Mike Brooks: Much being released from Dennehy probe
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CNN correspondent MIke Brooks
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(CNN) -- There's still no sign of Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy, missing since mid-June. Investigators searched a 50-acre field where a Delaware police informant said he was shot last month, a police spokesman said Tuesday. But they found no sign of the 21-year-old Dennehy. His SUV was found last week in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper discussed the investigation with CNN correspondent Mike Brooks, a 26-year veteran of the Washington, D.C. Police Department.
COOPER: As you look at this investigation from the outside, how do you think it's going? I mean, police come forward on Friday, saying that suspects are on the basketball team, now they're backtracking from that.
BROOKS: They're not holding things too close to their vest, Anderson. If I was an investigator in this particular case, I would be holding some of the information a lot closer to my vest. I wouldn't be putting out there that these people are suspects.
The other thing is the affidavit. We wouldn't want that to get out because the information in that affidavit, Anderson, is information that establishes probable cause for a search warrant signed by a magistrate. In that they say that some of the evidence -- and they're talking about the evidence that is in Patrick Dennehy's computers they're looking at right now and analyzing -- they're calling that evidence of a violation of a Texas penal code, and they cite the penal code for murder. So these are some things that I would not have let out initially.
COOPER: And just to be very clear to the viewers out there, this affidavit was what was used in order to get this search warrant, and in the affidavit, an unknown, unnamed informant apparently told Delaware police that Carlton Dotson had told his cousin -- we don't know if this informant is the cousin or is someone [else] -- told his cousin he had shot Patrick Dennehy. Again, this is an unknown, unnamed informant.
This is out there. It's been all over the television the last 24 hours or so. Why have police not moved against Carlton Dotson or tried to at least gain an understanding of his whereabouts?
BROOKS: Well, apparently the police have already interviewed Carlton Dotson at least one time. Apparently, a Waco investigator went to either Maryland or wherever there was to interview Carlton Dotson. But what information he gave them is not known.
Now the veracity of this police informant -- it was an informant of a police sergeant in Seaford, Delaware, which is just a short distance up the road over the Maryland line from Hurlock, Maryland, where Carlton Dotson lives -- the veracity of this informant we don't know. The law enforcement officer who has used him before, said he has been reliable in the past, so he was going on that information. But we're talking at least third-hand information here. So the veracity of that informant, Anderson, would also come into question for me.
COOPER: Mike, bottom line: Can the Waco police handle this? The FBI has already been consulted. If this turns into definitely a homicide investigation, think the FBI's going to take it over?
BROOKS: The FBI played a minor role early on in the search of that field. The Baltimore office of the FBI has not been contacted, I've been told by my sources, to assist in any interviews, any evidence-recovery at all with Carlton Dotson or anyone else.
Again, they're calling Carlton Dotson right now a person of interest. But there are other people out there who they also are calling persons of interest not mentioned.
