that on average the facility was loosing approximately $8,000 of product a week with several of the week’s losses exceeding $12,000 a week.
Will and Ruger determined it was time to conclude the investigation and begin to have conversations with each of the guards. The strategy was that Will and Ruger would begin interviewing the guards at midnight on the upcoming Sunday night. The plan was to bring in a third-party guard service with three guards to take care of physical security while the interviews were completed. Will and Ruger would identify themselves as corporate investigators sent by headquarters to complete an investigation and that they would be talking with each guard individually. Two of the third-party guards would assume the job of watching the building while the third guard watched the Lawson guards that would be waiting to be interviewed by Will and Ruger. Ruger also decided that all cell phones would be collected and the guards would not be allowed to make any phone calls until their individual interview was complete. They completed the rest of their plan and intended to use Friday to perform a complete review. Friday morning arrived and as they began their review Will received a phone call. Will’s wife had been involved in an accident on her way to the Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport. Ruger drove Will to the hospital in Frisco Texas where the doctor informed Will that Will’s wife had been killed. Will’s wife, Nancy, was hit by a drunk driver at 7:00 in the morning. The driver’s blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit and the driver had three convictions for drunk driving. Nancy was driving a Toyota Camry and the drunk driver was driving a large Cadillac. Will was devastated by Nancy’s loss and needed to focus on the aftermath of her death. Ruger immediately reached out to Sammy so the company could provide all the support that Will needed. Sammy was able to provide immediate support to Will and he assigned another loss prevention manager to assist Ruger for the upcoming interviews.
Ruger and Will had become close and Ruger wanted some serious revenge for the guy who had killed Nancy. These interviews were for Will and Ruger had no intention of screwing them up. Ruger entered the interviews wanting a pound of flesh. All nine guards were interviewed. Ruger had been trained and certified in basic and advanced courses of Interviewing and Interrogation Training. Ruger followed the course format and outline to the letter – the only thing that he could not totally escape was the part of the training on remaining objective – Bill was in the forefront of Ruger’s mind. All nine guards admitted to stealing from Lawson’s. All nine guards provided details of the first time that they stole from the company, the last time that they stole from the company and to the multiple times that they stole from the company. Each crook laid out how he began to steal and why he stole from the company. Each crook provided a verbal confession and a written confession. Ruger asked each one of these guys at the end of each confession if they wanted to set the record straight? Each guard said yes. Ruger suggested that they put that they wanted to set the record straight in their written confession. Once the confession was complete Ruger asked each crook what it meant to set the record straight. They all said that they did not know what it meant but that the statement sounded good. Ruger told each one of these guys that Ruger wanted the goods back that these guys stole. In addition to the confessions, Ruger took a company truck to each guard’s house and retrieved every item that he could that had been stolen. Once the stolen items were retrieved each crook was arrested by the Dallas Police Department. The goods were brought back to the Ruger’s facility. The product was then placed on pallets, shrink wrapped and labeled as evidence. All of the guards had been treated the same except for, Michael, the loss prevention manager who had oversight for the guards. Michael had been stealing from the company for at least seven years. Michael’s wife was a manager at Lawson’s Dallas Credit Union location. Ruger finished Michael’s confession at 6:30 in the morning. Michael called his wife and had her take the kids to school. He said he would explain everything later but that she would not hear from him for several hours. Ruger had one of his investigators meet them at Michael’s home. The investigator was instructed to bring one of the company’s large cargo trucks to the Michael’s home. By the time they had finished at Michael’s home they had loaded all of the stolen goods into the cargo truck. The products involved included flood lights from the side of the house, law equipment (lawnmower, edger, blower, etc…), multiple tools, a couch, a bed, two ceiling fans (that had been installed in the house), washer, dryer, refrigerator and many other items. Ruger literally had Michael remove the flood lights and ceiling fans from his home – lights that Michael had stolen from Lawson’s and then installed in the house. Ruger told Michael that Ruger wanted it all back. Michael agreed and Ruger started the chainsaw and cut the deck (that was in the backyard and measured 25 feet by 40 feet) into three pieces. The entire process was filmed and Ruger let Michael know that Ruger would use all of this as evidence at Michael’s trial. Michael was then arrested by the Dallas Police Department and taken to jail. It was unfortunate that Michael’s wife had to learn the hard way that her husband was a crook. All nine crooks were convicted and sentenced to prison for their crimes. Ruger’s moral code dictated that everything that these crooks stole had to be returned. In Ruger’s mind to allow these guys to keep anything that they stole would be degrade good order and discipline, thus, I want it back! Ruger did not want it back for himself; he wanted the product back for the good of the company and for the good of the employees who were doing things the right way. It did not matter to Ruger that the products would not be resold by Lawson’s. Ruger looked at things this way. Ruger was not going to let someone steal from Lawson’s and then allow them to keep the products that they stole.
The aftermath: Once the confessions were complete and the arrests were made Ruger filed his report with Sammy. Sammy asked Ruger to correct the reports since there was no way that these guys were using the company van to hire prostitutes and bring them back to the building. Ruger let Sammy know that those were the facts and the confessions were made and written by each of the individuals involved.
With the case complete (pending trials or confessions) Ruger was able to begin an official investigation for Will related to man who had killed Nancy. They directed all of their efforts and skills at the man who had killed Nancy. The investigation became very personal for both men. They conducted two investigations of their own accord. The first investigation was entirely related to the criminal charges and matters of the defendant. The defendant and his family did not seem to take this case as serious as they should have. Will and Ruger found the drunk driver’s families actions highly offensive and decided that a full court press was the only route to take. The rules and procedures for investigators in the private sector are dramatically different than the rules for law enforcement. Will and Ruger figured out quickly that the only way to get the attention of the defendant’s father was for Will to file a major civil lawsuit. You might be thinking how can you pursue the father for a crime that his 24 year old son committed? Ruger and Will saw it this way. The son (the driver of the car) hit Nancy while driving his father’s Cadillac. The driver was travelling at 85 miles an hour (speed limit was 40 miles an hour) when he ran a red light and hit the driver’s door of Nancy’s car. There were no skid marks at the scene. The father was in Hawaii with his wife at the time of the car accident. The question for the father to answer was this: had the father given permission for his son to drive the Cadillac? Keep in mind the father knew of the son’s previous convictions for drunk driving so allowing him to drive the Cadillac meant possible civil responsibility for the father. The defendant’s father had retired as an executive with a multi-billion-dollar Dallas based company. It was clear that the father did not cause the driver to become a drunk driver. In their mind the father was at the very least complicit in helping to diminish or eliminate his son’s criminal behavior. Ruger and Will were able to prove that the father owned homes in Dallas, Hawaii and Los Angeles. The father also had a collection of 13 vehicles across the three homes as well as a number of other assets. Their investigative skills paid off. The son was convicted of man slaughter and several additional charges and given 75 years in state prison. The son and father were both found responsible in the civil suit and the jury found the father to be fifty percent liable. This meant that the father was ordered pay fifty percent of the total amount awarded by the jury. The dad was forced to pay three and a half million dollars to Will. Will used the entire three and a half million dollars to set up a trust fund in Nancy’s name. The trust fund benefited an outdoor animal charity that Nancy and Will had been heavily involved in prior to Nancy’s death. The fund also benefited a college fund at the
