In 2008, Long Beach homicide detective
Brian Joseph McMahon was awarded the prestigious title of Investigator of the Year
by the California Homicide Investigators Association. McMahon has been involved
in hundreds of cases, mainly homicides. Today he is accused of manufacturing
evidence in a 1995 murder investigation, raising questions in hundreds of
related cases.
In 1995, Detective McMahon and Estella
Martinez were assigned to investigate the murder of Ed Weinmann, who was shot
and killed in Long Beach. Paul Denham became a person of interest. However, on
the day of the murder, Paul was in San Francisco and his name did not appear on
any flight manifests.
But McMahon and Martinez both filed
reports alleging they obtained a document from Paul’s belongings, four days
after the murder, that bore the names South-West and Delta airlines, along with
their phone numbers, clearly inferring that Paul contacted airlines to arrange
a flight.
At the time of Paul’s 1998 trial, McMahon
and Martinez had suppressed the document from the discovery file and a copy was
not disclosed to the defence, neither was it introduced into trial. But that
didn’t stop McMahon
from testifying to its discovery and contents. Paul couldn’t explain how
detectives discovered the document, and he was subsequently convicted and
sentenced to life without parole.
In 2014, a copy of the document was
disclosed to Paul. According to a court certified handwriting expert, a retired
Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) forensic handwriting expert, it is “highly
probable” that McMahon
authored the document and Paul is “eliminated” as a possible author.
On August 27, 2014, LBPD initiated an
investigation into this matter. (Log No. CIT2014-0143). Thereafter, the City of
Long Beach Citizen Police Complaint Commission scheduled a public hearing for
November 12, 2015. (CPCC 15-175.) To date, no findings have been announced.
In July 2012, McMahon retired as a LBPD detective,
some 17 years following the alleged manufacture of critical evidence. His
extensive career contributed to hundreds of convictions. Today, each and every
one of these cases becomes tainted and potentially reversible if any material
evidence was gathered/handled/introduced into trial by these detectives and
influenced the conviction.
Shaun Attwood
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