Stamford Police Evidence Room: A Tale of Weapons, Pooh Bear, and a Voodoo Statue

At Stamford police department, every piece of evidence tells a story
By Wynne Parry Staff Writer February 10, 2008

STAMFORD - In 27 years of working in the police department's property room, Sgt. Charles Rondano has watched the numbered shelves fill with objects, some mundane, some haunting, some bizarre.

A sliding gate guards the window behind where most items are neatly bagged or boxed, their whereabouts tracked in a series of black binders.
"As you get into this room, it gets more interesting than it looks on the outside," Rondano said.

Evidence in criminal cases is here, as is prisoners' property, and the lost and found. The oldest evidence entry dates to July 1976. It lists a plastic bag containing a lady's black shoe, a beer can, an arrow point and pages of other entries, all associated with the murder of a young woman found partially buried in a potter's field in North Stamford. She had been shot or stabbed twice with arrows more than a week before three visitors discovered her body.

A note posted over the first evidence sheet indicates that the only suspect subsequently was killed.
The primary suspect, the victim's boyfriend, shot a police officer and was killed in a liquor store robbery in September 1976. But a recent investigation by The Advocate found police failed to follow a lead involving the nephew of two officers.

All criminal evidence stays carefully packaged in labeled boxes and bags until a judge orders the property room to dispose of it. This murder case has remained open, so the artifacts of the crime could remain here indefinitely.

Unclaimed lost items and prisoner's property, meanwhile, can sit on the shelves for 30 days or longer before they are destroyed. After that, liquids go down the toilet, drugs go to a Bridgeport incinerator and other solids go in the garbage, Rondano said.

A few items Rondano has chosen to keep. A stuffed Winnie the Pooh overlooks the front of the property room. The bear has no tag connecting him with a case.

Rondano tells a story of a burglary suspect returning to a house to take this bear, only to be arrested. If he had only left the bear, he would have escaped. Rondano keeps the bear to comfort children who come through on tours.

Tours also include a glimpse at a variety of weapons: real, homemade and toys that bear a frightening resemblance to the real thing.

Everyday items also can become weapons.

A weathered piece of wood sticks out from a collection of baseball bats. A Ziploc bag attached to its top shows a snapshot of a pale, expressionless woman's face with faint bruising around her mouth.

A shovel, its head covered in brown paper, also is part of the collection. The shovel is evidence in a case in which a baby was buried in a back yard in 2002. After a teenage girl gave birth in her bathroom of her family's home on Erskine Road, her boyfriend buried the baby's body in a shallow grave he had dug behind the garage of his family's Glenbrook Road home. The medical examiner could not determine if the baby was alive at birth, so no warrant could be issued.

Items like this, which could remain in the room forever, frustrate Rondano. He doesn't want the evidence to outgrow the space while the cases remain in limbo. But the flow of items in surpasses those on their way out. Rondano estimates that within a year or two, the property room will run out space.

"The most interesting part is when everything falls into place," he said.

But that doesn't always happen. Like the black shoe and the arrow point, a wooden footstool filled with coins - mostly pennies - and a few crumpled bills from 1978 still waits on the shelf. The final order from the court telling Rondano how to dispose of it has never arrived.

Other items can be kept for different reasons. Since being found in a parking lot, a human-size voodoo statue near the entrance has remained. Rondano is hesitant to discard the statute because of its religious nature, but no one wants to take it - possibly for the same reason.

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