Return to Media Excerpts Archive


The Prying Game Under New Rules
Newsweek September 5, 1994

Trends: As police get swamped, more crime victims and their families are turning to private investigators for fee-for-service justice

"The case began like many of them. A phone call. From a distressed millionaire woman, in Paris. 'I want to know who killed by niece and I want to know it before I get back to the United States,' the woman told Los Angeles private eye Logan Clarke...The police were on the case but Clarke was dismissive. 'They had the same intensity that I have when I go to the pool," he sniffed. Clarke assigned no fewer than 12 of his investigators to the case. In three days, he later bragged, 'we told the police who did it, why it was done.' Indeed, on Clarke's evidence, the family says, an 18-year-old pregnant girl was found guilty of killing the niece in what was described as a drug deal gone wrong. The perp sits on death row."

"Sam Spade and Logan Clarke aside, most private investigators really don't spend their days solving high-profile murders."

Return to Media Excerpts Archive