_____________________ JOE SPROVERI_____________________
No, there’s no … there’s no smoking gun that we’re sitting on at this point. It’s just constantly following up with, you know … the timing of the interview is … interesting because it’s Det. Chimenti’s last day here before he retires and starts his own chapter two, but the rest of us are still here. And when … when new leads come in, we’re gonna follow them, and delegate whatever resource we need to to either prove or disprove that that new theory.
And the issue is, is that this is at this point, everything surrounding Damien has become folklore. It’s like a local legend.
On face value, you have the dark and twisted, you know, thing. That just that adds to the folklore at face value. If you look at him, you see the the dark and twisted, you know, drug user who, you know who looks Gothic or wears trench coats.
And then you have, you know, the female friends that basically said, yeah, I could … I could get blackout drunk or passed out high. And I knew that if I was with Damien, nothing would happen to me, you know? And then the other kids from high school that said you know well, I didn’t really know Damien, but some kid was trying to stuff me in the locker one day and he came and told them to knock it off. So you have like all these different versions, versions of Damien Sharp.
I can’t get two people to describe him exactly the same way. You know, everybody has a slightly different version of him. Even his family, his family.
So … I wish I had more insight on him as a person …
_____________________________________________________________________________________
From Your Daily Local and Two Moms Media in Warren, Pa., this is Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp. We’re your hosts, Brian Hagberg, and Stacey Gross.
I didn’t go into this story intending to investigate anything outside of what I’d do for a newspaper. And to this day, I’m not working for Damien’s family, I’m not working for the police, and I’m not working for anyone who’s paid me to do any of this. Brian and I accept donations and sell bonus content because, let’s face it, we’re trying to raise families while also contributing something to the world that adds value where it was needed.
But no one handed us money and said find out what happened to Damien. Neither of us have any law enforcement background whatsoever, so we decided early that it was not just the right thing to do, but also wise to reach out to the City of Warren PD before we even posted a single thing about Damien, or our intention to amplify and expand his story, on social media.
But as information started trickling, and then flowing, in, it became apparent that there was no way it had all been collected in one central source. Hell, half the people I spoke with said they either wouldn’t share what they were telling me with police, even if police interviewed them, or that they had shared it with police and didn’t know whether it was compiled in the case file or not.
Some of the information I’ve gotten that’s tangential to Damiens case? It actually deserves its own year of my attention, if I’m honest.
So as I started collecting rumors, making hash tags next to lose titles and genres of the rumors that existed, it became apparent that someone needed to be doing this now, before the legends developed deeper and deeper roots, and became harder and harder to untangle.
The lead investigator on Damien’s case changed multiple times, with Tony Chimenti taking the reins first, then passing the lead to Rick Brecht a year later. Chimenti reassumed the lead role in the case in 2008, and held it until retiring on Jan. 9 of this year. I was able to catch Tony on his last day as the Warren PD’s lead detective. He and Chief Joe Sproveri gave us an hour of their time that day, but the department has provided access to numerous videos, files, documents, and other evidence in order to help us corroborate and verify the stories we hear.
With all those changes, fine level details, where the devil’s said to be – was bound to be lost in translation. But that wasn’t the only thing holding the investigation back.
A mutual distrust between Damien’s family and local law enforcement developed early in the case. From the family’s perspective, the police were more concerned with the potential drug aspect of Damien’s disappearance than with finding him. Dana said when she and Janeane went to the department on June 3, they didn’t initially feel a lot of interest.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
… So … And I told her I can’t file missing persons, we’ve been to the apartment everything like that. What we found so. Janeane didn’t drive. She didn’t like driving or whatever, so I had to go pick her up. She lived in Celoron (N.Y.), get her back here. We got to the police department. It was late. I’m not sure what time … 9. 11, somewhere in there.
And the doors were closed. And so, you know, come around the back. So we went around to the back. I don’t know if we beeped, buzzed, knocked, whatever and you know we said you know we wanna talk about missing person.
And well, you know, they just didn’t seem interested at all, you know? Well, they probably seemed. It’s 11 o’clock at night. Someone didn’t come home. You know, how old is he, 22? OK, whatever. And then finally we said, well, we think maybe drugs are involved, you know, ’cause, we seen those notes at the house, you know? OK, then they would talk. But … _____________________________________________________________________________________
Police believed the family held back potential information, even going so far as to clean Damien’s apartment before reporting him missing, in order to keep any potential criminal activity on Damien’s behalf from coming out.
_____________________ JOE SPROVERI / TONY CHIMENTI_____________________
…You see all these shows about the the the importance of the first 48 hours in any investigation and they’re … and it’s valid. I wasn’t, you know, like I said, when this happened, I was still in high school. However, from everything, and Tony could speak on it more, but from everything that I understand, and I don’t believe this was very well publicized at the time to protect people, but that apartment had been. And … cleaned up organized. If there was anything of evidentiary value that did exist, it was gone. By the time this was reported.
He he left everything there. He left his wallet. He left everything. That’s what the story is in the paper. Everything was still there. So you get the call. They come down, they come down to the … can you just kind of give me the first few weeks of your investigation. And what were you thinking as you went into it?
I mean we we had to have them go and get a declaration obviously. There’s a declaration saying that he was missing, obviously because there was no … as far as we knew, there was no extenuating circumstances other than he was missing. But the only thing that we knew was that he hadn’t reported home. He had talked to his mother in a couple weeks. The brother had said … the brother and the … the mother’s sister. Dana said that she hadn’t seen him. She hadn’t talked to him. The brother hadn’t talked to him. I can’t remember if the initial was that the boys … the boys were supposed to meet up with them or something like that. I can’t remember what the exact … wordage was, but the mother was concerned because she hadn’t heard from him and that was what what her concern was that she hadn’t heard from him.
(And that had been out of character)
And that was out of character for him.
(At this point in time.)
Yeah. So, I mean, that was Mom’s concern was that she hadn’t heard from him and. So I said, you know, I was advised to let them know that they had to have a declaration signed that he was missing.
And is that like, what’s that process?
I believe they had to get it notarized. So they had to go to Art Zerbe’s office, which was a District … Magistrate at the time. So they had to have that signed and I believe they had … was the next day obviously because he was open and they had to have it notarized stating that he’s missing. So they brought that back so that we can get it entered NCIC …
Was Steven … did Steven come when they came was it or was it just Janeane and Dana?
I believe was Janeane and Dana. And then we had Steven come in and … we interviewed him. And that was the process, that that’s what I was started was we interviewed people and I believe we interviewed Dana. We interviewed Steven, we interviewed a bunch of people, like trying to figure out what was going on, you know, and that’s how it started.
So did you guys ever go to Prospect Street? Was it ever searched? Was there ever any?
(You talking about me mansion house?)
Yeah. The apartments …
I believe, Officer Brecht did all that.
OK. OK. So that’s a him question.
Yeah.
OK.
‘Cause that’s where it finally went. I mean, as far as the investigator … investigation with like, anything that went further ’cause, I got taken off of it. We … we did the search of like. When I did it, we did like the search of the forest. We started doing the bigger searches. When it got more involved of the who what when where and why of like suspects and stuff like that, we started getting … I started getting into more of talking to more people. It was getting deeper and deeper …
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Through the course of the investigation, two main suspects emerged. Both eventually landed in prison, but not for anything related to Damien.
The first – his name is Frank – was arrested in 2015 and charged with running a corrupt organization. Basically, he was a contractor, and owned rental properties. But instead of collecting rent, police said, he’d let the folks who worked for him rent his properties in exchange for labor, enforcement, and food stamps. Frank is rumored to have told numerous associates that if they got out of line he would do to them what I did to Damien.
We spoke with Frank a few months ago. He’s currently incarcerated in the state’s correctional system, serving seven to fifteen years for corrupt organizations, drug charges, food stamp trafficking charges, and cruelty to animals. We’ll tell you what Frank said in future episodes, but for now, know that the police have never named him as a suspect, and Brian and I believe that his association to Damien’s disappearance is rumor-based. We could always be wrong, but based on a year of deep investigation, we just can’t find a lot of tangible proof that Frank even truly knew Damien, which he himself says he did not. If that changes, we’ll of course let you know that.
According to police sources, before Frank was sent to prison, he was offered a deal that would have been too good to pass up – what law enforcement calls a defendant’s “Golden Goose.” If he was actually involved in Damien’s disappearance, Frank likely could’ve shaved significant time off that seven-to-fifteen-year sentence, our sources told us. And all he would have had to do was give police enough to recover Damien’s remains.
The second suspect in the court of public opinion was at the time, and remains for many, a man called James. James actually showed up on law enforcement’s radar before Frank, in the actual timeline of events. He was, Detective Chimenti confirmed, a person a person he was interested in in Damien’s disappearance, but no evidence ever surfaced that justified charging him with anything in the case either.
James was the last person anyone knew to have seen Damien alive – that is, until we interviewed a new source to the case a few months ago. James saw Damien at his apartment; 332 Prospect – the Prospect Mansions. You’ve heard of that place already. That’s where Damien allegedly went to buy some weed before Memorial Day festivities kicked off that Saturday night, May 25, 2002. James confirmed to us last fall, after I reached out to him on Facebook, that he did see Damien that night, and that Damien was there to buy some weed. Rumors that Damien was selling harder drugs, like cocaine, or that Damien was into doing harder drugs, like meth on a regular basis have not born out in the research so far. Those things may be true, but we can’t find anything tangible to show you to say he was for sure.
But James does confirm that Damien was looking for a pound of weed that night. He also says that he and Damien parted ways on the street outside the apartment around 6 p.m. that evening, with plans to meet up at a big party on Brown Run Road later.
Damien’s friend Danica described that setting to you in the last episode, but here’s a quick recap:
_____________________ DANICA STEC_____________________
Of course, there was supposed to be a party Memorial Day that weekend, right? There was always a party. Every Memorial Day weekend. And it was like not one spot on Brown Run. It was all of it.
Everybody like. Different cliques would have like different areas and like it would be all up and down. So, like, who knows what party you would end up at. You could walk up and down that road …
… Now is it on Brown Run itself or is it on 160?
…
Yeah. And then. It was like all sorts different places up and there was all sorts of different like areas, people like go to all sorts of different parts.
So who gravitated to where up there?
Never knew, they just found their spot when they got there. I mean, like, you know, like there could have been like a group that went up. I didn’t go to that one that year because I ended up having to work or something. I. Like like we would all go as like a group. Like say like I’d meet somebody at one party. And the other people didn’t like it. They would just leave me there and go to a different party.
Yeah, like that. Did you ever witness any altercations up there or…
I mean like, there were altercations and some dude hit on some dude’s girlfriend or whatever but
You never felt like you were in danger up there?
No, no, no, no. Not like that. No. NO.
Do you feel like he went to the woods that night, or do you feel like something happened in town? Like, just your personal …
My personal …
_____________________________________________________________________________________
James got into some trouble in August of 2002. James and Damien had become friends over a mutual love of controlled combat. They’d been planning to train together, James told us, but Damien’s busted knee had put a damper on that for the time being. James was known for being out late, though. Living on Prospect, he was within a mile or so of the middle school track, football field, basketball courts, and other places to basically find a gym for free. Pull ups on railings or monkey bars. Jogging the track in the wee hours of the morning.
James had a reputation for being a hard ass, but he told me last fall that he doesn’t feel it fits. “I’ve done wrong in the past,” is basically what James told me over the course of several weeks, talking back and forth on messenger, “but I was never out there looking to hurt people,” was his general message.
His August 2002 charge was for an assault that took place at Freddie’s bar, on Warren’s east side near where all these cats lived. James actually moved closer to Freddie’s at the end of July that year, according to a detailed rental ledger kept by the Prospect Mansions landlord, which was shared with us by family members. We thank them for their help in providing documentation and evidence that to us, as journalists, and to this project, is invaluable.
During the August altercation, according to the original affidavit – signed by Tony Chimenti – he and officer Scott Taylor arrived at the bar to find someone “laying in a moderate sized pool of his own blood motionless.”
_____________________ TONY CHIMENTI (READ BY FRANK WILLIAMS)_____________________
Your affiant and officer Taylor were called to Freddie’s Bar located at 1207 Penn Ave. East for a fight call. On arrival, you affiant observed one of the suspects on the sidewalk laying in the moderate sized pool, his own blood motionless. Your affiant had found that the other actor was not immediately present at the scene. Numerous individuals pointed at a lone individual walking back stating it was him.
The defendant stated to your affiant that he was the guy that engaged in a fight with the defendant, stated that he had been drinking since 11 a.m. today and your affiant smelled a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from his breath. Defendant, also stated that he had only hit the injured man twice and he hit the concrete sidewalk. The defendant was taken into custody and transported to Warren General Hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Defendant was Mirandized at 2250 hours, and he stated that he engaged in a fight with (removed). The defendant stated that he hit (removed), at least twice with his first, to which fell to the ground.
Injuries the victim suffered from the assault were a closed head injury in the back portion of the head and a fractured neck.
I, Patrolman Anthony Chimenti, duly sworn, according to the law, depose and say that the facts set forth in the foregoing affidavit are true and correct for the best of my knowledge, information and belief.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This all went down just after 9:30 p.m. on a city street a few months after Damien went missing. By that point, Chimenti would already have had at least one interview with James regarding where the hell Damien might be – not a friendly banter type of situation, but not quite an interrogation either – and now he was arresting him for what looked like a body slam to broken neck situation but turned out to be a jaw basically snapped off at the spinny part.
What you would not have gotten from reading your local newspaper’s blotter the day or two afterward is that the man James knocked the eff out had dated his mother when he was younger, and by his own admission, was maybe not the best domestic partner and caregiver at the time.
Not that he had it coming, this man told us – what James did to him was indefensible for any reason, and James himself confirmed this to me – but James wasn’t a just put for random blood that night either. This was a kid who grew up saying, “if I ever get the chance to get him back, as an adult, I’ll put hands on him.”
Well, this dude walked into a bar that James happened to be drinking at and it just so happened that felt like the time for James to make good on his childhood promise of vendetta.
Even I made choices about what to leave out of that blotter item and what to leave in, because the fact is that my job is to explaint o you what law enforcement was seeing and dealing with at the time. One of the main characters in Damien’s disappearance wound up catching some pretty serious charges a couple months after Damien went missing. Sorry guys, but that’s statisitcally significant. What’s not statistically significant, or necessary to report at all, is the details of that crime. This is what’s known as an editioral decision and they have to be made every day on the fly for so much content that your head would spin.
We’re going to investigate why the newspaper writes what it does – and why it has access to what it does, when it does – and basically how the sausage gets made every day and all night long before you wake up to the morning edition. We have things to say on that. Many things
But first. Let’s take a quick break.
These are just brief snapshots into a couple of the most common rumors surrounding this case, but it shows how much impact each rumor has on the course of the investigation. Here’s Detective Chimenti on what that impact looks like, and Chief Sproveri with some additional context:
_____________________ TONY CHIMENTI / JOE SPROVERI_____________________
… and then it’s the circle and it’s that’s the frustrating part and. And that’s the part I hope that when Tiffany or whoever else they can call me up and they say, hey, this is what I heard. And I’m sitting there just, I’ll just hopefully I can just sit there and go, look at page 9852. We’ve already been through this circle. You know, I mean. I … I won’t be able to reference that exactly obviously, but you know …
You guys have been through a lot of circles. You’ve been through a lot of circular evidence, a lot of circumstantial stuff.
Yeah, and that’s what’s the worst part. We came to a head, thank goodness, where you’ve chased so many circles that you know, when the circle is been chased. And when I reference a circle. There has been so many circles, it’s a spinning circle. Can you talk about some of them? Like what … I mean … I know that there’s a lot of different theories, and I know that some of them are more ridiculous than others, but are there some that come up and you hear them and you’re just like Jesus, here we go again?
Well, circles come up in different times in different areas. Obviously the first circles come up when he first came missing. When he first came missing, the circle was. When the first. When the first things of why he came missing and it was a drug deal, that’s a drug deal that this much money and then was a huge circle then and it’s obviously a massive circle that comes into a smaller circle and big, you know depending on … who you hear from … how big that circle is. Of course you have to generate who … the who, what, when, where and why. Grab the people that you know are in that circle and try and limit that circle. But when you start getting people that are outside that circle, the circle obviously gets bigger. So you … you have to limit your circle and and. Depending on how big that circle is … is … how that’s gonna go, because if it’s just us three … If we if we keep that circle to that, then that’s how big that circle, right?
That’s … yeah.
It’s it’s the phone game.
Yeah.
It’s just like anything else.
I mean, well, that’s a really good segue, I think, to talk about the rumors and how all of the rumors and the rumor mill kind of affects your ability to investigate this case as officers. And I mean, you might wanna jump in, Joe, I don’t know, but just in any case, and then in this case, specifically, how does that … that must make it almost impossible at times to kind of get … just started.
We live in a day and age where everybody, for most part everybody, believes everything they hear. There’s not many controls. Whether or not somebody post something on social media or … or … talks about something at the bar or ends up going to jail and they want some credibility, so they make up some outlandish story on something that they participated in, and by the time that story is told or posted, then somebody else can interpret it differently and … Depending on how that information is relayed to us, we have to try to track it down to the original source and everything is already convoluted as it is. I will say one thing I … you know, I haven’t had a whole lot of involvement with the actual Damien investigation itself. However, I do know that every lead or theory, no matter how big or small, or … or credible or outlandish that comes in, we … we follow up on everything, whether it be … executing a search warrant on a basement of a house and digging out a foundation wall or searching an area of the forest. Even including a lady that stopped in and she was a medium and she had some visions and we followed up on that.
What’s been the hardest thing about this case? Like, is it the rumors? Is it the rumors that you think makes it so hard to dive into for you guys?
You know when the hardest thing is that that you get your hopes up, that it’s actually going to be a good thing you’re going in, you … you get all the resources together and you go out there and it’s … and it’s. You get the resources and you have the good … Different solid …
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Aside from the rumors, there were communication issues from the start.
In the first days after the family realized Damien was missing, they say they were told by police that they had to wait two weeks to file a missing persons report. Both Dana and Steven were focused on that two week period, roughly, though I think they’re overlapping and I think they’re for different reasons. Here’s Dana on that initial part of things:
_____________________DANA KIBBEY_____________________
It ended up being … We thought we filed a missing person. And we didn’t. Apparently, it wasn’t until, like, two weeks later that they had us go in front of Zerbe and then to find out that this was the official one, which we thought we had filed. But I don’t know how to …you know, I thought just telling it was filing it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I reached out to Art Zerbe, who was the District Magistrate at the time. In Pennsylvania, the District Magistrate is basically the guy the cops bring you to if you get arrested. The first level of the commonwealth’s court system, these guys handle everything from landlord evictions to traffic and non-traffic citations, summary offenses, preliminary arraignments, bail hearings, and more.
If you get busted in the city limits in 2002, you deal with Art Zerbe. I reached out to Art a few months ago, and he said he didn’t remember much from that time. It’s unfortunate, because according to Dana he remembered Damien from the YMCA, where Damien worked out regularly.
_____________________DANA KIBBEY_____________________
… but that’s one of the reasons he got the apartment … you know where he did. Cedar Street?
Yeah.
Was the Y was right there ’cause the Y was such a big part.
Yeah.
You know he went there everyday …
I know that Thursday … I know that was last time he checked in.
Yeah. And when this one in front of Art Zerbe, because at the time he’s the one that had to … sign the missing persons paperwork and stuff or be part of it or whatever. I had to go in front of him. He had told me as soon as he heard about this he … you know, because he’d see Damien at the Y, you know, he … he went down and looked to see and went through the books when Damien … and he said I was sure I had seen him since then. He said, but no, he hadn’t been in since then.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
And that’s a really good example of how time can be a detriment in cases like this. They say the first 48 hours in a missing persons case is the most important. I’m sure the experts rage back and forth between one another, but the logic is sound: The sooner you start looking for something that could be on the move – against its own will or not – the sooner you can close the distance between yourself and what, or who, you’re looking for.
What happens after 20 years?
You’re not hoping for a happy resolution after 20 years. You’re mostly just praying someone remembers something that gives you a foothold to start climbing down into the rabbit hole. One tangible fact. One thing you can go look up on paper.
As a reporter, I think I wanted most from law enforcement was insight into how information was shared with media then, and why, because up to that point, all I’d been able to do was speculate, in the opposite direction to Damien, about what was shared, and with whom, and why.
What I knew, from those first few trips to the library was that the first time Damien’s situation was reported to the public by the TImes Observer was on Friday, June 7.
So let’s just do this one more time, you guys.
Saturday, May 25, Damien is last seen by James – everyone agrees at that point – around 6 p.m. at the Prospect Mansions. The two parted ways, James told me last January. He went down to a family member’s house to get some camping things, but discovered that she’d already headed out camping herself. With it. So, he said, he went home to get his own tent, waited around to hear from Damien, never did, and figured he missed out.
Saturday, June 1, Damien’s best friend Dave called his stepmom, Stacy Sharp, to say no one had been able to get ahold of Damien for a few days. Dana and Stacy went to Damien’s apartment, found a bunch of notes on the door, and went inside to find it basically undisturbed, but messy – likely from that Friday night party Dave described in episode one.
Monday, June 3, Dana and Janeane go to the police department and filed a report.
And Friday, June 7, seven lines appeared in the paper’s blotter.
We’ll get more into the media timeline in the next episode. For now, though, I want you to take a second and look around you because we’ve reached the point in this story where I encountered my first informational crater.
Steven, Damien’s brother, said he waited around for Damien to show up that night, even shooing away those friends from earlier in Damien’s afternoon – his driver, and the weed customer. Steven kept going back to the apartment that weekend, he told me last fall, but Damien never showed back up.
Dana said it took her a couple days to get Janeane down to the department from her home, in Celoron, N.Y., and a time period of a week to deliver information on a missing person isn’t necessarily weird, but it does seem to point to something people talk about a lot when they head down the “Warren Police didn’t do anything/enough/some version of that” path.
Here’s why rumor is such a nasty thing to deal with when you’re trying to get to the truth: there’s no standard unit of measure for “enough.”
No two people are going to define that concept exactly the same in this situation, and their relationship to Damien, not to mention their perception of him, likely played a part.
And that doesn’t even have to imply what it feels like it might imply: that the police perceived Damien as not worth their time.
Well. I mean, yes and no.
In 2002, it was not uncommon for most people to recognize that an adult can choose not to interact with family and friends if they want. An adult can even go so far as to avoid being contacted, or even found, by those people. That’s basic adult freedom, right?
As Dana said in the last episode, though, from the other side of things – from the family’s side – to hear someone say that your loved one is allowed to avoid being found by you, who lay awake each night worrying about them…that’s a blow.
So Brian and I have talked this over a lot of times. I’ve talked it over with a lot of people. And we agree, it’s probably pretty likely that you could’ve walked into a lot of police departments in the United States in 2002 with an army veteran who hadn’t been home in a week and not raised a ton of eyebrows.
We don’t believe Warren was especially unique in that way.
What was unique – honestly, pretty much the only truly unique element of this entire story – was Damien.
And Dana said that, from her perspective, perception played a part. The police, she felt, warmed to the idea of a missing person who went missing while buying drugs.
So fast forward to last fall, working with almost no names, a vague idea of what Damien might have been up to that day, and not much else, staring at those newspaper articles and seeing a few lines in a blotter item, a tentative small feature on the case a few days later, and then bam.
Like magic. Out of nowhere. Friday, June 21, there are volunteer divers, dog handlers, and all manner of helpful sleuths from all sectors combing the hell out of the Allegheny Reservoir. That glacial playground in the ANF.
Reading through the story, I found that land searched of Morrison Run – a road similar to Brown Run on the other side of Route six, with lots of camping and party spots and a stream running down it. These roads connect the hill people to the townspeople, basically. They follow water and they bring you up and down the hills.
This was interesting to me, back then, because I knew Steven said they’d considered camping at Heart’s Content. Morrison Run serves Heart’s Content from Route 6. Just like Brown Run feeds Jakes Rocks.
I asked Tony and Joe whether the “information” provided to then-District-Attorney Richard Hernan, cited by the paper as the spark that set off the elaborate efforts, was up for sharing.
Here’s what he said.
_____________________TONY CHIMENTI / JOE SPROVERI_____________________
… They started land searches I believe on the 14th. Or the 16th of June. It was the third full week, and then the Morrison run and then other areas of the ANF. What other areas do you know?
So we were in … we have Morrison Run. We also went to Rimrock. I believe that area up there, we just we had that was with Rick Hernan … he actually we got a bunch of people, Allegheny National Forest people we had. The search dog there was actual group search dog team group that they had dogs. It was a group for Warren County that would look for missing persons. They had all kinds of dogs back then that were trained. It was after 9/11, so there was a lot of people that were involved in that kind of stuff that had dogs that were cadaver dog trained and all kinds of stuff like that. I don’t know how long … If they still have that group anymore, but they had, there was a lot of dogs training back then. There was Sheriff office were there, this all kinds of stuff. So there was a lot of different officers that they, they came out and. We all did searches in the in the woods where known areas where he would go in camp.
I was going to say did that come from the interviews?
… it did have areas that he would go and camp on that weekend. That Memorial Day weekend. So Morrison run area. There’s one whole … they searched and we did another area. Like I said, Rimrock area.
And then they switched to the water searches on the 23rd. I believe it was the following Thursday, and Rick had said in the paper it was based on some information that came in, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Do you know anything about what what might have let them because they switched from the land searches to more water based searches around the Devils elbow bridge and the Morrison Run Bridge.
So that was from. Possibilities of where someone might be actually dumped into the water, where it would be. Deep areas.
What about as tips came in? Do you have any kind of timeline? Did it take a form? Almost? Did people have a narrative and the narrative changed as the tips were coming in? Or was it just convoluted from the beginning?
It was very very. Yeah, very certainly. If I can use that word, it’s it’s a very, very poor word to use, but it was very there’s a lot coming in and. You know, there was a lot of different agencies that. You know, everybody wanted to get the tip, the Sheriff’s Office, state police. Everybody was getting it was hot. It was a hot item at that time. You know what was the hot thing that everybody wanted to be involved with? You know what I mean? Not saying that anybody wanted to be the hero or anything like that, but everybody wanted to help. Everybody wanted to find them.
Yeah.
So then, you know, there was tips coming in. And of course, Rick Vernon had. It was a task force that return and actually created at that time. So. It was a good thing, you know, that we all were working together and then that’s when Officer Brecht took it because it was getting so. Yeah. And in the news media got involved in chief Poorman at the time said yeah, I think this needs to be going to a different officer. _____________________________________________________________________________________
I did reach out to former District Attorney Hernan for information about this and other questions I had about this case. While he expressed support for the project, he urged me to reach out to the police instead. He no longer had notes on the case, he told me, and fouldn’t remember much after so many years.
I did reach out, however, to one last law enforcement fifgure within the case. Officer Rick Brecht took over Damien’s case in 2003, a year after it had started. Here’s Det. Chimenti, explaining the timeline of the investiagtive office within the department, and how the case progressed through those years.
_____________________TONY CHIMENTI / JOE SPROVERI_____________________
I’ve been doing detective work for 14 years here. I was put into that job back in 2008. Started off as an Investigator and then promoted to Detective. So through so Zydonick, through (Chief) Ray Zydonick. So I mean, we didn’t have an investigative office for years and years and years
When did they that start here?
In 2008, we … we they put that back in the office, they used to have one. I couldn’t even tell you how far along back they had a detectives position.
(Going back to the mid to late 80s was 80s or 90s and) …
… even prior to Portman maybe,
…no it wasn’t. It was in the Poorman era. Dick Kiehl was the last detective. I couldn’t tell you when he retired. I I don’t have that list of when he retired, but I know Dick Kiehl was the last detective. And they haven’t had one since. When I originally started this case, they had taken me off of it. It was … I … I had it probably … I think I had it for the rest of the first year of 2002 and then they give it to Rick Brecht. They give it to a more senior officer. They didn’t want a junior officer handling the case. Myself and Scott Taylor were kind of working on it together. They saw that it was going to be bigger than it was. (Chief) Rick Poorman took me off of it. Give it to a more senior officer. He had it until I took it back in 2008 when Ray Zydonick came on and he made the investigator job. When he put me into that office. I actually started that office I. Did everything as far as generating the office. Establishing you know who does this, who does that with him? You know what … what cases I would take with what I would do, actually bringing the Damien Sharp case back and … You know, regenerating what I had to do with the Damien Sharp case. So …
Was that difficult? Getting it back and then having to sort of put it back into your system and …
Yeah, it was. It was a lot of work. It was. There was a lot of work involved in that, but it is what it is. I mean, that’s …
Different styles. Different. Yeah. It’s just what you do. And there was a lot of time in between there that from what Officer Brecht did and what I what I had to do into that and … and he was still here. So it was still a lot where, we had to bring his stuff over and …
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To round out this episode, I wanted to just share with you some of what Det. Chimenti said in response to the feelings on the part of some family members that the police didn’t do enough.
_____________________TONY CHIMENTI_____________________
Well, I mean. It bothers me. In a … in a … in a fashion of being a father and being a parent of Janeane, just thinking of her. Because. I understand. I understand where she’s coming from. You know, at first, obviously there’s always the anger. I mean the … the stages that people go through, the trainings that I’ve gone through and all the things that I’ve seen, not just the trainings, just. In the 20 years I’ve been here, you know I’ve. I’ve gone through so many trainings I’ve … I’ve, I’ve finished my bachelors. I’ve earned my masters degree. I’ve gone through all those trainings. I’m a … I’m a chief deputy coroner. I’ve … I’ve done that since 2014. All the things that I’ve seen and done. And all of the stuff that I’ve gone through and all the different stages of grief that I’ve seen people go through. I just can’t imagine what she’s gone through.
(The closure aspect of it)
… exactly. And I went through everything with, went through to where they declared him dead. I went through that court hearing. I was sitting right next to her. I was sitting there in the courtroom with. And I had to testify in the courtroom to when they declared him dead. OK, I went with her and we had that rally and everything else here when they brought …
… CUE …
… Yeah. When they brought and I apologize, I just forgot her name when we brought her up, I got…
… Monica
… Monica Caison. Yes. Thank you very much. Monica Caison up from North Carolina and … and … And they came up and they and she was a great help. And … and she got hooked up with Monica and Monica was the best thing for her and helped her out. And you know, at First, Janeane, you know she. She did not like us, she did not. She, she said bad things. But of course that was the anger stage. That was she didn’t understand. But she understand. After that she understood what we were going through.
And it wasn’t just it wasn’t just me, it wasn’t anything else. She wasn’t mad at me. It was she was mad at. She was mad in general. Exactly. I never took offense to it. I never was mad. I still I’m not. I mean, I understand. I couldn’t imagine what she went through. And that’s the part that upsets you….
____________________________________________________________________________________
…man. As a mother, I’m struggling to write about Janeane. Mostly, because I don’t like to make comments on people I’ve never spoken with and to be absolutely clear, Janeane is only a source in this podcast insofar as a trail of interviews – some videos, some podcasts, but mostly in the local newspaper – like breadcrumbs. I used those newspaper stories to follow Janeane through this case, through 2018, when, as Tony describes, Janeane had Damien declared legally dead.
I cannot impress upon you enough that I sit here now, writing this, as I have sat here all year, bereft of a way to put myself into Janeane’s position over these past two decades. It’s very likely not an inability to do so at all, but rather the fiercest subconscious unwillingness for fear of being swallowed up into the ocean of anxiety that lies behind it.
I have ten year old twins. They just turned ten, on May 18. Of all days. The last day Dana ever heard from Damien.
Their birthday, this year, had a little tinge of something like grief for Janeane, mixed in with the typical celebratory tone of that day, for me.
I travel with my kids. We routinely visit another OG mom in my Two Moms Tribe, in New York State. I’ve packed two cranky six-year-olds up and driven them alone as far as Albany. I’m about to fly alone with them this summer.
I’m barely grown up enough to fly myself anywhere, so that should be a comical little shitshow.
Anyhow, when they were little and I’d take those road trips with them?
Every single time before we left, or at the first interstate outhouse we found along the way, if I forgot in the rush to get moving, you would find a series of several high definition photographs of my daughters’ faces, birthmarks, uniquely identifying features, and the clothes they were wearing including shoes, jewelry and accessories.
Front and side.
Little baby roadtrip mugshots you guys.
I’m a barrel of laughs as a mom. You bet.
The point is I live in abject terror every single day of becoming Liam Neeson in Taken but with none of the inexplicable super stealthy spy skills, or unlimited wealth, or chill. At all.
I’ve been this way since they were little. It had nothing to do with Damien ten years ago. My utter, utter fixation on the guy wasn’t even in my conscious awareness at that time, I don’t think.
It was because, culturally, 20 years ago, we were a society where kids rode their bikes until dusk and beyond throughout their neighborhoods, likely full of all manner of nefarious scoundrels that have to register on a list today, completely unshielded from any of it, yet by the grace of whatever deity you like, made it home every single night.
Today? Roadtrip mugshots.
Now, I’m conflating being 14 and riding my bike around the State Hospital campus with being 22 and looking for a pound of weed on the cusp of a holiday weekend, but really, those “fresh, newbie drinkers,” as Danica described herself and her friends that year?
They were just the next level of 14-year-olds on bikes in Warren County, weren’t they? Developmental milestones out the ass, major life changes. Moving out. Getting big kid jobs. Having kids, for some, like Steven Sharp, who was 20 that year.
21-year-olds with cars, riding around together – like Brian or I riding bikes with our friends – just looking for little adventures and maybe a tiny taste of trouble from time to time – recently unfettered by new levels of independence. First apartments. First serious relationships.
We grow up in stages, and it’s hard for me not to see how fragile anyone is at that age. I know I really stocked up on those “do as I say and not as I did” experiences in the decade between high school and kids. I’m gonna have so much ‘splainin to do when my kids hit 15 man. I need to start preparing a defense now, actually. Should get on that.
But look.
Yeah. Damien was a 22 year old army veteran who’d been to Bosnia and could’ve handled himself around Warren.
Had it not been for that knee….
But to who cared for Damien with any kind of parental warmth at all, that was Squeaky Boy out there missing and it must have felt like they were screaming their lungs bloody in a crowd of people who couldn’t hear them at all.
I documented my children’s current appearances during road trips in case we were separated at that interstate outhouse that, let’s face it, we were stopping at anyhow, so that police and the media could more easily disseminate them to the world which, I guess I assumed in my sweet, silly little new mom head, would stop.
For me.
And my missing children.
I mean I have better odds that Janeane. My children are girls, and that already puts them near the top of the line for most news editors. It’s not even intentionally ridiculous either, I don’t think, but when a man goes missing I think the media waits because we expect men to wander off from time to time. It’s expected. It’s not out of character.
For men.
So it must not be for your man, either.
As Dana said, during her interview, when it is your man, you want everyone’s attention.
I would stop the world to find my own kids. I know that for sure.
So to be living in a world that did not feel like it even blinked for Damien?
Biggest fear of my live as a mother. And I don’t think that will ever change. Even when they’re 102 and I’m anxiously lying dead in my grave, worrying over them.
Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp 