Michael Carmen
was a young University of New Mexico student who was working at a small gas
station in Albuquerque's Northeast Height in July, 1976. He was only
two weeks away from marrying his high school sweetheart. On the
night he was killed, he was working an extra shift because one of his
friends needed the night off.
On that fateful
Friday night, two men robbed Michael's gas station and then — for no
apparent reason — fired a shotgun blast from less than 10
feet into his abdomen. Remarkably, Michael lived for more than four
hours after the shooting. Several times he tried to tell detectives who it
was who shot him but he didn't have the strength. He died on the operating
table without being able to make a dying declaration.
Detective Greg
MacAleese was one of the detectives working that case. The murder seemed so
senseless at the time. It still remains senseless today. But Detective
MacAleese told Michael's mother that we would bring his killers to justice.
And yet, after six weeks of trying to piece evidence together to
solve the murder, they were no closer to a solution than we were the night
he was killed.
It was really
out of desperation that Detective MacAleese approached Max
Sklower, then general manager of KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, and asked him if we
could reenact the crime for one of his newscasts.
The reasoning
for reenacting the crime was simple. We had an eyewitness to Michael's
murder somewhere in the community. The only logical approach was to get the
media to do it for us. If they reenacted the crime, we might be able
to trigger the memory of a potential eyewitness, someone who might
have seen part of the crime committed but not understood what he or she was
witnessing.
On September 8,
1976, the first crime reenactment was broadcast on the news. The next
morning we received a call from a young man who told us that he had
watched and remembered some very important information. The case was solved
and Crime Stoppers was born.
As a result of
this success, Crime Stopper Programs are now world wide.
The local programs are responsible for solving serious crimes by
offering rewards anonymously.
Detectives
decided that there were two reasons why no one offered assistance
on this case. Either the public was afraid for their own physical safety
from the culprits or they just did not care or want to get involved. To
solve the problem of fear for their well being, they were offered anonymity,
and to combat apathy they were offered cash rewards.
Police
could not offer rewards for anonymous information, so they needed a
community board that could raise the money and pay the rewards.
The community stepped up to the plate in masses.
In order to
spread a detailed account of the crime to the community as well as
the anonymity and rewards, they needed the help of the media.
Assistance was offered by the media and the first ever Crime Stoppers
reenactment was done. It resulted in a case-solving tip the very next day on
the teen’s case. Furthermore, it also solved 4-5 other violent
crimes.
