Keywords

evidence; hotel security; opinion; site inspection; testimony

What happened?

An airline crew checked into a hotel following their last flight for the day. Within a short time, one of the attendants was sexually assaulted in her room while her colleagues waited for her in the lobby.

Who was being sued, and why?

The hotel was named in the lawsuit for inadequate security and security negligence.

Who was involved?

When did it happen?

Within an hour after the flight crew checked into their respective rooms, sometime around 8:00 p.m.

How did it happen?

The plane’s passengers had disembarked, and the crew of five had completed their day. A van took them to the contracted hotel, and they went through the quick check-in procedure. The desk clerk handed the three flight attendants their keys and the captain and second officer their keys. All took the elevator to the fifth floor and went their various ways with the agreement they’d assemble in the lobby in 45 minutes after freshening up to share dinner together. Mary White entered her assigned room and, upon discovering the room didn’t have a coffeemaker, she left her luggage and returned to the desk, explaining her desire to have a coffeemaker. Rather than have someone deliver the appliance, she was reassigned to a new room on the fourth floor, just one level below her colleagues. With two keys in hand (her original key and the new key), she went to her new room to check it out. A coffeemaker was present. She left that room, rode the elevator up one floor, returned to her original room, gathered up her uniform, coat, and suitcase, and returned down to her new room.

Her intention was to return the key to the fifth floor room once she met her coworkers in the lobby. On her way to the elevator to descend to her new room, she saw the copilot in the hall and informed him of her change of rooms and the new room number.

She unlocked the door to her room on the fourth floor, which opened and swung to the left, hitting and stopping against the west wall of the room. The light switch was immediately to her right on the wall facing the length of the room. Further to her immediate right was a doorway (without a door) leading into the toilet, tub, and shower. In front of her and slightly off to the right was the sink, counter, and stack of towels. From the back of the sink counter to the ceiling was lattice work that you could see through; on the other side of this ornamentation was the coffeemaker. The space between the wall on the left and the end of the sink was the entry to the main part of the hotel room which included the bed, which was off to the right.

Mary headed for the sliding-glass door at the far end of the room, passing the bed to her right. She was still pulling her wheeled luggage. Her intention was to open the slider, which opened onto a small balcony overlooking a central courtyard. She wanted fresh air in the room. As she approached the slider she heard something behind her and, upon turning, was startled to see a man dressed completely in black, including a ski mask, long sleeves, and gloves.

Mary dropped the handle of the luggage as he seized her arm and jerked her toward the sofa, which was against the wall and adjacent to the bed. She was instructed to disrobe and sit on the sofa. She later told the police she was utterly terrorized. While seated, he took of his pants, threatened her, and forced her to perform oral copulation.

As this was occurring, the rest of the crew had gathered in the lobby and were waiting. Because she was late, Ron Hefstedder, the copilot, went to her room. As he approached her door he noticed it was slightly ajar and the key was still in the lock. He gently pushed the door, but it would only open an inch or two because the privacy chain had been engaged. Ron called Mary’s name through the crack of the slightly opened door. She later told the police the assailant forcibly prevented her from answering.

After calling her name, the copilot informed Mary her key was sticking out of the lock. He heard a male voice answer, “Oh, Okay. Sorry, I’ll get it.”

Puzzled by the sound of a man’s voice, Hefstedder nonetheless left and headed for the elevator to return to the lobby. Some few steps away from the door he heard her door close behind him. He turned and noted the key was no longer protruding from the lock and the door was shut.

He told the waiting crew what he had seen and heard, and decided he must have gotten the wrong room number and went to the desk. The desk clerk was on the phone. Ron could hear a woman screaming over the phone. He recognized the voice. The clerk picked up a second phone and dialed 9-1-1; the police happened to be in the neighborhood. The first police officer entered the lobby a few minutes later. The copilot raced back up to the fourth floor and observed a hotel maintenance man knocking and shouting for Mary to open the door. She refused and could be heard yelling for him to get away from the door. Later Mary said she thought he was culprit.

When the police arrived on the fourth floor, they too asked her to open the door. She said she couldn’t because all she had was a towel wrapped around her. Eventually she opened the door and, after the paramedics arrived, she told all concerned what had transpired. She had the presence of mind to preserve the evidence, which she spit into a vial provided by the paramedics.

Mary’s room was taken out of service for as long as was necessary, knowing the matter would surely cause the filing of a lawsuit.

Mary filed a lawsuit against “John Doe” (the assailant) and the hotel for inadequate security for travelers in general and female guests in particular. The complaint was subsequently amended to include another “cause of action”—negligence—after the plaintiff’s counsel discovered the hotel’s master key had been missing for four days prior to this incident. Clearly, the plaintiff’s position was someone employed by (or formally employed by) the hotel had intimate knowledge of the hotel, its operations, security, and the fact that airline attendants regularly stayed there.

The plaintiff further contended the assailant waited with the master key for the most attractive target of opportunity, and the plaintiff was his choice. The plaintiff would take the strong position that a missing master key was a matter that should have created a greater and urgent concern among the hotel’s management because it posed a serious risk to every guest, not just to women. No one would stay in a hotel knowing the master key was missing. The plaintiff retained Bobby Sonderman, the former chief of police of the southern city in which this hotel was located, as her security expert, and counsel for the hotel retained me as the hotel’s security expert.

Assessment of the hotel’s security program

This was a pretty straightforward case, on the face of it. Clearly, the missing master key would be hard to explain to a jury. I credited the hotel for having a key control system that “caught” the fact the master key was missing, but faulted the hotel for allowing four days to pass without rekeying the locks. Rekeying a hotel is a major expense, therefore a reasonable period of time is needed to fully investigate and attempt to locate the key, but four days could not be justified. Here was another example of finding some contributory negligence in a defense case and I shared that “bump in the road” (i.e., bad news) with the attorney defending the hotel. That sharing meant if I was asked while under oath if it was negligent to allow four days to pass with a master key missing, I would be morally and legally obliged to say “yes.” That would not bode well for the hotel.

It really wasn’t an issue of inadequate security in terms of the number of security officers who were or should have been on duty, or the quality of security officer training. Indeed, there was a well-trained security officer on duty at the time of this incident, engaged in his regular routine of patrolling the floors.

The focus of the case wasn’t the issue of foreseeability of crimes based on a history of criminal incidents. I checked all available hotel records and police data, including calls for police service at that address (a good indication of the frequency of police and crime-related incidents), and there was no indication it was a dangerous location. I know Sonderman checked the same data (or should have). Historically, and from all other perspectives, this was a clean, above-average, airline-approved place of lodging in a fairly crime-free part of the city. It would be foreseeable that a guest could be victimized if an unaccounted-for master key was in the hands of some employee or friend of an employee.

The police pursued their objective of attempting to identify the assailant, while Sonderman and I pursued our objective of determining if the hotel was civilly liable for the attack. In the police’s pursuit they checked every possible suspect, including all male employees of the hotel, for DNA comparisons to the semen evidence. There were no matches. The detectives were mystified by the suspect’s M.O. (method of operation). No similar crime had ever happened in this major city.

Further, the police investigation failed to locate the key to the room. Indeed, there should have been two keys, the one for that room and the key to the fifth floor room that White had yet to return to the front desk. There were no keys. If, indeed, the master key was used it’s likely the culprit wouldn’t want to carry it away and possibly be stopped with it in his possession. It would be better to leave the key or all keys in the room.

Each expert, if he or she wants to or knows what he or she is doing, conducts what is called a site inspection—that is, a careful visual inspection of the property and crime scene to better understand the entirety of the event. That’s weighed against the police report of their findings and their record of what the witnesses and victim tells them. Comparing all this information against the victim’s sworn deposition can reveal interesting or curious differences that can give direction to the search for the truth of what happened.

The plaintiff told the police how she had changed rooms, and, after inspecting and liking the second room, she left the light on because she knew she’d be right back after retrieving her luggage from her original room on the fifth floor. She had to turn on the lights to see and ensure it was satisfactory, and to ensure it had a coffeemaker.

In her sworn testimony, she said she returned to the second room and, upon entering, turned on the light switch so she could see, as anyone would do upon entering a dark room. Subsequently, during her sworn testimony, she stated when she returned to the fourth-floor room with her luggage and entered the room she had to turn on the light.

My assessment of the event

My focus concentrated on her and her story of what happened. I became privately convinced her story wasn’t entirely truthful. These are the issues that struck me as peculiar:

In trial, Sonderman, as I understand it (normally experts are not present in the courtroom when opposing experts testify, principally because of the costs involved), testified the master key was used, unequivocally, and the hotel was negligent. His bottom line was, but for the failure to remedy the missing key, the plaintiff would never have been assaulted. During his cross-examination he was asked if he had any hand in the training of the police detectives during his service. He did, and he praised their investigative skills, including the quality of the investigation into this sexual assault. His final point was that he believed the assailant saw her enter the room the first time and, believing she was returning, let himself in with the master key and waited for her return. Then he donned his black costume once inside.

Therefore, the plaintiff’s expert formed an opinion as to how the event unfolded and connected the event to the negligence of the hotel’s control of and reaction to a missing master key. He shared his opinion with the jury.

When I was questioned about the missing master key, I agreed it was wrong of the hotel not to change all the locks, irrespective of the expense, but I doubted the master key had any role in this alleged incident. In my opinion, master keys have a greater value for surreptitious use for financial benefit or even for a more natural sexual attack than this one-time unusual attack. I could not share with the jury my suspicion of a setup, which I couldn’t prove, for fear of alienating and/or angering someone on the jury. After all, it was pure speculation. I did testify I couldn’t explain some of the very unusual and peculiar circumstances of this event, hoping the jury would also be curious about such evidence as the semen in the mouth.

I was never asked, on the stand, if I suspected the incident had been staged.

Toward the end of my testimony, and I was the last witness, the questioning went something like this: “Mr. Sennewald, you’re aware, are you not, that Chief Sonderman, the plaintiff’s expert, testified before this jury that his opinion is the assailant had the master key, chose Ms. White as his victim, let himself into her room, and waited for to return? You understand that sir?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you don’t agree with him do you?”

“I do not.”

“Why not?”

“How could he know she was in the midst of changing rooms and was coming right back to that room?

“Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say he was standing down by the desk, where he overheard the exchange between Ms. White and the desk clerk, and he waited to see her enter that second room and, shortly thereafter, leave and go up to retrieve her luggage from the first room. It’s possible that could have happened, couldn’t it?”

I was fleetingly tempted to answer “Standing down there in his black costume?” but that would have been a sarcastic answer to a legitimate question, as well as disrespectful to the dignity of the process, the court, and the jury, and I knew better. Instead, I said, “It’s possible. Unlikely in my view, but, yes, possible, anything is possible.”

He continued, “Possible. Thank you. Taking that further, because you say it’s possible, I submit to you when she left the room and he knew she would return shortly, he used the lost master key and hid in the room awaiting her return.”

I responded, “Using your hypothetical, where could he hide in the room and not be seen when she returned and, according to her testimony, turned on the lights?”

“Well, Mr. Sennewald, you’re the security expert, not me. Where could he hide?”

“I’ve examined the room. Indeed, I measured the room. The only place a person could hide and not be seen when a guest enters would have to be in the bathroom to the right as you enter. The bathroom has an entry, not a door. The only place one could hide in that bathroom would be to stand in the bathtub, behind the shower curtain. The police detectives in this case are well-trained and experienced, even your expert acknowledges that. They’re experienced criminal investigators, and they thought through where a culprit could hide and not be seen when someone entered the room. They knew the tub with the shower curtain was the only possible hiding place and they examined it for footprints. Their investigation, their examination, revealed no evidence of footprints in the bottom of that tub.”

I was never asked if I had formed an opinion as to how the event occurred, but clearly rebutted Sonderman’s theory and opinion. Apparently this left the jury with no positive expert support of Mary’s version of the attack and no logical explanation for her bizarre story. I was excused and left the courtroom.

Following that concluding testimony, the next event is the closing arguments. I have no idea what the defense attorney had to say to the jury. I can only guess they somehow concluded the event did not happened as alleged, as I suspected, and they found for the hotel.