Perspective: Three years later, still no answers

As the three-year anniversary of Wharton doctoral student Shannon Schieber's death approaches next month, the investigation into the yet-unsolved murder remains riddled with setbacks and disappointments. Although DNA evidence has linked Schieber's killer to five Center City sexual assaults, three years of investigation have left the attacker unidentified and still at large. Sylvester Schieber, Shannon's father, summed up his opinion of the Philadelphia Police Department's investigation in three words -- "In the toilet." "The police department screwed up the investigation big time," Schieber said. "Not only did they set [Shannon] up to get killed, they couldn't investigate their way out of a paper bag when it came time to figure out who killed her." Major misclassifications of crime may have added to the initial problems in the investigation. A 1999 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation found that the PPD had downgraded thousands of reports -- including those of rape and sexual assault -- in order to improve their annual crime statistics. "[Schieber's] murderer had assaulted five other women in the area and two of their cases were classified as non-crimes because they did not continue to investigate them," said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project, a public interest law group concerned with women's issues. "They underreported crime and eventually the DNA was connected," she added. The PPD was forced to audit over 3,000 case files, and the audit showed that almost 700 were Felony One rapes, and 500 others were some form of felonious assault. "One will never know if, had they investigated all these cases thoroughly, they would have realized they had a serial rapist on their hands... perhaps they could have saved Shannon's life," Tracy said. Sylvester Schieber agrees. "The guy that attacked Shannon had attacked four other women in a very small neighborhood," he said. "Nobody had warned the community, nobody warned Shannon. They were either indifferent to it or couldn't detect it." Although police quickly identified a suspect -- Yuval Bar-Or, an acquaintance of Schieber's from Wharton who had been accused of harassing her -- DNA tests completed within a month of the murder soon cleared him. It was not until February 1999 that the DNA found in Schieber's apartment was matched to samples found on the scene of two 1997 rapes, a delay Police Commissioner John Timoney at the time blamed on computer glitches. But Ken Coluzzi, the former lieutenant from PPD Homicide who handled the investigation, justified the department's efforts. "Countless people have been spoken to as potential suspects, and have been cleared through physical evidence," Coluzzi said. "The commissioner put out a notice to the labs to test all DNA samples and to compare all DNA samples with those from Shannon's apartment." "There are detectives that are still diligently working, there are still teams of detectives looking at every sexual assault that happens," he added. PPD officials declined to give specific details about the investigation. "It's active and ongoing and we're consistently investigating this case," PPD spokeswoman Sue Slawson said. Special Victims Unit Captain Joseph Mooney -- who is heading up the investigation -- refused to comment. With the investigation at an apparent standstill, criminologists are left only to speculate about the identity and the motives of the Center City rapist. Brian Marx, a Temple University professor who has studied violence and victimization, said offenders of this sort tend to have violent histories and are capable of committing non-sexual crimes as well. He added that these types of offenders typically "have psychopathic tendencies," tending to be "manipulative, out for themselves," "remorseless" and are usually involved in other, non-sexual crimes. "It's unclear as to what the circumstances were that lead up to murder," Marx said. "It could be the case that he is not usually looking to murder his victims but did in these circumstances... I wouldn't say this guy is not capable of killing other victims. It's hard to know what he's capable of." An FBI report last year alleged that Schieber's attacker had not intended to kill her, but had strangled her in a moment of panic upon hearing the police outside her Rittenhouse Square apartment door. The assailant's second victim was stripped and throttled until she fell unconscious. While raping his third victim, the man wrapped a belt around her neck and punched her as he said "stop screaming and I won't kill you." "[He] may be sexually turned on to things normal people wouldn't be excited about," Marx added. "They may be highly aroused and they just don't have the tools to regulate their affect or emotion in a healthy way." With the knowledge that such an offender had gone undiscovered for years before Schieber's death, her parents filed suit in U.S. district court in 1998. The Schiebers seek unspecified damages from the City of Philadelphia and the two officers who knocked on Schieber's door, as well as improved police treatment of rape and sexual assault cases. After a factual discovery period, motions for summary judgement were filed last August and Judge Norma Shapiro heard arguments in December. Shapiro has not yet decided if the facts of the case are clear enough for her to make a ruling without a jury trial. The suit alleges that Schieber was still alive when the officers, Steve Woods and Raymond Scherff, left her apartment. Additionally, the suit claims that the practice of downgrading crime left the officers without crucial information pertaining to the criminal, but that, regardless, officers failed to respond properly to a neighbor's 911 call and thus contributed to Schieber's death. This claim was supported by a June 2000 FBI report profiling the case. The profile alleges that Schieber's attacker had not intended to kill her, but strangled her to death in a panicked response to knocks on the door, first from her neighbor and later from police. Upon arriving on the scene, according to court documents filed by the police department, the officers questioned Parmatma Greeley, who placed the 911 call, as well as another resident who hadn't heard anything unusual. They then proceeded to Schieber's apartment and banged on her door with their batons. Police claim Greeley then expressed uncertainty about what he'd heard earlier that night. "They asked me if I was sure [the noises] came from her place or did it come from outside," he said in a deposition. "I said -- I said I'm not -- I said maybe, when they said 'Are you sure it didn't come from outside?'" Since no other residents heard noise from the apartment, the officers decided they had no probable cause for entering the apartment. Motions filed by the Schieber family, however, state that Greeley informed the officers that he had heard "the screams for help and the choking sounds from Ms. Schieber's apartment" and did not exhibit as much uncertainty as the officers claim. The Schiebers claim that any expressions of uncertainty were the result of leading questioning by the police. Timoney has stood by the two officers ever since the lawsuit was filed. Lawyers for both parties declined to comment on the lawsuit. Experts for the police department have disputed the Schieber family's claim and testified for the department in court. In October 2000, forensic pathologist Vincent DiMaio testified that Schieber would have become unconscious in 10 to 15 seconds after her assailant began strangling her and would have been dead after about five minutes. But Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist who testified for the Schiebers, said there were marks in Schieber's mouth often seen in victims who have been gagged, leading him to believe Schieber could have been held hostage when police arrived, and then killed any time before 3 a.m. This type of expert testimony is crucial to both sides of the case. However, a 1993 Supreme Court ruling placed strict limitations on expert testimony, requiring that it hold up to certain scientific criteria. The testimony must concern a hypothesis that has been tested using methods generally accepted by the relevant scientific community where the rate of error is known. The research must also have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Penn Professor Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, said that it will be difficult to find testimony in this case that fits these criteria. "The question is whether any expert will testify that there is a standard of care that requires the police to knock down the door under these facts," Sherman said. "I don't know of any such standard of care, but I know of many experts that would be willing to give that testimony...." "The point about causation in this case is that someone would have to testify that police breaking a door down where someone had been screaming would reduce the level of injury to that person," Sherman added. "I'm not aware of any research that has tested that hypothesis." If the case does go to trial, the result is far from predictable. "Generally, some courts are reluctant to second guess the police in the terms of allocation of resources, with regards to response time," Law Professor Regina Austin said. "The one area where it's pretty likely that the court will be an interventionist or closely scrutinize the police response is the area of domestic violence and violence against women." Reiterating that he believed there was a lack of admissible expert testimony, Sherman said, "I think there's enormous sympathy for families of rape-murder victims and a lot of ill will against the Philadelphia police system."

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