Tuesday, 10:20 p.m. -- Fox 2 reports that Crime Stoppers has publicly apologized for misleading the public by offering the reward for a missing person who was actually dead.
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From earlier today
Fox 2 reports that Detroit Police intentionally lied about a homicide investigation, hoping the public deception would help them get more information about the case.
Fox 2's Dave Spencer reports that Detroit Police released information that Lisa Maison was a missing person and said Crime Stoppers was willing to pay a $2,500 reward for information to help find her.
When Fox 2 aired the report on Friday, viewers let the station know where she was, and pointed to an online obituary. She had been shot in the head and had been dead since last month.
Capt. Eric Decker then admitted to Fox 2 that Maison had been found dead Feb. 22 in the morning, but the department decided to put the case out as a missing person because it gets more information that way as opposed to if it had put it out as a homicide.
"The fact the Ms. Maison is deceased was not released, that was intentional. We have a higher instance of citizen response when it's more of a missing person investigation. Once you throw out this as a homicide investigation it could set people back and they may be reluctant to call," said Decker.
"We can track Ms. Maison back to the downtown area just a few blocks from here approximately 8 p.m. on February 20, getting off the Greyhound bus. From there we are not sure how she made it to the East side."
Decker said the tactic of deceiving the public was "a rarity."
"The facts are that this is the information that we are looking at: Ms. Maison's timeline after February 20th," said Decker. "We just didn't put the end time on that."
He called it a matter of semantics. (Bill Clinton would be proud of that one).
Fox 2 said it contacted Police Chief James Craig, who said he didn't know about the tactic and was bothered by it. He said it wouldn't happen again. -- Allan Lengel
