Questions Hang Over Case That Lay Dormant For Years

Detective David Kishbaugh was called in to review the evidence and locate the case file. When the file was not found in the active investigations files, a thorough search of the records room was made and the file was found in a box with a different case number written on it.

“The box contained only this case, no others. At this time it’s unknown why this file was placed in this box, why it was left unfinished and why Detective Tim Dixon, who was the detective in this case, did not inform investigators about this case prior to leaving the department,” stated Police Chief Mark Jackson.

The case was originally opened on July 4, 2007, when the Snowflake-Taylor Police Department was contacted by a woman regarding a teenage girl she believed was being molested by a family member.

As the investigation unfolded two suspects emerged, Larry Triplett Sr. of Taylor, who is now 75, and Carl Kelloway of Concho, who is now 69, both of whom were serving as Navajo County Sheriff’s Auxiliary Volunteers at the time, but who were removed from service once the criminal investigation began. The evidence collected by Bruce Dush, the investigator in the case, led him to believe that the abuse involved more than one juvenile and that the places where the abuse occurred included a location in Holbrook. As a result, in July 2007, HPD Detective Dixon received the case and began his investigation into the possible crimes that took place in Holbrook.

A review of the case file indicates that once received, Dixon was thorough in his investigation. A warrant was served to collect evidence from a building and a travel trailer where incidents were reported to have taken place, and forensic evidence was recovered, including bedding material, DNA, photographs and film. There was no documentation, however, that showed that the evidence recovered from those locations was ever submitted to the Arizona Department of Public Safety for analysis, a necessary procedure to determine DNA results and other forensic details.

Interviews were conducted with the victims and a log was kept recording the evidence collected by Dixon from July 2007 through October 2008. On Feb. 9, 2010, a final entry was made on the case, which appeared to be an unfinished sentence stating, “Kristen told me that,” followed by the numbers 13:00, indicating military time. On that same date Dixon password protected the file, making it inaccessible by anyone else.

Dixon retired from the Holbrook Police Department in March 2013.

Jackson recalled that he came to the department in May 2009 after Dwayne Hartup resigned as chief of police. Jackson, a 20-year law enforcement veteran employed by the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office, was asked to fill the chief’s position for three months as the city began recruiting for a new chief. “It was a temporary situation, so for a few months I worked on bringing stability to the department, and getting a feel for what improvements and changes the new chief may want to address,” stated Jackson. As the end of the three-month period approached, the decision was made to offer the position to Jackson, who officially took over in late August.

Jackson said he faced some challenges with the department. Morale was low, there was disorganization regarding duties and changes were taking place as the department made the transition from internal dispatch services to combining dispatch services with the sheriff’s office, which also involved training in and implementation of a new records keeping system.

“There was a lot going on the first few years within the department and I had concerns about the evidence room. There were several locations within the building where evidence was being stored, some of it dating back to the 1970s, and none of it had been inventoried. I had approached (City Manager) Ray Alley at least four times about getting an evidence technician, but with the budget cuts that hit us in 2009 he told me that he didn’t have the funds to pay for that position,” explained Jackson.

Another concern was investigations. “Working in investigations is difficult. The cases that are handled will take a toll on anyone, especially the ones involving sexual abuse. In January of 2013 I informed Detective Dixon that I would be taking him out of investigations. He had been in there for 13 years, which is way too long. I told him that he needed to reach out to his contacts, organize his files and cases, and in three months I was putting him back on patrol,” stated Jackson.

Jackson had long had concerns about Dixon’s methods for handling his cases within the department. While Dixon was diligent in his work, he insisted on working on them alone and had password protection on most of his cases.

“I didn’t like it. I would ask for updates and got very little back from him. He was also spending a great deal of time working on ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) cases that had nothing to do with the cases here in Holbrook,” stated Jackson. Dixon had received ICAC training early in his investigations career and as a result, was called upon as a witness in cases that occurred throughout the country, at times traveling to other states to take part in trials.

According to Jackson, each month for the next two months he would write Dixon a memo reminding him of the transition to patrol and to organize his information to transfer it to the new detective. When Jackson saw that Dixon had made no effort toward doing what he had been told to do, he decided he’d had enough.

“It was a Friday and I told him he was going to be on patrol as of Sunday and to wrap it up. He wasn’t at all happy about it. I went back to my office and a short while later one of my officers came in and told me that Dixon is shredding documents in his office. When he went to lunch I changed the lock on his office and when he came back I told him he was relieved of duty until Sunday. That Sunday morning (March 29, 2013) he came to the department and in the parking lot he informed me that he was retiring,” explained Jackson. “I never heard from him again until he became a city councilman earlier this year.”

Since Dixon had not informed the incoming detective regarding his caseload, the cases on his desk were sorted through to determine their status. “Since Dixon provided no information regarding his cases when he resigned, we had to figure out the status of each case, but the one recently discovered was not one of them. I have no idea how that file ended up in that mismarked box in the file room. I don’t know why it was unfinished in 2010 and I don’t know why, with all the evidence that was collected, it was never submitted to the county attorney’s office for review,” stated Jackson.

Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon confirmed Jackson’s statement. “We did receive the case for review from Snowflake Police Department in 2007 and it was declined for insufficient evidence at that time. We had not received this case from the Holbrook Police Department until this year,” stated Carlyon.

A review of the documentation included in the case file also confirmed that information. When a case is submitted to the county attorney’s office, not only is it logged at the police department, but a log is made at the county attorney’s office and if it is declined, a discharge document is submitted stating the action that had taken place. While such a record was found in the Snowflake case file, there was nothing regarding the Holbrook case.

Dixon was contacted by telephone regarding the case last week and sounded pleased that arrests had been made. When asked why it had never been submitted to the county attorney’s office while he investigated it, he replied that it had been, twice.

“I have submitted cases like this to the county attorney’s office and they just send them back saying there’s not enough evidence. This isn’t the first time,” he stated.

When he was told that there was no record of the submission, he sounded surprised and stated that since it was several years ago he wanted time to think it over and that he would contact The Tribune-News with a reply. Three days later Dixon delivered a letter to The Tribune-News office, which follows in its entirety.

“I would like to address a recent article titled, Suspects Arrested in 2007 Case Discovered in Evidence Room as reported in the Sept. 16, 2015, issue of the Holbrook Tribune. I do not want the public to be misled by this article,” Dixon wrote.

“First of all I want to say that I’m excited and relieved that this case is finally being charged. I spent much time and energy investigating this case when it was first reported in 2007. This case was one of the most exhaustive and comprehensive of my 25-year career as a police officer and 13 years as a detective even though only one incident appears to have taken place in Holbrook. I retired from police service after having led the Holbrook Police Department’s criminal investigations division for more than 11 years.

“There are certain investigations that I took very personally, this being one of them. This case still keeps me up at night. Imagine interviewing the young victims in a case as horrendous as this and hearing every detail of how another human being victimized them. And then imagine turning the information over to the prosecutor only to be told that they will not pursue the case. This is exactly what happened. This case, after being completed, was turned over to the prosecutor’s office. I sat down with a deputy prosecutor and stayed in his office until every page was read and every video interview was watched. Then I was told that the case would not be charged. I pleaded with him to charge it. I did everything in my power to resolve this case. Keep in mind that this was the second time the case was turned down by two different attorneys.

“I am perplexed at the ‘discovery’ of the case during a recent, so-called audit of the evidence room. I find it amusing that it took nearly three years for this case to be ‘revealed’ even though the evidence rooms are supposed to be audited annually. Furthermore, why would a ‘case’ be in the evidence room? When I retired in 2013 this case was in the investigations office, which was the proper place for it. I never closed any legitimate cases unless a perpetrator was in jail. In my view a case was not closed until the term of the sentence has been carried out.

“For the current administration to say that the case was not processed is asinine. I wish he would have taken this much interest in investigations when I headed the division.

“I always had hope for this case and am pleased that another attorney agreed to charge it. I believed from the beginning that this was a very good, prosecutable case. I hope and pray for the victims for their healing and for them to have justice and closure,” Dixon concluded.

Dixon did not explain why this case, which he stated had such a profound effect on him, was not passed on to another detective to ensure it remained active, or why there was no record of the case being reviewed by the county attorney’s office as he stated in his letter.

The evidence and the file were submitted to the county attorney’s office earlier in the year for review, and it was determined that the evidence was sufficient to move forward with both the Holbrook and Snowflake cases.

The county attorney’s office requested that new interviews be conducted with the victims and as a result of the information gathered, Triplett and Kelloway were arrested earlier this month along with four other suspects, including Larry Triplett Jr., 30, of Taylor, Shelley Bradford, 38, of Snowflake, Diedra Sullivan, 35, of Show Low and Karmen Podhola, 26, of Independence, Mo. The charges against Bradford, Sullivan and Podhola include sexual conduct involving a minor, while the charges against Kelloway and the Tripletts include first-degree murder in addition to numerous counts of sexual assault, continuous sexual abuse of a child, sexual conduct involving a minor and child molestation.

“This case is of tremendous concern to me, especially since these victims continued to be subjected to terrible violence,” stated Chief Jackson. “When we were finally able to hire an evidence technician in November of 2013 he began the arduous task of auditing the evidence in our department. This is not a simple task and so far he has processed current evidence back to 2007. He’s doing an excellent job, but there’s still quite a bit to go through and it concerns me what else he may find.”