It’s Elementary : Modern-Day Sherlocks Deny the P.I. Image

Magnum, P.I. would never do it this way --without the chase scenes, illegal break-ins and shoot-outs with the crooks.

But then the TV private eye never worked with a staff of 35, an 8,000-square-foot office, his own computer search business (geared to private investigators)--and an income in seven figures.

That office belongs to Fullerton private investigator Jack H. Reed, who would like to explode the television myth of the gun-wielding detective.

Professional detective work is often boring, requiring “a lot of plodding” as investigators search court, credit and property records in person and by computer, Reed said Wednesday. “And probably one investigator out of 1,000 carries a gun.”

Reed and 150 private investigators from the United States and abroad were at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim this week for the annual meeting of the Council of International Investigators. Reed is president of the group, which includes 300 experienced private eyes from the United States and 27 other countries. Despite the television image of the macho detective, nearly one-third of the council’s members are women, Reed said.

Upgrade Their Image

In addition to sharing the latest techniques for electronic surveillance and finding missing persons, council members have been trying to upgrade the image of their profession.

And gumshoes they are not, members insisted Wednesday.

“It’s not all the cloak and dagger and disguises that we used to associate with private investigators,” said Oceanside private investigator Florence Drummon Sperbeck, a 75-year-old great-grandmother who has worked as a private investigator for 21 years and boasts a compelling interview technique.

Because she is a woman, “I give the appearance of being very empathetic,” Sperbeck said. When she has met with accused criminals, “first thing I knew they were talking to me about it (their crime).”

“What we want is a professional image,” added Cathy Rogers, who is chairman of the council’s board of directors and who runs the Los Angeles firm Rogers & Associates Investigations, which investigates employee thefts.

Work Often Tedious

“My friends think this work is really exciting,” she said. “They really don’t understand it at all.”

Although the work is often tedious, still “it’s extremely challenging and rewarding because whatever you do you are helping someone,” said San Diego private investigator Allan Ferguson, who tracks missing persons and investigates fraud. He also teaches a class in investigative work for ACCESS, a private school in San Diego.

“Your job is not to color the facts, but to present them,” Ferguson said.

And always, he stressed, a private investigator must abide by the law.

“I don’t do black bag jobs. I don’t break and enter. I don’t get hit on the head and I don’t shoot at people,” Ferguson said.

He sometimes carries a gun--but only when a neighborhood “is known to be dangerous,” he said. Ferguson will not bribe someone for information, although, he said, he sometimes brings flowers to a San Diego property tax clerk who has helped him find what he needs.

Drawing the Line

And though he sometimes shares information with police officers, there is one line he will not cross, Ferguson said.

“A private investigator is not a law enforcement officer,” he said. “When people see investigators on television--these people are acting in place of law enforcement officers and that isn’t what they do.”

For all the denials that real detectives don’t resemble the TV ones, some council members told stories that might have made good scripts.

Nicholas Beltrante, for instance, is a former Washington, D.C., police officer who now runs a private detective agency with offices in Alexandria, Va., and Washington. He investigated the Watergate break-in for the Democratic National Committee.

“You’re talking to Deep Throat,” he said cheerfully, later cautioning that he believed he was one of several sources to whom Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward may have given the name “Deep Throat.”

Investigated a Murder

San Diego investigator Ferguson, who often dresses entirely in black (on Wednesday he was wearing a black shirt, black vest, black pants and black cowboy boots) described investigating a murder recently in Loreto, Mexico.

Hired by relatives of the missing woman, “we were down there looking for the body,” he said.

After “a wild goose chase all over Baja California,” Ferguson concluded that the chief suspect was the victim’s husband and gave that information to Mexican police. The man was arrested but killed himself in jail. “We never will find the body,” Ferguson said.

But stories like those are not the norm, Ferguson and fellow council members stressed.

Most of the work, whether it is tracing a missing person or unraveling an insurance fraud, is a paper chase, said James E. Myers, a former FBI agent who runs the Vargas Co. investigative agency in Los Angeles.

“All the detective shows are based on weapons, chases. That’s just not the way the business is run,” Myers said. “We have a lot more detailed investigations. We have to spend a lot of time searching records to get the job done.”

Added Sperbeck: “On TV it takes them 20 minutes to trace something that takes us 20 hours.”