Читать книгу Limb from Limb - George Hunter - Страница 14

When Lieutenant Darga summoned her staff into her office to brief them about the case, she named Kozlowski lead detective. Kozlowski had a reputation as a tough, tenacious investigator. The hulking sergeant was an imposing presence whose size, shaved head, and bushy goatee gave him the air of a professional wrestler. He’d cut his teeth on the narcotics beat, after hiring on at the sheriff’s office in 1990 as a corrections officer (CO) in the “Hackel Hilton”—otherwise known as the Macomb County Jail.

The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office, which dates back to 1818, was growing as quickly as the county around it. Mark Hackel’s father, William Hackel, had been sheriff from 1977 to 2000, when he was forced to resign after being charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

A twenty-six-year-old woman told police the elder Hackel forced himself on her while she visited him in his room at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant, during a Michigan Sheriffs’ Association conference. Hackel, who maintained the sex was consensual, was convicted and served five years in prison before being released in 2005.

A three-person panel picked William Hackel’s longtime friend and undersheriff Ronald Tuscany as the acting sheriff until the term was over. Mark Hackel, then an inspector, beat out eight candidates in the 2000 election for his father’s former seat.

During his tenure, the younger Hackel had brought the department into the twenty-first century, implementing a cyber task force that investigated computer crimes, along with K-9 and motorcycle units to patrol the fast-growing county.