October 31, 2026

A lot of the cases I get called into start the same way. An attorney has a new client, a charge or a claim, and discovery that hasn't arrived yet, so the investigation gets penciled in for later, once the picture is clearer. The trouble is that evidence keeps its own calendar. Camera systems record over themselves, witnesses move, and the person who saw everything starts remembering it a little differently each week.

I've been doing this work for more than nine years, and the cases where I come in early almost always give me more to work with. Starting early doesn't predict how a case will end, and it says a lot about how much is still out there to find.

Footage has a shelf life

Video is usually the first thing to go. Most business and home camera systems save to a fixed amount of storage and record over the oldest footage once it fills, and depending on the setup that can mean a few weeks or only a few days. A gas station, a parking garage, and a neighbor's doorbell camera each run on their own settings, and nobody at the front counter is watching the calendar for you.

When I'm brought in early, a big part of Research & Reconnaissance is a canvass. I walk the area, note every camera that might have caught something, and find out who controls that footage and how long they keep it. That gives the attorney time to decide on a preservation letter or a subpoena while the footage still exists, because once a system has recorded over the night in question, no letter brings it back.

Witnesses move, and memories drift

People get harder to find with every month that passes. They change numbers, move out of state, or stop answering calls they don't recognize. A witness who was easy to reach the week after an incident can take days of database work and door knocks to locate six months later, and some never turn up at all.

Memory runs on its own clock too. Details that were sharp in the first few days, like the color of a jacket, who arrived first, or what was said in the parking lot, get softer over time and start to blend with what a person has heard from others since. An early interview captures someone's account closer to the event, before it's been retold a dozen times.

The hardest interviews need the most lead time. Many witnesses in criminal cases have every reason to distrust anyone connected to the legal system, and I bring more than 20 years in mental health, addiction treatment, and social services into how I approach them. One defense attorney I work with wrote that my people skills have been "invaluable when interviewing hostile witnesses." That kind of trust gets built over several conversations, and there's room for that at the start of a case in a way there isn't two weeks before trial.

Records take longer than anyone plans for

Records feel permanent, and plenty of them aren't. Businesses keep receipts, time cards, and internal logs according to their own retention policies, and those policies don't care about your trial date. Transportation records, from transit data to ride-share trip history, often sit with companies that clear them out on a schedule.

Medical records are generally kept longer, but getting them still takes signed releases, the right paperwork, and follow-up calls, and a records department that runs slow on a normal day won't speed up because your deadline is close. Public records have their own waits. Court files, police reports, and 911 recordings each come through a request process with its own turnaround, and some recordings are only kept for a limited time. Sending those requests out early means the answers come back while there's still room to act on what they show.

Getting it on paper, then going back

Finding something early only helps if it's documented well enough to use. Every interview gets written up while it's fresh, every record request gets logged with the date it went out and the date it came back, and every clip of footage gets noted with where it came from and who handed it over. That's the Compilation step of T.R.A.C.E., where a pile of findings becomes a work product an attorney can stand behind in court.

Follow-up is the other half of it. A first interview points to a second witness, a record mentions a name nobody had, and a business owner who said the footage was gone remembers a backup drive. On one mitigation case with a Portland defense attorney, that kind of repeated digging became a 20+ page report she presented to the court at sentencing. A report like that is built from a lot of return trips to the same sources, and those trips need room on the calendar.

When to make the call

The best time to bring an investigator in is close to when you take the case, even if the scope is still loose. An early consultation is where we set the target, sort out what's most likely to disappear first, and decide what to chase. Starting early won't change what the facts turn out to be (I report what I find, whether it helps or not), and it gives you the best chance of reaching them while they're still there.

If you're a criminal defense or civil attorney in the Portland area and a case just landed on your desk, I'm glad to talk it through with you, and every case I take, I handle personally from that first conversation through the final report. Contact me at (971) 570-8676 or [email protected] so we can get started early.