Pine Bluff police have confirmed that a crime scene technician was suspended for five days following an internal investigation into why evidence collected in the Cleashindra Hall investigation sat at the police department for more than a month before being delivered to the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory at Little Rock.
Capt. Greg Shapiro said Cathy Ruhl was suspended for improperly handling the evidence which was collected when police served a search warrant at 5309 Faucett Road on March 29. The house was the last place Hall, 18, was seen before she disappeared May 9, 1994. It was delivered to the crime lab May 8.
“The evidence was not compromised,” Shapiro said. “There was just a delay in it getting to the crime lab.”
Laurell Hall, Cleashindra Hall’s mother, Friday questioned how an experienced official could have made such a mistake.
“I had heard that this lady had been doing her job for 19 years and it’s amazing to me that she could not handle this evidence that was apparently important in my daughter’s case,” Laurell Hall said. “What was different in this situation from something that she should have been able to do in her sleep.
“Also, how can she verify that the evidence wasn’t tampered with when no one had seen it in 40 days,” Laurell Hall said. “It’s hard to believe that with her experience, she was that lax with the evidence.”
According to an inventory list prepared by Lt. Bob Rawlinson, who supervised the search and was day shift detective lieutenant at the time, the evidence consisted of four items listed as being taken from the west wall of the living room. Police have not been more specific on the nature of the evidence.
Rawlinson was reassigned by Police Chief Brenda Davis-Jones on April 8, and is currently one of two patrol supervisors on the department’s night shift.
The items were collected from a house owned by Larry Amos, for whom Cleashindra Hall, then a senior at Watson Chapel High School, did clerical work.
In June, Davis-Jones told the Public Safety Committee of the Pine Bluff City Council that the evidence collected had tested negative for blood and was being sent to another section of the State Crime Laboratory for DNA analysis.
Shapiro said while the investigation into Ruhl’s involvement is complete, “we’re doing some checking on some other stuff in that situation.” He would not be more specific.
“I’m not sure what’s going on in my daughter’s case,” Laurell Hall said, adding that department officials had told her they had formed a “task force” and she would be contacted regularly with updates on the case. She also said she had not been contacted since early July.
“I know there are a lot of things going on, shootings and the like and I’m not trying to make light of them but I don’t want her case to be pushed by the wayside again,”Laurell Hall said.
Additionally, Laurell Hall said she was still hoping that someone would come forward with information about her daughter’s disappearance.
“I had hoped when the search got enlarged and the media got involved, someone would come forward but they still have not,” she said. “When she left, she had no car to leave in, no identification, no money and she didn’t leave a note to say she was leaving.
“Somebody, and there could be more than one, knows what happened and why they won’t come forward, I don’t know,” Laurell Hall said. “We’re still praying that someone will come forward and tell what they know.”