AZ DOC: Witness the Murder of Pete Calleros

from the roof of the Herberger Theater

(the mural was made there without their consent - it's a public sidewalk) 

February 20, 2012

What follows is a highly redacted AZ Department of Corrections Criminal Investigations Unit report and an Administrative Investigation Report on the death of Pete Calleros on August 10, 2009, obtained directly from the state last year in a public records request. His family has been in contact with me since I first posted on his homicide - they confirmed that the AZ Department of Corrections told them it was a suicide when they sent his body home.  No one ever told them it may have been murder in the aftermath, when more information was available. That seems to be a simple courtesy that every crime victim's family should be able to expect - the truth from law enforcement officers investigating their murder.

So, if we can't expect the Department of Corrections to protect and serve those whose lives they have total control over while in custody, then how can they possibly profess to protect the public with what they do? After all, one of Pete's killers is now out on parole and missing, with a warrant for his arrest. Hope I don't run into him out here.

I've had previous correspondence with the ADC about Pete's case - see here, for example. They've never responded. Maybe mainstream media (or the DOJ) will have better luck getting an answer out of them for why Pete's family was never told about the evidence of his murder.

For those of you who loved Pete, I'm sorry to put this out there like this, but the truth needs to be told. He may have murdered a man, but his sentence was not to be executed, and this is symptomatic of so much that is wrong with the current leadership at the ADC. And for the community's sake, the men who killed Pete should be held responsible, and the rest of us should be protected from them. If we were reading the narrative below of a guard who was murdered, the word of a prisoner against another would be all the evidence the prosecution needed to get the death penalty. Here the ADC won't even present the case to the prosecutor as a homicide. I wonder how they reported this death to the DOJ, anyway. If they told the guy's mother he had hung himself, my bet is they lied to the feds, too. I don't know why the FBI isn't looking into this already...falsifying a federal report is a serious offense.