News
Mother of BPD Officer Katie Brown Feels Misled by Death Investigation
By Fox 40 Staff.
At approximately 10:12 pm on may 18th, 2014 a motorcycle crash on the Vestal Parkway killed Binghamton Police Officer Katie Brown and Christopher Stoeckel, a former BPD officer. At 1:15 the next morning May 19th Brown's mother Lisa Capaldo was informed by local authorities at her home in Indiana that her daughter was dead.
She travelled to New York and by the time she met with Binghamton Police mid-afternoon that day Capaldo said the department already had Katie's personal phone and private computer. As she was meeting with police, she said Chief Joseph Zikuski was texting before he stopped and apologized. According to Capaldo he said he was trying to get into Katie's phone because it would help with the investigation.
Police records show Brown's phone was recovered from the scene and analyzed but there was nothing of evidentiary value noted. Capaldo also said she gave police permission to go to Katie's home to remove weapons.
But she says when she went to Katie's home after police had conducted their search, she found ammunition and a gun in the laundry room. Capaldo, feels she was misled about the reason for the search.
Police reports show officers did find a Glock .22 on the top shelf above the washer. Capaldo also says her daughter wanted to leave the force but was waiting to do so on her own terms.
Binghamton resident Garo Kachadourian says Katie Brown would feed him information through Stoeckel via text message.
"I know that Kate was keeping and compiling information on her personal computer. She was very upset with what was going on with the Binghamton PD," said Kachadourian.
Kachadourian acquired police documents via the Freedom of Information Law, as has FOX 40. He's posted some of those documents on his website, bcvoice. Documents show Brown's laptop was collected from her home during a search at 1pm May 19th, the afternoon after the accident.
Documents show the laptop was in the possession of the Binghamton Police until June 26th. Police documents state, though, that Capaldo did give police permission during a phone interview to search Brown's home for weapons and a computer.
Kachadourian says his effort to gain the reports from the search of the computer via the Freedom of Information Law was denied for privacy issues. Meanwhile Capaldo wonders with her daughter and Stoeckel dead, why there should have been such an investigation to begin with.