Jim Leach began his law enforcement career in 1975, and he shares his insights as a multimedia analyst and consultant for Golden Media Group in matters relating to Criminal Justice. He served as a Special Agent for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

It was about 45 years ago, and I was a Special Agent with the TBI assigned to West Tennessee.

We had been asked to investigate a murder case that was about a year old. Today, we would call it a Cold Case, but we weren’t that sophisticated back then. It was an unsolved homicide.

We had been working on the case for a couple of years when the Sheriff from the victim’s home county called me and said he knew a young lady that he thought we’d be interested in interviewing. I called another TBI Agent, and we met with the girl at the Sheriff’s Office.

She was about the same age as the victim and told us that they had known one another. I asked her what she knew about the murder, and she began telling us about her dreams. After about an hour, she said that she believed the dreams came to her through an evil spirit.

The information she was providing was amazingly accurate. She could relate details of the crime that matched what we knew to be facts. She even drew a picture of how the body was lying, and it was very close to the truth. I had almost decided we had a situation where she was actually a witness to the crime, but couldn’t bring herself to admit it to the police.

You can’t do much good in a court of law using a witness who is testifying about information she received in a dream. We were trying everything we could think of to get her to tell us the real story. My partner even tried to interview the spirit by performing an exorcism. I had no idea what he was doing when he left the interview room. When he returned, he had a crucifix from a dispatcher’s necklace and a bottle of nail polish remover with the seal removed. He declared the bottle contained holy water. He proceeded to tell her that he could perform exorcisms and started to chant. I’m not sure who was the most shocked, me or the girl.

I forget what it was, but after about 3 hours, she said something that did not match up. I began to question her more intensely, and she finally admitted where she got her information.

She had scoured all the news stories on the radio, TV, and in the paper to get every bit of information she could find. She also monitored who we were interviewing and, after we talked to them, she would interview them herself. She not only found out what the witnesses told us, but what questions we asked, revealing what we were thinking about the case. Often, the police inadvertently give more information than they get during an interview. In some instances, she put 2 and 2 together and made some good suppositions. The reason she wanted to meet with us was to try to see what more she could learn and then tell all her friends.

If we had not figured out what was happening, she could have led us to believe certain people were involved in the crime, and perhaps even caused someone to be charged. To say the least, we would have wasted a lot of time that could have been spent running down the real killer.

Information she put on the street could contaminate future interviews and possibly a suspect’s confession. We discussed these issues with the young lady in a very direct manner, and hopefully, she never did it again.

You may remember that in an earlier article, we discussed some of the reasons police can’t share everything they know. This is a real-life example of why that principle is so important.

And, yes, we eventually solved the case.