Based on what we see, it looks like you got upset and shot him. City attorneys are defending him, saying he acted in good faith and without malice. Burnsides family and friends were caught off guard by the lawsuit. Basing an opinion on over 30 years with the Dallas Police Department, Kim Sanders explained that the Lord interrogation was intimidation, not questioning, and as Thompson handled the questioning it was a textbook example of how police can get false confessions. Toward the end of the year, he finally saw the video recording of Rastegars interview at police headquarters. One of the few black detectives in the unit, Thompson quickly made his mark. A few days after the funeral, Lord called Burnsides brother to ask if she could retrieve some of her belongings from the house. Was it possible that he thought he was about to lose the woman he loved?. 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 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. He was so compelling in front of the cameracajoling witnesses to open up and then lashing out at a suspectthat he looked like a television actor playing a detective. And whats really frightening is that Thompson could come back after me, plant some new fake evidence, and arrest me for murder again. But he stayed in the bedroom, pacing, walking around, yelling at me, screaming, angry. Finally, after he couldnt get her to respond to him, he left the room. Im not even sure the word accident was used. He said he later surmised that Lord had shot Burnside because he had heard a story going around the neighborhood that Burnside had been shot in the back of the head, which would suggest he had been murdered. Join Facebook to connect with Dwayne Thompson and others you may know. Five years later, Lord clearly remains tormented by that conversation, haunted by the idea that she might have said something that pushed her boyfriend into committing an impulsive act that no one could have imagined him doing. Nearly a year after the shooting, a grand jury met and heard the evidence. Then his own cellphone rang. When Michael Burnside was found dead in his Dallas home four years ago, detective Dwayne Thompson decided that the victim's girlfriend, Olivia Lord, had pulled the trigger. But she was pointedly not invited to a get-together that Burnsides friends were throwing after the service at one of his favorite bars. And then Thompson pounced. He had on a dark fedora, a dark suit, a white shirt with a tie, and dress shoes. If I discover anything that substantiates what I believe, Im going to charge you with murder., He glared at her for a moment. Lord seemed shocked. 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. In August, three months after the shooting, Shearin requested an examining trial, a legal procedure in which a police officer must appear in a magistrates court to lay out the probable cause for the arrest of a suspect in a felony case. And who knows? Hed been as tall as Thompson, with a lean, athletic build. He told Thompson that his son had had the most positive personality of anyone he had ever met. 4. He said that based on Burnsides victimology, there was no way that a young man with a bright future would put a bullet in his brain simply because his girlfriend was peeved at him. Lord is a striking green-eyed woman, with wavy auburn hair that sweeps down past her shoulders. Im a person who just lost her boyfriend, Lord wailed. Thompson, a 21-year veteran of the Police Department, has been a homicide detective since 2006. Thompson looked at his notebook, where he had written down the calls Lord had made on her cellphone. 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. Both have worked numerous murders and each has been featured on the popular A&E reality television show, I heard what I thought was glass shattering really loud, Lord said. Lord shook her head. And, yes, she said, she had grown irritated when she heard Burnside and Jaffe talking about the birthday party. 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. I believe that with all my heart.. Anonymous 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. Im trying to figure out how to move on with my life, she said recently, sitting at a back table at an Italian restaurant in North Dallas. Jaffe was sitting in a plastic chair next to a small table pushed against a wall. 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. Dressed in one of his dark suits, Thompson strode toward his seat. The idea that she would put a gun to his head and pull the trigger is just unfathomable.. Finally, after Thompson barked at him, he stepped onto the front porch and told a flabbergasting story. He told the jurors that he didnt believe that Lord had shot Burnside. They too had been talking to Thompson and they were furious. She works at a clothing shop, making $14 an hour, far less than what she was earning when she was in the mortgage business. A light drizzle was falling in the early morning hours of May 9, 2010, when detective Dwayne Thompsonpulled up in front of a modest home on Spring Grove Avenue, in a tree-lined neighborhood in North Dallas. He told Lundberg that he wasnt sure this was a suicide. Shearin got Lord out of jail on bail. 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. | Link Errors But she maintained her innocence and claimed Thompson was the one who should go to prison. She wanted to not only vindicate herself but also make sure the public knew just what Thompson had done to her. Which brings us to the story this week here in Dallas of Hephzibah Olivia Lord, who sued and won a civil lawsuit against a Dallas police detective for false arrest, reportedly in large part because the jury found that the detective had acted with malice (a legal term here) during his interrogation of Lord after she was arrested on a charge of murdering her boyfriend. I mean, she got no-billed. Who do you think you are? I was leaning over my future husbands body, Lord said. Im just as baffled as you are, she said. Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. He sustained a fatal contact gunshot wound to the right temple. She wanted to know why they were there. A team of U.S. marshals found her at her fathers home in Palmdale, about an hour north of Los Angeles, and Lord was held in custody for nine days. He had on a dark fedora, a dark suit, a white shirt with a tie, and dress shoes. What other results could you have with the police policing themselves? she said. You said he was upset and he hollers and starts getting destructive, and the thing is, you said he gets scary. 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 parents say that they still cannot believe that their son took his own life. I wasnt going to leave him., She then told me something she had not mentioned before. He asked her again about what she was doing during that seven-minute gap between phone calls in the house that night. However, the police may or may not let the person know about this right (remember the experts concerns that Thompson had not told Lord about her right to a lawyer). When Thompson took the stand, he seemed utterly likable as he described his history as a detective. He called the tone and line of questioning a formula for a false confession. And Sanders questioned why Thompson did not read Lord her right to remain silent after the point in which he clearly considered her a murder suspect during the interview. Thompson misrepresented any facts or falsified any government documents. They also declared that there was no evidence that Det. Bring on the Shiplap? Lets make a bad thing right. His fellow detectives nicknamed him D-Train. A Dallas County grand jury declined to indict Hephzibah Olivia Lord on a murder charge in connection with the 2010 death of Michael Burnside in his home. If the detectives thought they had noticed the smell of chemicals on her, it must have come from the paint thinner and the floor stripper that she and Burnside had been using that day. It was so hard for us to believe that she was doing this, said Jaffe. They liked to say that when he pursued a suspect, he was as unstoppable as a locomotive. Testimony. Lord was charged with murder a month after Burnsides death, based on Thompsons affidavit, and spent nine days in jail. He can go so far as to lie to a suspect to try to obtain a confession. Dallas Homicide Detective Dwayne Thompson revisits an empty plot of land where a grizzly double homicide had occurred years prior.Subscribe for more The Firs. Lord spent the next four days at her mothers home in the Dallas suburbs, lying in bed, taking sleeping pills. The jury determined Friday that Dallas homicide Detective Dwayne Thompson showed a reckless disregard for the civil rights of 36-year-old Hephzibah Olivia Lord. But as the case made its way through the courts, she maintained her innocenceand claimed Thompson was the one who should go to prison. The officer flipped another page. On July 15, the Public Integrity Units report landed on the desk of Dallas police chief David Brown. She had then grabbed the bottles of cleaning products from under the sink to wash away the blood and the gunpowder residue, which would account for the chemical odor he thought he had smelled on her. City Employees Are Heading for the Exits. Case Style: Hephzibah Olivia Lord v. Dwayne Thompson, Court: United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas County), Defendant's Attorney: James Carroll Butt, J.G. And now hes dead, he said. Thompson picked up his cellphone and called Burnsides father, John, a successful Dallas business analyst. Lord was accused of murder countless times, and she always denied it. A bullet hole was in a wall near the ceiling. Several months later, when he called Lord to refinance his home, their other relationships had ended. Why did you wait seven minutes before calling 911? he yelled. A citizen filing a lawsuit for false arrest must prove that the officer acted with malice, which is difficult to do. Tired of fighting, she stopped talking to Burnside and went into the bathroom to take off her makeup. And its going to come out.. His voice got even softer. Police interrogations happen all the time here in Dallas, and over in Fort Worth as well as the rest of Texas and around the country. That was one of the most-watched episodes in The First 48s run, drawing 2.3 million viewers, and the producers told Thompson that they wanted to do more shows with him. Tittle next called to the stand a retired Dallas homicide detective named Kim Sanders, who said that Thompsons interrogation of Lord was outlandish and that he left out key evidence in his arrest warrant. 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. After the argument was over, Michael stopped being sarcastic and he became quiet and somber. I did start dating a guy not long ago, she said after the waiter left. During her twenties, she always seemed to be out and about, a regular at trendy nightspots and concerts. Thompson, Andie - Thony, Steve > Thompson, Dorothya - Thompson, Elexus > Thompson, Dwanna - Thompson, Dweese > Thompson, Dwayne 1-25 of 112 Contacts Contact Name (2014) | Articles Come on., Lord closed her eyes when I asked her about those detractors who continue to believe shes hiding something. The First 48 (2004- ) Dallas Detective Dwayne Thompson hunts for a band of carjacking killers that are terrorizing a neighborhood. People drink all the time who own guns, Thompson said. But Lords attorney, Don Tittle, said the detective was wrong that police records show she called 911 immediately after trying to reach the friend. The arrest was based upon Thompsons affidavit. The Hephzibah Olivia Lord by Detective Dwayne A. Thompson lasted for hours. All prosecutors know that almost every murder case contains inconsistent and sometimes contradictory evidence. January 2023 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? Her parents hired an attorney named Joe Shearin, a former guard for the University of Texas Longhorns who had played in the NFL before becoming one of Dallass most prominent criminal defense lawyers. Her fight for justice here began around 3 years ago and ended with last weeks jury verdict. 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. He noticed that there was a chemical odorit smelled like bleach, he would later sayon her clothes. He stabbed the photo of the victim with his index finger. Who cares? Lundberg walked into the interview room, pulled his chair close to Lord, and played the role of the good cop. Had she washed up with towels before the paramedics and police arrived? Prior to her arrest, Lord had been known for her good-natured personality. Burnside told her that he was under financial stress, having to pay both his mortgage and his income taxes. Strapped around his shoulders was a thick brown leather holster that held his department-issued pistol, a 9mm Sig Sauer. Im still going to suffer for the rest of my life for this, she said. You shot him!, Olivia, youre not telling me the truth., Youre arguing about a goddamn birthday party, and he says, Im so upset about the goddamn birthday party that Im going to kill myself? Thompson said, his voice growing louder. Thirty seconds passed as she wept before she added, There are still nights when I drive by our home just to look at it. Just because the words were less strong doesnt mean they were any less true.. 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. Testimony continues Friday, during which Lord may take the witness stand. She certainly had not used them to wash herself off, she said. Tittle then had the jurors watch Thompsons interview with Lord and Lundbergs interview with Rastegar. Whats more, he said, Thompson had left out of the affidavit the fact that Burnside, who was right-handed, had been shot at point-blank range in his right temple, which would give a judge another reason to believe he had committed suicide. I wondered about the story Jaffe had told Thompson about finding her in the front yard, desperately saying, I wasnt going to leave him. Leave them blank to get signed up. Some are arguing that Lord has won this jury verdict because Detective Thompson used a controversial form of interrogation method called the Reid method of questioning. As for the question of blood spatter on Lords clothes, however, Quinton did have a definite opinion. Or he mistakenly pulled the trigger thinking the Beretta was unloaded., Jaffe shook his head. He knew it. But what did you actually tell Michael during the argument? They make honest, reasonable mistakes. For more information, see Michael Lowes Things to Know if You are Being Investigated for a Crime in Texas and our blog postSalinas v. Texas: Your Silence During Police Interrogation Does Not Get 5th Amendment Protection, Can Be Used Against You As Evidence Of Guilt To The Jury.. Chasing a trail of clues, Thompson and the Dallas homicide team are always one step behind their suspect. Thompsons interrogation of Lord was videotaped. Lord seemed to be trying to control her breathing. 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