Tag: Alfred Damiani

Q&A with Homicide Detective Al Damiani
(“Transaction Failed,” Forensic Files)

Ronnie Neal and his daughter, Pearl Cruz, accepted the kindness of Diane Tilly and then robbed the educator in her San Antonio, Texas, home and killed her.

Last week’s post detailed the tragedy and irony of that 2004 crime, which Forensic Files portrayed in “Transaction Failed.”

Puzzling. Today, I’d like to focus on the senselessness of the crime.

Ronnie Neal, 33, committed capital murder for household electronics, a few hundred dollars, and a six-year-old car.

And he seemed oddly unaware of the way police actually catch criminals, considering that, as a felon, he had plenty of experience with law enforcement.

Hat trick. For example, he made no attempt to disguise himself when trying to withdraw cash with Tilly’s ATM card at businesses he must have known had security cameras.

He had Pearl, 15, use the card, too. She wore a hat but did nothing else to hide her identity.

After the authorities apprehended the father-daughter team at a motel, Neal told the police quite a yarn about how he came into possession of Tilly’s 1998 Cadillac Fleetwood, .357 Magnum, bank card, and other property.

You don’t say. Neal was at a car wash, he claimed, when he spotted the sedan with the keys in the ignition and the engine running. The vehicle was already loaded up with easy-to-pawn possessions, so he just couldn’t resist hopping inside and driving away, he said.

In the glove compartment, Neal explained, he discovered Tilly’s ATM card, with the PIN number written on a piece of paper.

When he heard on TV that the beloved Robbins Academy educator had gone missing and authorities were searching for two people seen with her car, he set the vehicle on fire in a field so no one would mistakenly believe he was connected with her disappearance, he said.

I’m curious as to why Neal peddled such absurdity.

He was there. Fortunately, Alfred J. Damiani, who Forensic Files watchers may remember for his appearance on “Transaction Failed,” agreed to answer some questions.

As a homicide detective, he worked to find Diane Tilly’s killers and win convictions against them.

Damiani, now a detective with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Vehicle Crimes Unit ReACT in San Antonio, offered some insight and also indulged my curiosity about his line of work:

Were you shocked by this case?
It was disturbing but not particularly shocking.

My wife is an educator and my habit was to have her proofread my reports before I turned them in. She told me recently that she found it [the Tilly case] so disturbing that she had trouble sleeping.

Why was Ronnie Neal so reckless? 
He made some attempt. He told Pearl, “Don’t worry, the quality is so bad on the security footage that they’ll never be able to identify us.”

Why didn’t Neal just clam up instead of giving police a story that could easily be picked apart?
He didn’t have a lot of choices because we caught him dead to rights on video tape using the ATM card on more than one occasion.

We caught him with her possessions, and he tried to pull a gun on us — the gun he stole from Tilly’s house. It was in his waistband and fell down his pant leg. Then we grabbed him and took him into custody. He had a second gun, which we found in his hotel room.

And the interview was more than meets the eye.

I sat down with this guy and talked to him and came to the conclusion that no helpful information was coming. At that time, we hadn’t found a body yet so I was still involved in trying to find an alive Diane Tilly and didn’t want to waste time with the guy giving a fabrication.

There was a real close time frame between the murder and when we had him in custody — around 24 hours — and that’s why we were still operating under the hope that it was an abduction and we still might find her alive someplace.

So I turned the interview over to some other detectives, and they got something from him down on paper. Sometimes it’s good to get a story down, even if it’s a fabrication. It helps for judges to see what a liar he is.

Did you believe his contention that he was mentally retarded?
I don’t think he was a genius but, no, I didn’t believe he was retarded.

That contention came up later, because he wanted to stay out of the death chamber.

This information didn’t make it into the Forensic Files episode, but once when Ronnie Neal was in county jail in the Houston area [in connection with an  earlier crime], he hatched a plan to have his sister bring him a TV set with a gun inside the back — this was before TV sets were so thin. The plan was that he would take the gun out, shoot a guard, and watch him die.

I felt a little bad for Annie Pine, Ronnie Neal’s mother, when she begged for his life. She seemed sweet. (I found some footage online of Annie Pine in court that didn’t appear on Forensic Files.)
I think there was more going on at Annie Pine’s house than we know. I don’t think she was the nice person she seemed.

The first time I met her I got a bad vibe off of her and she was incensed that we would be looking at Ronnie Neal in relation to this crime.

Annie Pine absolutely refused to cooperate with the investigation back when we still hoped to find Diane Tilly alive.

What about Pearl Cruz’s sentence? Forensic Files said she got 30 years, but I read that she’s already out.
Pearl Ann was as much a victim as anyone else. That doesn’t dismiss her behavior. She took an active part in this crime. But she was only 15 years old and she cooperated with the investigation, which is why the District Attorney’s office allowed her to have a life and walk out of jail. Otherwise, she would have been considered an adult and served the whole 30 years.

Did you feel Forensic Files’ portrayal of the case was fair and accurate?
Yes, they did a great job, especially considering the time constraints. There were two days of shooting and a lot of stuff going on.

Why did you stop working as a homicide detective?
I had one case after another of some really disturbing stuff. They say a detective has only so many homicides in him that he can deal with, and that everyone has a different body count.

One day, it just hit me, I don’t want to do this anymore. It was after the Tilly case and later some baby cases.

Could you put your cases out of your mind when you were at home?
To do homicide, you have to be completely involved — it’s not something you can forget. It was my life. Fortunately, my wife didn’t divorce me.♣

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Next: A look at the 1997 murder of Stefanie Rabinowitz in Philadelphia