Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 04/03/1994
Section: C
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR

Sky-high help on homicides/HPD implementing '90s technology to unravel cases

By T.J. MILLING
Staff

While Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson were being slaughtered at the end of a west Harris County lovers lane four years ago, a satellite may have been watching in mechanical apathy thousands of feet above.

With all other leads exhausted in the case, the Houston Police Department homicide division is looking to the heavens in hopes of a miracle, but it has been a frustrating month for homicide information analyst Pat Mathis.

Psytep Corp. of Corpus Christi queried satellite databases around the globe, but the closest it came to a satellite image at the right time and place is 11 p.m., Aug. 22, 1990. That is an hour before police believe the young couple was slain in a wooded area near the 1300 block of Enclave Parkway.

Psytep waived its normal $300 search fee as a means of proving to HPD and the public just how valuable the company's services might be. Police say Paul Caldwell, chief executive officer of Psytep, also implied he would provide the satellite photo free, but now wants thousands of dollars -- more than HPD can afford.

Although this case has proven frustrating, satellites and other high-tech information sources may be useful in the future.

"There's a lot of gee whiz stuff that cities normally can't afford, that will be used in one in a thousand cases," Mathis' supervisor, Lt. Murray Smith, said. "But we need to know about them for when that case comes along."

The imagery is not the read-a-newspaper-from-space technology of Tom Clancy spy novels. It is at best "two-meter resolution," meaning anything two meters in size or bigger will be discernible, Caldwell said.

"The magic in this stuff, if there is any, is in the interpretation of the image," Caldwell said. "What you saw in (the movie) "Patriot Games" is real world. It's just not our world."

In the movie based on a Clancy book, CIA agents used satellite imagery to pick out new arrivals at a terrorist desert camp by their sunburns and watch a commando raid on the camp. Spy satellites with resolution that good are generally classified, Caldwell said.

But even with the lesser resolution available to police, people can be picked out, and the make and model of a vehicle discerned. That alone can be a great help in cases, like the Lovers Lane murders, where little is known about the crime, Mathis said. A photo interpreter can perceive things from the shading of pixels, the dots that make up the image, that a less trained eye might miss.

The Lovers Lane case is the high-profile type for which HPD could justify the cost of seeking satellite imagery, she said. The search and purchase of any available pictures can cost thousands of dollars; a photo interpreter, even more.

Pictures from space are just one of the new information sources the homicide intelligence section is looking at as an aid in murder investigations. There are other less expensive, more practical tools of the information age available to the department.

From using fax machines to speed up the subpoena and warrant process to tracking suspects' checks and credit card expenditures to global communications networks, homicide investigators are relying more and more on technology.

Created in December 1991 with a federal grant, the HPD homicide intelligence section is composed of four analysts. Although narcotics divisions have been using analysts for decades, HPD's section is among the first of its kind attached to a homicide division, Mathis said. Much of the unit's equipment is still purchased with federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area grant money.

The analysts are charged with finding new and better ways to gather information for detectives.

"There are so many pieces to the puzzle that sometimes, while you're chasing a piece, you lose the big picture," Mathis said. "We need to keep them (the detectives) focused. . . . We're the people behind the computers, and we have identified and caught killers, but it's not glamorous."

Limited funding will probably leave the section somewhere short of the cutting edge of technology, but highly useful tools are becoming more affordable.

The homicide division is purchasing a compact disc with a national crisscross directory indexed by name, telephone number and address, and another disc containing a street map of the entire state.

"Say somebody lives in San Antonio and we have a partial street name and partial block address," Smith said. "We can pull that (area of the map) right at our desk. Whatever we can use to find people is getting cheaper and smaller, more manageable."

The section is also planning to subscribe to the Internet, a global communications network using computers. On the Internet, HPD could query some of the satellite databases directly, bypassing private sector companies like Psytep and their hefty fees, Mathis said. But HPD would still have to buy the photos.

Beyond satellite imagery, the Internet could be used to post messages on computer bulletin boards around the globe for other police departments and the private sector. Police bulletin boards could keep departments abreast of similar cases, such as those of serial killers, who wander across the country picking victims at random but using consistent methods. Private-sector bulletin boards could be helpful when a criminal is a member of a professional organization, say a bulletin board read by doctors or engineers or truck drivers, Smith said.

"We're on a learning curve right now," Smith said. "The stuff that's out there is unlimited, but we have to see what's useful. . . . It's really an exciting time for information research because things are moving so fast."