By Colleen Heild and Rozanna M. Martinez
Albuquerque Journal
SANDOVAL COUNTY, N.M. — Sandoval County sheriff’s deputy Theresa Moriarty pleaded with neighbors to call for an ambulance after her partner was gravely wounded during an undercover stakeout in a Jemez Mountain cabin.
A 911 tape recording released by State Police late Friday shows neighbors across the road from the cabin called in the emergency at 4:40 a.m. on July 16.
“She’s (Moriarty) out there yelling, ‘He’s been shot, please call an ambulance. He’s been shot,’ ” said the caller.
The caller told the dispatcher she believed the victim was “an investigator who’s been staying over there” who was “trying to find the Cookie Bandit.”
“Those people don’t have a phone,” she told the dispatcher, apparently referring to the owners of the cabin where Sgt. Joe Harris and Moriarty had set up their stakeout.
The three-minute call shed some light on what happened immediately after Harris was shot by a burglar who broke into the cabin.
It isn’t clear why Moriarty needed neighbors’ help to call in the shooting, but the mountainous area is known to have poor cell phone and radio coverage.
Police and neighbors had for years referred to the burglar prowling the area as “the Cookie Bandit,” unaware he was a fugitive wanted for murder in Canada.
The two sheriff’s officers were staking out the cabin near La Cueva in the hopes of catching the burglar. After Joseph Burgess broke through a window, an exchange of gunfire ensued.
Before it was over, Harris had been fatally hit in the femoral artery. The burglar, identified as Burgess, was shot twice in the head.
Harris died a couple of hours later at an Albuquerque hospital. Burgess, later identified as a suspect in 1972 double murder, died at the scene.
Stakeout authorized
The news that Harris and Moriarty were on the stakeout seemed to surprise the dispatcher, according to the 911 call.
“Do you know how many officers are out there?” the dispatcher asked the 911 caller, who couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
“Joe Harris is the one who was up here working on this,” the 911 caller responded.
On Friday, Sandoval Sheriff John Paul Trujillo told the Journal the two officers were on an “authorized stakeout.”
“I am the supervisor. I am the sheriff, so that’s the reason for that, and it was authorized,” he said.
Model police procedure on stakeouts from the International Chiefs of Police Association recommends an inside team of officers be assigned along with an outside team. The outside team is to provide backup and make the arrest of the suspect.
But Trujillo said assigning a sheriff’s team to work outside with Moriarty and Harris inside wasn’t practical.
“The outdoors guy that was there for 12 years watched everybody,” Trujillo said. “If we could have put people in stakeouts in the trees, he would have seen them.”
The reclusive burglar was believed to have been hiding out in the area for more than a decade, breaking into cabins to steal food, clothing and liquor.
“He’d watch those campsites from day to night. He knew which ones to hit.” State Police Lt. Eric Garcia said the cabin used for the stakeout July 16 was selected
by the Sheriff’s Office because it had been burglarized a number of times, as had surrounding cabins.
Radio availability?
It was unclear on Friday whether Moriarty, who wasn’t injured in the exchange of gunfire, went outside screaming to the neighboring cabin because she was unable to use a police radio to call in the emergency.
Calls to Trujillo and Undersheriff Tim Lucero regarding radio issues were not returned Friday.
Bernalillo Police Chief Fred Radosevich said there are numerous areas in the county with poor police and fire/rescue radio coverage. He serves as chairman of the board for the Sandoval County Regional Dispatch Center.
“Some areas have zero or very limited coverage,” Radosevich said.
Radosevich, who owns a cabin in the La Cueva area, said he always notifies his officers when he will be heading there because of the lack of radio and cell phone coverage. He said they have directions to the cabin and that he also notifies La Cueva Fire Department, which has a station nearby, so he can be reached if needed.
Radosevich said Sandoval County spent about $100,000 on a study about a year and a half ago to address the limitations of the current dispatch system. He said it showed that $17 million would be needed for a new system to provide uninterrupted coverage throughout Sandoval County.
Another victim?
FBI spokesman Darrin Jones said Friday his agency presumes Burgess killed a man who was reported missing in the Jemez Mountains in 2006.
The FBI traced the .357 revolver Burgess used to kill Sgt. Harris to David Lloyd Eley, who was reported as a missing person to the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office in December 2006.
“It’s a presumption because Burgess was in possession of (Eley’s) weapon,” Jones said. “Somehow (Burgess) got a hold of (Eley’s) weapon. It is our presumption that he met up with Burgess at some point and became a potential victim.”
Anyone with information regarding Burgess’ most recent camp sites or any information regarding Eley is asked to call the FBI at (505) 889-1300. Call to 911
Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal