Phoenix, AZ—The State of Arizona still plans to strap Debra Milke down to a table and kill her.
It was in December of 1989 that two men killed four-year old Christopher Milke. These horrible creeps were arrested, convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber for their monstrous crime. For the record police did a great job on this part of the investigation.
Police tape recorded the men’s confessions, and were careful to not violate the rights of these two killers.
The investigation would not fair so well when another detective went after the boy’s mother Debra Milke. That detective, Armando Saldate we’d later learn placed himself with Debra Milke in a sealed, witness free room as he conducted an unrecorded interrogation.
Unlike Detective Saldate I tape recorded my interview with Milke just a couple of hours later in the receiving unit of the Maricopa county jail. Milke has always denied Saldate’s claims she confessed to him. I broadcast my tape of Milke on television for a million people to see.
Phoenix police have recorded each and every interview with police recruits caught speeding on the way to the police academy for well over 30 years now. The same is true for catching the customers of prostitutes. That same agency apparently did not mandate recording interviews with murder suspects. Why are trivial events recorded and this capital crime interview not recorded?
Most cops I know would always have a fellow officer present during an interrogation of a female to avoid sex allegations and in a murder case record the session on audio or video tape. Saldate was different and despite instructions of a supervisor failed to tape the session he would later claim ended with Milke confessing to him.
Saldate had a miserable and devious way to interview witnesses. The detective would poison and destroy the reputation of the suspect and then ask for the witness to help him confirm the character assassination of the suspect.
The so-called confession Saldate claims to have gotten from Milke has been hotly contested. According to recent sworn testimony Saldate himself confessed he had his mind made up of her guilt before he interviewed Debra Milke. That was with the absence of any evidence against her!
The confession became a, he said, she said swearing contest at the trial court. The jury believed Saldate.
No other evidence surfaced that would later link this mother to masterminding the killing of her son.
The jury that convicted Milke behaved strangely. Most every jury will answer media questions after their verdicts even though they are never required to do so. After the Milke trial the jurors fled from the courtroom and stayed silent for an entire decade. It was a conspiracy of silence that lasted until I began asking questions.
I contacted jurors in June of 1998 a full decade after they convicted Milke. Every juror except Deanna Krupp refused to talk most slammed the phone down in my ear or worse.
Krupp let out the fact they heard a tape recording not played during the trial. Krupp told me they were deadlocked 50/50 for acquittal until they found the tape in an evidence box, asked the bailiff for a player and listened to it.
The defense attorney C. Kenneth Ray was inattentive during the repetitious admission of hundreds of court exhibits during the trial and failed to raise an objection.
The Prosecutor Noel Levy knew very well on the other hand that the evidence was inadmissible, knew the defense lawyer had an attention lapse and let it get to the jury anyway. A disgusting and corrupt act by Levy gained a wrongful conviction against an innocent woman.
So far the courts have not ruled on the issue of the secret tape.
The poor quality video copy was from a June 1989 KTVK-TV news story.
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