating a guy not long ago, she said after the waiter left. Edit. When the lab report on the gunshot residue was completed, it wasnt much help either. It was Lundberg, who had gone to Parkland to examine Burnsides body. I wondered about the story Jaffe had told Thompson about finding her in the front yard, desperately saying, I wasnt going to leave him. Thompson testified that Lord had little blood on her hands and that she smelled of cleaning solution, which led him to believe she had washed her hands. Witnesses can shift their statements from one day to the next. The report could be interpreted several ways: Maybe, as Shearin believed, after Burnside had pulled the trigger, some of the gunshot residue had been transferred onto Lord when she held him in the kitchen. Although she had her own apartment, she was planning to move in with him as soon as he finished remodeling the house. Thirty seconds passed as she wept before she added, There are still nights when I drive by our home just to look at it. Raised in Ohio, Thompson spent five years in the Army, earning the rank of captain and commanding a military police unit in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Required fields are marked *. I wasnt going to leave him., She then told me something she had not mentioned before. Hed been as tall as Thompson, with a lean, athletic build. In 2008, when the producers of The First 48, a reality series on the A&E network about homicide detectives in big-city police departments, came to Dallas to film some episodes, they were riveted by Thompson. Something happened there tonight, and it doesnt make sense., The only thing I can think of is that he was careless sometimes with guns, Jaffe said. What do you guys think? When Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson checks out a missing persons apartment and finds it covered in blood, he's launched into one of the strangest cases in his career--a case that he must solve without the victim's body. I do believe you killed him. He asked her again about what she was doing during that seven-minute gap between phone calls in the house that night. Thompson stormed out of the room and asked Lundberg to see what he could get out of Lord. It found that two particles characteristic of primer gunshot residue had been discovered on the back of Burnsides right hand and that one particle characteristic of primer gunshot residue had been discovered on the back of Lords left hand. And in Cleveland, an argument among friends spins out of control when one of them makes a deadly decision. He asked her about some of the puzzling physical evidence that had been found at Burnsides home the night of the shooting. Thats what you did! he told a stunned and confused Lord, who protested her innocence. Finally, after Thompson barked at him, he stepped onto the front porch and told a flabbergasting story. She appeared to be so despondent that a jailer thought she needed to be put on suicide watch. She had volunteered at an AIDS hospice. Outcome: Plaintiff's verdict for $800,000.00. After the argument was over, Michael stopped being sarcastic and he became quiet and somber. City attorneys are defending him, saying he acted in good faith and without malice. Thompson sat in another chair and asked about Burnside. The lawyer was reluctant to open the door. Shearin paid a visit to Reade Quinton, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Burnside, to ask him why, just prior to Lords arrest, he had changed his ruling about the cause of death from pending to homicide. Quinton replied that Thompson had informed him about the statement made by Rastegar. [4] If I discover anything that substantiates what I believe, Im going to charge you with murder., He glared at her for a moment. I cant say any more, but its insane.. I had to cover my mouth I was so appalled, Judy Durbin, an accountant who was the foreman of the jury, would later recall. But there was no corruption involved. The lawsuit also claimed that Thompson had permanently damaged Lords reputation in Dallas and caused her to suffer extreme emotional and mental anguish, including depression, insomnia, nightmares, and constant anxiety of the most extreme nature. Lord was asking for monetary damages, and according to courthouse gossip, Tittle was not willing to settle for less than seven figures. Thompson wanted to find out if Lord, under such heated questioning, would crack. A retired Dallas police officer acting as an expert witness for Lord told the jury there was no evidence that Lord shot Burnside. Mitchell eventually told Shearin that she was willing to dismiss the charges against Lord. HEPHZIBAH OLIVIA LORD She identified herself as Olivia Lord, Burnsides girlfriend, and said she had just found Burnside lying on the kitchen floor with a gunshot wound to his head. If I was guilty, would I really have gone out and filed a lawsuit, knowing everything would be brought up again, giving Thompson and all the other naysayers one more chance to come after me?, A few weeks later, I called Lord and asked her again about Burnsides death. Summary: Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson and the homicide team investigate the brutal double murders of two friends shot and burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a car. The officer pointed to a woman sitting on a chair in the front yard, her face in her hands. Its insane, he was overheard saying one afternoon at a restaurant near the police department. Lets make a bad thing right. His fellow detectives nicknamed him D-Train. She added a detail about their relationship that she hadnt told Thompson, saying that she had been disappointed that Burnside hadnt proposed to her the previous Christmas. I did not kill my boyfriend. In this trial, Lord was definitely the underdog. When Thompson asked why he didnt immediately tell that story to the police, Rastegar replied that the uniformed officers who first arrived at the scene had rudely ordered him to go back to his home before he had a chance to say anything. There hasnt been one bit of evidence in this case that has caused you to pause in your opinion that she murdered Michael?. After The First 48. But Lords attorney, Don Tittle, said the detective was wrong that police records show she called 911 immediately after trying to reach the friend. Tittle said that Thompson told one of Burnsides friends within 12 hours of the death that he would bet his career that Lord killed Burnside. She explained that after she had found Burnside, her calls to 911 kept getting dropped due to a weak signal on her cellphone. Not only that, Sanders also pointed out Thompsons failure to read Ms. Lord her Miranda rights including specifically her right to remain silent after it was clear that Thompson considered Lord to be a suspect in a crime. When the paramedics arrived, Burnside had faint vital signs, but he died shortly after reaching the emergency room at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Why, for instance, were there bottles of cleaning products scattered on the kitchen floor? He asked Thompson if he had told one of Burnsides friends that this was the case of a lifetimethe kind of case that could make him famous. There was another, longer silence. He actually turned to Lord and said, I know you didnt do it. He turned back to the jury and continued, But thats not the issue in this trial. The First 48 (2004- ) In Dallas, when a good Samaritan is gunned down trying . Its psychological pressure as opposed to physical force, however many believe that the result, coercion, can be the same even though no blows are struck. Burnsides family and friends were caught off guard by the lawsuit. I dont remember the exact words that were used, he told Lundberg. He also had run up some debt: he owed a rental car company money for crashing one of its vehicles, and he had received letters from the IRS demanding that he pay more than $50,000 in back taxes. But Lord wanted her arrest to be permanently removed from her record, which would require her to be no-billed by a grand jury, a finding in which the jurors refuse to indict a suspect, primarily for a lack of evidence. She grew up in the Dallas area and after graduating from high school, she went straight to work, leasing apartments for a large real estate company and later selling cosmetics at Neiman Marcus in NorthPark Center. But when she realized how serious his injury wasI think I saw a spot on his head, she saidshe called 911 several times. He thought he had a mild case of COVID-19. (As he said in one interview for The First 48, Bringing stuff back to life is whats up, Jack.) He taught classes at the Dallas Police Academy, and a private training agency hired him to lead seminars on detective work around the country. Hephzibah Olivia Lord, distraught and sobbing, sat across from Detective Dwayne A. Thompson in the Dallas Police Departments interview room several hours after her boyfriend had died from a gunshot wound to the head. But, Jaffe added, Burnside didnt wave the gun around. Will detectives be able to catch the killers before they strike again? Only Burnside and Lord were in the apartment where they lived at the time. (The autopsy report revealed that he had at least a .17 blood alcohol level when he diedtwice the legal limit to drive a vehicle.) They returned a unanimous verdict in favor of Lord, and ultimately the city had to pay her $1.2 million, which reportedly was the largest judgement of its kind in Dallas. His blood must have dripped off her clothes. He was confident and charming, she said. Shearin ordered Lords cellphone records and received more good news: there was no seven-minute gap in her calls. As for Burnsides relationship with Lord, Jaffe said, It was one of those old-school-type things. According to Thompson, Rastegar said he had been in bed during the early morning hours of May 9 when he heard screaming in Burnsides front yard. She claimed that Thompson show a reckless disregard for her rights in having Plaintiff arrested in 2010 for the shooting death of her . Its terrifying., Lords claim of innocence has been bolstered by Rastegar, who told me that he never said to Thompson or Lundberg, not even on his front porch, that he had heard her confess to shooting Burnside. When Michael Burnside was found dead in his Dallas home after an argument with his girlfriend, detective Dwayne Thompson decided that the victim's girlfriend, Olivia Lord, had pulled the trigger. Thompson repeatedly asked Lord during the interview why she waited seven minutes to call 911 after trying to reach a friend of Burnsides by phone. He also said he had seen Burnside act recklessly with a gun only two or three times over the past fifteen years. Comments are moderated and these will not be published. Will detectives be able to catch the killers before they strike again? That doesnt mean they kill themselves.. In his free time, he read Civil War history and played Internet chess. Thompson, Andie - Thony, Steve > Thompson, Dorothya - Thompson, Elexus > Thompson, Dwanna - Thompson, Dweese > Thompson, Dwayne 1-25 of 112 Contacts Contact Name For her part, Lord said that she would gladly give up any money in return for Thompsons being sent to prison. Lord explained again and again that while she was in the bathroom, her boyfriend shot himself (they had been fighting, he was drunk). Lundberg conducted the interview because Thompson had a prior commitment to teach a class at the police academy. Yes. There were too many unanswered questions, he said. You realize, dont you, that if I didnt have money from my family to fight back, I could have been wrongfully convicted, fighting this from prison. Lord said that she and Burnside had gotten into an argumentsomething about a birthday party. Then Shearin got his big break. 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