Sharon Pagaling-Hagan

•It is difficult to pick the worst investigative moment in the case of Janet Kovacich's disappearance, but it was likely the minute that Sharon Pagaling-Hagan became involved.  Although Auburn PD's use of psychics was terrible, and embarrassing for Auburn PD, at least their advice was met with some skepticism and caution--not taken as scientific fact. 

•There is nothing about "profiling" that can be replicated or objectively tested.  Profiles have proven to be so inaccurate that investigators have been directed away from the correct suspect, or have wrongly pursued innocent men. Unfortunately, police often believe that they are relying upon objective science, and give too much weight to the "profiler's" opinion. 

•Pagaling-Hagan was first brought into the case by Ron Eason in 1997:

TRANSCRIPTION:

Rebecca and I met with DOJ Special Agents: Mike PRODAN, supervisor and Criminal Investigative Profiler; Sharon PAGALING and Rick SINOR. We met for three hours and reviewed the case. They suggested interviewing all of Janet's relatives and friends to get as complete a picture o her as possible. We can then determine how to approach the kids. Suggested I tell Paul that I'm swamped with cases and won't be able to devote time I'd anticipated to the case. I'd just like to leave the door open to later contact. They provided questionnaires to assist with our interviews. 

•Auburn PD Ron Eason was suspended, and off the case in December, 1997. Unfortunately, the damage was done. Pagaling-Hagan had already "profiled" Paul Kovacich as the person responsible for Janet's disappearance, and set in motion the plan to tamper with the case witnesses, and use their new interview "memories" as evidence to obtain a criminal indictment against Paul. 

• In December 2000, Janet's case was back in the hands of Pagaling-Hagan's profiling unit. Former Auburn PD detective Dan Boon (who was by then the Chief of Pismo Beach PD) presented the case to the annual CalDOJ “Cold Case” seminar. 

•Once again, instead of asking the group for input on all possible suspects to be investigated--including known serial offenders, Boon told them that he just needed help getting together a criminal case against Paul. He gave the same slide presentation he had given Eason in the 1990s, and omitted everything that pointed to a stranger abduction. 

•The group's “Suggestions” became a “To-Do” list that was designed to rip apart, and destroy the Kovacich family. It was also a plan to commit perjury, witness tampering, and a criminal conspiracy:

California Penal Code §182 Conspiracy:

  (a) If two or more persons conspire:

(2) Falsely and maliciously to indict another for any crime, or to procure another to be charged or arrested for any crime.

Falsifying Evidence, and Bribing, Influencing, Intimidating or Threatening Witnesses

California Penal Code §133:   Every person who practices any fraud or deceit, or knowingly makes or exhibits any false statement, representation, token, or writing, to any witness or person about to be called as a witness upon any trial, proceeding, inquiry, or investigation whatever, authorized by law, with intent to affect the testimony of such witness, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

California Penal Code §137:  (b) Every person who attempts by...use of fraud to induce any person to give false testimony or withhold true testimony or to give false material information pertaining to a crime to a law enforcement official is guilty of a felony.

•The main targets of the CalDOJ witness tampering plan were Kristi and John Kovacich--Janet's grown children.

•Kristi and John were interviewed alone by law enforcement starting a few days after Janet disappeared, and multiple times over the next several years after their grandmother filed complaints and lawsuits against Paul's custody of them:

•Both children repeatedly told law enforcement, social workers, a child psychologist, and the court that they: 

--knew of no fighting between their parents; 

--had no idea where Janet was, but stated that they and their father believed that she was still alive; and, 

--they witnessed both the incident with Fuzz and the garbage, and his death at the veterinarian weeks later. Neither they nor Janet believed anything other than that Fuzz had been poisoned by a stranger in their yard on Forest Court a day or two before he died--exactly as the vet had told them. 

•They described Janet as being afraid of her parents, especially her father, and stated that they felt stressed by their grandmother's actions after Janet disappeared. 

•Police, social workers, a child psychologist, and a judge had questioned Kristi and John alone for three full years after Janet's disappearance. Their memories and statements never changed, and were on the record. They were always found to be honest, truthful, and unguarded in their answers.

Based solely upon Sharon Pagaling-Hagan's "profiles" of the Kovacich family, and the written CalDOJ plan, Auburn PD became convinced that Kristi and John had lied, or withheld information about Janet's disappearance:

•All parties agreed that on September 8, 1982, the children said goodbye to Janet at the front door, and then walked to the car with their carpool driver. When they arrived home, Paul asked the carpool driver if she had seen Janet, and when the answer was "no," he commented that she must be with her mother. 

•There is no question that the children were at school when Janet disappeared, and spent the night on the couch with Paul waiting for Janet. She was reported missing to Aubun PD first thing the next morning. 

•Whatever happened to Janet occurred while Kristen and John were at school, and there was no way for them to have any direct knowledge of the events. 

•Kristi and John had grown up in Auburn, completed college, and in 2005, had professional careers and partners. Like Janet had been, Kristi and John were both close to Paul's elderly parents. They had helped care for their grandchildren after Janet disappeared, and still lived in the same house at Lake of the Pines. 

•Paul had retired from PCSO, was working as a licensed private investigator, and in a 20 years relationship with Dixie King, a PCSO/DA major crimes investigator. 

•Sharon Pagaling-Hagan had convinced Auburn PD, CalDOJ, and the FBI that Paul's children, parents, and partner had direct knowledge--and could provide evidence that Paul and killed Janet. They were either covering for him out of fear, or misplaced loyalty because they didn't believe that he was a killer. 

•The arrest, search, and wire tap warrants needed to execute CalDOJ's plan were based almost exclusively upon Pagaling-Hagan's opinion "profile" of the Kovacich family members:

•At this point, Janet's case was a disappearance with no physical evidence other than the broken window--which was never collected or tested by CalDOJ.  Sharon Pagaling-Hagan convinced Auburn PD of two things:

1. Paul had buried Janet under his parents' driveway or garage; and,

2. That if Paul's children and parents were intentionally fed lies about the evidence, and threatened with criminal prosecution they would "turn" on Paul, make new witness statements, and/or cause Paul to make incriminating statements they could capture on wiretaps of the family's phone lines.

•Auburn PD reserve officer Jerry Johnson used Pagaling-Hagan's "expert" opinion as the basis for obtaining the warrant to dig up the parents' property, and place the wire taps:

•Pagaling-Hagan based her "expert" opinion that Paul was guilty of killing Janet solely upon one short excerpt of Paul's interview with Auburn PD and PCSO investigators in September, 1982. 

Paul was explaining that Janet had been complaining about her parents' marriage and their own, and he asked her directly if she wanted a divorce, but never got a clear answer:

•Pagaling-Hagan claimed that Paul's use of the phrases "beat her to the punch" and "push her in a corner" were a confession from Paul, and proof that he murdered Janet in that manner in the house, and buried her at his parent's home so he could maintain control of her after death. 

•Pagaling-Hagan's expert "profiler" opinion was that the person who killed Janet would use that type of  language--Paul said those things--therefore, Paul was the killer. It wouldn't have mattered what statement or behavior Auburn PD had given her, Pagaling-Hagan would have always said it was consistent with the person who killed Janet. She made up the killer's profile, and then said law enforcement's suspect was a perfect fit.

•In 2001--FOUR YEARS before her profile of Paul was used in his case--A California Appeals Court had already overturned a conviction based solely upon Pagaling-Hagan's junk science "profile" testimony, and they explained the inescapable bias inherant in her opinions:

--A profile is a collection of conduct and characteristics commonly displayed by those who commit a certain crime: a listing of characteristics that in the opinion of law enforcement officers are typical of a person engaged in a specific illegal activity. Profile evidence is generally inadmissible to prove guilt. Profile evidence is inherently prejudicial because it requires the jury to accept an erroneous starting point in its consideration of the evidence. The syllogism underlying profile evidence is that criminals act in a certain way; the defendant acted that way; therefore, the defendant is a criminal. Guilt flows ineluctably from the major premise through the minor one to the conclusion. 

The problem is that the major premise is faulty. It implies that criminals, and only criminals, act in a given way. In fact, certain behavior may be consistent with both innocent and illegal behavior, as the People's expert conceded here. 

•Paul's phrase choices were likely common among males in 1982, and especially with sergeants in command of the county jail staff, and inmates. The interview had been conducted by two of Paul's male co-workers, and they were speaking to each other with a lot of cop bravado--showing no weakness or emotion. 

•Pagaling-Hagan told law enforcement investigators that her training gave her the power to know who was guilty and who was innocent, and she offered to predict behavior. She told police exactly what she "imagined" the suspect had done in the past, and what he would do in the future by seeing into the suspect's mind. Despite the prior 2001 appeals court ruling banning Pagaling-Hagan's evidence, the Placer County judge granted all of the requested search and wire tap warrants. 

•Pagaling-Hagan was then called in to train Auburn PD officers on operating a wire tap. She also directed them on conducting the "misinformation" interviews so they would generate family upset, and then discussions on the wire taps. 

•Somehow, Pagaling-Hagan also convinced the investigators that if they put GPS tracking on the Kovacich family vehicles, and conducted surveillance they would catch them doing something incriminating:

•After a long day of waiting for Paul Kovacich to do something they could use as evidence against him--23 years after Janet disappeared--the surveillance team finally found him:

•It is hardly a surprise to see CalDOJ's Sharon Pagaling-Hagan in the middle of the conspiracy against Janet's children. Pagaling-Hagan was the agency's top "profiler," and her junk science opinions infected many criminal cases in the early 2000s.

•When the memo was written in 2000, Pagaling-Hagan had a BA in Government from Sacramento State, and had taken some classes in "Counseling and Psychology" from Chapman College in 1976-77. 

•Her work experience from 1977-87 was as a juvenile probation officer for Placer County (where she worked with Joe DeAngelo and Sharon Huddle).

•From 1987-2000 she had worked for CalDOJ in their narcotic's enforcement bureau, violent crimes, and "profiling unit." 

•During these years, Pagaling-Hagan became convinced that she could listen to a tape of a person, and know whether or not they were lying. She basically held herself out to law enforcement investigators as a human lie detector. 

•In 2001, Pagaling-Hagan's "expert" witness testimony at trial, was the sole cause of the conviction reversal in People v. Robbie, and the court had a lot to say about her experience, methods, and the junk science of "criminal profiling" she claimed as her expertise:

Pagaling supervises the Violent Crime Profiling Unit in the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. Half of her caseload involves crimes with unknown perpetrators. Her unit analyzes the available facts to determine an offender's personality and lifestyle, thus narrowing the scope of the investigation. 

The remainder of Pagaling's caseload involves known criminals. She might, for example, evaluate an offender who had committed certain crimes to ascertain if he might also be responsible for other unsolved ones.

Every defendant has a right to be tried based on the evidence against him or her, not on the techniques utilized by law enforcement officials in investigating criminal activity.

--Pagaling maintained the impermissible syllogism; she simply varied the major premise to match defendant, then varied the minor premise to prove guilt rather than innocence. Pagaling described defendant's conduct as the "most prevalent type of behavior that I've seen with sex offenders." While never characterized as such, this was inadmissible profile evidence.  The effect of Pagaling's testimony was not to help the jury objectively evaluate the prosecution's evidence, but to guide the jury to the conclusion that defendant was guilty because he fit the profile. 

--The error was not harmless. 

...the trial court erred in permitting Pagaling to testify about offenders' thought processes. These observations far exceeded the scope of the expert's proffered testimony. Further, the record did not demonstrate the witness was qualified to testify about the motivations or cognitive processes of those whose behavior she observed.

People v Robbie, 2001

•The 2000 CalDOJ memo being followed by Auburn PD during the 2005 investigation assigned a very specific set of tasks to Pagaling-Hagan:

Have Sharon Pagaling interview the children. Cognitive interview, forensic hypnosis.

•Obviously, as the court pointed out in 2001, she was "not qualified to testify about the motivations or •cognitive• processes of those whose behaviors she observed," yet the plan to directly lie, and feed misinformation about the evidence to Kristi and John Kovacich went ahead in 2005. 

•Perhaps even more shocking, the California Supreme Court had ruled in 1982, (People v. Shirley , 31 Cal.3d 18), that hypnotized witnesses were unreliable, and could not testify in court: 

“any person who has been hypnotized for investigative purposes will not be allowed to testify as a witness to the events that were the subject of the hypnotic session. It would fly in the face of that consensus to allow a witness to be the judge of which portions of his testimony were actually produced by hypnosis. A witness who has been hypnotized for the purpose of improving his memory is so contaminated that he is thereafter incompetent to testify.”

The California Rules of Evidence now allow a witness who was hypnotized after making a statement to testify only about their original statement, but not unless the later hypnosis was conducted by a licensed mental health professional, and not a member of law enforcement, or in their presence:

California Evidence Code 795 (3)(D) The hypnosis was performed by a licensed physician and surgeon, psychologist, licensed clinical social worker, licensed marriage and family therapist, or licensed professional clinical counselor experienced in the use of hypnosis and independent of and not in the presence of law enforcement, the prosecution, or the defense.

•As the court pointed out in 2001, Pagaling-Hagan held none of those professional licenses, and had been a member of law enforcement since 1977. Additionally, the hypnosis plan was being directed by the FBI, CalDOJ, and Auburn PD.

•Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, hypnosis was very popular with law enforcement. It always seemed create new "memories" that pointed directly to their favorite suspect or theory, and shored up circumstantial cases that had no physical evidence--like Janet's disappearance. 

•The 1982 Shirley court was clear, hypnosis did not retrieve buried memories, it just created new false ones, and the witness lost the ability to know which memories were real, and which had been planted by the police:

The principal proponent of hypnotically aided recall is a police department psychologist, Martin Reiser, Ed.D. According to his published writings, Dr. Reiser operates on the belief that human memory is like a videotape machine that (1) faithfully records, as if on film, every perception experienced by the witness, (2) permanently stores such recorded perceptions in the brain at a subconscious level, and (3) accurately "replays" them in their original form when the witness is placed under hypnosis and asked to remember them. 

With minor variations, this belief -- or assumption -- is apparently shared by police psychologists and "hypnotechnicians" at all levels of law enforcement, and serves as the theory on which such personnel base their practice of hypnotizing potential witnesses to improve their recall of crime-related events.

The professional literature, however, rejects this belief: the scientists who work in the field generally agree that, as Dr. Schafer testified at trial, the memory does not act like a videotape recorder, but rather is subject to numerous influences that continuously alter its content. This view has been expressed at least since the pioneer study of Sir Frederic C. Bartlett of Cambridge University, published a half-century ago. 

During the time between an event and a witness’ recollection of that event—a period often called the ‘retention interval’—the bits and pieces of information that were acquired through perception do not passively reside in memory waiting to be pulled out like fish from water. Rather, they are subject to numerous influences. External information provided from the outside can intrude into the witness' memory, as can his own thoughts, and both can cause dramatic changes in his recollection.

A number of influences can cause a memory to change during the retention interval without the witness’ awareness: 

- The witness may ‘compromise’ the memory with a subsequently learned, but inconsistent fact; 

-he may ‘incorporate’ into the memory a nonexistent object or event casually mentioned by a third party, e.g., in later questioning; 

-Post-event information may change the way the witness ‘feels’ about the original incident, e.g., may affect his impression of how noisy, or how violent it was; 

-Because a witness is under great social pressure to be complete and accurate he may fill gaps in his memory by guessing, and thereafter ‘recall’ those guesses as part of the memory; and, 

-If the witness is subjected to repeated questioning, any erroneous statement he made early on may be ‘frozen into’ the memory and reappear later as a fact. 

There is no way to tell, moreover, whether any given detail recalled by the witness comes from his original perception, or from external information that he subsequently acquired.

In the stage of the process known as ‘retrieval,’ the accuracy of the witness’ memory may be adversely affected by outside factors even as he recalls it: 

-the witness may subconsciously tailor his recall to conform to expectations implied by the person questioning him; 

-those expectations may be conveyed, intentionally or not, either by such conduct of the questioner as tone of voice, emphasis, pauses, facial expression and other ‘body language,’ or by the particular method of interview used or precise form of question asked; and,

-the witness may be more likely to respond to such cues if the questioner is a status figure (e.g., a doctor or a law enforcement official) than if he is merely a passerby inquiring what happened.

There is no clear correlation between the witness’ confidence in the accuracy of his recall and its accuracy in fact:  indeed, studies have shown that in some circumstances people can be more confident about their wrong answers than their right ones. To be cautious, one should not take high confidence as an absolute guarantee of anything.

The final distorting influence on memory retrieval, is a well-documented phenomenon:  Most people, including eyewitnesses, are motivated by a desire to be correct, to be observant, and to avoid looking foolish. People want to give an answer, to be helpful, and many will do this at the risk of being incorrect. People want to see crime solved and justice done, and this desire may motivate them to volunteer more than is warranted by their meager memory. The line between valid retrieval and unconscious fabrication is easily crossed.

The person under hypnosis experiences a compelling desire to please the hypnotist by reacting positively to these suggestions, and hence to produce the particular responses he believes are expected of him. Because of this compulsion, when asked to recall an event while under direct suggestion of heightened memory (‘hypermnesia’), he is unwilling to admit that he cannot do so or that his recollection is uncertain or incomplete. Instead, he will produce a ‘memory' of the event that may be compounds of:

 -relevant actual facts;

 -irrelevant actual facts taken from an unrelated prior experience of the subject;

-fantasized material (‘confabulations’) unconsciously invented to fill gaps in the story; and,

-conscious lies—all formulated in as realistic a fashion as he can.

The likelihood of such self-deception is increased by another effect of hypnosis, i.e., that it significantly impairs the subject's critical judgment and causes him to give credence to memories so vague and fragmentary that he would not have relied on them before being hypnotized.

A witness who is uncertain of his recollections before being hypnotized will become convinced by that process that the story he told under hypnosis is true and correct in every respect. This effect is enhanced by two techniques commonly used by lay hypnotists: 

-before being hypnotized the subject is told (or believes) that hypnosis will help him to ‘remember very clearly everything that happened’ in the prior event, and/or,

-during the trance he is given the suggestion that after he awakes he will ‘be able to remember’ that event equally clearly and comprehensively.

Finally, the effect not only persists, but the witness’ conviction of the absolute truth of his hypnotically induced recollection grows stronger each time he is asked to repeat the story; by the time of trial, the resulting ‘memory' may be so fixed in his mind that traditional legal techniques such as cross-examination, may be largely ineffective to expose its unreliability.

People v. Shirley, 1982

•Why was Sharon Pagaling-Hagan still doing profiling, *cognitive* interviews, and hypnosis after the Robbie court had called her unqualified, and both the Robbie and Shirley courts had called her methods unscientific, unreliable, and banned them from California courtrooms? It is a total legal mystery.

•If Paul Kovacich had minimally competent public defenders the entire case would have been thrown out prior to trial, but none of these issues were ever raised with the judge. Court rulings on junk science opinions, and witness tampering are useless if defense counsel doesn't object, and make sure the jury never hears about them. 

•Pagaling-Hagan's methods were harmful to the truth in multiple important criminal cases, but her offender profiles based upon crime scene analysis were maybe much of a failure. 

•At CalDOJ Sharon Pagaling-Hagan was asked to create a criminal "profile" of the East Area Rapist, and in 2001, she was part of the EAR work group that tried to identify DeAngelo:

•From 1977-1987 Pagaling-Hagan worked as a Placer County Juvenile Probation Officer, and until Sharon Huddle became an attorney in 1982, the two women worked together in the Placer County Juvenile division. From 1977-79 Pagaling-Hagan also worked with Joseph James Deangelo, Jr.-- an Auburn PD officer taking arrestees to Juvenile Hall, and then testifying about those cases in juvenile court. 

•California's top criminal "profiler" failed to identify that the East Area Rapist was the husband of a co-worker, and a police officer she  knew while he was most actively offending.

•In her public statement after DeAngelo's arrest, Sharon Huddle made a point of saying that she had worked at Juvenile Hall during his crime spree. Even if it wasn't an intentional dig at Pagaling Hagan, it pointed out an embarrassing fact--"profilers" are no better than the average person at guessing the identity of serial killers. 

•Sharon Pagaling-Hagan's failed analysis of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker/Cul-De-Sac Killer also completley missed the MO shared by that unknown offender, and the Auburn-Folsom Road cases (PG&E, Kovacich, Norris, Lloyd, Martin, Wanner, and Hawkley).  

•When Pagaling-Hagan saw: the poisoned dog; broken window/replaced screen; missing purse; kidnapping after being left alone; a .38 revolver with JHP rounds; and, a petite brunette in her 20s taken from suburban house at the end of a cul-de-sac backing onto a canal, why didn't she recognize them as critical and unique EAR MO points? Wasn't that entire point of her job as a criminal profiler?

•By the middle of 2005, every one of the actions items on the confidential 2000 CalDOJ memo were executed—ultimately leading to no physical evidence implicating Paul, or new information from Kristi and John Kovacich. Nothing that Sharon Pagaling-Hagan had predicted or promised had been true:

•It wasn't until several years later that the criminal case against Paul Kovacich was revived through the supposed "kinship" match between the Rollins Lake Skull and Janet's children. The facts that the mtDNA testing of the skull was never turned over to the defense, and previous testing had eliminated Janet were simply ignored by the public defenders.

As the criminal case against Paul Kovacich was moving towards charges and a trial, Sharon Pagaling-Hagan was brought in to profile the Zodiac killer for a documentary accompanying David Fincher's fictionalized film "Zodiac." She appeared in the finished Zodiac documentary reviewing evidence with Lake Berryessa survivor Bryan Hartnell, but her extended thoughts on the identity of Zodiac were only included on the DVD as an extra:

Apparently, this offender didn't remind her of any other she had ever "profiled."