The Search Warrant That Found None of What It Sought

In May 2012, Detective Morgan Lawton of the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations obtained a warrant authorizing police to search my home in Winooski, Vermont.

The warrant did not describe a general search for ordinary household evidence. It identified an extraordinary and bizarrely specific collection of objects that investigators had apparently been led to expect they would find inside my home.

They found none of them.

What Investigators Were Told to Look For

The warrant authorized investigators to search for items including:

  • Duct tape
  • Rope
  • Candy with faces printed on it
  • Gummy worms and gummy sharks
  • Costumes and tails
  • Sausage
  • Photographs of my son nude or in costume
  • Pajamas with holes cut in the backside
  • A camping shower
  • A ball described as being an appropriate size to fit inside a child’s mouth

This was not a vague list. The descriptions were unusually detailed. Investigators entered my home with judicial authority to search for objects that had been tied to deeply disturbing allegations against me.

None of Those Items Was Found

Not one of the bizarrely specific items identified in the warrant appears in the inventory filed after the search.

No photographs of the kind described in the warrant were found. No altered pajamas were found. No costumes or tails were found. No camping shower was found. No ball fitting the description in the warrant was found.

The warrant records what investigators had been authorized to search for. The inventory records the personal property they actually took from my home.

Those two documents tell very different stories.

What Police Took From My Home

Although investigators did not find the alleged objects described in the warrant, they did not simply leave. They seized personal property from my home and listed it in the inventory returned after the search.

The word recovered would be misleading. This was not stolen property being returned to an owner. It was my property, removed from my home by investigators acting under the authority of a warrant built around allegations that the search itself failed to substantiate.

The Warrant and the Inventory Must Be Read Together

A search warrant shows what investigators believed, or claimed to have probable cause to believe, would be found. The inventory shows what the search actually produced.

Here, the contrast is the story.

Item Described in the Warrant Found During the Search
Duct tape and rope connected to the allegations No
Candy with faces printed on it No
Gummy worms and gummy sharks No
Costumes and tails No
Photographs of my son nude or in costume No
Pajamas with holes cut in the backside No
Camping shower No
Ball described as fitting inside a child’s mouth No

Why This Search Matters

The search warrant marked an early and serious escalation in the campaign of allegations surrounding my family. Police entered my home searching for an extraordinary collection of supposed evidence. The search failed to produce any of it.

That did not undo the invasion of my home. It did not return the property investigators took. It did not erase the allegations that had already been placed into official records. And it did not prevent those allegations from continuing to influence what happened afterward.

But the warrant and inventory preserve one essential fact:

Investigators searched my home for the specific objects described in the allegations, and none of those objects was found.

Primary Source: Search Warrant and Inventory

The complete warrant and inventory are embedded below so readers can compare what investigators were authorized to seek with what they actually documented after searching my home.

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