Cannon Airmen help police catch murder suspect

  • Published
  • By Keith Pannell
  • 27th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFPN) --  Like a scene out of the TV series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” two multimedia flight Airmen here helped local law enforcement officials solve a grisly murder recently.

Senior Airman Michael Garza and Airman 1st Class Tiffany Curbeam, both of the 27th Communications Squadron, answered their buzzing pagers and stepped into a world that included murder, arson, kidnapping and theft.

“I was on call that night, and I received a call from (Office of Special Investigations) to come to the office,” said Airman Garza, a video specialist. “I had no idea what the call was about when I got there, but I did what they asked me to do.”

What OSI agents, local investigators and New Mexico State Police agents wanted was help identifying a suspect in a double murder in which an elderly couple was robbed, kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk of their car, which was then set on fire on a county road.

“We’ve got a great working relationship with the base,” said Agent Joshua Armijo, of the New Mexico State Police criminal investigation division. “We’ve worked with them before on various things and, when we needed their help, they were there.”

All Airman Garza had to work with was a grainy, time-lapse recording from an automated teller machine camera.

“The problem with those machines is the tape gets reused over and over,” Airman Garza said. “It wasn’t too hard to do, but the quality of the tape made finding just the right image, the one they wanted, tough.”

The video was recorded at a slightly different speed than normal surveillance video, which records at about a frame every three seconds, he said. He had to use some finesse to “freeze” the exact image the law enforcement officials wanted.

“I was intrigued by the whole process,” Airman Garza said. “They were explaining what they would do with the photo if they could get a clean image, and I liked being part of that process. It didn’t dawn on me exactly how important it was until I saw the photo we created the next day in the media.”

Once Airman Garza had captured the best image possible, he put it on a disk and passed it off to Airman Curbeam, a photographer, who took the frozen image and put the multimedia photo software to work.

“It was really dark since the guy hit the ATM at night,” she said. “I had to lighten it, sharpen it and clear it up without overdoing it and making his face unrecognizable.”

Yet, the Airmen were able to make the face in the image as clear and crisp as possible. Agent Armijo passed the photo out to area media and started receiving phone calls and leads in the case almost immediately.

“The assistance we got from those two Airmen gave us a huge break in the case,” Agent Armijo said. “They enhanced the video and gave us a great photo. We had the suspect in custody in less than 48 hours.”

In the final image handed out to the local media, the suspect can be seen looking squarely into the camera with a hood covering the top half of his face. The suspect was taken into custody after a shootout with police within 48 hours of when the Airmen started work on the video tape.

The suspect has since been charged with two counts of capital murder along with counts of assault on a police officer, kidnapping and tampering with evidence.

Two other people also have been charged in the case.

“Helping find this guy made me feel good,” Airman Garza said. “It really gave my job a lot of meaning.”

“As I worked on that photo, I was amazed that I was looking at a (suspected) killer,” Airman Curbeam said. “I didn’t want to mess it up. This was certainly different than taking pictures at a retirement ceremony.”