FBI NEVER INTERVIEWED KEY OFFICIAL IN LENGTHY PROBE OF COP DEATH
For 1 ½ years, FBI probed mysterious death of officer but didn’t try to speak with key official
In a case the FBI believes involved the murder of an off- duty Chicago cop, the federal agency brought in an outside pathologist, it met with the Cook County medical examiner’s staff in a failed effort to reverse a suicide finding, and it interviewed more than two dozen members of the Chicago Police Department.
But the FBI didn’t interview one key police figure in the course of its extraordinary, year- and- a- half- long examination of the 2015 shooting death of Sgt. Donald Markham — Kevin Duffin, the commander overseeing the detectives who determined Markham shot himself in the head.
An FBI task force didn’t try to speak with Duffin even after learning he’d had a personal relationship with Markham’s widow, Officer Dina Markham— who reported finding her husband dead after arguing with him following a night out drinking, according to records examined by the Chicago Sun- Times and interviews.
As the FBI was investigating Donald Markham’s death, his widow was found dead in her bathtub on May 28, 2017, in what the medical examiner determined to be an accidental drowning after ingesting alcohol and pills, though she’d threatened suicide.
The day of Dina Markham’s death, Duffin told detectives on the scene that he’d gotten a personal textmessage from Dina Markham hours earlier. That was one of many texts they had exchanged as part of what the Police Department has described as a personal relationship, the Sun- Times previously has reported. Duffin told detectives they’d been exchanging text messages for about six months — about the time the FBI began investigating her husband’s death.
Duffin was the only cop involved in the death investigation of Donald Markham on the day of his death who wasn’t interviewed by the FBI task force, sources tell the Sun- Times.
Duffin has had a professional friendship with FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Brown, an FBI agent for nearly three decades, who heads the task force, sources say.
According to Brown’s online LinkedIn profile, he oversees FBI agents and Chicago cops assigned to the Chicago FBI Homicide Task Force, providing “ongoing assistance to state and local police departments in cold- case homicides and gang- related homicides.”
More than a year after Donald Markham died, the FBI got a tip that he hadn’t killed himself and assigned the case to Brown’s task force — made up of two federal agents and two Chicago Police detectives.
Brown says FBI policy prevents him from commenting. Chicago FBI spokeswoman Janine Wheeler won’t comment. Duffin could not be reached.
At the time of Donald Markham’s death, Duffin was Area North commander, overseeing all detectives on the North Side and Northwest Side, including the Old Norwood Park neighborhood where the Markhams lived.
Duffin didn’t go to the scene of Donald Markham’s death. He left the investigation in the hands of a top aide, Lt. Denis P. Walsh, who texted Duffin at 4: 35 a. m. on Sept. 2, 2015 — about 90 minutes after Dina Markham had called 911 to report her husband had been shot.
“Call me so I can give you better direction d [ sic],” Walsh texted Duffin, according to police records.
An hour after Duffin got that message, Walsh and three other cops put Donald Markham’s body in a police wagon to the morgue. According to the medical examiner’s office, that agency hadn’t yet been notified of the death, which would be a violation of police policy and a county ordinance.
At Walsh’s direction, the police put the bloody mattress on which Donald Markham’s body was found in another wagon, which took it to be dumped in the alley behind the Jefferson Park police station. The mattress was hauled away by a city garbage crew within hours.
City Hall’s inspector general’s office continues to investigate the Police Department’s handling of the Markham investigations, which also were marked by a number of other irregularities. Among them:
† A police official at the scene of Donald Markham’s death told the Sun- Times he was surprised to see Walsh in charge of the case given that hewas under internal investigation over his role in the Police Department’s mishandling of the investigation into the death of David Koschman at the hands of then- Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R. J.”