Police reserve officer always hot on a cold case

Deepa Bharath

He’s too jolly to be described as the city’s Sherlock Holmes.

His accent is nothing like Hercule Poirot’s.

And he’s much too macho to be compared with Miss Marple.

But Costa Mesa Reserve Officer Det. Paul Cappuccilli does possess

several qualities that these fictitious yet legendary crime solvers

possessed.

Persistence. Patience. Passion.

He seeks the thrill of a good fight. Not the physical one, but the

one posed by catastrophic situations and desperate circumstances.

Cappuccilli is one of the detectives in the department who is

trying to crack at least one of Costa Mesa’s unsolved murders.

“Sometimes, I just feel like tearing my hair out and banging my

head against the wall,” he says with a laugh.

“But,” he added earnestly. “I believe it’s all going to be worth

it. And I enjoy it.”

“Cap,” as he is affectionately called in the department, retired

four years ago. But the 55-year-old officer returned right away as a

reserve officer.

“I always enjoyed the investigative side of police work,” said

Cappuccilli, who started off investigating crimes against children

and retired after working several years as a patrol officer.

It was right before Cappuccilli retired that Lt. Ron Smith started

a cold case unit. The department pulled out cases unsolved since

1972.

“These cases were unsolved for a reason,” Cappuccilli said. “They

were put away because the detectives had run out of leads.”

And the challenges multiply dramatically as the years pass.

Evidence deteriorates. Witnesses lose their memory, move out of town

or die.

What jolts these cases back to life is new technology, Cappuccilli

said.

“We have so many advancements in computer-aided technology,” he

said. “We can now analyze DNA and ballistics like we weren’t able to

do 25 years ago.”

Cappuccilli said he cannot go into details of the cases he is

investigating now, but he said he has come pretty close to solving a

case recently.

The investigation took him out of state, where he tried to

interview the suspect, he said.

Cappuccilli believed the man was linked to the murder, but he had

no evidence to prove it.

Still, he had to try.

“I was hoping and praying that he would confess,” he said. “But he

didn’t. Instead, he said halfway through our interview that he wanted

to talk to his attorney. That’s where that ended.”

Dead ends are to be expected while investigating such cases,

Cappuccilli said.

But it gets tough when he has to call a grieving family member and

tell them that he was unsuccessful.

“I hated making that call to that victim’s mother and telling her

I wasn’t successful,” he said. “But all she told me was: “You’re my

only hope, Detective Cap. Don’t give up yet.’”

And that’s what does it for him.

“I was this person’s last hope,” he said. “There’s no one else to

answer to the families. When I first called this woman to tell her

we’ve reopened the case, she went hysterical and said, ‘I thought

you’d forgotten about my baby.’”

The raw emotion is as hard to deal with as is the complex nature

of such cases, Cappuccilli said.

“It’s like a murder mystery,” he said. “You start in a small

circle and eliminate people as you go along. You look at alibis they

had or didn’t have.”

Except, these mysteries are all too real.

“And I have the time to sit back and look at them,” he said.

“Sometimes, little things get overlooked, which I may be able to

catch.”

He sits back and reads extensive documents and autopsy reports. In

several cases, the detectives who investigated them can’t be tracked

down.

“And I wrack my brain about why they didn’t do something a

particular way or why they didn’t pursue some leads,” Cappuccilli

said. “But sometimes, you just have to live with those unanswered

questions.”

Costa Mesa has solved only one unsolved crime since the cold case

unit was set up, Lt. Ron Smith said.

“But I’m so sure Cap is very close to cracking something,” he

said. “I can see it in his eyes. He has the dedication and the

passion it takes.”

Cappuccilli has taken cold cases “to an extreme,” Smith said. His

hard work won him Reserve Officer of the Year last year.

“He’s gone way, way beyond what an average detective would do,” he

said. “He’s like a bulldog. He sinks his teeth in and doesn’t let go.

He has stuck with cases that have run into brick wall after brick

wall.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at [email protected].