Melanie Mc Cracken
My daughter, Melanie McCracken, 25, died on
Melanie had been married for eighteen
months to Mark McCracken, a New Mexico State Police sergeant. One of Mark's
stories is that he found Melanie unresponsive and face down on their bed. He
didn't call 911, even though they lived one half mile from Living Cross
Ambulance. Instead he put Melanie in the back of his 1991 Chevy, (ignoring his
State Police car with lights, siren and radio, which was also in the driveway),
drove onto the Isleta Indian Reservation, and ran the
car into a tree. When rescue arrived Mark pretended to be unconscious, but gave
himself away when one of the rescue workers carrying his backboard became
unstable and Mark reached out and grabbed hold of his wrist. A test that
measures responsiveness in patients showed that Mark was "feigning
unconsciousness."
Melanie didn't have to "feign"
anything. A medic who tried to revive her stated in a deposition that he had
"never seen another patient that blue, other than somebody who had been
dead for a while or had been asphyxiated." He said he felt at the time
that something wasn't right with the scene. "Why was this lady so dead?"
The State Police first tried to pass
Melanie's death off to Bosque Farms officials as accident related, but the
Medical Investigator said she was dead before the accident occurred. The State
Police then told the media that Melanie was "cancer-stricken" and had
been terminally ill for some time, and Mark McCracken announced that Melanie
had leukemia. The autopsy showed no evidence of leukemia or any other disease.
The chief of the Office of the Medical
Investigator suggested that an outside law enforcement agency handle the case
because Mark McCracken was a ranking State Police officer. Darren White, DPS
Cabinet Secretary, and Chief Frank Taylor denied that request on the grounds
that there was "no conflict of interest." No conflict of interest!
Mark's subordinate officers and buddies were the ones who investigated the
case, and they didn't do a damned thing! A couple of those officers went to the
house as friends, once with the medical examiner and once before, but conducted
no official investigation. Photographs that OMI field investigator
Luis Brown alleged were taken at the house were nowhere to be found.
When I appealed for help to the state
Attorney General's Office, the OMI, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney, everyone
was furious that I wouldn't just shut up and let it go. Lt. Governor Walter
Bradley has certified letters written to him that he refused to answer. The
AG's Office was willing to help, but was told by State Police that their help
was not needed as the First Judicial District out of Santa Fe was independently
investigating, which was totally untrue. I even received a call at work from
APD homicide detective Damon Fay, who threatened to have me arrested for
obstructing justice if I continued to question the circumstances of Melanie's
death and "interfere with an on-going investigation." He told me that
he certainly knew where to find me, implying that he would have me arrested at
work and dragged off in handcuffs. (I'm a registered nurse and at that time was
nurse supervisor at Carrie Tingly, a special needs children's hospital in
In 1998 -- on my own, without legal
representation, (no
Expert witness Dr. John Smialek (now deceased), head of forensic pathology at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine, issued a written opinion that Melanie died as a result of "homicidal
suffocation." Dr. Smialek criticized both the
autopsy and the police investigation and suggested that Melanie's body be
exhumed and re-examined. When it began to appear that the case would turn into
a murder case, my court-appointed attorney succumbed to pressure to settle out
of court.
The national television show,
"Dateline," became interested in Melanie's story and set up a meeting
with a magistrate judge who was sympathetic to our cause. When the producer
attempted to meet with the judge, two state cop cars blocked the road and
turned their lights in her face. She was so scared that she filed a report with
her legal department, something she stated she had never done before.
The producer then arranged to interview
Robert Mireles, former head of Living Cross Ambulance
Service, about numerous 911 calls that had been made from Melanie's home prior
to her death. On those occasions, Mark did all of the talking, only allowing
medics to check Melanie's vital signs. On one occasion Melanie was in bed
wearing a turtle neck sweater that came up to her chin, even though the day was
very warm, an apparent attempt to prevent medics from seeing the bruises on her
neck. On another occasion, on which she wore a nightgown, paramedics noticed
bruises on her shoulders. (Mark McCracken explained those bruises by lying to
the medics and saying his wife was "critically ill with leukemia.")
Dateline's meeting with Mr. Mireles never occurred, as Mireles
was found hanging in his garage in the early morning hours of the day before
his scheduled meeting with Dateline.
The District Attorney's Office is now
looking at Melanie's case as a possible homicide and Mark has hired a criminal
defense attorney.
To show their on-going support for Mark
McCracken, the State Police have now promoted him to the rank of lieutenant.
Nancy Grice
Updates:
12/30/03: Albuquerque Journal: Valencia county Magistrate John Sanchez, a
former State Police officer himself, filed a federal civil rights suit against
the
April
2004: Melanie's family, acting upon the
recommendation by the grand jury, petitioned a second grand jury to investigate
the
Dec.
2004: Judge David Bonem
ruled that former NMPS Lt. Mark McCracken will not have to stand trial for his
wife's suspicious death. The judge
stated that, while "a violent and unnatural death cannot be
excluded," there was not enough probable cause to try McCracken on charges
of murder and tampering with evidence.
He chastised the NMSP for not allowing an outside agency to take over
the investigation of a case in which the suspect was one of their own officers.
MCCRACKEN
CASE MUST LEAD US TO MAKE CHANGES
The
end--in dismissal of all charges -- of the almost-decade-old murder case
against former State Police Lt. Mark McCracken likely means the public never
will know for certain what happened to his wife, Melanie McCracken. That uncertainty aside, the public also might
never know whether justice has been served.
The
evidence in this case and in the court ruling ending it suggests it is time to
reform
At
best, state officials should consider establishing a completely independent
state bureau of investigation, such as those created in several other
states. That not only would allow an
arms-length investigation of cases in which State Police officers might be
under suspicion, but it also could provide highly dedicated, professional
investigative capabilities for the State Police, the state's counties and its
many small cities and communities -- including internal affairs investigations
in any of New Mexico's many police agencies….
The
investigation into (Melanie's) death, to say the least, was poorly handled by
State Police, who really had no business investigating a case of such highly
suspicious circumstances, in which one of their own could have been a suspect…
In dismissing murder and tampering-with-evidence charges against McCracken … Bonem suggested what many people outside the State Police
fear -- that the case was bungled. He
rightly observed, "I believe it is clear to all that the failure to
involve an independent agency early on to conduct the investigation was not
provident. Hopefully the lesson has been
learned."
New
Mexican's should not assume it has. They
should press the Legislature and
