Category Archives: Life & Death

SUN DANCE – WHY CUSTER REALLY LOST THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is one of the highest-profile events still shaping North American history. It’s an intensely studied military and social conflict. Yet, the main mystery of what occurred in June of 1876 on the Montana plains seems unsolved. That’s why—not how—the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors were able to strategically and tactically annihilate five United States Army 7th Cavalry companies under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s command and severely maul other soldiers in his regiment.

The core reason—the root cause—of why Custer really lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn hasn’t been identified by historians. They’ve overlooked the Sun Dance effect—the psychological and spiritual impact of the warriors’ cultural unity led by Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. This book outlines why the Lakota Sioux Sun Dance had such a powerful effect on the warriors’ will to win and why this sacred ceremony was the root cause of Custer’s demise.

That about 268 United States Army soldiers and approximately 40-50—maybe as many as 100—Native American civilians died in a brutally violent battle at a valley along the Little Bighorn River is a well-documented historical fact. Over the years, Custermania books saturated the non-fiction historical market. They’ve dissected practically every explainable part of the action.

Except for one. That’s where this book is different. It says Custer lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn because of the immense psychological effect the Native Americans’ ceremonial Sun Dance had on willing their people to win. Mentally, the Sun Dance made the warriors far better prepared to fight than the soldiers. In their minds, the warriors knew they would win. They were convinced that all they had to do was get the job done.

It was an amazing cohesiveness of combined will and unwavering belief that mobilized the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne people to attack the United States Army. They defended themselves, and their very existence, through forced aggression. Nowhere—at any time—did Euro-American authorities expect “savages and inferiors” would be superior in spiritual, strategic and tactical warfighting. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Lt. Col. George Custer, and the 7th Cavalry he controlled, was mentally outclassed and defeated. It was because of the Sun Dance.

The Sioux and the 7th Engage

What happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn is George Custer headed the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry regiment to find and engage a nomadic camp of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Native Americans spiritually invigorated by Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. The military mission’s objective was to force free-roaming native people onto reservations so European-Americans could steal their remaining land. For the indigenous people, their objective was self-defense and preserving a traditional way of life.

Custer’s cavalry found Sitting Bull’s camp in a valley along the Little Bighorn River. The village was far larger than Custer anticipated—possibly up to 10,000 people. Custer chose to attack immediately—despite the massive population and having no idea of the resolve warriors had to fight—rather than conduct reconnaissance and prepare a proper battle plan or attempt negotiations. Historically, the disastrous results for the soldiers are well-documented. The Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne alliance overwhelmed and soundly defeated the U.S. Army.

The battle circumstances are well recorded, but the real reason—the root cause—why the warriors cohesively gelled and so effectively destroyed Custer’s troops was never distinctly identified. It was ignored. Research through carefully-applied root cause analysis techniques show the enormous positive effect Sitting Bull’s ceremonial Sun Dance—performed shortly before the battle—had on his people. Sitting Bull experienced a victory vision during the Sun Dance that mentally and spiritually prepared his warriors for combat.

Psychologically, the warriors knew there was a fight coming. They were convinced they’d be victorious. It wasn’t only their superior numbers. It wasn’t just the terrain and their home-turf advantage. And, it wasn’t simply their weapons and skillful tactics.

Those were factors, for sure. However, it was their collective mindset—their commitment to engage the soldiers—that gave them overwhelming and superior psychological power. Combined with physical cohesiveness, this allowed the warriors to stunningly defeat the United States Army. The 7th Cavalry soldiers never had a fighting chance.

Two Reasons for this Book

There’s been more written about the Little Bighorn confrontation than any other single American conflict, except possibly the Battle of Gettysburg—certainly more than Pearl Harbor and D-Day. Fascination about the Greasy Grass fight, as Native Americans call it, or Custer’s Last Stand as it’s also known, has never waned. There are plenty of factors for continual interest. Perhaps as many factors as there are books.

So, why this book when so many others exist? Why enter a saturated Custermania market of Little Bighorn writing when so many speculative theories and analytical examinations already exist? There are two reasons.

First, the current plight of the plains indigenous people and other Native Americans is directly attributed to white society actions that caused events like the Battle of the Little Bighorn. As military battles go, the Little Bighorn was a small skirmish though it had crushing ramifications. The battle’s aftermath set the stage for European-American and Native-American relations spanning more than a century.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn still has an impact on today’s Native-Euro American relationships. It’s exceptionally important for people to understand the wrongs inflicted on Native Americans by European-based society. Everyone can benefit from a deeper understanding of other cultures, especially a culture as spiritually advanced as the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne were in the nineteenth century. That’s this book’s primary purpose.

Secondly, the core reason—the root cause—of why Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn has never been precisely identified and articulated. Finding the root cause is vital as it solves a long-standing historical mystery and resolves many misconceptions. It produces a better understanding of this high-profile event and a greater appreciation for Native American culture.

Historians focus on issues like how drastically outnumbered Custer was and how he charged an attack without sufficient intelligence to know the terrain and his odds. Often, the main reason cited for Custer’s defeat is because he divided his command into smaller units unable to support one another. Poor communication between soldier groups under Custer’s command is another identified downfall.

Many suggest Custer’s ego played a big role in this recklessness—how his lust for glory overshadowed his caution and leadership responsibility to protect his command. Historians and Custer buffs also identify how regiment infighting, hunger and malnutrition, fatigue, fear, confusion and chaos, drunkenness, lack of discipline, low morale, poor training and weapons malfunction contributed to Custer’s defeat. Some even suggest Custer disobeyed orders.

All these factors were likely influences on the battle’s outcome. Probably most, combined, contributed to the 7th’s defeat. But, what really caused the warriors to win—the underlying root cause—was their mental state.

Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance Vision

It started with Sitting Bull’s vision at the Sun Dance. Sitting Bull held a multi-day cultural ceremony at Deer Medicine Rocks along the Rosebud River which is one watershed east of the Little Bighorn. This was in mid-June, 1876, about 10 days before the Little Bighorn battle. After enduring enormous pain through self-mutilation and sensory deprivation, Sitting Bull publicly danced in the blazing sun until he dropped from exhaustion.

Sitting Bull had a vision where mounted U.S. soldiers fell upside down from the sky into their camp. He interpreted this as a message from Wakan Tanka, or the Great Spirit Creator, that American soldiers would attack them but be annihilated by the warriors in a victorious battle.

Sitting Bull correctly predicted the army’s loss and the warriors’ win. To the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne people, this was a divine message and a guarantee for victory. It psyched the warriors into a supercharged and unbeatable mental state.

The key to understanding this root cause is to appreciate the effect of Sitting Bull’s leadership and how Sitting Bull conducted himself in the Sun Dance held just days before the battle. It psychically and spiritually equipped the warriors to win. Sitting Bull’s credibility and integrity caused unity—cohesion with all native tribe occupants of the massive village including women, elders and other non-combatants.

Because their belief in winning was so strong—so overwhelmingly powerful—warriors went into battle with an unbreakable mental conviction. They knew they couldn’t lose. It was just a matter of exercising the process. That wasn’t the case with United States Army’s 7th Cavalry soldiers, and that’s why Custer really lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Authority to Write This Book

Why am I an authority to write this book? First, I’m not a historian. I’m a retired investigator with experience as a homicide cop, then as a forensic coroner, now as a crime writer and researcher. I’m also formally trained in conducting a Root Cause Analysis of crime and accident events by the industry’s authority, Think Reliability.

I’ve always had an interest in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. I also have an intense interest and some experience in Native American spirituality after being exposed to the sweat lodge culture. It’s part of my curiosity to try and make some sense out of interconnected consciousness… but that’s for another book.

I decided to write a post on my blog site www.DyingWords.net about applying a root cause analysis to the Little Bighorn battle. To my surprise—my astonishment, you could say—I found the root cause of why Custer lost wasn’t the numbers, the tactics, the terrain, the weapons or even George Custer’s inflated ego and erroneous decision about ignoring reconnaissance and splitting his forces. These were factors, for sure. But no matter how I analyzed it, the arrows kept pointing at the Sun Dance.

What started as a blog post turned into this book. It began with fact research that took me down a historical rabbit hole, through tightly-connected strategical and tactical tunnels, then into a labyrinth of fascinating insights about military procedure, native culture and overall human conditions. Most blog posts take a few hours to research and write. This book took two years and I want to share it with you.

While the root cause of why Custer really lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn appears obvious, it seems this simple explanation escaped most historians. They paid little attention to the Sun Dance’s important influence in every publication and film I’ve seen. It’s fair to say that no other work details the Sun Dance connection to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. If it exists, I haven’t found it. If it does, I hope you can share.

Doing a Root Cause Analysis

Conducting a root cause analysis isn’t difficult. It’s actually a common sense approach to looking at an outcome, or a negative-impact loss situation, and getting to the root reason for what caused it. In the crime business, it helps identify the motive and points out the suspect. In the accident business, it identifies a danger and seeks to prevent another mishap by eliminating the cause. Determining a root cause also identifies responsibility and accountability for negligent actions.

The same principles apply whether you’re cause mapping something as simple as a fall down the stairs, something fairly routine like a vehicle accident, something serious like a homicide, or something as highly-complex as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. You keep asking, “Why?” till you run out of answers. That’ll give you the root cause.

Root cause analysis is also called cause and effect analysis or fish-boning. You state your effect like “over 300 unnecessary deaths at the Little Bighorn” and ask why that happened. Your first cause answer will be “a battle between the Lakota Sioux/Northern Cheyenne alliance and the U.S. Cavalry”. Your next question might be “why did the Sioux and Cheyenne ally?” The answer is because “Sitting Bull pulled them together for mutual protection through the Sun Dance ritual”. Another question is “Why were the soldiers so outnumbered?” The obvious answer is because “the Sioux and Cheyenne made a pact sealed by the Sun Dance to ally for safety in numbers to prevent being attacked by soldiers”.

This alliance and the huge number of warriors coming together happened because Sitting Bull realized the dangers from a direct attack on his camp by U.S. soldiers. His spiritual leadership allied all available native people into one huge village. The alliance mechanism mentally bonded them.

Sitting Bull galvanized this through the traditional Sun Dance ceremony and demonstrating the four sacred Lakota principles of bravery, fortitude, generosity and wisdom. At the Sun Dance, Sitting Bull reaffirmed his mental strength, physical endurance and unwavering personal commitment to his peoples’ welfare. Again, this points to the Sun Dance ritual as the common denominator for bonding the people.

You need to take every pertinent and contributing factor you can find into account when doing a root cause analysis. In the case of the Little Bighorn, that includes every relevant contributor or detractor on both sides of the battlefield. For the soldiers, there were leadership problems, a lack of training and proficiency in horsemanship, poor shooting ability, fatigue, pain, hunger, thirst, bad morale and regiment infighting, poor or non-existent reconnaissance and intelligence as well as severe tactical mistakes, fear, terror, emotional collapse and disorder leading to chaos and a complete command breakdown. Additionally, the soldiers didn’t have personal skin in the game until it came to the end. Then, it was too late to escape.

Native American Warrior Superiority

The list of contributing factors is also extensive, but it comes around to Native American warrior superiority in almost every way. They had the terrain on their side or home field advantage. The warriors had extensive weaponry and the skills to use it. And they also had total skin in the game from the start. Their cultural and personal survival depended on winning. But, most of all, the warriors had the unswayable will to win and the incredible ability to communicate through some form of consciousness-based interconnection across five miles of rugged battlefield.

Conventional western science doesn’t begin to address or understand this phenomenon. Somehow, it’s part of the Lakota and Cheyenne cultural complexity. That’s firmly formed, anchored and nurtured in the Sun Dance ritual. This reality is foreign to most Euro-Americans, but many people in today’s Native American societies understand this power and still practice the principles.

Finally, you’ll get to the question about mental preparedness. There’s no other answer than the Sun Dance. Clearly, the root cause of why Custer really lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn is due to Sitting Bull’s leadership in mentally preparing his warriors to fight. Not only were they incredibly psyched-up, but these fighting men were desperately protecting their families and their way of life. Their willpower and their ability to cooperate on the battlefield completely overpowered the 7th Cavalry. The Native Americans turned the table on the army, immediately and completely throwing the cavalry’s offensive charge into a defensive rout.

Building a Cause Map

On a cause map produced in a spreadsheet, the effect and cause boxes connect with arrows. My actual cause map for the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the Think Reliability Excel sheet is far more detailed. It’s available at a link on my website where you can print it out, but it looks something like this concept.

Root cause analysis theory is straightforward. You keep drilling down till you run out of questions. In some cases, there can be multiple root causes. With the Little Bighorn battle, you can make the argument that Custer made a gross tactical error by dividing his command against a vastly superior force. He failed to anticipate the warrior numbers and resolve to fight. History proves that quite right. Ultimately, Custer failed to properly assess his battle challenges and options.

In fact, the mentality of the entire United States Army hierarchy for capturing “hostile” natives was to prevent the villages from breaking up and fleeing. That’s what they assumed would happen. It wasn’t just Custer who got the native people wrong.

Not one of them—from President Ulysses S. Grant to William Sherman, General of the Army, to General Philip Sheridan, Commander of the Missouri Department, to General Alfred Terry, leader of the fateful 1876 Dakota-Montana-Wyoming summer campaign—gave any thought that the native people would do anything but flee or cut & run. Custer, like all his superiors, went into the campaign with the entire concern that his challenge would be locating and containing the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne to prevent them from running.

The challenge with doing a proper and thorough root cause analysis with something as intertwined as the Battle of the Little Bighorn is getting reliable information. Determining the facts is crucial before putting them in an analytical order. Fortunately, there is a wealth of reliable knowledge available in books, films and internet sites. Sifting through what historically occurred leading up to, during and after the battle is time-consuming. Then there’s the task of researching the Sun Dance ceremony, and what psychological/physiological impact it really had.

Organizing This Book

To make sense of what happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the implications it still has on the Native American people, it’s necessary to look at this thing in bite-sized chunks. I’ve laid this book out accordingly. You can take any section and read it independently of other parts. Or, you can follow the book chronologically from section to section.

It’s not intended to produce a complete history lesson on Euro-American and Native American relations. Rather, this book is primarily about what caused the Little Bighorn battle, why Custer lost, and what happened afterward to result in the current Native American plight. It’s a case of not knowing where you are—and where you’re going—without knowing where you’ve been. Here’s how this book is organized:

This book is meant as a resource for students of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and to inform anyone interested in this historical milestone to clearly grasp the facts. It’s also meant to raise awareness of the rich and complex cultural contribution that Native Americans have to offer. As well, it’s to help understand the plight suffered by current Native Americans.

I try not to be a Custer apologist or to overly bash him. History has done its fair share of both. This is simply an attempt to get the truth—as best as possible.

But, what I don’t think history has properly done is taking a detailed and objective look at the root cause of why Custer really lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn. And I’m sure nothing was more influential on how the battle turned out than the Sun Dance. I’m also positive George Custer never considered it.

As much as Custer had over a decade of soldier experience—some of it on the plains—he had little or no appreciation of the Native American resolve to fight at the Little Bighorn. He also had no understanding of the Sun Dance culture and the mental effect it had on the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors. And Custer certainly had no idea how strong Sitting Bull’s spiritual guidance truly was.

George Custer severely underestimated his opponents. Custer was poorly prepared, psychologically unstable and culturally ignorant. He had no concept of Lakota spiritualism, how they thought, and the psychological power of Chief Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance ceremony.

_   _   _

If you’d like a Free Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of Sun Dance – Why Custer Really Lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn, email me at garry.rodgers@shaw.ca and let me know if you’d like a Mobi, Epub, PDF, Webpage or Word.doc file.

JOSEPH WAMBAUGH — INTERVIEWING CRIME WRITING’S MASTER OF CHARACTERS

Joseph Wambaugh is crime writing’s master of cop & crook characters. Unlike many crime writers, Joe Wambaugh policed in the Los Angeles trenches. He’s worked with guys like Roscoe Rules, a fictional yet true-to-life rogue in The Choir Boys whose behavior was delightfully over-the-top. Wambaugh also served with psychologically-wounded real-life officers like Karl Hettinger portrayed in The Onion Field as a PTSD victim sadly spirally down after his partner’s on-duty execution. And, after 50 years in the police and crime writing business, Joseph Wambaugh knows his characters and remains down-to-earth. I’m honored to share the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Quarterly magazine’s recent interview with crime writing’s master.

*   *   *

In 1971, Little, Brown & Company published a novel with a catchy title, The New Centurions. It was the first book from a young writer who described his profession in a way never been done before. The author was a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department and the book was an unorthodox look at policing—full of colorful characters tossed together in a zany, chaotic world of life and death. Joseph Wambaugh was describing policing in the City of Los Angeles, but it might as well have been any city. The New Centurions was a runaway bestseller.

Joe Wambaugh went on to write 15 more novels and 5 non-fiction books. He wrote TV scripts, contributed to movies and television shows, and became a household name in police and literary circles. Fame forced him to leave policing and propelled him onto the author’s circuit in countries around the world. He made appearances on countless TV shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Wambaugh’s fame continues to this day. His books continue to sell, phrases he coined are commonly used in policing and—most of all—he left a profound mark on the police profession. Joseph Wambaugh understood cops. He also recognized the emotional toll of “the job” on police officers, long before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was a diagnosed condition.

Joe Wambaugh also exposed the disparities in society through his examination of topics as diverse as dog shows and prostitution, describing the opulence and hypocrisy of some, as a counterpoint to the pathetic underbelly of society. Wambaugh described the job of a police officer in a gritty, realistic way that upset the prevailing view of policing as a mechanistic, black and white world of good and evil, typified by TV shows such as Dragnet and Adam-12.

No one underestimates the role Wambaugh had on policing and its perception by the public. Police officers came to understand the heroic qualities and tragic frailties of their peers and themselves. The public saw police as dedicated and brave, but imperfect human beings like themselves. Through Joseph Wambaugh’s works, policing became seen as a high-risk profession—physically and emotionally. Police Story and Hill Street Blues became the new TV paradigm of policing.

Today, Joe Wambaugh remains an astute observer of policing from the distance of his California home. He’s a husband, father and grandfather—a youthful 82 and sharp as a tack. The Quarterly had the pleasure of interviewing this most unassuming man. Here’s the conversation.

Joe, you grew up in East Pittsburgh and joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Why?

I had been living in southern California for three years before joining the USMC. I joined because after graduating from high school, I did not want to go to college, and was too young to get a decent job. Thanks to the military, I benefited from the GI bill and used it for college later on.

What inspired you to become a police officer?

I took college classes while in the military, then doubled up on classes when I left the Marine Corps at age 20, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts before my 23rd birthday. I had intended to become a teacher but saw an ad in The Los Angeles Times that the LAPD was paying $489 a month to recruits. It was very enticing, as I was bored with school and wanted some action.

At what point in your career did you decide to mix writing with policing?  Did someone influence you to write?

I had majored in English and every literature major who has ever lived is a closet writer. I read John Le Carré’s spy novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. For me, it was the ultimate story of police undercover work. I decided to write that novel.

How did you break into the publishing world?

I sent short stories to all the cheapo magazines and received rejections. I sent one story to the same magazine twice because I was convinced they had not read it the first time. It came back to me with a note: “Dear Schmuck, it’s no better this time than last time.” In desperation, I tried a literary magazine, The Atlantic Monthly. They encouraged me to try a novel. That did it; The New Centurions was the result. I could never find the “Dear Schmuck” letter to send it back to him.

Tell me about the reaction to The New Centurions.

I knew my Chief of Police would not approve of the book. I violated Departmental policy by not submitting the manuscript for editorial approval. It became the main selection of the Book of the Month Club. I received a check for $50,000 in 1970. The Chief ’s public comment was that he was glad Sergeant Wambaugh is making a lot of money because he won’t have a job much longer. The press jumped all over it. Everyone was on my side. Everyone had to see what this young cop had done. The book remained on The New York Times best seller list for 32 weeks.

You‘ve been referred to as the father of the modern police novel. Comments?

It was my intention from the beginning, to tell the story of policing from a different and more realistic perspective – the gritty, cynical, slapstick and emotional side of policing. The public was ready for truth, in place of entertaining propaganda. Jack Webb, the creator and star of Dragnet, became involved in all the kerfuffle over the release of The New Centurions. He got a man to contact me to say that Webb would read the manuscript and if it deserved to be aired, he would protect me from being fired.

My homicide partner and I drove to Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills and dropped off the manuscript. Well, it took a couple of weeks. I finally got a call that the manuscript was there to be picked up. We drove back in our detective car. The manuscript was in a wrapper. I said to my partner that the manuscript was heavier than when I brought it here. Every place where Webb worried about the content, he placed a paper clip – 500 in total. Every page had multiple paper clips. I kept the paperclips and never met Webb.

The practice of letting off steam after a shift is seen in The Choirboys. But that book also described a darker side to the police profession, in which the emotional toll can be greater than the physical danger, occasionally leading to suicide and divorce. Comments?

If I had still been in the LAPD at the time that The Choirboys was published, it would surely have gotten me fired. I have always said that the physical dangers of policing were overstated by TV shows and movies, but police officers are constantly exposed to the worst of people and ordinary people at their worst. This produces premature cynics and makes it one of the most emotionally dangerous jobs in the world.

Your writing style is somewhat unconventional, described as a series of connected episodes involving colorful characters, more so than plot-driven. How did you develop this style?

The style reflects how I see life: episodic. That leads to character-driven stories, rather than plot-driven stories. I am no Agatha Christie.

What techniques did you use to document the many great stories which you fictionalized?

I took lots of secret notes as a cop and kept them in boxes and drawers in case I ever decided to try writing.

You also faced danger yourself.

I happened to be one of a dozen besieged cops at Manchester and Vermont Streets on Friday the 13th of August 1965 when Watts erupted in rioting and all the shooting started. I don’t know if one of the hundreds of rioters fired or if it was a cop, but a couple of bodies fell. And then all hell really broke loose for three days. We were ordered to 77th Street Station earlier that afternoon from all over Los Angeles and assigned to three-man cars with cops we’d never met before. We were given a box of ammunition and a shotgun and sent to unfamiliar streets, with the intent of stopping the riots.

It was not police work, but a crazy kind of urban combat in a state of anarchy. We mainly tried to protect each other while mobs looted. The windows were smashed from our car within minutes, and at some point, one of the cops I was teamed with fired a shotgun blast in the general direction of a muzzle flash and managed to hit a looter in the ankle with one pellet of double- aught buckshot. Taking that looter for medical treatment and then to jail got us off the street for nearly two hours and was a welcome relief, ut then it was back out to hell. Anyway, that wasn’t really police work.

Joe, tell me then about a police incident that had a lasting impact on you.

I was a patrol officer in south central L.A. We had a lot of shootings and action. I was training rookie named Fred Early. He was only out of the Academy for matter of weeks. We got a call of shots fired at a pool hall and arrived just ahead of another black and white. A guy stepped out of the pool hall with a shotgun. Pellets whiz past us and he heads back inside.

I didn’t pay attention to Fred Early. Everyone was yelling, and the radio was blaring. It turns out that Fred had run around the building and covered the back door. He was assertive and smart. The robber runs out the back door holding the shotgun at port arms. Fred fired one round. I arrived to find the suspect on his back with a grimace on his face and a hole between his eyes.

That, however, wasn’t the end of the story. Five years later, Fred Early was on his way home from work. Something happened. He reported a burglar breaking into a commercial business. He tried to arrest the suspect. A fight ensued, he was repeatedly beaten and kicked in the head by his assailant and shot in the leg with his own gun. The guy got away. Fred eventually died during one of his surgeries, having suffered irreversible brain damage.

You’re a New York Times bestselling author and the winner of many awards, including Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. Did you anticipate your novels’ impact and it would become next to impossible for you to resume work as a homicide detective?

Nobody could have anticipated the instant success. I simply wanted to publish something. I never dreamed that I would be unable to complete my 20 years with the LAPD and get my pension, the security blanket all cops want. Many times, I regretted my success. Fourteen years was seventy per cent of what I agreed to serve. I thought about it a thousand times. I would love to just have completed it. Also, in those years, I was used to packing a gun and no longer had a right to carry a gun.

Do you have a favorite character in your novels?

I don’t really have a favorite character, but nonfiction books are like my step-children, novels are like my biological children.

Is Joe Wambaugh in the novels himself?

Pieces of me are probably in some of the fictional characters.

At some point, you decided to write non-fiction, beginning with The Onion Field, which was a huge hit. Why did you expand from the fiction genre?

I knew there was a great true story that had to be told, not so much about the murdered officer, Ian Campbell, but about the survivor, Karl Hettinger. I was working Wilshire Vice the night that Campbell and Hettinger were kidnapped in Hollywood Division, the next division north of us. Everyone was looking for them. I stayed close to the case. When I heard what happened to Hettinger within the Department, I knew it was wrong and that he would pay a terrible price. He surely did.

Your books spawned TV shows and movies and turned the existing genre of television shows, such as Dragnet and Adam-12, on their head, helping spawn a new paradigm, typified by Police Story and Hill Street Blues. Thoughts?

I’ll give you an example. I worked on Police Story which aired on NBC television. After some rookies have a year or so under their belt, their badge starts to feel heavy and they begin to swagger a bit. We created an episode about what we, at LAPD called the John Wayne Syndrome. For some reason, the producer submitted the script to John Wayne Productions. Their response— “absolutely not.”

The production company got cold feet and changed the term to the Wyatt Earp Syndrome. The badge heavy cop loses everything, including his wife. At the end of the episode he is seen sitting on the bed of his empty apartment. The tough guy suddenly breaks down weeping and the show ends with the sound of a radio call playing over his sobs.

Using a radio call has become a part of line of duty police funerals, where the fallen officer is called on the police radio and fails to respond. Did this tradition begin with your writing?

Not to my knowledge. However, not being too vain, the tradition of playing bagpipes at police funerals started after The Onion Field was published. The book introduced it by recounting Officer Ian Campbell’s funeral. His grandparents on both sides were from Scotland and Ian loved everything Scottish. There is a photo of him playing the bagpipes. They were played at his funeral, and this was repeated in the movie. It was heartbreaking.

Another non-fiction book, The Blooding, tells the story of the first successful use of DNA profiling, which occurred in England. How did you learn of this case and did you anticipate the huge impact that DNA would have on policing?

I read about the case and knew at once, if it could be true, that this would be the biggest event in crime detection since inked fingerprinting.

One of your most entertaining books must be The Black Marble, a story about dog shows and crime. But there appears to be a deeper meaning in this and other books, which appear to use satire to pan the excesses of modern American society.

That is probably true. As with most of my work, all the comedy is tempered by some intense and painful scenes involving PTSD in police work. I really liked the movie of Black Marble, but the mix of funny and harrowing stories, including the torture and death of a child and a cop going crazy, confused some viewers who either loved or hated it. Harry Dean Stanton was a great comedic villain in the movie.

Do you have a sense of the impact that your books had outside the United States?

My books are fading into distant memory. I’m not sure that there is a large society of avid book readers left, anywhere in the world. At the time, however, I met cops in Europe, Australia and New Zealand during book tours. I did become aware of their impact. It was very flattering.

Have you visited Canada and met Canadian police officers?

I did the book tour to large cities and met a few Canadian coppers. I also spent a month in Toronto prepping Echoes in the Darkness, a TV mini-series, where we made Toronto look like Philadelphia. We brought in palm trees and placed them on the shore of Lake Ontario, turning it into Miami! One day in April it was so hot that we were in t-shirts. The next morning, the snow was six inches deep! While in Toronto, we had to fly to New York to interview actors, but everyone had the same feeling—New York was foreign to us, Toronto was like home. Such a great city. I thought about it the other day when I read about a terrible shooting in Greektown. I used to go there all the time for dinner.

Would you recommend a policing career to young people today?

All my life I’ve seen it getting worse and worse. The police can do no right. They are criticized more and more. Criticism starts before the facts come out.

One important point in terms of police shootings. The critics are endless. So called bad or shaky shootings arise from fear not anger. Fear is the motivator in the case of bad shootings. Shootings arising from police rage are uncommon. This is a fundamental thing that has to be understood. I would not recommend policing as a career today.

How does Joe Wambaugh spend his time today?

Dee and I married when I was an 18-year-old Marine and we have two children and two grandchildren. I hate the idea of retirement. The worst part of old age is the loss of creative energy and being unable to write more books. Three of my four grandparents were Irish immigrants – the fourth being a German-American originally named Wambach – so mostly Irish DNA means that I tend to see the world and my life through a glass darkly. On the other hand, it is probably my Irish DNA that made me a writer in the first place. So, what do I have to bitch about? Semper cop!

*   *   *

Joe Wambaugh took a chance almost 50 years ago to write about policing from the perspective of a street cop. He forever changed how the public perceives police officers, their role in society, the pitfalls of the profession and its strengths. It’s from such realistic—in your face—writing that we have a better understanding of the mysteries of what it means to be a police officer and the heavy toll it takes on officers and the larger police family. May we continue to learn from the wonderful tales told by Joseph Wambaugh and enjoying his captivating pages.

Acknowledgements

My DyingWords thanks to two retired RCMP members for contacting Joseph Wambaugh for a talk. Staff Sergeant (ret’d) Michael Duncan, who I worked with in the 1980s, is on the editorial board of The Quarterly It’s been the RCMP voice since 1933. Deputy Commissioner (ret’d) Peter German is a Quarterly contributor who spent time with Joe Wambaugh and put this piece together. It’s a unique insight into how Joseph Wambaugh’s police and writing career progressed. It’s also a fascinating insight into Wambaugh’s thoughts that captivating crime writing isn’t about how cops work on cases—it’s about how cases work on cops.

MISTER BIG UNDERCOVER STING CONVICTS ANOTHER COLD CASE KILLER

The “Mister Big” undercover sting is an exceptionally effective cold case homicide investigation technique where police set up a fictitious organized crime group and entice a suspect to confess to an unsolved crime they’ve committed. Since developed and perfected in the 1990s by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the fictional Mister Big ruse sent dozens of murderers to prison. That’s despite conventional police procedures failing to find admissible evidence… leaving the jaws of justice wide open to trick and do-in deviant criminals with this innovative and highly-incriminating trap.

This week, the RCMP convicted another cold case killer evading justice for 40 years. It was long overdue and fair game. The Mister Big undercover sting might be controversial to bleeding-heart civil rights activists and money-hungry defense lawyers, but the man playing the theatrical Mister Big in the undercover scheme brings immeasurable comfort and closure to the families of defenseless murder victims.

Garry Taylor Handlen is Mister Big’s latest justice-delayed example. A jury in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, just convicted this 71-year-old monster of kidnapping, raping and strangling 12-year-old Monica Jack in 1978. Canada doesn’t have the death penalty, but Garry Handlen will die in jail with a mandatory life sentence. Mister Big and his police investigative team made sure of it after Handlen confessed to murdering Monica Jack during an undercover operation.

Before going into what Mister Big’s undercover investigation procedure involves, Monica Jack deserves respect. This innocent young girl was riding her bike near Merritt, B.C., which is ranching country east of Vancouver. Handlen spotted her from his truck and camper. A serial sexual opportunist, Handlen stopped, wrestled Monica into his camper, kidnapped her and took her up a mountainside. Then he raped Monica, strangled her and dumped her lifeless body in the woods.

It was 17 years before Monica Jack’s skeletal remains were found and identified. However, Garry Handlen was on the police persons-of-interest list right away. A witness saw Handlen at a rest stop. They also saw Monica Jack being taken by a man—similar to Handlen’s description—to a distinctive truck and camper consistent with Handlen’s registered vehicle.

Garry Handlen was no stranger to police. He was a serial sexual offender—now a known serial killer— who was in and out of jail for serious sexual offenses. Handlen was on parole for rape when he accosted Monica Jack. He was also suspected in a string of violent offenses including sex murders.

Police at the time had a general description of Monica’s abductor and vehicle. But, they had no body and certainly no forensic evidence like today’s DNA technology or video surveillance. All they had was Handlen’s guilty mind and his intimate knowledge of what really happened when he murdered Monica Jack. That’s what eventually sunk Garry Handlen when he confessed to Mister Big during an elaborately choreographed undercover operation.

The Mister Big ruse sounds simple in principle. The police undercover team targets a viable suspect like Handlen to gain his confidence. This is a slow, methodical process where they make contact several times removed from the main undercover players. Steadily, they bring their target into the fold and make him reliant on a fictitious crime organization. To prove his worth, or be protected from prosecution, the target eventually confesses his crime to Mister Big—an all-powerful and superior crime boss who can make anything happen.

In reality, the Mister Big undercover operation is difficult and expensive. It takes months—sometimes years—of planning and putting into play layers upon layers of scenarios needed to get a target vulnerable to confessing. Sometimes, it never happens and the time spent of twenty to thirty undercover officers in supporting roles is wasted. That’s not including hundreds of thousands of dollars in public expense setting up the sting.

The RCMP has an impressive success record with the Mister Big sting. They won’t release exact figures, but inside sources indicate they’ve done over 200 Mister Big Sting operations. Some fizzled out because the target wouldn’t bite. Some even exonerated the suspect. But for criminals who’ve confessed to Mister Big, the police and prosecution have a 95 percent conviction rate. Garry Handlen’s going-down added to the success list.

So why have Canadian authorities used the Mister Big Sting so successfully to convict cold-case killers when other countries like the United States stay away from the ruse? It’s because of entrapment. As much as Canada is seen worldwide as this bleeding-heart bastion of civil liberties with a socialist soft-belly—Canada isn’t as much of a lawyer-run place like the States.

Maybe it’s because Canada is careful about following the U.S. lead in bad jurisprudence decisions and making those same mistakes. Canada learned that Miranda shouldn’t taint “the fruit of the poison tree” nor should DeLorean dictate rules of entrapment. Canada has this thing called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which says that criminal evidence has a “Bringing the Administration of Justice into Disrepute” test. This is a two-headed coin where artificially dismissing truthful evidence under a Miranda application or Delorean entrapment procedure would not be in the public interest. In fact, not allowing truthful evidence gained through the Mister Big investigative approach would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, at least in the common person’s common-sense view.

Canadian courts look at each case on its own merit—within general admissibility guidelines. In Canada, there’s nothing wrong with police officers tricking viable suspects into incriminating themselves as long as the authorities don’t threaten them and make them do something they wouldn’t do within their own free will. In other words—let them talk, be themselves and naturally confess their crimes.

The main criteria for allowing confessions made in Mister Big stings into trial evidence is they’re corroborated in some way that proves the accused is truthful. That’s usually by the accused disclosing some piece of key-fact or hold-back information known only to the crime’s perpetrator and those closely involved in the investigation. This is the safeguard in preventing false confessions from convicting a wrongfully accused and innocent person.

RCMP Mister Big stings don’t just happen. They’re tightly controlled operations where highly skilled investigators collaborate with many support services. Mister Big undercover operations employ technical units like wiretapping, bugging and clandestine visual surveillance professionals. Stings use mobile eyes like airplanes and drones. They use prompts, staging, costumes and makeup worthy of Broadway theatre productions. And undercover operations depend on psychological services like the Behavioral Science Unit for profiling targets to find vulnerabilities. They also protect the physical and mental health of their operators.

Why don’t the United States and other first-world countries use the Canadian-led Mister Big technique? Actually, they do. Because the Mister Big investigation technique is legal in Canada—within limits—confessions gained on Canadian soil can be admissible in the U.S. and other courts. Other countries team with the RCMP to have undercover operations done inside Canadian territory.

The case of Atif Ratay and Sebastian Burns is a prime example of international investigation cooperation. Ratay and Burns brutally murdered Ratay’s family in Seattle, Washington, with baseball bats to collect insurance money. Then they fled across the border to their native Canada and eventually fell trapped in the RCMP’s Mister Big sting. After confessing, these two killers were extradited back to the United States where they sit doing life.

The RCMP exports its Mister Big sting expertise worldwide. Seasoned RCMP operatives and instructors from the Canadian Police College help many international police agencies develop versions of the Mister Big sting that work in their countries. It’s all about finding crime-fighting tools that identify the guilty—and, yes—sometimes exonerate the innocent.

*   *   *

On a personal note from DyingWords, I worked with the RCMP members who pioneered the Mister Big undercover investigative technique. Their names remain anonymous, although one’s now passed on and the other recently retired. These dedicated police officers thought outside the restricted confines that stop imaginative breakthroughs in police sciences. Truly, they were ahead of their time.

I joined the RCMP in 1978 and just graduated from the Academy when Garry Taylor Handlen abducted, raped and murdered Monica Jack. Over the years, I helped investigate still-unsolved murders that Handlen may have committed. And I worked with talented undercover operators on Mister Big stings where we had success when other investigative avenues failed.

I’m not plugging a book sale here. My based-on-true-crime novel Under The Ground follows an actual Mister Big undercover sting where a cold-blooded killer might have got away with murder if Mister Big hadn’t intervened. Under The Ground is free for DyingWords followers.

If you’d like a digital copy of Under The Ground, just email me at garry.rodgers@shaw.ca and I’ll send you a Kobo/ePub, Kindle/mobi or PDF version.