DeFede

JACKSONVILLE (CBS4) ― In the early afternoon of September 13, 2007, Kevin Wehner was in the front yard of his house in Jacksonville, changing the spark plugs on his car, when his mother-in-law called from New York. "She said, 'Right now I'm looking at your face and your name all over the television,'" Wehner recalled. "`It's on almost every station and they are saying you just killed a cop and you shot three more.'"

    Two hours earlier, and more than 350 miles away in Miami, Shawn LaBeet, a violent felon with a penchant for assault weapons, had gunned down four Miami-Dade cops. It was one of the state's worst shooting rampages against police officers in more than two decades. For more than four hours, police believed the gunman was Wehner, a man with no criminal history.

    "Imagine I didn't hear about this manhunt happening," said the 30-year-old Wehner, "and I'd been on the road, maybe even with my children, they would have come and just possibly shot me. When they apprehend someone like this, they come in with guns blazing; they don't really ask questions, they shoot first."

The Miami Dade Police Department's assertion that the killer was Wehner – an assertion that prompted a nationwide manhunt and allowed LaBeet to initially escape the area – seemed, at the time, perfectly reasonable. In 2003, LaBeet had stolen Wehner's identity, obtained a Florida driver's license, and had been openly living in South Florida as Kevin Foston Wehner. Furthermore, LaBeet's girlfriend told police in the moments immediately after the shooting that her boyfriend's name was Kevin Wehner.

    "That hampered our investigation," Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez said at the time. The decision by LaBeet's girlfriend, Renee D'Angelo, to withhold LaBeet's true identity has been deemed so serious by police and prosecutors that they have criminally charged the girlfriend as an accessory after the fact to murder. She is facing up to 20 years in prison.
A three-month CBS4 News investigation, however, reveals that long before that fateful September morning, a combination of both poor police work and lack of communication among local, state and federal agencies allowed Shawn LaBeet to remain free.

Among CBS4's findings:

• July 2004, more than three years before the shooting, the State of Florida was contacted by the real Kevin Wehner, who was living in New York at the time. He warned that based upon problems with his credit report, someone had apparently obtained a fraudulent Florida driver's license under his name and was living in South Florida. The state Department of Motor Vehicles took the complaint but did little about it. They did not red flag the Wehner driver's license with FDLE or any of the state databases used by law enforcement.

• Between December 2005 and April 2006, LaBeet, using the fraudulent Florida driver's license, bought a cache of firearms from a pawn shop in Tamarac and a gun shop in Key Largo. Included in these purchases was a Norinco MAK90 assault rifle, the gun used by LaBeet in his shootout with police.

• Thomas Kiffney, the owner of the Key Largo gun shop and a sergeant in the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, told CBS4 News that after the man who identified himself as Wehner made his last gun purchase, he asked about special ordering bullet proof vests and gas masks. Kiffney said he became so concerned by this conversation that on April 7, 2006, he called the Miami field office of the ATF and said they should investigate. "I just wanted to tell [ATF] that there was something suspicious about this guy," Kiffney said. "They seemed interested and I sent them all of the paperwork on the gun purchases. But that was the end of it, we never heard back from them."

• During October 2006, the real Kevin Wehner, who had moved to Jacksonville a few months earlier, called the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department to report that he had received renewal notices for two cars he knew nothing about in Miami-Dade County. A Jacksonville deputy investigated the case and determined that someone had indeed stolen Wehner's identity and had obtained a Florida driver's license. A report from that investigation lists a physical description of the suspect, an address for the suspect in Miami-Dade County, and a description of the suspect's two cars, as well as their license plate numbers. None of this information, however, was shared with other law enforcement agencies or even with the state DMV. "An attempt to contact the customer service line with the Department of Motor Vehicles was unsuccessful," the Jacksonville deputy concluded in his report. He then added: "Patrol efforts suspended."

• On August 17, 2007, one month before the shooting, Kevin Wehner went to the DMV office in Jacksonville to apply for a Florida driver's license. He was denied a license because there already was a Kevin Wehner in the system. Wehner filled out a fraud investigation report, complaining -- for the third time in three years -- that his identity had been stolen and someone was operating under his name in South Florida. The DMV took a picture of Wehner "as part of the fraud investigation," according to Major Ernie Duarte of the Florida Highway Patrol. On the day of the shooting, it was this very picture that Miami-Dade Police released to the media as the man wanted for murdering a police officer.

LaBeet, who had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, was stopped by police on traffic violations on at least five separate occasions between 2003 and 2005. Each time he provided officers his false Kevin Wehner driver's license. Since neither the license nor the license plates were flagged in the system, LaBeet was merely issued a citation and allowed to leave.

"This is what the 9/11 Report complained about," noted Wayne Black,
a private security specialist who works with the Department of Homeland Security. "Agencies have got to talk to each other. Somebody has to do something. It's actually depressing the amount of red flags in this chain of events going back to 2003."


*  *  *  *

    Shawn LaBeet arrived home in North Lauderdale on April Fool's Day 2002, only to discover that someone had smoked or stolen all of his marijuana. Angry, he retrieved a shotgun from his room and began questioning his girlfriend, her cousin, and a friend who were in the house. A struggle ensued and the shotgun went off twice, a pellet ricocheted off the wall and struck girlfriend D'Angelo in the thigh.

    LaBeet was arrested, charged with aggravated assault, and released on bond. He skipped his next court appearance, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Shortly thereafter, Shawn LaBeet, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.

    He moved with D'Angelo to South Miami-Dade, where in August 2003, he walked into a Florida DMV office and identified himself as Kevin Foston Wehner. As proof of his identity, he presented a U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate and a Social Security card bearing Kevin Wehner's name. Under state law, he was not required to show a photo ID. He was issued a Florida identification card and a Florida driver's license with his picture and Kevin Wehner's name. (Wehner says his birth certificate and Social Security card were stolen when his house in St. Thomas was broken into sometime around 2001.)

    From that point on, Shawn LaBeet did everything as Kevin Wehner. He bought cars and registered then under Wehner's name. He rented apartments and houses under the name of Wehner. All of his neighbors knew him as Kevin.

    He also ran up debt as Kevin Wehner, which eventually caught the attention of the real Kevin Wehner. Like LaBeet, Wehner was born in the Virgin Islands. He moved to New York, got married, and was preparing to start a family when he started having trouble establishing credit. Bills out of Florida were showing up on his credit report, and he soon discovered he was the victim of identity theft.

    State records show that on July 23, 2004, Wehner called the Florida DMV from New York and told them they had issued a Florida driver's license to someone pretending to be Kevin Wehner. The DMV asked him to place his complaint in writing. On August 25, 2004, the department received a letter for Wehner asking them to investigate.

    The DMV sent Wehner a letter asking him for proof that his identity had been stolen.  The agency told him to provide a copy of his passport or other documents that would prove he was the real Kevin Wehner. The DMV said they never received a response from Wehner and took no further action on his complaint.

    "Maybe they did send a letter, but we didn't get it," said Wehner's wife, Jessela. "If we had we would have responded. We wanted to get this cleared up. They had our phone number. They had our address. They should have sent a follow up letter. We thought they were taking care of it."

    Security expert Black notes that a report of someone obtaining a fraudulent Florida driver's license is a serious issue and that more should have been done by the state. "You don't assume someone else's identity because you like their name," he says. "You do it so you can commit a crime."

    The Florida Driver's license allowed LaBeet to buy an assortment of assault rifles and handguns. In December 2005, he went to a pawn shop in Tamarac, D&P Pawn, and paid $450 for a Norinco MAK 90, the Chinese-made version of the AK 47.

    He gave the owner Wehner driver's license and filled out the ATF required paperwork, which asks a series of questions:
  

•  Are you a fugitive from justice? LaBeet wrote "NO," which was not true. He was still wanted in Broward for having shot his girlfriend.

• Are you under indictment or information in any court for a felony, or any other crime, for which the judge could imprison you for more than one year? LaBeet wrote "NO."

   

• Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana, or any depressant, stimulant, or narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Once again, LaBeet wrote, "NO."

   
Before turning over the assault weapon to LaBeet, the pawn shop owner called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which did a quick background check on the name Kevin Wehner.  Seeing nothing of concern in the system, FDLE cleared the owner to sell LaBeet the gun.

Three months later, LaBeet drove to Kiffney's Gun Shop in the Florida Keys and bought three, Yugoslavian-made SKS assault rifles for $275 apiece. Four weeks later, he was back to purchase CZ semi-automatic handgun for $540. As he had previously, he filled out all of the paperwork and was cleared to receive the guns.

But after buying the handgun, LaBeet started asking the owner, Thomas Kiffney, if he could special order items such as gas masks, bullet proof vests and other types of body armor.

"Once he started asking questions about bullet proof vests and gas masks, that's when I became uncomfortable," said Kiffney, who in addition to owning the gun shop is a patrol sergeant with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department. "I told him, 'I'd really rather not do any more business with you.' And he was fine with that. He was polite and left. He is the only person, other than police officers, who has ever asked about bullet proof vests and it just didn't sit right with me."

After LaBeet left, Kiffney called the Miami field office of the ATF to report his concerns. "I have no clue what was done, so it is hard for me to criticize them," he said. "I don't want to Monday morning quarterback anyone."

A spokesman for ATF said he could not find a record of Kiffney calling the agency, but he said such calls wouldn't be unusual and if there wasn't a specific crime being reported there was little the agent could have done.

*  *  *  *


In June 2006, Kevin and Jessela Wehner, and their one-year-old daughter, moved from New York to Jacksonville. Within three months of arriving in Florida, Wehner began receiving auto tag renewal notices for two cars registered in Miami-Dade County, including a 1990 red Buick LaSabre.

He realized someone was still operating under his name and called the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department.

A few days later, the Jacksonville deputy who was assigned the complaint, showed Wehner all of the information he had uncovered. He told Wehner that the imposter was using his same birth date and social security number. He showed him the DMV information, listing the imposter's height; he even showed Wehner the imposter's address in Naranja, in South Miami-Dade.

"The officer was even making jokes with me, saying I should go down there and kick this guy's butt," Wehner recalls. "And I said this is the reason I'm filing this report, so you can do this for me."

The deputy wrote in his report that he tried calling the customer service line for the DMV but wasn't able to get through so he stopped trying and filed the report.

Security expert Wayne Black gives Jacksonville credit for putting all of the pieces together, but was stunned that they didn't do anything with the information. "They proved there was identity theft," he noted. "They proved that someone else was using Wehner's name and they called customer service and when no one answered they stopped. They just stopped.

 "[The deputy] made a finding that Wehner was the victim of identity theft and that somebody else, somewhere, was using a driver's license that did not belong to them. He has an obligation to follow through and do something with that"

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