THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP -- CHILD ABUSE, SATANISM, AND MURDER IN NEBRASKA |
CHAPTER 4: COVER-UP PHASE 1: THE POLICE In July 1988, Omaha police officers in the Robbery and Sex Unit received an unexpected visit from their boss, Chief of Police Robert Wadman. According to the officers' own account, related by Nebraska Foster Care Review Board official Dennis Carlson in testimony to the Legislature's Executive Board, they took precautions to keep Wadman out of their work on Larry King. Excerpts of Carlson's remarks, from the Executive Board minutes of December 19, 1988, show that the officers feared a police cover-up of King's activities, from within the department: [Officer Carmean] told me some things which I found to be somewhat startling. I asked if he was interested in information regarding Larry King and he said, yes we are, we're conducting what he called a supersensitive investigation of Larry King and he said this investigation was so supersensitive that they were not even using the steno pool in the Omaha Police Department. They were handwriting their police reports, and he also told me that Chief Wadman had come to their unit and directly asked if they were investigating Larry King. ... Investigator Carmean told me, we lied to the Chief and we said, no, we are not investigating Larry King. OK, so that conversation took place on July 20th of 1988. After we were presented with that information we had some concerns as to what was going on in the Omaha Police Department. We were concerned about if we gave this information to the Omaha Police Department what would they do with it? *** The investigation of Loretta Smith's charges did not go far, in Wadman's department. Neither did the career of Officer Carmean. On the afternoon of June 28, 1988, immediately after Carmean's interview with Loretta, his supervisor, Sgt. Ken Bovasso, spoke by telephone with Dr. Kay Shilling, Loretta's psychiatrist at the hospital. According to Bovasso's write-up, Shilling told this Reporting Officer that she has spoken with LORETTA SMITH since LORETTA'S discussion with Officer CARMEAN. ... LORETTA told DR. SHILLING that she only gave Officer CARMEAN general information, ... [but) that she had no problem talking with Officer CARMEAN. Reporting Officer told DR. SHILLING that sometime during the week of 04 July 1988 this Reporting Officer will assign Officer CARMEAN to revisit Loretta at the hospital in order to build up some rapport and possibly obtain more specific information. Carrnean never came back to interview Loretta Smith again. As Loretta volunteered more horrific, detailed allegations during the summer, Richard Young Hospital and FCRB personnel were concerned about the lack of police interest. Dennis Carlson recalled, in his Executive Board testimony: Loretta was making more allegations against Larry King and others and these were allegations of the most serious nature. She was reporting that she had witnessed homicides. Investigator Carmean was contacted by myself on one, possibly two or three, occasions. ... I'd tell him that this girl's making more allegations, that she's opening up, she's telling additional information, she's beginning to relate better to her case workers and social workers, would you please go out and re-interview this girl? ... After Investigator Carmean received the information from the Foster Care Review Board, the information that I hand delivered to him, he never went back to interview Loretta Smith. In one of my telephone conversations with Investigator Carmean, I remember telling him that this girl was now reporting homicides, and he said, yes, I need to get out there and re-interview this girl. ... [O)ne of my concerns Senator is the conduct of the Omaha Police Department. I don't know what's going on up there, I'm not familiar with the players in the Omaha Police Department, but I know that I hand delivered material to an investigator. ... Investigator Carmean and Investigator Hoch left my office and they seemed sincere, they seemed that they were going to investigate these allegations and later it was as if air had been let out of a balloon, that all of a sudden they had no interest in even re-interviewing a girl who was saying that she had witnessed homicides and I just don't understand it. ... FCRB Executive Director Carol Stitt testified: I would like to add something that was highly unusual in this case. Loretta's psychiatrist contacted the police in Omaha and asked them to come, Loretta's personal care worker, Ken Stoner, contacted the police, [Richard Young employee] Kirstin Hallberg contacted the police, as well as Adrienne Hart, who is Kirstin's supervisor. All those people had made contact and nothing was being done. ... Not long after after his interview with Loretta, Officer Carmean was transferred out of investigations altogether, into a section called Research and Planning. At the same Executive Board meeting, Senator Ernie Chambers recounted a phone conversation with Carmean: When I called [the sexual assault unit], they said he's no longer here and that's when they told me that he was with Research and Planning. ... I finally ... got him and I mentioned his enthusiasm at the outset, and that from what I had developed in terms of creditable information being given to me, I felt he'd been transferred because he was getting too close to something and his superiors did not want him to continue. So there was a silence, then he kind of chuckled, he said, well, no, uh, I wanted this transfer. I've known of Carmean for years and he's not the type of officer who'd want to be put into an office where he's the only one there, in fact that might have been the creation of the department. Didn't even have a secretary. Carmean himself testified before the legislative Franklin committee in June 1989, that, although he had been pulled off the case, he thought Loretta's charges were "credible" and deserved follow-up. Less than two weeks later, on July 5, 1989, Chief Wadman tried to get Carmean declared crazy. In a lengthy "Inter-Office Communication" to Omaha Public Safety Director Pitmon Foxall (a cousin of Larry King!), Wadman announced that Carmean needed a mental health evaluation: I am requesting a supervisory referral for Officer Irl Carmean to see police psychologist Dr. Steven Sherrets. I am basing this request on the actions demonstrated by Officer Carmean that surfaced during the Larry King investigation. ... Prior to Officer Carmean's assignment with Research and Planning, he was serving as an investigator with the Robbery and Sex Unit under the command of Lt. Guy Goodrich. While in that assignment, Officer Carmean was involved as an investigator and did participate in looking into matters involving allegations that Larry King was involved in some sexual improprieties with young people. The investigation never did come close to supporting the allegations sufficiently for a charge to be considered against Larry King. One other Omaha policeman who was reported to have kept a file on Larry King, Officer Bill Skoleski, died of a heart attack. *** In August 1989, Chief Wadman dismissed out of hand the criminal, satanic horrors that Loretta Smith and other children had described to authorities. On Omaha radio station KKAR, the city's chief law enforcement officer chalked up concern about these allegations to the fact that some Omahans have a "prurient interest of child abuse, of child sexual abuse, those kinds of things. ... I think that the media attention to that element of things is inappropriate." Regarding Loretta Smith, Wadman said, "The primary witness was ... making statements that were very bizarre and were not founded in reality." Wadman concluded his KKAR interview by stating that the OPD and other agencies had conducted a thorough investigation, but the allegations led to "a dead end." *** Robert Wadman has sworn under oath that he barely knew Larry King, that he "had very few social contacts with Larry King." That's not what King says. In April 22, 1989 interviews with King and Wadman, Frank Brown of TV 7, Omaha, questioned them about an incident in which Wadman intervened at King's request, to order the release of a suitcase seized in a drug raid. BROWN: King acknowledges he is a friend of Chief Wadman's. We asked King did he call the chief to get a suitcase released that had been seized in a drug investigation? BROWN: You had that friendship where, you could. ... KING: Yes. BROWN: You could call the Chief of Police and get a piece of evidence released? KING: I felt that I could call anyone in this city. BROWN: What was that suitcase? I've always wondered what was in that suitcase and what was it about? KING: Um, it's really nothing. It was a relative of mine and he was staying at a hotel, and I guess they had a drug bust or something. ... BROWN: We asked Chief Robert Wadman if Larry King had ever telephoned him to get a suitcase released from police custody. WADMAN: Yes ... I can't recall if it was this past year or the year before that he did call regarding a situation and that information was forwarded to the unit responsible for the request. ... BROWN: That did not compromise any investigation? WADMAN: Absolutely not. And I'm very disappointed that this situation continues to be protractive but it was a situation that was routinely handled. I receive literally hundreds of those requests and this situation was handled exactly the same way as the rest. Switching back to Larry King, Brown raised another question about a smooth ride he seemed to have gotten from the OPD: BROWN: The Omaha Police had an investigation last summer into an alleged pornographic. ... KING: Uh, huh. BROWN: And you were cleared? KlNG: I didn't even know that they had one last summer- ... [P]eople make up these things. People make up anything, you can hear anything about anyone. If you choose to believe it you will, if you choose not to, you don't. I choose not to listen to garbage and gossip. King had indeed been cleared, with the blessing of Robert Wadman. The legislative Franklin committee's record of Wad- man's own testimony to this effect dates from October 13, 1989. Besides Wadman, the speakers in this transcript are committee counsel John Stevens Berry and Robert Creager, and Wadman's attorney, Kent Whinnery. BERRY: Are you aware whether or not there have been any ongoing investigations in Omaha regarding whether or not Mr. King has been involved with narcotics? ... WHINNERY: May I just ask a point of clarification? Are you talking about ongoing but not concluded or -- BERRY: Well, I suppose I could ask a series of questions. Have there been in the past? Have there been any continuing? Have there been any ongoing at all? Do you know anything about Mr. King or has Mr. King been a subject of a narcotics investigation? That's an area I want the Chief to address, and I'm happy to have him address it. WADMAN: I'm unaware of any of those. CREAGER: The answer is no? WADMAN: The answer is no, yeah. BERRY: Let me ask the very same broad question about Mr. King and the relationship to child pornography or pornography of any kind. WADMAN: We had a situation where we were advised that there was a possibility of child pornography involving -- no, it came in as child pornography case. What happened is that there was a photographer who was taking photographs of young women, and in the course of that set of circumstances, a mother with her daughter called and filed a complaint with the police department, and the complaint involved a situation where her daughter was approached by the photographer to be photographed, and the photographer extended an invitation to this young woman's mother to come with her. They went to the studio; photographs were taken; and in the course of that the mother became concerned over the photographs and some of the photographs that she observed at the photo studio and then filed a complaint of concern that this was a possible pornographic situation. We investigated it, found the photographer to be, you know, legitimately involved in the photography business, legitimately involved in conducting the photographs, and getting signed releases and having a photography studio and so on. The only involvement is that this individual had subleased his studio or apartment from Larry King, and that was the extent of our investigation into pornography-related activities involving Mr. King in any direct way. This was the photographer, Rusty Nelson, described to Margo Georgiu by people who knew him as "a pervert," and proven by her to have lied about his professional experience and resume. The pictures in his studio were "frontal nudity" shots of adolescent girls. Nelson described King not as his landlord, but as his "boss." The investigating officers had com- piled and filed accounts from several people about the lavish spending by King on Nelson's and other apartments, about his comings and goings in Mercedes Benz cars, and other evidence of an unexplained leap in King's income, and about the common knowledge that King was involved with drug dealers and was a homosexual who "liked young boys." Wadman, who had approached his officers with such curiosity about any investigations of Larry King that they might pursue, swore under oath, that he knew nothing about any of that. |
