Jerry Klein's Creative Loafing Column

A lawsuit brought by Dr. Ed Friedland formally accuses members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department with subjecting an innocent man to a murder charge in the killing of his wife. Friedland's lawsuit maintains that the 1994 murder charge was brought against him, at least in part, so the policemen in question could avoid facing a lawsuit for their own misconduct and mistakes.

In the latest chapter of a bizarre saga that began nearly seven years ago, Dr. Ed Friedland, charged in 1994 with killing his wife, Kim Thomas, in July of 1990, this week filed what amounts to a multi-million-dollar civil lawsuit against the City of Charlotte and, specifically, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officers Larry Snider, Rick Sanders, Walter Bowling and Robert Buening.

In a 75-page-plus brief, Friedland and his attorney, David Rudolf of Chapel Hill, claim, among other charges that, having followed the wrong trail in focusing on Friedland, the officers then attempted to manufacture evidence against him in order to obtain a murder indictment that would otherwise not have been filed; that they withheld other evidence from the District Attorney's office which would have made such charges impossible; and that they then attempted to cover-up their failure to adequately investigate another man, Marion Anthony Gales -- to whom much circumstantial evidence points -- all in an attempt to avoid personal liability for their actions.

The City of Charlotte may now be facing the largest lawsuit ever filed against it. While no specific amount of money sought for damages is mentioned in the lawsuit itself, Rudolf told me last week, "To say that the actual monetary damages suffered by Ed run well into the millions of dollars would not be an overestimation." And that doesn't take into account punitive awards, or money paid for emotional distress, on top of real losses.

To briefly review this sorry story, which I first related in Creative Loafing in March, Ed Friedland found his wife, Kim Thomas, lying in a pool of blood when he returned home from work around 10pm on Thursday, July 27, 1990. Her throat had been cut and her hands were cuffed behind her back. Despite having numerous leads within 24 hours after the discovery of the body pointing to Gales -- an ex-con with a violent history, a severe drug habit, and a long record of breaking-and-entering burglaries, including many in Thomas' neighborhood -- police apparently became convinced that Ed was the killer, and failed to pursue Gales, although there was no physical evidence, nor other behavioral signs, pointing to Ed, other than the fact that he'd been having an affair.

Because of this lack of evidence concerning Ed, the police were unable to obtain an indictment against him from the District Attorney's office until 1994. But those charges were dropped by the DA in pre-trial hearings early in 1995 when their wobbly case collapsed -- though he was never officially cleared. Friedland has since filed a wrongful-death civil suit against Gales, which will go to trial in September.

It was while taking depositions from the police and the district attorneys, as well as gathering testimony from witnesses, and further investigating the case against Gales, that the information leading to the newly filed suit against the police was developed. It paints a picture of a bungled investigation conducted by poorly trained, understaffed and ineffectively managed investigators, illogical conclusions drawn from clear leads -- and, finally, a long, snaking journey down a tawdry path, in an attempt to cover their butts. Some examples:

The initial crime-scene investigation, though badly botched in many respects, revealed one central fact that should have pointed away from Dr. Friedland immediately: "A report from the Charlotte Police Department, prepared by (Charlotte Police Shoeprint Analyst) Todd Nordhoff on August 2, 1990, reflected the fact that there were 'two different shoe sole patterns' found at the scene. Mr. Nordhoff immediately informed the homicide investigators," who knew that none of Friedland's shoes matched either pattern. This information, buried for years and never mentioned to the District Attorneys, was only recently uncovered by Friedland's investigators.

"Unnecessary personnel were allowed to enter the Friedland/Thomas home, in violation of established criminal procedures." Friedland's business partner "was allowed to enter the home, unescorted by police, to change the diapers of Dr. Friedland's infant son." He "sat on the bed and used the phone in the master bedroom, putting the infant on the pillow. Not knowing about the infant, the police believed the indentation in the pillow indicated that Kim Thomas was asleep with her head on this pillow when attacked."

Police interviewed Kim and Ed's friends, relatives and associates and found no one who believed that Ed was capable of her murder, while receiving numerous reports pointing to Gales. Even so, they failed to follow many of those significant leads. Finally, when Gales was arrested for stealing a truck on August 24, 1990, for which he continues to serve time in prison, he was questioned about the case, and lied repeatedly about his acquaintance with Kim (he'd previously done yardwork for her), about whether he'd ever owned handcuffs, about his drug habit, and many other facts. But even after he failed to pass a lie detector test (the results were inconclusive) the police inexplicably dropped any further investigation of Gales, because they thought they had their man: Friedland. The suit contains this description of the inappropriateness of that decision:

"In late August, 1990, Investigator Boothe relayed to the other investigators that he did not believe that Gales had committed the murder of Kim Thomas. Boothe's opinion was not based upon any fact, but rather on his 'intuition.' Boothe reached his intuitive assessment of the case without being aware of much of the evidence against Gales, including the information that Gales had been identified as working at the Thomas house in June 1990, that Gales' brother-in-law had provided information to the police indicating that Gales had been seen with blood on his clothes and wearing Docksider type shoes on July 27, 1990 (shoes that are consistent with one of the types of footprints found at the scene), and without knowledge that there were two distinct sole patterns found in dried blood at the home of Kim Thomas."

The suit points out one incredible mistake: "On August 24, 1990, (Officer) Boothe collected head hair, pubic hair, saliva and facial hair from Gales. The property control sheet used to identify this evidence incorrectly stated that the evidence was collected from Kim Thomas, thereby obscuring the fact that physical evidence had been collected from Gales. This evidence from Gales was never submitted to the Charlotte Police Crime Laboratory." In fact, it was Rudolf's investigator, Ron Guerrette, who years later discovered the mistake.

The suit alleges that the police engaged in behavior which attempted to convince family and friends that Friedland had killed Thomas: "At the time of the murder, and for months thereafter, no one in the Kim Thomas family believed that Dr. Friedland was capable of having committed the murder. To convince them otherwise, investigators...selectively revealed misleading and inaccurate information to the Thomas family. For example, (they said) that the FBI VICAP report (an analysis of the likely characteristics of the killer) indicated that Dr. Friedland committed the murder." This was, to say the least, a distortion -- the report said no such thing, and in fact painted a picture of the assailant much more synchronous with that of Gales than Friedland.

But because he'd become convinced of Ed's guilt, Kim's father, Lou Thomas, in the words of Deputy Chief Snider, began "creating some problems" by January of 1992 -- a period during which nothing was being done with the case by the police. In response, the suit alleges that, "In February 1992 Investigator Bowling was assigned...to become lead investigator...It was Bowling's first case as a lead homicide investigator. He was not yet even assigned to the Homicide Unit. Sanders specifically told Bowling to see if he could put together a prosecutable case against Dr. Friedland. Based upon Sander's instructions, Bowling did not investigate anyone other than Dr. Friedland. Bowling believed that he would advance his reputation and career if he could succeed in making a case against Dr. Friedland."

According to the lawsuit, "Because the Charlotte Police had been unable to secure sufficient evidence to legitimately justify charging Dr. Friedland...Bowling began in February 1992 to try to create such evidence....Sometime in 1992, Bowling contacted a federal agent in South Carolina. By this time Dr. Friedland had married his current wife, Lisa, who he started dating many months after Kim's death. Lisa Friedland had at one time, years before, been the girlfriend of Henry Belk, the department store heir who had been involved in cocaine distribution. Although Lisa Friedland was not the subject of any criminal investigation, and had her own young child, Bowling informed the federal agent in a tape-recorded call that 'basically, what I'm trying to do is...either somehow, ah, put a squeeze on her through the federal system...for her to provide information on...her husband. Sanders and Snider knew of, and approved this attempted 'squeeze.'" Federal officials refused to assist Bowling. "Undeterred, Bowling went to see her, while she was seven months pregnant and home alone with two minor children. Bowling falsely informed Lisa Friedland that she was about to be named in a federal drug indictment. He then told her that he wanted her to come to the police station and cooperate in the investigation against Dr. Friedland." Lisa, "who believes in her husband's innocence, was left in tears by Bowling."

Friedland's lawsuit asserts that the attempt to "build a case" against him continued. Police needed to prove that Thomas had died before Friedland left that morning for work, but when local and state medical examiners said that couldn't be determined, they took the highly unusual step of going out-of-state: "Bowling contacted Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist in New York, (who) was not told simply to try to determine the time of (Kim's) death. Rather, he was informed that the police feel 'It is vital to do whatever we can to show that the victim died prior to Dr. Friedland leaving the house'... Baden informed Bowling in this call that he could not rule out that (Kim's) death occurred after Dr. Friedland left the house. Bowling did not inform the DA's office of this prior to Dr. Friedland's indictment."

Baden's testimony was thrown out at pre-murder-trial hearings by the judge, largely leading to the charges being dropped, in March 1995. But the main reason for the case's dismissal was the DA's office becoming aware at the pre-trial hearings, for the first time, of the mountains of evidence against Marion Gales.

The lawsuit shows the police misleading the DA about the full facts of the case during a two-hour meeting in December, 1993, between police investigators and "members of the District Attorney's staff, and, particularly Richard Gordon, the Assistant District Attorney assigned to the case, (where they debated) over whether there was enough evidence to justify indicting (Friedland). The absence of any other viable suspect was one of the factors the District Attorney's office considered...(The police) never mentioned Gales by name, and instead repeatedly told the District Attorney and his staff that other suspects had not 'panned out.'"

Further, the suit states, "(Assistant District Attorney) Bart Menser testified (in a deposition taken a few months ago) that somebody from the District Attorney's office would have 'wanted to sit and look at that a lot more closely because we try awfully hard not to charge people who we don't think did it.'" Gordon has testified that no one from the Charlotte Police Department ever told him prior to Friedland's indictment about the evidence against Gales and that if they had 'it would have made me as a prosecutor stop dead in my tracks and reassess the entire case....I mean, nobody at the meeting spoke up and said boo about Marion Gales.'"

The lawsuit charges that the officers involved admitted under oath that they knew, years ago, and discussed among themselves, that they were in danger of facing the kind of lawsuit as has now been filed. And as the evidence against Gales began to become more public, they allegedly attempted to thwart further investigations, frequently disclosing to Gales evidence that had been gathered against him. Based on that knowledge, the suit alleges, just this past April, Gales reportedly threatened the life of two women for their testimony.

The mountain of information contained in this filing is much too voluminous to relate here in full. Suffice it to say that the saga goes on, as Ed Friedland continues to try and clear his name. We'll keep you posted.

Jerry Klein's talk-show on 1110AM WBT (99.3FM) airs Monday-Friday, 8:00 - 11:00 pm, and Sunday 7:00-10:00 pm. And you can check out Jerry's Internet web-site at: http://jerryk.com 

Return to Jerry Klein's Archive Page.