Probe not going to happen in Gateway leak

Lee County Sheriff's Office officials haven't conducted an internal affairs investigation into who leaked key evidence in the Gateway double-homicide case to a Southwest Florida newspaper before prosecutors and defense lawyers were given the information.

And they say they aren't going to because it's not important who passed audio recordings of detectives' interviews with witnesses and interviews and interrogations of then-suspect Fred D. Cooper Jr., before the information made it to the State Attorney's Office.

Cooper, of 28263 Jeneva Way, Bonita Springs, is being held without bond in the Lee County Jail on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary while armed. He is accused of killing Steven and Michelle Andrews in their Gateway home between 11:30 p.m. Dec. 26 and the early morning hours of Dec. 27.

Their 2-year-old son, Lukasz, was found unharmed inside the house.

"There's no investigation," Sheriff's Office Legal Director Barry Hillmyer said. "We're not interested. It doesn't matter (who leaked)."

The News-Press began posting audio recordings of Cooper's interviews and interrogation, and interviews with other witnesses, on its Web site Feb. 15. The newspaper posted more information the next day.

The Daily News filed a public records request with the Sheriff's Office on April 18, asking for copies of seven types of records. Included in the request was one for documents pertaining to Internal Affairs Division investigations involving the Gateway homicide case. Out of the 655 pages the Sheriff's Office provided, none pertain to an internal affairs investigation.

Cooper, who has been held since his arrest Jan. 11, was indicted by a Lee County grand jury on Feb. 1. Steven Andrews was fatally shot, while Michelle Andrews died from traumatic asphyxia and blunt-force head trauma. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Shortly before the killings, Cooper had been jilted by his girlfriend, Kellie Ballew, 26, with whom he had lived for years and has a daughter. Ballew and Steven Andrews both worked at Outdoor Productions in Bonita Springs and were having an affair, which investigators say sparked the double slaying.

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott was on vacation and unavailable for comment. Chief Charlie Ferrante also was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Maj. Jeff Taylor, with the department's Major Crimes Unit and an investigator on the Gateway case, said the Sheriff's Office did look into the leak but won't launch a full-fledged internal affairs investigation.

"You can't very well polygraph 1,400 employees," Taylor said. "We have no idea where it came from, whether it even came from here. It's my impression it could have been something inside or something that could have been tapped into from outside (of the Sheriff's Office). A lot of our things are computerized."

Taylor said he didn't know if a hacker could have tapped into the Major Crime Unit's computer system and pulled out the recordings.

"Hopefully it won't be detrimental to the case," Taylor said. "That's not a situation where you throw murderers back on the street."

Only two recordings, excluding those of Cooper's interviews, could be provided to the public by prosecutors eight days after the Feb. 15 leak. Those were one recording of Ballew's questioning and one of Gateway resident Douglas Jimmo's. That's because those recordings had been handed over to prosecutors for their case, and so they could provide them to Cooper's defense lawyers as required.

Discovery in Cooper's case — which should have included the digital recordings of detectives' interviews with Michelle Andrews's father, Steven Andrews's parents and one of the interviews with Ballew — was released to the public by the State Attorney's Office on Feb. 23.

"All the information came out hours later anyway. It would come out anyway in discovery," Taylor said. "If you look at Miami ... it's always on the news first before anybody has it."

Chief Assistant State Attorney Randy McGruther declined comment on the case and the absence of a Sheriff's Office Internal Affairs investigation into the source of the leak.

"I can't comment because it's an ongoing (criminal) case," McGruther said.

But on Feb. 15 when the leak broke, McGruther said that only Assistant State Attorney Anthony Kunasek — who is prosecuting the case with McGruther — and State Attorney's Office Investigator Mark Moore had authorized access to the recordings.

McGruther said at the time that he had spoken with both men and was "confident" they didn't leak the compact discs with the recordings and interviews. He also said on Feb. 15 that the person who handed over the recordings could face criminal prosecution if caught.

The leak, and lack of an internal affairs probe, already may be affecting the case against Cooper.

"I'm going to be filing a motion for a change of venue in the next two weeks," said Public Defender Bob Jacobs, who heads up the office for the five-county judicial circuit and is one of Cooper's three defense attorneys. "I'll address it (the absence of an internal affairs investigation) at that time. We're getting all our blogs together and everything. I'm loading it all to CDs. I think it'll take three CDs."

Web sites operated by local media, including the Daily News and The News-Press, were hot-spots for residents and family and friends of the Andrewses to post comments relating to the recordings and the case.

Taylor said he isn't concerned about how defense lawyers might latch onto the leak in defending Cooper.

"Defense attorneys can make a case against anybody, or at least they try to make an issue out of a non-issue," Taylor said. "That's why we have judges — to decide if there are issues or not."

Cooper's trial date tentatively is set for Oct. 9.

Steven and Michelle Andrews, both 28, were found Dec. 27 in their eastern Lee County home after a sheriff's deputy responded to an open-line 911 call made from inside the house at 7:02 a.m. They were found in their second-floor bedroom, down the hall from their son's room.

In February, Michael Crews, director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's professionalism program, told the Daily News that if the sheriff's investigation reveals that an officer leaked the recordings, that officer might go before the FDLE Standards and Training Commission to face possible sanctions for the conduct.

The professionalism program addresses allegations of officer misconduct in police agencies throughout Florida. Crews said in February that an officer accused of such behavior through a sheriff's internal investigation also could face criminal charges. The officer also could be brought before the Standards and Training Commission to determine whether the officer's law-enforcement license should be suspended or revoked, said Crews, former bureau chief for the FDLE's standards division.

If the license was revoked, the officer could never again work as a police officer in Florida.

Tom Berlinger, spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Standards and Training Commission members don't try to micro-manage law enforcement agencies and assume that police chiefs and sheriffs will hire, fire and investigate their own when appropriate.

"My feeling is that FDLE doesn't have a dog in that fight," Berlinger said. "And I certainly am not going to be second-guessing anything that the Sheriff's Office is or is not doing or the State Attorney's Office is or is not doing."

If the Florida Department of Law Enforcement receives a complaint regarding actions in a department, staff would review the complaint, he said. FDLE staff cannot comment on any complaints filed unless they rule the complaint has merit.

"There are times we get ordered by the Governor's Office to investigate a public official and at those times we do," Berlinger added.

Naples and Fort Myers criminal defense lawyer Lee Hollander, who has handled several death-penalty cases, said the leak might not derail the case against Cooper, but it might have hurt it.

"But the problem was, somebody tried to affect the case extra-judicially," Hollander said. "Why would you not investigate (the leak)? Somebody was trying to do something. You'd think the Sheriff's Office would be interested in finding out who the little miscreant was just so they could take the credit for nabbing the little bugger. This is not kosher."

"Somebody knows who did it," Hollander said. "They just don't want it to become public."