Chicago Police Homicide Sergeant Michele Wood

Michele Wood was born and raised in Chicago and has served with the Chicago Police Department for 25 years. Promoted to Detective in 2006, she investigated thousands of cases, including homicides, police-involved shootings, sex crimes, and domestic violence. In 2017, she was promoted to Sergeant and now supervises a Homicide team on Chicago’s West Side, leading high-stakes investigations with integrity and accountability. Michele is also an FBI-certified Hostage and Crisis Negotiator and serves on CPD’s SWAT Hostage Negotiator Team. A certified instructor through the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, she mentors the next generation of detectives. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Safety Management and is a nationally recognized true crime expert featured on multiple television networks.

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJTRRVFN 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Michelle Wood is a Chicago police detective sergeant and the author of a new book, Model Detective: A True Story of Heels, Handcuffs, and Homicides. Michelle, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Michelle, please tell our listeners a little something about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

My name is Michelle Wood. I have been a member of the Chicago Police Department for 25 years, and I'm actually retiring in two days.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Congratulations. And wh why did you want to become a cop? What what brought you to this path?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Well, when I was a little kid, my grandfather was the chief of police of a small town in Montana, Terry, Montana. So every summer, my mom and my sisters would take the Amtrak train to Montana and we would visit with him. And obviously, you know, I live in Chicago. It's a lot different than Montana. But that was my first uh experience with law enforcement. And I saw how he did stuff. And I always knew I was going to be the police. I knew I wanted to do other stuff before I was going to be the police. But I I loved police TV shows when I was a little kid and always, always, always wanted to be a homicide detective. Even when I first got on the Chicago Police Department, I told people that. And, you know, the old timers would kind of laugh like, kid, there's no broads in homicide. So I had a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

What what year did you join the Chicago police? 2001. Reading in your bio a little bit, before your career in law enforcement, you were a model and a flight attendant?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yes. Yes. I did fitness modeling. I still did it when I was on the job. I actually, when I got on the job, though, I stopped. I'm like, no, I'm going to be taken seriously. This is all I'm going to do. And then I saw, I'm like, okay, I'm I need to do something outside of work. I don't want to, you know, hang out at cop bars and do all that stuff. So kind of went back into like competitions. It was like bodybuilding, a figure competitions. I did that for years and years. And it was a nice break from, you know, the everyday in the beginning when I first got out of job, I worked in an armed violence suppression unit. So we worked nights and we worked in the roughest area in the city. And I just didn't want that to be my only thing that I look forward to in life. So I was like, I got to do something outside of work.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Guessing as a flight attendant, you learn how to deal with people and diffuse unpleasant situations that helped you in your police career.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

It's so funny because I get so much flack for that job, and people will be like, oh my God, she was a flight attendant. I'm like, you guys don't realize there's no now, of course, you'll have like people that are flying there unbeknownst to everyone on the plane who are armed, but we had no security, we had no nothing. So yeah, if there was any bad situation or a drunk person on the plane, we had to defuse the situation at 30,000 feet. So it was a little bit, you know, different than if you're trying to, you know, do customer service work on the ground. When they're up in the air, I mean, there could be big, big, big problems there. So a lot of the techniques that I used to diffuse situations on the plane actually carried over to the police department.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

I believe that. And so you go into the police academy in Chicago. What was the police academy like back then?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

It was, you know, it was strict. I was in the army as well. So I wasn't uh, you know, unaccustomed to that type of like rigorous training. The fitness and stuff was less than I thought it would be. I mean, it was still, you know, we would run every day, but it wasn't anything. I actually gained weight in the academy because we weren't that active. Like, yeah, and um so I think it was more mentally stressful than it was physically stressful. Flight attendant training was definitely more stressful because they kept removing people when I was in flight attendant school. Like we'd walk in and we started off with 132 people. And every day, if they didn't think that you had what it takes, and mind you, you know, it's three people keeping 137 people safe in a you know small little chamber where things can go bad. So they would fire people in training, but instead of like kicking them out of the room, they would wait for a break and they would take their chair out of the room. So when you came back, there wasn't an empty seat, but the group kept getting smaller and smaller. So we started off with 132 or 135, and we ended up with 92. That's how many people they got rid of. So every day you were like waiting for the tap because that's what they would do. They would tap you and just say, they would say, You don't have the Southwest spirit, and we'll keep you out. And I was like, Oh my god, I'm from Chicago, and I have this, you know, to them obnoxious accent. And we had a girl from New York, she got fired. Like I felt like every person that was a little bit more uh abrasive with their their speech wasn't making it through. So I'm like, I'm gonna just stop talking.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

How many members are in the Chicago police department?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

The numbers are so skewed because if you look it up, I think they say we have like 14,000, but I think it's probably closer to like nine or ten thousand. Not a lot. Like, not a lot for what how big the city is and what we deal with.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

I was gonna say, because NYPD at any given time, I mean, we were close to 40,000 at one time, and I think we're down like 30 something. What kind of weapons did you guys carry?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

I carry and most people carry nine millimeter in the last, I would say, five or ten years. The cool gun is the 40 caliber, but I carry a Smith and Wesson MP, I think it's 13 plus one rounds. I used to carry a 45, but that was totally me thinking like, oh, I need a bigger gun because I kept getting homicide investigations where people would be shot in the head with a nine millimeter and no one would die. So I'm like, this is this is not good. I need a bigger bullet. And no, that made no sense. But that it was a reason why that I switched over to the 45. And then as time went on, I'm like, I don't need a bigger bullet, I need more bullets. So then I went back to the nine, and uh, I love the the gun that I have. I'm not a big gun nut, but uh, I think it is super important to have a gun that you're comfortable with and that fits your hand really well. So the Smith and Wesson is is good for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, Chicago's one of those police departments, you guys can carry multi different types of guns with the NYPD. It's nine millimeter, that's it. Unless you're an undercover in some circumstances, they let they'll let them carry a 380, but you guys can pretty much carry what you want as long as you qualify with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yeah, we have certain things that you can't take. Like when I got on the job, it was um what was it, uh double, what was it, single double, double single, where the first round was harder to uh pop off than the rest of them. Now you can't carry those guns anymore. But my original gun was like archaic, and uh then they were a little bit more strict, and then as the time went on, they started letting us carry like blocks, and then everyone liked uh six hours. That was a big thing that everyone was really into. But I would say right now, if you see the new young kids, they are carrying 40s.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

You get out of the police academy, where do they put you?

SPEAKER_01 6:25

I went to the 14th district, which was well, number one, we started off doing what they called the window detail, which was traffic on the reconstruction of Lakeshore Drive, which is brutal. I mean, and I was in a one wind tunnel downtown, and I remember I had every single piece of gear that I had on, and I'm like this, and it was so cold. Um, but after that I went to the 14th district, which was uh it was called Shakespeare. It was Humble Park, which is basically northwest side of the city. So, you know, up and coming area. It was the area that I grew up in, but uh district was pretty big. So we did have uh we had what was called back then the zone, which was a very well-known Latin Kings territory, big gang problem. So we had a lot of murders with a ton of shootings, but we had a lot of murders, and I stayed there for three years.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Most rookies, I mean, after you hit the street, what was the what was the biggest learning curve for you?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Well, I had a really good field training officer, and I don't think everyone has the uh ability to get someone like that because you don't have someone trained like that. But the guy that trained me was on the same beat for 25 years. So I was super lucky that he knew every single house, every single person, every single arrestee, every person on the street knew him. So it was amazing. He taught me a lot. I followed his lead, and it it it really wasn't I don't want to say it was seamless, but he was such a good field training officer that we prepped on the way there. And I ended up doing this through my whole career. He's like, okay, we're we're not going lights and we would go lights and sirens, but he said we're never gonna run a red light unless a police officer is being hurt, you know, or calling for help. He's like, it's not gonna help us to get into an accident on the way there. So I was always very careful about like cutting through red lights when we would go lights and sirens. And then he made me do all the paper. So and he would explain what to do, but that was the best way to do it was you know, doing it by learning. But so many things they don't teach you in the academy, and you learn everything on the streets, but even just stupid stuff. Like I remember I had a guy that um was beat almost to death with a hammer, and the evidence technician came out and was asking me questions, and they never told us to figure out what was evidence and what wasn't. So we didn't think like investigators did. You know, you kind of are there, like, okay, well, get the weapon and the blood. And it's like, no, there's so many other things that you have to do there. But thankfully, I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have such a great field training officer, and then I went to midnights and I had another good field training officer, and then I went to days, and I had another good field training officer, and I think that particular district had really solid field training officers. I don't know that you would get that in other parts of the city. So I was lucky.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Rookie cops go through a period where they're often the butt of jokes and practical jokes are played on them. Do you remember any when you were a new rookie cop?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Well, when I was a new cop, my last name is Wood, my partner's last name was Johnson, and our other person's name was Little. So every day the sheets either said Little Johnson, Little Wood, or Johnson and Wood. I'm like, you can't make this stuff up. So I mean, people would draw like penises next to her name and all that type of stuff, but it was uh it was fun because it th it was during that time that they hired I was gonna say shitload of a boatload, a boatload of people. And uh so everyone was around my age, and then when you started off either on afternoons or in midnights, everyone, you know, had two to five years on the job. So it was just fun. Like it was just a lot of fun. And I don't know if they're having fun like that now, but we had a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I don't think that they are. Do you do you r no, it's a different world. Yeah. Do you r remember as a rookie cop or a young cop responding to your first homicide?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yes. And uh this one actually wasn't it was a homicide, but what happened is these young kids, they're gangbangers, but they weren't, you know, the worst of anything that I'd ever seen. They were playing Russian roulette, and we didn't know what happened because of course they were all lying when we got there, but uh this kid was laying there dead and he at some point or someone else had put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. But literally the hole in his head was so small and his whole brain flew out of his head intact. So it was laying next to his body. And I was like, How you know, because it just shot out of there. And back then Chicago didn't have body removal service. We had to remove our own bodies. So my field training officer made me pick the brain out and put it inside the bag. We just, you know, put the body in the body bag and put the brain in the body bag and zipped it up. I mean it's so crazy that you did stuff like that. But we didn't have body removal service until years later. They would pay wagon guys out of grade and they would pick up bodies. And then at some point we got a contract with Allied Body Service. But my time in patrol, we picked up our own bodies.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

A half-assed thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

I know. When I when I say it out loud, I realize how absurd it sounds. But I mean, there were so many times where my partner and I had to like pick up bodies, and it's just gross too. Like we never had PPE, we didn't have any protective gear, we didn't have anything. Like, if you had gloves, we would take when you went to the hospital to like get coffee or use the restroom, we would steal the gloves and weren't stealing them. You know, we take a pack of them and stuff in the pocket, but we never had foot like booties, we never had any of that stuff, we didn't have masks, so uh yeah. Can you imagine the nastiness that was going on then that we didn't even know about?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I remember traipes and through crime scenes as a cop that were just like you said, they were just, you know, they'd say wash your shoes when you got home.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah, or throw them out.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah, or throw them right, right, right. Throw them out. You you got promoted detective fairly early in your career. I think you had like a little over four years on. How does that work in Chicago? Like, do you go right to a detective squad and you're catching all sorts of cases, or do they kind of bring you along slowly?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

No, uh, yeah, I I had five years when I made detective. I took the test at one three and a half years. And I started off in Area One, which was the south side of the city, and I was lucky enough to go to Special Victims Unit, which for us is domestic-related crimes. And I hooked up with a crew of people who they were basically like a tactical team because they would go out and pick up any, you know, pinches that we would get were domestic related, but it was like baby violent crimes because you got to deal with sexual assaults, shootings, anything that was domestic in nature. So that's how I learned the basics of violent crimes. We trained in all the oversight offices. So I trained in homicide and you know, I went out with the old homicide guys, I trained in property, I trained in burglary, but special victims unit, no one wanted to go there because of youth investigations, because no one wants to process juveniles and stuff like that. But they already had a crew that dealt with that, so I knew I was gonna get stuck there. So I basically did, you know, I had stuff, I had so many cases where like, you know, I had a girl, her boyfriend ran her over with the car and actually like ripped her earrings off her ear, but told tore her uh earlobes and she signed complaints. We went to court, she dropped charges, and that was my first introduction to those kind of cases. So what we would do is we would get all these domestic cases and just go out on the street and round these people up. So we'd get coffee, we'd get a good lunch, and then we'd go out into the projects and grab all of our people. But I would say 80% of them didn't proceed with the prosecution because they ended up back together.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I'm wondering, Michelle, like is Chicago police department like the NYPD where they'll throw detectives in uniform for the day and fly them out to parades and demonstrations? Yes. Okay. I didn't know if it was and and detectives go kicking and screaming and complaining about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Well, uh okay, so when I made detective, it your seniority is not based on time as a detective. It's you're still considered a patrolman in the grade of detective. So I got promoted in 2006 with five years on the job. Most people that could promote it after me, that test stayed up for 10 years. 10 years they did not have a new promotional exam. Every person that was promoted after that had more time than me. So every time a new detective came, my seniority went down and down and down. So it's all these new people, but I have no seniority. So we have Obama here. Remember that. Obama, when he ran for election, I was on every single Obama detail. I went to pizza with the daughters, I went to Beyonce concert with the Obamas, I was on the Hillary Clinton detail, I was on the detail from the president of the Congo, of Ireland, of Iraq. Like everything, like every person that came in here, every dignitary, I got it reverse seniority. So it was brutal because Secret Service, number one, they don't get paid overtime. Number two, they can't make an arrest without a warrant. So the reason I was there is if something happened and an arrest had to be made, I was there. Nothing ever happened. It was pretty chill. Obama, we had a couple problems here and there, but it was more because his neighborhood was really nice, but it was surrounded by like a really bad neighborhood. Like really, like you driving in there, and I used to love the Secret Service driving in there because it would see, you know, people selling socks and crack on the corner, and then we're driving down his street. So it was it was bizarre, but I mean they can't smoke cigar. I don't smoke, I would never smoke cigarettes, but they can't smoke cigarettes, they can't drink coffee, and they can't eat or chew gum while they're on duty. So I would be sitting there like with my Starbucks, and they're like, You can't drink coffee. I'm like, you can't drink coffee. I can drink coffee.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Were you working during the Black Lives Riots, Black Lives Matter riots of 2020?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Well, 2020, I was pregnant and I was hiding my pregnancy. I was I hid my pregnancy until I was seven months pregnant because we had a brand new like turnover of the detective division and they opened up two more units that were open before that they closed. But our new superintendent at that time decided to reopen them. So I wanted to go to area four, which is I would say it's the worst area in the city, but I I was offered a homicide team there as a sergeant. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take this. If I tell these guys I'm pregnant, they're gonna put me in missing persons or, you know, somewhere answering the phone. So I hit it. And so I mean, I was going out on the streets and people just thought I was getting fat. And then I finally told my commander, I took off. You know, we we had no parental time back then. We just got parental time for uh moms and dads in the last two years. So, you know, I got the eight weeks and then I put my vacation and stuff with it. But yeah, I was uh at the end of 2020 into 2021, we had all the crazy looting and rioting and cars set on fire. And yeah, I worked days and they every day off was canceled for I don't know, like a year and a half or something like that. Every day my day off was canceled. And not only that, on our days off, they deployed us on nights. So instead of working my regular seven to whatever I worked 5 30, we'd start at five o'clock at night. And it was brutal. And then we were also on extended uh tours of duty every day. So we were working seven to seven. It was it was it was brutal, and there was no reprieve because you know, we try to go and get coffee at places, and people are like, You can't come in here with your guns on. Like there was even a grocery store whose name I won't say, um, very popular, that wouldn't allow us in there. And they're the first ones to call the police when they need something. But we had coffee shops we couldn't go to. I've been kicked out myself of at least three coffee shops where we walked in and they said we couldn't come in. They wouldn't let us use the restroom at certain hotels, they wouldn't you let us use the restroom at numerous places where they said they had no public bathroom. I'm like, we're not the public. We're out here in a squad car for 12 hours, you know, in the middle of like chaos. And yeah, it was brutal. You you see the bad side of humanity too, because it's such like group mentality where people are like, oh, I'm not supposed to like the police, so I'm gonna treat you like crap now.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

I remember watching those poor Chicago cops on television getting pelted with bricks and frozen bottles of water over by that fountain. I mean, New NYPD got it too, but there's a lot more of the NYPD, and I just remember like I just felt so bad watching those videos.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

And then we're still, you know, because I had a homicide team, so we're still, and our murders at that time were insanity. You know, like we we have uh Madison Avenue where there's a bunch of shops over there. It's it's the home of the old, you know, riots from the 60s. That area is still really bad. And we were getting like, you know, bodies being found in backup places with no idea and no idea how to investigate them. We had Shot Spotter back then, which was awesome. I could talk shit about it now because I'm leaving. But our mayor now got rid of Shot Spotter. And everyone now is like, crime, the police are actually responding to crime quicker now because you know, Shot Spotter's gone. I'm like, yeah, but we're still finding dead bodies that have been there for a while because people don't call the police in certain areas in the city. So yeah, we might be getting there faster. But I mean, you know, Shot Spotter all night. I don't know if you guys have this in New York, where it's like, you know, three rounds, division and Pulaski, six rounds, and that's what you hear on the radio all night. But when we'd hear, you know, a barrage of bullets at some point, and you can actually hear it, you can put the app on your phone and you can hear like you can hear it, and we would know, like, oh, someone's dead. Like you can just tell from doing this for so you can hear like certain set of bullets. I'm like, that sounds like a murder. And and your new mayor got rid of that? Got rid of it, rid of it. We don't have it anymore. They can't they canceled the subscription to the thing and they were trying to go back and forth, and he said we don't need it. And yeah, it and it was also good for us because if we're driving down the street, we're also aware ahead of time that there's people shooting, you know, and usually it's people shooting back and forth at each other. So it also was good for us to know that you're, you know, going into an area where there's battle.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah. How many murders uh do you guys average a year in Chicago?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Um you know, it goes back and forth. My homicide team where I worked uh every year, we handled 35 a year, and there were six teams. So in our area, what is that around 200-ish a year? But there's um five areas in the city. So I would say probably between high-end five to like 700. Yeah. And then our area though, like um every year at the end of the year, we would try to balance it out to make sure that every team got around the same amount. And then pretty much every every year when I was a homicide sergeant, my team would get 35. But that didn't mean I only went out on 35 because when we went on call every six weeks. So for a week, you're on call 24-7. So, you know, sometimes we'd get two murders, sometimes we'd get seven murders, sometimes we'd get two murders at once. And I had my team of five to eight people, and we would just go out and handle it.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

I pulled up a couple of your cases through newspaper articles, see if you remember them. You were det you had a case in 2011 of a teenager accused of pushing a woman to her death in front of an oncoming CTA train after stealing her iPhone.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Sally Katona King, that was Prince Watson.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Yes. Can you go into that case a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah, that case was actually really interesting because we got that case, and I remember the victim in that case. Uh, she was pushed so hard down the cement stairs that her aorta was dissected from her basically her chest cavity. It was brutal. And uh, I was there when she died. I was standing in front of her when she died. And I remember I asked the doctor, I was like, is she gonna make it? And he was such a jerk. He's like, no, and he explained like the technical term of what happened, but her family was there. It was terrible. She was the deacon at uh at a Lutheran church, so she was very well loved. So we started watching video, and this is in the beginning of you know, really good video. So my partner and I would ride the Chicago Transit Authority trains just looking to see, and I ran into him at one point, and I looked at him, and he looked At me and he, you know, we knew he was a robber. We were aware of some of these crews of people that were robbing people on the CTA, and this is the beginning of it. It's like these guys invented it. Um, but he we did have video of him running down the street, and it was only partial video, it was pixelated, and we couldn't see what was on the back of his jacket. It looked like a white sack socks jacket, and we're zooming in and we're googling and we're doing all this stuff. And then so one day I'm in um my partner John and I, you know, we're we're looking for whoever it is at this point, and there's a tactical team from the 18th district in Chicago on a stock, and we're there, just you know, helping, and they're like, no, we're good. So we're kind of just standing around bullshitting, and the kid that's there, Prince Watson. And I look at him, I'm like, turn your jacket inside out. And I looked, I'm like, that's him, Pelly Pelly. He what happened is after he killed the woman, he flipped his jacket inside out and he was running down the street and it said Pelly Pelly. We thought it said white socks because it was written in white, but that wasn't anywhere near enough to solve it. We just knew this kid was a robber, but was he the robber? So we ended up doing a lot more work. So then he ended up running past like a Buffalo Wild Wings, and there was a waitress in there. We went back in canvas and we're like, Oh, do you remember anything? She goes, Well, it is so funny. I was outside and I saw this kid that fit the description taking a cell phone, like one of those like plastic covers off the iPhone and throwing in the garbage. She goes, I thought it was weird, so I picked it up. We end up taking that, submitting it for DNA, and it comes back to him. We already started figuring out that it might have been him, but the DNA comes back to him. Then we have him in the room and we have these two older detectives interviewing him, and they're hitting him hard, and they're like, you know, the family wants closure. And I'm sitting outside, I'm like, this kid does not give a crap about closure. So when they were already exhausted, and mind you, I'm still newer in homicide at this time. I went in the room and I went in there and I was like, You went in there and you pushed that old lady out of the way and blah, blah, blah. He's like, I didn't, it was an accident. And then he admitted he was there, he admitted he did it, and he was telling you what happened. He robbed this girl from her phone, he started running away, and he tried to kind of um jump over the woman, and because he was so long and lanky, he took her head and basically like whipped it down the stairs. So that was felony murder, fleeing from a felony. He killed someone. So he was charged first degree murder as a felony murder. And he actually did have remorse because when he was at trial, he ended up playing guilty. I don't remember what he got. It wasn't anything, it wasn't low. It wasn't like the way Cook County does stuff now, but I think he got maybe four years, but he actually felt bad and had remorse. One of the few people that I've ever had that actually expressed remorse.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Who also worked on a tough case with the murder of a seven-year-old girl.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Heaven Sutton. Yeah, that was brutal. That was actually overturned by the Illinois uh appellate court. And thank God he pled guilty uh last month. Yeah. They uh he's been in prison for 13 years, and everyone knows he did it. We were getting ready to go back to trial. I actually extended my uh retirement. I was supposed to retire in February, but I stayed for that case because I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna deal with all this stuff. I'm gonna have to come to court for free. They said that he wasn't given a phone call. He asked for a phone call back then multiple times, but we didn't give people phone calls. I'm like, I'm not your secretary, we're not giving you a phone call. It's different now where when someone is arrested and placed into custody, we have to give them like three phone calls, or you have to give them an unlimited number of phone calls within the first three hours, blah, blah, blah. It changes all the time. Um, and now we have cell phones that we give them that allows them to make phone calls, but then we didn't. So they're kind of judging us based on those rules. They're like, he clearly asked for a phone call. I'm like, yeah, he did, but we didn't have accessibility to phone calls back then. We would have had to give him our phone or bring him out on the floor where, you know, offenders, victims, detectives are. So um, he did end up initially he he was in there for life, basically 60 years, and he pled guilty and he got 24 years. So he'll be out in the next 11 years. But uh, that thing was gang stuff. Like that offender, there were two offenders, the one that went to prison, that was one of them. They were shooting at rival gang, and the little girl was outside with her mom. She had like a makeshift candy store. They'd sell like snow cones and stuff to the people in the neighborhood. Very common in Chicago. Little like uh our our makeshift bodegas, and she caught a stray bullet in the chest and died. It was it was brutal. I'm still friends with the mom, but it was brutal.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Are most of your murders in Chicago tied to gang violence?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yep. Yep. If you get one that isn't, especially the area that um I just left, uh area four, I would say, you know, 85% of them are gang stuff. Um the area that I'm in now, which is where I'm finishing out my career, is where I started. It's always gang crime stuff back then, but you'd have a little bit more because we did have the downtown area that we covered. So you'd have a little bit, you know, variety of different types of murders. When we do get different stuff, it's it's always interesting to work because you work those cases a lot differently than you do gang crimes.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

You mentioned the Latin Kings earlier. What other gangs are prominent in Chicago?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Oh, four corner hustlers, huge GDs. I would say where I work, four corner hustlers and GDs are the big ones.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

In Chicago, like New York City, is known for for organized crime activity. Did you handle any mafia murders?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

No, I handle cartel murders though. Mafia murders, I don't want to say we didn't have them because I'm sure we did, but I think they handled it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, yeah. I I I'm also guessing like after that family secrets trial, things calmed down with the mafia in Chicago quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah, yeah. And they might have experienced that a little bit more in the suburbs, and I don't mean suburbs, suburbs, but I mean right outside of the city. They might have had more stuff like that. But um, we did have cartel stuff, but cartel is uh is almost like untouchable stuff too. Like no one is gonna come forward with cartel stuff because they will like back in the day, we used to tell people we're like, we're not gonna kill a witness. Well, then we started getting witnesses killed, and we would never say that for cartels because we know they will kill the witnesses.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

How often do you get cartel murders in Chicago? A lot.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

A lot. Now, because we uh the area that I worked in, we covered Little Village, which is it's mostly mostly a Hispanic Mexican neighborhood. There's a lot of cartels up there because there's a lot of drugs there. And then even the Hispanic gangs, a lot of them are overseen by the cartels.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Are they professional hits? Like not a lot of evidence left behind or Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Tons of them. Like a lot of the Hispanic murders that are in uh Little Village are botched hits a lot of times too, where they end up killing the wrong person or they kill an innocent victim. But uh yeah, we uh my last like probably two years in homicide. I mean, I just left homicide in December. It wasn't like it was a long time ago. We we had a ton of hits. I mean, and now everyone uses automatic guns. So, you know, we got Uzies and you go out on crime scenes now, and there's 80 shell casings there. You know, it's not uncommon. Well, before it was like five or six, like now we're stepping everywhere. Um, you know, Draco's and it's you know, it's popular now. All the rap videos and everything. And some of these guys are like popular rappers that are doing the these crimes in Chicago, which is crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Are your cartel murders your victims? Are are most of them illegal aliens? Or is it guys here that got something on consignment and got greedy and I'm not paying it back, and they send somebody to cancel his ticket?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, no, it's it's it's not um it it's definitely not like migrants or anything like that. I would say it's gang members that are stealing from the pack, you know, like you know, pulling their own, not uh not not paying the the money back. I would say it's money related and it's drug related and it's you know citizens.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Michelle, how long were you in the Detective Bureau before you got promoted to sergeant?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Uh I made detective 2006, 11 years. And I actually got promoted before that, but I turned it down because in Chicago, when you get promoted to detective when you're in the detective division, I mean when you get promoted to sergeant when you're in the detective division, you go back to patrol. And you basically yeah, so you basically have to, you know, get a scholarship to come back. So I was lucky, yeah. It's and I I'm like, okay, there goes my detective career, it's done now because I'm gonna go back to working a beat car. So and that's exactly what happened. I made sergeant and then I went to the 19th district, which I was super lucky because it's a good area, it's where Wrigley Field is. We still had a lot of crimes. No, we had a lot of robberies and stuff like that. I worked midnights for about a year, and then the uh watch commander gave me a tactical team, which is probably one of the most fun um like assignments that I've had on the job where we're playing clothes. We just go out and basically you gotta go out and get activity and whatever activity that is. I came from the D unit, so I taught these guys how to do investigations. So, you know, we would get take just case reports and look them up and go out there just like detectives. And we ended up getting a lot, you know, we had murder pinches, we had hate crimes, we had everything. And then my old commander called me and he's like, Hey, do you want to take over as a DNA sergeant and the sex sergeant? And I'll bring you back to the D unit. I'm like, Oh my god, yes, absolutely. So then I went and did that, I think it was 20 uh end of 2018, I think. And then you're assigned to violent crimes, which means you're the sergeant in violent crimes, but in that area, it doesn't mean I only handle sex crimes, it just means I handle every sex crime. So I had a team of sex detectives, amazing, like crazy work that went on. And we were in the area where we had like, you know, lots of serial rapists, like stranger danger rapists. And in 2020, they changed over the whole format of the police department again. And that's when I got a call from another area and I was offered a homicide team. And there was not even a thought about it. I actually lived right near the station I worked in, and I left to drive to the other part of the city while hiding my pregnancy so that I can work murder.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

A lot of subplots. Yeah. So you're an investigator, and now you're I mean, you're a detective, you're a detective, you get promoted sergeant, now you go back to the squad. Did you struggle with managing your subordinates and like not stepping all over them? Because sometimes that happens. I I saw it with my job, someone was a detective, they'd become a supervisor, and now they're into everything.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

I didn't, and I was lucky that I didn't. I got to pick my own team because we were brand new. So this was basically like people giving you resumes, and yeah, these are people that wanted to work with me. So it was a little easier. I really had the best team. And then I was lucky because I had very aggressive, like they would call us the speedballers because I was the same way. You know, I'd get up and go out with them, but they did the work I didn't, but very aggressive. Like we'd start the day with tons of espresso. We even ended up getting an espresso machine in the office, and we just hit the streets. We didn't do anything. Like I always yell at these guys now that are sitting at their desk all day. I'm like, you're not gonna set up a a crime at your desk. I'm like, go out on the streets and talk to people. But uh, I was lucky that the people that I picked also were less experienced detectives, so they did look to me for stuff. I would always tell them, I'm like, this is your case. I'm never gonna tell you how to do your job. I'm like, but this is what I might do. You know, I'd give them different versions of what they could, you know, could do or didn't, you know, do. But I would keep track of their things. So every week we would sit down. I'm like, what's going on with this case? What's going on with this case? And I think that prevented me from having to ever micromanage their cases because I also knew if they needed work. And because I mean, I'm sure you know after being on the police department for a long time, you end up just having so many resources. Like one of my detectives ended up going to ATF. So I got an ATF guy. My my old partner that I worked with back in the day ended up going to the DEA, and he's based in Columbia. So we've got so many resources where it's like, what do you need? And I will get it. And they also knew that I was there to fight with evidence technicians when they didn't want to pick up evidence and fight with states' attorneys when they didn't want to charge cases, and they knew I always had their back. So they did the brunch of the work, and I always said that I got to go out on crime scenes like a TV detective and point at stuff. And then the news comes by and takes pictures of us pointing at stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Michelle, as an investigator, you learned a lot of interview techniques. I saw you doing an interview where you showed one that involves handing a subject a can of Coca-Cola.

unknown 34:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Yes. That was always our joke with stuff because we're like, okay, you know, when you're when you certain times people don't deserve anything special and I won't give it to them. If they walk in there and they're lying, I'm like, I'm not giving you anything. But when you're trying to actually get, you know, gain some rapport with someone, I'm like, okay, is there do you want something to drink? Oh yeah. And they'll ask for something specific. And then you act like you forgot about it and then come back a little while later and you're like, wait, well, I didn't get you a drink. Okay, you could have mine. And they're like, no, no, no, I don't, I don't want yours. You don't have to give me yours. So then, you know, that that was all a ploy, but it was me saying, no, no, no, I'm gonna give you what I have. And I would tell them, when I eat, you're gonna eat. And you know, that that was just to get on their good side, but it usually did work.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I got a kick out of that. I was watching you talk about that. I got a kick out of that. And you're an FBI certified hostage negotiator for the Chicago Police Department. How'd you get into that?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

That was one of those coveted roles that I never knew how you can get certified. And I would ask people, and they're like, oh no, no, no, they never certify people, you know, only comes up every like 10 years. I was in a car chase when I was a tactical sergeant, and it was craziness, and I can talk about it now because everything happened great. We ended up in a car chase for 50-something minutes. We had the helicopter on top of us, we had a bunch of cars. I ended up terminating the car chase, but the helicopter picked it up and the chase continued. So these guys ended up smashing into a building, doing a home invasion, like all types of craziness. So when I get there, I called my lieutenant and I'm like, hey, I was in a car chase, and I told him where I was, which is way further. It was 50 minutes outside of the district that I worked in. But he wasn't mad. You know, he knew that we were doing good police work. These guys were targeting lone females walking down the street, putting guns to their head, robbing them, and then taking their cars in certain instances. So it was all fine with that. But I remember when I arrived on the scene, my lieutenant's like, call SWAT and I hung up and I felt stupid. I'm like, how do you call SWAT? Like, what meaning call SWAT? So I'm asking and I'm on the radio. I'm like, can I call SWAT? They're like, wrong zone. So I'm switching over, they're like, it's zone, whatever. So I I call SWAT and they come out and they're, you know, they leave a big footport wherever they go. Tons of trucks and this and that and ballistic shields. And I was standing there and one of the negotiators came out. He's like, You're in the hot zone. And I'm like, Oh, okay. And you know, I was in the zone of fire, whatever. We were too close to the building. So I met the negotiator sergeant then. I'm like, hey, uh, I would love to be a negotiator if class ever comes out. So he remembered me and he sent me an email shortly after and got me in on the class, which is it's a really hard thing to get because it just doesn't come up and it's not offered. And then when I first did that, they're like, you can't go out on jobs because you're a supervisor and you can't be supervised by someone the same rank as you. But then we ended up finding out in the standard operating procedures that I could go out as long as I am in a unit where I have investigative responsibilities. So then I was able to go out on it. So now I'm still part of the uh the the team until I leave on Friday.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

You had a you had a barricaded hostage situation tied to a homicide. I've had many. Yeah, uh, this one, the guy, guy killed his girlfriend on the street, shot at a cop, and then took a family hostage in a house. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Yes. That was uh that was on the south side of the city. We've had that that's the standard thing, though. And it's funny because my husband is the chief hostage negotiator in Chicago. So when I see things that are going in that direction, you know, we try to go out, we have the homicide investigation support team. We go out and we grab our own people, you know, so the best we can, but we also try not to heat them up. And a lot of times we'll see, like, okay, the situation is gonna turn into a standoff. So I mean, I've had that situation on multiple cases. And unfortunately, you know, you try to avoid going in and being seen. You know, we try to do it very quietly, but in that situation, all we do is surround and call out. Um we don't kick the doors in and do all the stuff that people see on TV until we really have to. We do flashbangs, uh, which you know, you throw the stuff in there and I we always kid around. We show up, we're like, we're here for the flashbangs, and we'll throw gas in and we'll do all the stuff. That one was resolved because he ended up coming out of the house. And I think Larry, who's one of the other negotiators, um, ended up this guy Larry can get anyone out of a house. But um, yeah, we've we've had many, many of those.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

Well, in addition to your police career, you've written a great book, Model Detective, true story of heels, handcuffs, and homicides. How did you get into writing it?

SPEAKER_01 38:29

My partner and I would say, we're like, man, we have so many crazy stories here that we should keep track of them. So I I did start like back in the day keeping track of them, and then I'd give little like synopsis of what occurred. And then I finally um I had a literary agent years ago, and he's like, Yeah, you know, you should craft this book. So he was helping me. He was actually in New York, his name was Paul Fedorko. Um, and we ended up right during the George Floyd time, started pitching the book, and I had a lot of people that were kind of interested in it, and then the George Floyd thing happened, and all the leads dried up, and they're like, No, we want nothing to do with the police. And it's so funny because I had so many people that were like in TV land that like deleted me. I'm like, I didn't kill him. Like it was just like group mentality, people are such followers sometimes. I'm like, okay, now everybody hates me. So then the book kind of just like, you know, sat still, didn't finish it. And then um I had an editor that I was working with that's like, no, Michelle, you should really try to finish this. So we pitched a couple times, didn't get anywhere. And then randomly, one night, I think I was at work and I sent the pitch out to uh Wild Blue Press who ended up giving me an acceptance letter a couple days later. And then they're like, Okay, when are you gonna be done with it? And I was like, May 2026. And the one of the heads of the company there was like, Okay. I'm like, wait, May isn't not good. Should I do it before then? He's like, No, no, no, everyone writes at a different pace. He's like, but your book is basically done. You just need to put everything where it needs to be. So I'm like, okay, December 31st. So I finished it on December 23rd, and we were already done with the first stage of editing um on New Year's Eve because they called me on New Year's Eve. And they're like, okay, your release date is, you know, whatever it was supposed to be February, and it moved back to March. And I was like, wait, of 2027 or 2026? So it moved really quickly, but that's because I had edited that book so many times. I mean, I was sick of looking at it because I kept changing it and moving it and this and that. So yeah, it was it was a long process.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Do you think your time as a detective writing countless reports helped you write this book?

SPEAKER_01 40:34

100%. Because it's funny, I write my reports the same way that I wrote the book. And I always tell people that your reports and homicide investigations should read like a story. It should be from when you arrived on the scene, what you saw, what happened. And I think that's really good for testifying because you can look back at it and see exactly what went on. So luckily it worked out with the writing thing because I didn't know if I was a writer or not. You know, I I document cases, doesn't mean that I'm not necessarily, you know, a good writer.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Writing a memoir requires some vulnerability. Yes. Was there a particular chapter of the story that was hardest for you to share?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

I think just being honest, like I would always have people ask me stories about like, how is it being a female? I'm like, oh, it's awesome. People are so nice. And I think that was the hard part because I was always worried that people were gonna think I was a crybaby or something. But I'm like, no, you know, when I started off, people weren't nice. And there are the things that people hear about the good, you know, good old boys club and all that type of stuff. It's way less now, definitely. But I think that part I might have been worried about it before. And then I did go through a divorce that I did mention in the book, and um initially I wrote so much bad stuff in there, and I took it all out. I'm like, I went as soon as my pain. But it was in there because you know, I was just basically dumping all my thoughts. And then when I was going back, I'm like, okay, this doesn't need to be in there. Yeah, it kept like a smidge.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Do you think you got another book in you?

SPEAKER_01 42:01

I I think I do. I I don't I think might maybe it'll be something about like sergeant's stuff is so much different than actual investigations. So it's me leading a group and they're doing all the work. So it's it's a lot of different stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

So maybe Michelle, last time, what's the name of your book and where can our listeners pick up a copy?

SPEAKER_01 42:20

It's called Model Detective, and it is available on Amazon and Barnes Noble or basically anywhere where you can get a book.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

And Michelle, if people want to reach out to you for interviews or speaking engagements, where can they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 42:32

My website is model detectivebook.com, and there's a link that goes straight to me in there. So you could send me a message or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Michelle Wood, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Thank you. Thank you so much, Vic. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Chicago, Illinois, Toledo, Ohio, Syracuse, New York, Dallas, Texas, and Patterson, New Jersey. If you work in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFroy50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons. If you're really feeling strong, please hit the hype button. If you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page. Type in my name, VicFroy Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.