Crimes of Passion Can Be Murder on Private Investigator

They fascinate us. They appall us. They torment us.

They’re crimes of passion, and everyone from Shakespeare to Spillane knew the territory.

As studies in human nature, crimes of passion leave us to wonder: Could we kill for love? Or, more precisely, could we kill for those evil twins born of love--jealousy and suspicion?

We never seem to run out of cases. Currently, a Rancho Santa Margarita woman is on trial for killing her husband’s mistress and their love child. In another case, a former Fullerton high school “teacher of the year” was charged last week with shooting her former lover and another woman after the two had become involved. In another long-running case, a South County man is back in jail without bail and awaiting trial for allegedly poisoning his unfaithful wife.

Love gone wrong is a world the private detective knows only too well.

“I guess it’s always going to be around,” says Joe Sampson, an Orange County private investigator with more than 30 years in the business. “It’s suspicion that leads to it. That suspicion--within a normally contained person--they can swallow it, they can rationalize it or they can reason it out. For someone who’s emotionally disturbed, even if it’s not apparent, that suspicion gnaws like a cancer till it’s literally too late to do anything.”

Once upon a time, Sampson says, suspicious clients paid for information to use in court. “Now they come in for quite another reason. They come in for what I like to call emotional solace or satisfaction. In other words, the only purpose it can serve is to confirm what they already think, like, ‘Yeah, he’s a sonofabitch and he’s doing this to me’ or ‘She’s a bitch and look what she’s doing to me.’ And that leads to all kinds of conjecture as to what might come about. No decent individual wants to be the instrument for someone being hurt. When and if I do these cases, I’m very, very selective and the person has to really convince me it’s necessary.”

Sometimes, self-preservation takes precedence over a paycheck.

“I can tell you one tragic case,” Sampson says. “There was a guy out in the Valley, a p.i. had a domestic case and he got the woman shacked up in a hotel in Vegas. And his client, who was a professional guy and mild-natured, takes him up there because he wanted a confrontation. He went right to the door, gives a whack on the door, the door opens, there’s his wife with a guy behind her, and the guy pulled out a gun and shot her, shot her husband and shot the p.i. That’s an absolutely true story, and that’s what makes you walk on eggshells when you get a domestic issue.”

I asked Sampson if anything amazes him after all these years. “I’m amazed at how quickly so-called love can turn to absolute hatred, so much so that it leads to murders. They’re not just going out and slashing tires and beating them up or nailing a dead cat to the door . . . it’s the extra inch that worries me.”

David Sandberg, who has a detective business in San Clemente, says, “My concern is that there were always violent people, but there seemed to be an order and system amongst it. There seemed to be almost an honor among thieves, a certain line you didn’t pass, you didn’t disrespect someone in a particular way, whatever. Now it seems like everything’s open and every time you see a case or open a newspaper, you say, ‘I can’t believe one human being could conceive, contrive and put together these actions against another.”

Like Sampson, Sandberg is wary of domestic surveillance cases. Sometimes, the case is important because it involves alleged child abuse or has large financial implications, but if the case is simply “to confirm someone’s fidelity, I have talked myself out of a lot of business,” Sandberg says.

Much of Sandberg’s work is for lawyers preparing for trial. As such, he prepares background information on key players in the case. “When I think of all the cases, I don’t think many of the clients had planned to go out and murder someone. They are reactions. The emotion and adrenalin at the moment has caused them to react a certain way.”

I ask Sampson if murder-for-love is human nature.

“I’m not sure whether it’s human nature,” he says. “You and I might have an emotional distress and may suffer in a very real way through it, but the next day we get up and it doesn’t seem as acute as the day before and we gradually simmer down. But other people, and luckily, it’s still a minority, they get up the next day and they keep building up a head of steam and up it goes and up it goes and up it goes and, bingo, the top blows off.”

Are you ever amused, I ask. “There are amusing episodes, but they’re few and far between. When you’ve been around as long as I have--and I’m 71 so I’ve seen it all--there are some incidents that have their humor. But when you think about it, the humor is not very well-placed, because I’ll sit back and think about something that may give me a chuckle and say, ‘What the hell am I laughing about?’ ”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.