D.A. Detectives (Quietly) Bring Forth Evidence

You’ve probably never heard of the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigations, but you certainly know their work.

Remember the pictures of a battered Nicole Brown Simpson that emerged after her death? Or the letters O.J. wrote her apologizing for the 1989 attack? D.A. investigators found those in her safe-deposit box.

The same office put together the stalking case against the obsessed fan who said he wanted to rape film director Stephen Spielberg.

For decades, detectives working for the Los Angeles district attorney have toiled behind the scenes.

Their primary mission is to do whatever follow-up work is needed by prosecutors to shore up cases for trial. Often that involves finding new witnesses, re-interviewing old ones and unearthing more evidence.

But the bureau’s 206 detectives also work cases from the ground up, particularly ones involving white-collar crime.

Last year, the detectives worked 900 original investigations and helped other local law-enforcement agencies build 651 other cases, according to Alan Tomich, chief of the Bureau of Investigations. They also did follow-up work for deputy district attorneys in about 1660 prosecutions.

Not bad for a force that was born in 1913 with three detectives, a process server and a chauffeur.

By the 1930s, dozens more detectives had been hired and their work included raiding the gambling ships that cruised the coastal waters off Los Angeles County.

These days, some of the division’s most experienced detectives work in specialized units investigating hot-button issues such as stalking, domestic violence and gang crimes, Tomich said.

The stalking unit built the case against Jonathan F. Norman, 31, who was found outside Spielberg’s Pacific Palisades home with handcuffs, duct tape and a box-cutter knife. He was convicted in March of stalking.

Nearly a decade earlier, Tomich said, D.A. investigators arrested another star-crazed fanatic, a woman who wrote 2,000 threatening letters to actor Michael J. Fox.

The division’s fraud investigators specialize in big-money cases that often end in civil settlements, Tomich said. Last year they arrested two Chinese nationals for selling counterfeit Intel computer chips, seizing an estimated $6.2 million in software and $3.6 million in cash. The investigation grew out of the examination of a computer store in Sherman Oaks.

D.A. detectives also investigated Levitz Furniture for misleading credit-seeking consumers into buying insurance. Levitz paid $10 million in a statewide settlement last August.

But Tomich said that probably the toughest job the detectives have is finding witnesses and persuading them to testify.

“It’s one thing when law enforcement is out there after the crime occurred,” he said. “Everyone comes forward. But as time goes on, they’ll have a change of heart, or they’ll be threatened or don’t want to take the time.

“It’s our job to make sure all the evidence is presented.”

Despite the size of the staff--about as many detectives as a mid-sized city’s police department--and the number of investigations they carry out each year, the agency is not well known, even in law-enforcement circles, Tomich said. “If you went to a patrol officer and asked him,” Tomich said, “he wouldn’t know we exist.”