Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu Goes on the Defensive in a Desperate Attempt to Save His and Deputy Louie Puroll's Reputations

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu seemed unprepared for the intense national and local media scrutiny immediately thrust on him and his deputy, Louie Puroll, in the wake of our story "Pinalcchio".

Forensically examining just the bloody T-shirt won't prove definitively whether Louie Puroll is lying or telling the truth.

Sheriff Paul Babeu became a national media darling earlier this year after Deputy Louie Puroll (right) said he was shot in the desert by drug smugglers bearing AK-47 rifles.

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More About

• Louie Puroll
• Paul Babeu
• Todd Nelson
• Shootings
• Investigations

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Babeu, an anti-illegal immigrant spokesman of increasing national prominence since the famous April 30 shooting incident involving Puroll, attempted the following defenses after we published the results of our four-month investigation into the shooting, allegedly by drug-smuggling men of color (Latinos or Native Americans, according to the deputy's account):

• New Times is a "conspiracy theory publication" that favors leaps of logic over bona fide reporting techniques, and the newspaper rushed to judgment that the deputy was lying within hours after Puroll reported being shot. (To the contrary, we started questioning the deputy's account only after law enforcement sources from myriad agencies contacted us with concerns in the days after the incident. We then spent hundreds of hours — many of them in dialogue with Pinal County Sheriff's Office officials — analyzing every aspect of the complex case.)

• The paper went "expert shopping," perhaps even going so far as to "hire" forensic pathologists, psychiatrists, crime-scene experts, and private investigators quoted in the piece. (Neither "shopping" nor "hiring" of experts occurred. We contacted the best, most experienced pathologists we could find — and they weren't all in agreement on certain aspects of the evidence — and asked them to analyze the case.)

• That he has "reopened" the case by sending Deputy Puroll's bloody T-shirt to the Arizona Department of Public Safety to be scientifically analyzed for gunshot residue evidence and other signs of a contact or near-contact wound. The testing, Babeu continues to insist, will "put this matter to bed once and for all" by proving that Deputy Puroll was truthful about getting grazed in the left flank by a marijuana smuggler who fired an AK-47 assault rifle at him. (Babeu has not reopened the case, which would mean re-interviewing his deputy, asking a litany of unresolved questions, and looking into all aspects of the prior investigation. What Pinal County has done is send an evidentiary item — the T-shirt — to a state crime lab five months after the fact for evaluation. That shirt is but one component of the case, a piece of a much larger puzzle. The shirt alone isn't proof positive of whether the deputy is lying or has been truthful.)

• That he was "befuddled" by statements, made by a DPS spokesman at a news conference last week, that state detectives were surprised when Pinal County relegated the DPS to processing the Puroll crime scene rather than investigating the entire matter. (Babeu told the Associated Press after last Wednesday's news conference that he disagreed with the DPS for making negative statements "at a time that there's questions about a piece of evidence, and they weigh in and try to distance themselves and raise additional questions.

• That the PCSO concluded months ago "the incident occurred as Deputy Puroll reported it." (True enough. Sheriff Babeu and his detectives seemed to decide from the moment they heard the deputy's "I've been hit!" 911 call that he was telling the truth.)

The New Times investigation raised doubts about Deputy Puroll's story and questioned parts of Pinal County's investigation.

Among the issues:

• The shortage of expended shell casings at and near the desert crime scene that may have been fired by Puroll's alleged assailants (going by the deputy's own account).

• The inability of a quasi-cavalry of law enforcement officers by land and by air to ever locate the half-dozen smugglers (Puroll said he probably hit one of the bad guys with gunfire) or any of the five backpacks supposedly filled with marijuana that the deputy reported seeing.

• The deputy's improbable account to Pinal County investigators about not wearing his backpack during the "shoot-out." (It remains unclear whether he was carrying it for some reason when the smugglers supposedly opened fire on him or whether he took it off during the clash. The backpack, which surely would have been damaged by the bullet that struck Puroll just above his left kidney, had he been wearing it, showed no signs of getting hit by gunfire.)

• Puroll's "interview" with Pinal County criminal investigators, which was more of an uninterrupted monologue than a search for the truth by the detectives — no follow-up questions of substance and no quest for telling details that may have aided the investigation ensued.

• New Times quoted nationally known forensic pathologists, some of whom concluded, on the basis of photographs, that Deputy Puroll's grazing wound was caused by a contact or near-contact shot from an undetermined caliber of bullet. Puroll, to the contrary, has told investigators that he was shot from at least 25 yards away.

• The angle of Puroll's wound, which was horizontal, does not mesh with the angle of the distinctly uphill shot from the first of at least two assailants the deputy described to investigators.

Sheriff Babeu continues to insist in interviews that his agency's chain of custody (paperwork that tracks the movement and location of physical evidence from the moment police obtain it) was followed in the Puroll case, specifically the bloody T-shirt.