South Texas Calendar
Nice Guy, Private Eye: Cheaters beware, this detective may be following you
By Teri Kenny
I have to admit, I was pretty uneasy about the assignment I was given a story about a local private investigator who checks out unfaithful spouses. I have a hard time believing anyone would go to a "private eye" to spy on their "significant other." It smacked of one of those syndicated late-night talk shows. Oprah wouldn't even touch the subject. (Well, maybe during sweeps month.) I was convinced I was wasting my time on some back room sleaze operation. As I drove to his office armed with questions, I couldn't help but picture the situation I was about to walk into--a low rent office in a run-down building, with a blond secretary in a too-short skirt and low-cut blouse. Then there'd be my subject, Kelly Riddle, looking like he spent the night on the fake leather office couch with his trench coat as a pillow. I could imagine an old ceiling fan slowly whirling, barely moving the dusty air around. He'd answer my questions with more questions. What if someone came in with a gun, threatened his life--an mine? Oh my God--what am I doing here? The whole scene was black and white in my mind. But, it was too late to turn back now.
As I arrived at the offices, I tried to put aside my B-movie, Mickey Spillane-induced notions and approached the place with adventurous spirit and notebook in hand. After meeting Kelly Riddle, such notions were about to be dispelled. He is a pleasant, friendly gentleman with a solid handshake. Riddle doesn't look sweaty or shady. In fact, if I saw him on the street, I would think he was a corporate executive of some sort. This San Antonio native is a former police officer, author of three books, family man and world traveler. Kelmar and Associates, his 8-year old private investigation firm, is very established. This guy was definitely "legit," as they'd say in those cheesy movies. His business is as well. It became apparent the instant I stepped into his offices and saw signs of success--copies of his books on investigations, various plaques on the wall pictures of him and family on vacation in Hawaii and the like. Unlike many private investigators, Riddle is a firm believer in marketing--he advertises, does book signings and (of course) gives interviews. (He cites it as one major reason for his success.) His company even has a brochure which lists services like due diligence searches, arson investigations, criminal history searches, and the one I was there to report on-domestic investigations. After hearing his story, another of my notions was also dispelled: the business of investigating the alleged unfaithful is for real.
In fact, domestic investigations makes up about 25 percent of Kelmar and Associates cases, "and growing steadily," Riddle said. His most common clients were women. An ususally, he said, their instinct is correct. "By the time they come here there's enough other things, tell-tale signs, to indicate they're right." One of the most common reasons his clients do come to him is to obtain evidence for a divorce and/or child custody battle, for which videotape of surveillance can be used legally. "If you can see it with the naked eye, it's admissible," he said. Other reasons are usually more emotional; Riddle said he has to be careful whose case he takes, since some may wish to harm the alleged infidel. When his firm takes a client, they find out his/her schedule and determine times when the suspect may be cheating. Difficulty varies, depending on things like the suspect's job, for example. If they're out in the field, like a sales rep., then it's more difficult. We have to watch the person from 8 to 5," he said.
Their method involves teams of two--one may be on site with a hidden lens and the other in a vehicle, for example. If the couple leave the site, the other can follow them, pick up where the other was left. The tools that Kelmar investigations use in their surveillance include night-vision goggles, body mikes, long range lenses, lenses hidden in pagers, briefcases and cellular phones--James Bond-style gadgets. What they don't do, I learned, is use phone taps, since the requirement to trespass in order to install the "bug" is not legal. I even made the mistake of asking about his surveillance van. "We don't use vans," he said with a smile, "because that's what everyone thinks we will use." (I'm glad I didn't ask if they say "Bob's Landscaping Service" on the side--what a faux pas that would be.)
What interested and sometimes shocked me most were the stories he told about his experiences--he could have gone on all day. Some are funny, others are sad. He shared several with me. One client came to Kelmar to check out a possible husband candidate-a guy she'd been seeing for about six months. "She felt relatively certain she was about to be asked for her hand in marriage," Riddle said. "She wanted to check him out to see if he was everything he said he was." He sounded like a dream: a scholar, a millionaire, never been married, even took unfortunate children under his wing. Within an hour of the client's first meeting with Riddle, she went home, only to get a call from her beau asking her why she was visiting a private eye. After that, Riddle ad his client had to communicate via pagers and pay phones. Through surveillance and other research, Riddle found out that he'd never finished college and that he had been married before, to a woman whom he physically abused and whose money he took with him. He was also under indictment for drug trafficking. But the most chilling was what was never found out. In one meeting, Riddle asked the client to describe her boyfriend's home and surroundings. "She said he had six-foot walls around it, video cameras everywhere and Dobermans run free," Riddle said. Still convinced he was a good guy, the client told Riddle about how he liked to help disadvantaged children in the community. He was also into photography. Riddle didn't like the combination. Unfortunately, despite Riddle's suggestion that her "knight in shinning armor" may be more dangerous than she thought, she stopped the surveillance and decided to marry him.
All in all, I was impressed with Riddle. I enjoyed our conversation, admired his business sense, and was fascinated with his stories, although a little saddened by the need for these services. I also felt a little sheepish for my earlier assumptions. I'll never look at a stand-up cellular phone the same way again. But I still wondered one thing: with all his advertising, book signings and publicity, does he worry that he'll be recognized? "Not at all," he said. As many times as I've been on TV, no one recognizes me. I've got books out with my picture on it, and nobody ever recognizes me." Maybe there's something he's not telling me--master of disguise, perhaps? I saw that in this old movie once….
San Antonio Express-News, June 26, 1998
Front Page: SA Life
Cyber-detectives: The power of the Web helps investigators track information
By Rene Guzman
As a local private investigator, Kelly Riddle tracks down criminals, cheating spouses, corporate outlaws and other ne'er-do-wells on a daily basis. He typically uses phone taps and night cameras to get his information. Four years ago, he added the Internet to his investigating arsenal.
Anyone can be a gumshoe in cyberspace, says Riddle, who has 18 years experience as a private eye. "It's all here," says Riddle, who teaches a course in investigating on the Internet. "You just have to know where to go and what you want." Whether you're looking for a distant relative or doing a background check on a local pediatrician, the Internet offers a wealth of information a phone call alone may not provide. "Liens, judgments, lawsuits…most of that information is public domain and most of it is free of charge," says Riddle.
Riddle explains that the only on-line information that is off limits to the general public is usually personal information that could be misused, such as driver's license histories, employment and credit histories, social security number traces and criminal records. He adds, however, that most confidential information is accessible over the Net at a nominal fee per record or per month for a subscription to a Web site service. "You can still find out about sexual offenders, parolees, vehicle registrations, bankruptcy records, education and professional license verification, as well as civil and criminal histories online," says Riddle. "The question is: Is one of the two parties breaking the law by offering that information?"
Indeed, not all of the truth is out there on the Information Super-highway. With an estimated 400 million Web sites already floating around in cyberspace, how do you know if a site is credible? Riddle says the best way to delineate fact from fiction in your cyber-sleuthing is to consider the source. "Any information you get is simply an unverified lead," he says. "You still need to get another source to verify it-cross reference it with another source."
St Louis Times, May 1998
Times Magazine:
"Private Investigators Ease Cyber
Lover's Minds"
Also Printed in The Las Vegas
Review Journal, August 6, 1998
Private Investigators ease cyber lover's minds, by Tom Zoellner
Also Printed in Third Age News & Opinion, April 18, 1998
PI's Check Out Cyber-Dates
The Internet has been kind to private investigators like Kelly Riddle, investigators' phones and e-mail boxes are swamped by suspicious sweet-hearts, who aren't quite sure about that special someone they've met on-line. "Guys and girls both-they just lie," says Riddle. "You can take a diploma from Princeton, scan it into a computer, change the name and turn yourself into a Princeton grad. Simple as that." Almost 45 percent of Riddle's clients have met their questionable partners on the Internet, a medium that allows its users to build elaborate personal facades while evading the scrutiny that comes face to face. The primitive human factors-tone of voice, facial expression, body language-that can give away a lie are concealed behind a screen name.
Many of the people who come to Riddle have never met their cyber-dates in person. One man told his new girlfriend he was a millionaire and a Rhodes Scholar, who had never been married. The woman became suspicious and hired Riddle, who discovered the man had swindled an ex-wife in Colorado and was under federal indictment for smuggling drugs with his private airplane. The Internet is not just a source for broken-hearted clients; it is also a powerful investigative tool. Many government agencies have up-loaded public records that used to be accessible only by a physical search through dusty tiling cabinets. Riddle and his staff of 20 licensed private investigators can probe marriage licenses in Minnesota or boat ownership records in Florida without leaving the office. Some clients ask for surveillance, and Riddle is also happy to put a tail on would-be Romeo of Juliet. Riddle will do a basic background check for a fee of $50. With the suspect sweetie's name and place of residence, Riddle can check to see if he or she has ever been arrested, sued, jailed or gone bankrupt. A marital investigation will uncover previous marriages or divorces. For an additional $50, he will prepare a dossier listing the person's know associates, assets and true date of birth.
More detailed virtual friskings can reveal whether a subject actually went to the prestigious Ivy League school, actually owns that plantation in Georgia, or if his or her parents are really deceased (burying living parents is a strangely common trait among phony suitors). Nearly everybody harbors a deep inner hunger for perfect love, and those desires can often fog good judgment, says Riddle, whose own brother asks for a background check on any woman he dates more than twice. "It's better to find out ahead of time before you sink your money and your family and emotions into something," he said. "The information is out there, but nobody takes the time to go seek it out."
Sensible and well-educated single people can be surprisingly easy targets for Casanova con-artists, who surf the Web the way they once cruised bars, said Jane Greer, a New York City psychologist, who specializes in relationship issues. She thinks a little investigation might not be a bad idea. "A service like this gives you cold, hard facts-like cold water in the face when you're drunk," she said.
Not everybody is enthusiastic about the idea of hiring a gumshoe to sniff out facts on a potential mate. Geraldine Piorkowski, head of counseling at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wonders how subjects would feel if they found out they were being vetted by a P.I. "Trust is like a fragile flower early on in the relationship, and it can be very easily damages," she said.
Riddle acknowledges that private investigators have a sleazy image-the alcoholic ex-cop working out of a dingy office-reinforced year after year by novels and film noir. The Internet can also be a marketplace for unlicensed investigators, who overcharge for basic services or fail to deliver as promised. The intersection of this cynical business with the deepest needs of the soul is similar to the spirit behind pre-nuptial agreements, said Riddle. Just another sign of the times. "The way I see it is this: God doesn't need doctors to heal a person, but he uses doctors to heal. He doesn't need an investigator to expose the truth, but he uses investigators. He uses us, as detectives, to protect the innocent and uncover the truth." Riddle's Web site: www.kelmarpi.com.
San Antonio Express-News, October
19, 1997
"Images" Magazine Front Page:
"Private Investigator Kelly Riddle:
Tips for the Truth
Truth Sleuth: Private Investigator and author shares his expertise
by Mary M. Fisher
Know how those quick-thinking detectives come up with such convincing stories when they're caught snooping? They work them out ahead of time, says Kelly Riddle, a private investigator and author who was named Private Investigator of the Year by the National Association of Investigative Specialists earlier this month. "Part of this job is you've got to think of scenarios and be prepared," he explains, recalling the time he was asked to investigate the vice president of a trucking company suspected of running his own business on the side. "One day I followed him to the truck yard," recalls Riddle. "He was going to take one of my client's trailers. I drove through the lot and took some pictures and drove off." But he wasn't quick enough, and the suspect and a gun-toting accomplice confronted Riddle. "I told them, I'm from out of town and looking for a friend who drives a truck, and I can't find him, and then he asked me what trucking company. I'd already scanned a name of another company down the road, and they told me where it was." Then the suspect asked, "My friend says you were taking pictures of me. Why?" Replied Riddle: "I bet what you saw was the telephone I was using to call my friend's wife to find out where he was." Exit Riddle.
Happily, most of Riddle's sleuthing doesn't call for creative storytelling at gunpoint. And that's the way the lanky detective who displays pictures of his family at his plush North Side office likes it. "I've never had to draw my gun," he says. And contrary to the stereotypical private eye who has no compunctions about breaking the law in pursuit of his man (or woman), Riddle keeps it legal. To keep current with right-to-privacy legislation, he puts in time at the courthouse doing research. "We always stay within the law," he says, explaining that illegal acts not only jeopardize a private investigator but the client as well. "I may know where somebody's parents live, and I know if I could get their telephone bill I could get the number and track them down. But that's illegal, and for me to do that the most I could charge is $30. It's not worth $30 to have the FBI come knocking on your door."
But for a bad experience, Riddle might have joined the FBI himself. A 1977 Roosevelt High School graduate, he completed a degree in law enforcement at the University of North Alabama and spent years doing police work in that state. But a corrupt police chief who harassed him and the officer who was to become his wife prompted the couple to resign in 1985. "I got accepted by the FBI and the Air Force Officer's School and three police departments," he recalls, "but I decided I didn't want to do any of them." Instead, he returned to San Antonio and began doing insurance investigations, eventually setting up 26 offices across the nation for a now-closed company. "And that's why I started this company (Kelmar and Associates in 1989)," he says. "I never wanted to be in this for myself, but it just happened. I never wanted to write a book, but it just happened." Riddle's first book, "Private Investigating Made Easy," published by Historical Publications in Austin, has gone into a second printing. It covers such things as locating missing persons, finding hidden assets and conducting background checks. "I wrote most of it in a weekend," he says. "It was kind of like a carpenter sitting down and writing how to frame a house. It just came off the top of the head." Riddle's second book, however, came from his heart. "To Serve and Protect: The True Story" chronicles the saga of his and his wife Susan's experiences in the same corrupt police department portrayed in the movie "Walking Tall." "They tapped our phones, they poisoned my dog. It burned me out on law enforcement," he says. Already he has had some nibbles from Hollywood about movie rights for the self-published memoir.
Riddle's most recent endeavor, also self-published, is "The Art of Surveillance," which was chosen as the Investigative Book of the Year by Thomas Publications in Austin. Tips range from how to install a camera in a briefcase to how to follow a suspect on the highway (stay a lane to the right so as not to raise suspicion when he changes lanes and to have quick access to exits). Riddle is working on an information system where clients can do research on his site. In conjunction with the Association of Christian Investigators, which he founded, he is developing an alert line for churches to check backgrounds of potential youth ministers. He also teaches at seminars.
Of the 500 or so cases he handles a year with the help of six part-time and six full-time employees, Riddle says about one-fourth have to do with infidelity. "Nine out of 10 times it's a woman checking on her husband," he says, "and 95 percent of the time they're right." Another common case type is the injured insurance claimant. "I had a man one time who was supposed to have been hit by a train," he recalls. "We caught him playing baseball."
Rather than confront the person, Riddle says, his people videotape them. Other tools of Riddle's trade include night vision goggles, body microphones, long-range lenses, listening devices, telephone bugs and lenses hidden in everything from smoke detectors to cellular phones. A typical workday for Riddle can stretch from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. He might begin with a couple of hours of surveillance, then come in the office to do record searches on the Internet and other computerized data sources. Then he turns to administrative duties and marketing. "Once a year I'm on the local television morning shows," he says, "and I've been on Real TV out of Los Angeles six times." A video he shot of a woman stealing from a cash register was shown on "The Montel Williams Show," and he has been contacted by talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael and the ABC news program 20/20."
At the suggestion of a Los Angeles Times reporter, Riddle is looking into critiquing detective movies for their realism. "I've not found any of them that come anywhere close to what we do," he says. "I've never been in a shootout. They always end up in bed with their clients. That doesn't happen." Instead, he spends much of his time tailing insurance claimants or husbands suspected of infidelity, searching for missing persons, doing background checks and debugging offices and homes. It's a dull job, but somebody's got to do it.
Final Draft/Magazine of the
San Antonio Writers Guild, August
1998
Writers Peek Inside Investigator's
World,
By Art Grand & Jean Parks
In appearance and demeanor, he could be an athlete, a lawyer or the neighbor next door, but few people would guess that Kelly Riddle is a private investigator. Perhaps that is why he is so successful. A the San Antonio Writers Guild meeting on July 2, Kelly regaled the members and guests with his remarkable tales of intrigue and deception as a P.I.
An excellent example of the adage, "if you can talk, you can write," Kelly is a talker who has now written six books about his profession (and is working on his seventh). He obviously has a knack for both. He said he wrote his first book, "Private Investigating Made Easy" in two weeks. Although many of his books are in the "how to" category, he has inserted numerous examples from his history of investigating to entertain and to educate his readers.
Some of the many examples cited in his books were recounted at the meeting. Kelly's stories dealt with deadbeat dads, drug runners, marital disputes, insurance scams, embezzlement and international skullduggery. He demonstrated some of the equipment he uses and said that as a professional PI unlike most fictional investigators, he has seldom been caught in the act of following or eavesdropping.
Although he did not discuss "writing" specifically, Kelly inspired the listeners to write what each knows best. The better we know it, the easier it should be to write about it. Kelly pointed out that publications about "what you do" can be useful marketing tools as well.
Articles Published & Written
by Kelly Riddle (partial list):
The National Assoc. of Investigative Specialists Magazine, December 1998: Why Trade Associations
P.I. Magazine, Summer 1998 issue: Home, Sweet Home? Why Nursing Homes Need Investigating
The National Assoc. of Investigative Specialists Magazine, August 1998: Surveillance Issues
Global Investigator's Network Newsletter, July 1998: Investigations: Fighting Fraud
Iowa Assoc. of Private Investigators, Spring 1998: Common Mistakes in Surveillance
The Investigator Gazette, Private Investigations-A Real Business
The Women Investigators Association, August 1998: Knowing When to Back Off
The National Assoc. of Investigative Specialists Magazine, July 1998: Nursing Home Abuse Investigations
The Louisiana Private Investigator's Journal, July 1998: Knowing When to Back Off
The Texas Investigator, April 1998: Common Mistakes in Surveillance
The Gator Gazette: Freeway Surveillance
The Louisiana PI Journal, October 1997: Common Mistakes in Surveillance
The Texas Investigator, February 1998: What is Nursing Home Abuse?
Associated Detectives of Illinois, January 1998: Legalities of Surveillance
The Louisiana PI Journal, January 1998: Investigations: Fighting Fraud
The Texas Investigator, October 1997: The Role of a Private Investigator
The Louisiana PI Journal, October 1997: An Outsider's point of View
The Texas Investigator, December 1996: Investigations: Fighting Fraud
The Texas Investigator, May 1996: Getting to the Bottom of Wire Taps
