BROOKFORD, N.C. — State investigators are questioning whether a police chief secretly recorded a man he thought could be tied to a cold case murder.
The State Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant on the Brookford Police Chief and his department.
According to these court documents, the police chief interviewed a man about the cold case and when he left, he allegedly left his cellphone in the home with it recording.
The search warrant says the police chief went back 10 minutes later to retrieve that phone.
William Crooks showed Channel 9′s Dave Faherty where the police chief left his cellphone inside his home last fall after questioning him for 30 minutes about Dee Dee Dawkins’ unsolved murder case from 1992.
“Try to say something that I didn’t do, and I told them I’d take a lie detector, right now,” Crooks said.
Crooks says he had nothing to do with the 13-year-old’s murder and police never took him up on his offer to take a lie detector test.
He says 10 minutes after Police Chief Willie Armstrong left his home, he came back saying he had left his cellphone. According to the search warrant, “Armstrong purposely” left the cellphone recording inside Crooks’ home later admitting he left it “behind to record Crooks to see if he called anyone or made any statements about their investigation.”
“That ain’t right,” Crooks said. “Trying to get me to say something I’m not supposed to say. Trying to get me to say something I’m not guilty of. That ain’t right.”
“I am the guy who made a mistake,” Chief Armstrong told Faherty after he accidentally left the phone inside Crook’s home.
He describes the Dee Dee Dawkins murder in 1992 as possibly racially motivated and claims his department has been “hindered” by other law enforcement agencies in trying to solve the case.
“Looking into this case you know now I’m potentially not only in fear of the case but I’m also in fear of my safety,” Armstrong said.
The sheriff’s office said the allegations from Armstrong are completely without merit.
The phone reportedly recorded 10 minutes of the TV show ‘Gunsmoke’ but captured no relevant information about the case.
VIDEO: Police in Catawba County reopen 13-year-old girl’s 1992 murder case
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