“Good Samaritan” arrested for lying to police
Deputies in Clay County, Iowa, made an important announcement Wednesday about an armed robbery someone reported on Sept. 17 on a rural road.
The announcement was, basically, that the guy made the whole thing up.
We at the Journal originally wrote about the alleged robbery a few days after it happened in September.
The alleged victim, Tommy Lynn Hartfield, gave a good amount of detail about the alleged robbery, police say, including that the man looked “scruffy,” the female robber was quite rotund, and that the couple were riding in a newer-model maroon or red Mitsubishi Eclipse.
It sounded really strange. Not that this can’t happen in Clay County. It could. But you don’t even hear about that sort of thing in a bigger area like Sioux City.
Apparently Clay County deputies were suspicious as well, because the release stated they began conducting “parallel investigations” with one focused on finding the bad guys and the other focused on whether there were any bad guys to find.
On Halloween, Hartfield went to the sheriff’s office to “review his case.” Police say that they, with help from a South Sioux City company, got him to admit he was lying.
The police statement doesn’t say it, but a little nosing around on-line makes me think someone from the South Sioux City company may have administered a polygraph.
And now, the sheriff’s department wants its money back.
According to the statement, if Hartfield is found guilty deputies will ask the court for restitution for the 40 hours they spent working on the case.
Which makes me wonder: How much does a polygraph cost?
