Fairfax County Police Watch: Ex-cop arrested after bodies found in suitcases

WEST ALLIS, Wis. — A former police officer has been arrested and is a suspect in the death of at least one of two women whose bodies were stuffed into suitcases and discarded on a rural southeastern Wisconsin highway, police said Thursday.

The 52-year-old security officer was arrested Wednesday on tentative charges of hiding a corpse. The same day, detectives wearing hazmat suits removed large, brown bags of evidence and a refrigerator from the man's apartment in West Allis, a Milwaukee suburb.

Highway workers discovered the suitcases containing female remains June 5 in the Town of Geneva, some 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee. Police identified one woman as Laura Simonson, 37, of Farmington, Minnesota. Authorities have yet to release the identity of the second woman but describe her as a white female with long dark hair, a pronounced overbite and a small heart tattoo on her lower left abdomen.

Farmington police Detective Sgt. Lee Hollatz told The Associated Press that the arrested man is his "number one person, by far, of interest" in Simonson's death.

The man is scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon in Wisconsin.

Police in Rochester, Minnesota, said during a news conference Thursday that they believe Simonson was killed in a Rochester hotel in early November. She checked into the Microtel Inn and Suites with the security officer on Nov. 2, and the man checked out alone the next day, Capt. John Sherwin said.

A woman who answered the phone at the hotel said employees had been told not to talk to the media. Rochester is more than 300 miles northwest of Milwaukee.

Police have not revealed information about where the second victim was killed.
Hollatz said Simonson's family reported her missing Nov. 22, and he learned soon after that she had been taken to the Rochester hotel by a man he identified early on as the former police officer. But Hollatz said all he had was a missing person's case until the bodies were discovered. He said Simonson was identified within a day by her tattoos.

"I saw Laura as a vulnerable adult because of things in her life that she was dealing with," Hollatz said.

Simonson's father, Richard Wierson, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his daughter had placed escort ads on CraigsList. Wierson said she had struggled with mental illness since adolescence, and that her seven children were placed in foster care with him in 2010.

The suspect is a licensed private security officer who has worked for Securitas Security Services USA since 2007, according to the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. Securitas spokeswoman Lynne Glovka said the company did a background check when he was hired and she was not aware of any problems while he worked there.

Morrogh finds cop he doesn’t love. In other news, hell freezes.

Probe of fatal police shooting goes to federal authorities

By Justin Jouvenal/Post

The Fairfax County prosecutor has turned over the investigation of a fatal police shooting of an unarmed Springfield man to federal authorities, citing complications with the five-month-old case.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia has agreed to continue the probe into the death of 46-year-old John Geer, who was shot during a standoff with Fairfax County police in August. No one has been charged in the incident.

“There is a conflict of interest that has arisen in the case,” Morrogh said Thursday. “And there is a second potential conflict of interest that has arisen out of my office. . . . This is the prudent thing to do.”

Morrogh declined to describe the nature of the conflicts because the investigation is ongoing. The U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday that it could not confirm or deny any investigation or comment on pending investigations.

Police went to Geer’s Pebble Brook Court home on Aug. 29 because of a report of a domestic disturbance. Geer’s father, Don Geer, said his son was upset because his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, had decided to leave him.

John Geer had thrown his girlfriend’s belongings in the front yard. She called police and told them that Geer had a firearm. Police said they tried for about 50 minutes to persuade Geer to leave the home, but he refused.

Don Geer said he watched the climax of the encounter. He said that he could not hear what officers were saying to his son but that he saw him standing with empty hands resting on top of a screen door at the home’s entrance.

At some point, John Geer began to slowly lower his hands and an officer opened fire, hitting Geer in the chest, his father said. Geer retreated inside and closed the door. A SWAT team eventually entered the home and found Geer dead.

Don Geer said detectives later told him that his son did not have a gun on him at the time of the shooting but that there was a holstered handgun a couple of steps from the front door.

Don Geer said it appeared to him that the shooting was unjustified, but he was unsure what to make of the probe being turned over to federal authorities.

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad — if I had a better idea of why they are doing it, I could form an opinion,” he said.

Geer and friends of his son have been critical of how long the investigation has taken, but Morrogh said police and prosecutors were working to explore all the evidence. He did not think federal prosecutors would have to start from scratch.

“No one wants these things to linger on,” Morrogh said.

Our ink will outlast his career

Under the reign of former Chief of Police Rhorer the Fairfax County Police arrested a man for not wearing clothes in his house while he made coffee, set up an eye doctor on a gambling charge and then used the SWAT team to kill him. An investigation into the charge that the Doctor’s primary clients were cops has never been investigated. The police gunned down an emotionally unstable man because cop who shot him wrongly assumed the man was trying to escape. He wasn’t. The cops also shot dead four other citizens under highly questionable circumstances. The department under Rhorer was sued multiple times by citizens. So did they fire Rhorer? Naw they promoted him. According to news reports Rhorer draws a salary of $191,168 per year as Deputy Fairfax County Executive as well as a concurrent pension from the Fairfax County police of $173000 per year.

Occupation by force

According to the most recent U.S. Census figures, nearly one in five Fairfax residents (17.5 percent) is of Asian descent while Hispanics make up nearly 16 percent of Fairfax’s overall population. Those numbers drop considerably when applied to the Fairfax County Police Department, where only 4.3 percent of officers are Asian and 4.1 percent Hispanic. White officers make up 84 percent of Fairfax County’s 1,360-member police department, significantly higher than the county’s general population (54 percent white). Almost 90% of the force lives outside the county.